Favorite rough weather technique

[gonzo]

I heave-to routinely. That is, back up the jib and set the tiller to leeward (or the rudder to windward). It is easy, fast and settles the boat into a relatively easy motion. It makes it safer to, for example, take a reef down.

[Frosty]

Do you mean a reefer furling main? I mean how do you slide the main down the track when the slides are loaded in heavy winds?

Before I wised up and bought a power boat my 63 foot sloop needed to shake the main down by holding her into the wind.

[gonzo]

I heave-to with any kind of reefing system or with the main doused. The jib is doing the work.

[marshmat]

For now, at the first sign of bad weather I goose the throttle and aim for shelter at 20-30 mph. This is pretty much the best storm tactic a small runabout has to offer. On the occasions where I have been caught in significant seas, modulating the throttle to maintain steering control and stay on the backs of the waves (if running) or aim for the destructive interference nodes (if beating) works very well, but requires a lot of concentration. (On several occasions, I've run a 5-metre boat into 2-metre seas this way, and ended up with slightly spray-dampened crew but a dry bilge.)

Of course, this is in small, fast powerboats; tactics will differ greatly when you go from 20 to 500 lb/hp and add a deck, keel, etc....

[gonzo]

Modulating the throttle is crucial. I remember my sister cutting the throttle suddenly while surfing a 18' runabout and getting pooped. She was really embarassed to sink her friend's boat.

[Kay9]

My Favorite heavy wx tech is to stand on chicken point in Winchestor bay Oregon and watch other people trying to get across the bar.

;)

K9

[mark775]

Reminiscent of the surest cure for Mal De Mer! (Take a nap under an apple tree)

[capt vimes]

gonzo

you never got caught by the so called 'bora' off the coast of croatia...
if you are sailing there and do not see the signs in time or ingnore them or are not able to read them, winds with forces 9 and higher might hit you within less than an hour... leaving you trapped in the middle of a lot of stoney and ugly islands... you definitely do not heave-to there... :p

what i am trying to bring across:
heavy weather strategies are very much dependent on the situation and location you are encountering it...
you got a lot of water around you - you actually could do as fits you...
you are close to land - reach open water as fast as possible... even if this means beating upwind for hours and knocking the crew about on the ship...

generally i am trying to get out of the weather with all speed and sails up the ship can bear and on the safest yet fastest course... and i have to confess - i like riding a storm very much! :p ;)

[gonzo]

I learned to sail in the Plata river. There is an average of nine hurricane force winds a year, plus several gales. The "Pampero" is similar to that. The wind dies down, the temperature drops twenty or more degrees and within ten minutes the front arrives with hurricane force.

[capt vimes]

so you know how fast a front with dangerous windforces can hit you...
but it was not the point of my posting...

any weathering strategy capable of getting the ship and crew through the rough times unharmed is dependend on the circumstances you are facing... different circumstances - different strategy
a good skipper should be confident with any strategy there is...

but to be honest - i like to sail it out with a course having the wind on the beam to aftship depending on the seaway and the traveldirection of the waves... and with enough water ahead of me....
you see - there have to be a lot of conditions met before i can do what i like most... ;)

[gonzo]

In extreme cases my favorite is to panic, run in circles and scream. It is what I read in most "disaster" sailing stories :)

[capt vimes]

hehe... unfortunately this is the case with most skippers... :)

[bntii]

I never remember to heave to or do anything sensible when the circumstances call for a clear thinking.
I always just fight it out- half under water with gear flogging about.. and tell the stories in the bar afterward.

[Frosty]

I never remember to heave to or do anything sensible when the circumstances call for a clear thinking.
I always just fight it out- half under water with gear flogging about.. and tell the stories in the bar afterward.

Now there is a truth full man.

[ancient kayaker]

In extreme cases my favorite is to panic, run in circles and scream. It is what I read in most "disaster" sailing stories :)

That would be from the WITOIDRICSAS school of mamagement theory: "When In Trouble Or In Doubt Run In Circles Scream And Shout"

I'm a JGOWI man myself (Just Get On With It)

Hm: this might need a whole new thread ...

[Eric Sponberg]

More often than not, I will run with the wind and tow warps. This is because most of the time, I am probably on off-wind courses anyway. When on the wind, and not wanting to lose too much leeway, I lie ahull and wait it out--lash tiller over to leeward and go below. I do not believe in storm trysails, I would rather proceed under bare poles. Off the wind, this isn't a problem. On the wind, even with trysails, you can still go too fast.

Eric

[MikeJohns]

I heave-to with any kind of reefing system or with the main doused. The jib is doing the work.


I was at a boat show recently and when I asked the fst talking salesman what he thought the chances were of the racing-cruiser he was toting being able to heave-to he said "No one heaves to any more "

I've always found heaving-to to be a very stress reducing and easy manouvre if you are on a passage and need some rest, but I'd be wary of doing it in a 'performance-boat' as I think you might compromise your safety.

On passages we usually just abandon our intended course and change course to wherever we get the most comfortable ride if its more or less in the right direction, otherwise we heave to. As the seas build you need to run with them with the wind over 40 knots the bare mast on a sloop provides 5 to 6 knots and then you may need to tow something to slow down .

Overall comfort goes up and you be miserable more comfortably when hove-to :)

[jim lee]

Boat wouldn't heave to. Tried with no success.

We would remove the jib, reef the main, then point close hauled into the wind 'till the speed dropped to about 3 kn. Using wind vane to hold the angle.

Get book, read & nap.

-jim lee

[simon]

instead of heaving to, I go upwind with very reduced sails. you can pick the speed and the boat is under control. Waves seem to slap the stern and not the stem. Going downwind raises the risk of broaching and going out of control. I could not make the warps work. Maybe drogue would work. but puts a lot of strain on the boat.


Simon

[marshmat]

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned lying to a sea anchor yet..... a lot of the more recent literature on seamanship discusses a big (10 to 30 foot) parachute anchor as a good strategy for staying bow-to-the-waves in seriously rough stuff. Thoughts?

[simon]

a friend of mine used a para anchor once and he told me that he did get rid of it after that. He deployed it from the bow. I don't think that he used a bridle to angle the bow to the waves. He said that the bow slammed from one side to the other and everytime reaching the end of the stretch his boat was strained and I think that he said that he ripped a deckgear of the deck. The strain on the rudder was huge and he was afraid of breaking it.

Simon

[MikeJohns]

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned lying to a sea anchor yet..... a lot of the more recent literature on seamanship discusses a big (10 to 30 foot) parachute anchor as a good strategy for staying bow-to-the-waves in seriously rough stuff. Thoughts?

Mat

I guess this will depend a lot on the size and style of the boat and just what you call 'rough stuff'. It's propable the best option for multi-hulls

I suspect if deployed you'd end up cutting it away if the weather built past the point where you could lie ahull anyway. Every big sea would sweep the boat and then I'd worry too...
If the gear parted rising on a big breaker, then with no control you would be backwards pitch poled. At that stage you are much better running with it.

I see a lot of marketing for para anchors but I think thier real worth is to postpone drift onto a lee shore. I think the best strategy for a monohull would be to stream a small one astern to slow down.

[gonzo]

I've never used a sea anchor. They seem more like a marketing gimmick than anything. If I am going to put that much strain on my boat, I rather it had some steerage.

[RHough]

In order ... :)

Avoid if possible any wind/sea state combination I don't want to sail in. Even in a 5 knot boat you have some control of how bad conditions will be if you have decent forecasts aboard and can update them every 6-12 hours. SSB radio helps here.

I tend to have the next sail change down ready whenever it is likely to kick up. #4 Jib hanked on inner forestay, with storm jib ready. When #4 goes up, the storm jib gets hanked on below. Trysail lives in its bag on its own track all the time with ability to tack above boom or at deck level.

Jordan Series Drogue is ready at all times. I don't know of any boat ever capsized while streaming a JSD. If I can get 100 miles of sea room before it goes to hell the JSD should limit the drift to about 1.5 knots ... 36 miles in 24 hours. Yes it depends on what side of the weather you are on.

The only time I ever have to heave too or run about in a panic is when I've forgotten #1 ... avoid the worst weather if possible. Having a boat that is quite happy to sail in 30-35 with the #4 and two reefs in helps. Also heaves too nicely with that sail combo.

We actually took advantage of a hurricane for a delivery up the west coast of Mexico from Manzanillo to PV. Rather than beat up the coast, the circulation gave us about 20 knots from the South and we surfed around Cabo Corrientes in 10 foot swells. I'll take running in 20 over beating into it any day! :)

If we were going to Cabo San Lucas, we would have stayed in the bar.

[john.G]

Go surfing!!!

[john.G]

seriously though...

My first choice is always to find a nice place to belly up and wait it out.

My second choice is always to run for deep open ocean. more boats sink by running into things ( or being driven onto them) then ever get overwhelmed by bad weather. So I get sea room.

My third action is to reef early and reef deep.

I will always choose to run if I can. That's why my own boat has a canoe stern... not one of them flat assed things that get slapped and pushed around by following seas until they broach.

If I can't run, even under a scrap of canvas the size of my wife's bikini, then I'll come about.

At that point I will swing the other half of the wife's bikini off the other mast. See, it's not just there to lean against taking sights. As long as I can maintain steerage I'm happy, even if I'm going backwards across the ocean.

If I'm going backwards I will stream a rope off the bow. And while I've never had to do it, i am prepared to lay a slick if necessary.

[ancient kayaker]

Any chance of getting your wife's input on this?

[john.G]

Any chance of getting your wife's input on this?

This summer she's wearing this:

http://www.surfstitch.com/index.cfm/seo/BILLABONG-MEXICO-BIKINI--/a/catalog.prodShow/vid/83096/catid/615/active/1

((and if she looked like that I'd be hoping for an active cyclone season)):D

[magwas]

In blue water, deploy your Jordan series drought.
In coastal waters choose a good anchoring site before the storm hits you. Anchor from stern, and make sure than no boat leaving anchor will foul yours.
Always be up to date on weather forecasts, so you won't get caught in a storm unprepared.

[magwas]

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned lying to a sea anchor yet.....

Sea anchor is the answer to a question involving old style ships. Modern yachts should be slowed down from the stern, And it helps to have a system which doesn not depend on setting the rope length according to wave length.

http://www.jordanseriesdrogue.com/D_3.htm

[Chickadee]

Mmmmh... heave-to, make some tea, relax, and play dominoes ?

[ancient kayaker]

Mmmmh... heave-to, make some tea, relax, and play dominoes ?

I have a magnetic chess set: are there magnetic dominoes?

[gonzo]

Relaxing is not really an option. When you are tossed violently around, getting wedged tight in a bunk is the best you get.

[Chickadee]

Please, I was kidding! :cool:

With some boats and good, flat sails, you can point very close to the wind. Not too much speed, and less heeling! It's not possible to handle any boat like that in great winds and waves without stopping the boat and losing control, but it's a good position to face the waves. Pick just enough speed in the hollows if you can and need to face crests. And it goes again and again. Problem is that without a bike helmet or diving mask eyes get irritated by salt and wind, and after some hours you need to get a rest.

I never sailed in huge waves with really long surfs, but I doubt this technique would work with "small" boats?

The equation to find the best action depends on the sea (waves height and lenght, surfs), the wind, the boat and the crew... different conditions, different techniques ? I hope more experienced sailors will enlight us !

[gonzo]

Last strong gale I was in that didn't work. This was in february. I didn't have enough speed to get over the crest of the waves and was pushed back and flopped on one side and the other.

[MikeJohns]

Mmmmh... heave-to, make some tea, relax, and play dominoes ?

Wedged somewhere in full wet weather gear waiting for new noises appear over the general cacophony.
Take 5 minutes to get to the navstation and put a position in the log.
Forget how to apply variation to get the compass heading and spend 10 minutes trying to draw little diagrams because nothing makes sense any more. True virgins cant vote twice .......;)

Shakespeare's Tempest summed it up all those hundreds of years ago.

[MikeJohns]

I will always choose to run if I can. That's why my own boat has a canoe stern... not one of them flat assed things that get slapped and pushed around by following seas until they broach........If I'm going backwards I will stream a rope off the bow.

Double enders have merits and disadvantages like any hull-form. We need to look at the total hull rather than one attribute such as the presence or lack of a transom.

The double ended lifeboats of Norwegian fame (Redningskoites) from the late 1800’s were not generally mimicked in other parts of the world where extreme seaworthiness was required, they were also in the main rescuing seamen form double ended fishing sail-boats !

In comparison the French and English North-Sea fishing boats took a completely different form and were seaworthy, faster, less prone to being pooped, and had reduced pitching tendencies.

Marchaj noted in his tome on seaworthiness that there it has never been shown that the double ender is more seaworthy. Its reputation as being a single attribute that can provide a superior heavy weather hull-form is based on popular culture.

As for going ‘backwards’ there’s a very real danger of surfing astern and damaging your steering gear and snapping off your rudder.

[BeauVrolyk]

I have read this thread with interest, as I've (unfortunately) spent a number of days at sea in ugly weather. I would strongly suggest that anyone reading any of this actually go sailing in bad weather and try out the different suggestions made here. Some of these suggestions don't work, in my experience, and some are entirely dependent upon what sort of boat you find yourself upon.

A few general observations:

1) Light and strong boats are always better at surviving bad weather because they don't break (thanks to modern extremely strong materials) and because their light weight allows them to spend more time above the water and less under it. Heavy boats can be strong, if correctly built, but they get buried by large waves and having a lot of water on deck is always dangerous to the crew, regardless of how "traditional" the owner feels his boat is. Progress has been made in yacht design, and much of it has yielded genuinely better designs, ignore that at your peril.

2) Boats with fuller ends tend to do better than those with narrow ends. Long narrow ends with lots of overhang look wonderful, and I own a day sailer like that, but they are always less sea worth and more dangerous than a boat of similar displacement with fuller ends. The buoyancy in the ends allows the boat to go over the waves, rather than through them. This is always safer - see #1 above. This is my strongest argument against double ended boats. The stern needs to have enough volume to lift it over a wave, this is frequently hard if the boat has a long narrow pointed stern. If the stern is short and full, for buoyancy, then why bother making it double ended? Why not have a flat transom that can be tied up to a pier or queue?

3) Boats seem to survive in terrible weather if they can be sailed in high winds and big seas, and don't drive the crew below (by being underwater). It is almost always better to keep sailing that curling up down below with a cup of tea. This, IMHO, is because bad things happen on deck during terrible weather and it's better to be there where you can do something about it, rather than having all hands below. It's no that I enjoy sitting out in a big gale, but I have caught a chafing sheet or failing sail too often to want to abandon my boat to the elements without watching it. Further, if the boat is being sailed it can be guided around the various things that come up, waves, land, other boats, etc... I distinctly remember sailing past a Valiant-40 in 50 knots of wind. I was about three boat length away and there was no one on deck. Sure, we might have missed each other without me sailing away from them, but we might not have. In those conditions, where seas were really large, any contact would have caused significant damage. Finally, I was struck by how well the boats in the 1979 Fasnet did if they were being actively sailed, and how poorly they did when the crew went below to hide.

4) My final comment is that I have never managed to get a boat to lay to any sort of sea anchor and be as safe and comfortable as it is when it's being sailed. I've tried, and the jerking and yanking as the boat comes up on the end of its rode and is held by the sea anchor is quite violent. I would strongly recommend bringing enough crew that you can properly sail your boat 7/24 regardless of the conditions, and count on your sailing skills rather than some anchor or drogue.

Hope this helps, it's the result of over 40 years of sailing a lot of miles.

Beau

[Brent Swain]

In my youth I used to lash the helm down and lie ahull. Amazing I never got rolled over that way. Don't do that anymore. If conditions are not too strong, I deep reef the main , sheet it to windward, douse the jib ,and lash the helm down, thus heave too. In rougher conditions, or if the wind is going my way and gets too strong, I drag a drogue of the stern quarter. This holds the boat at a slight angle and the pressure of wind on the rig takes the roll out of her. Lately, I have made up a galerider type drogue, which friends used with great success in the Queen's Birthday storm off New Zealand. They found they had to keep shortening the rode, until it was 80 ft long, to keep it from fouling the skeg, At 80 feet it was no longer a problem. Small steel yachts are far stronger than any lighter hull made of expesive high tech material, and will never break.
I don't worry about water on deck because, once the drogue is set, I never go on deck until things calm down again.
Any drogue off the bow will have the boat sheering around it, unless you use the bridal arrangement that the Pardy's use . Too much hassle for me. Still doesn't protect the rudder enough for my liking.
I once tried surplus parachute. It was shiny, so I assumed it was nylon. It was shiny cotton and only lasted an hour and a half before shredding. Don't assume any parachute is nylon .Test it with a flame first.

[MikeJohns]

..................

1) Light and strong boats are always better at surviving bad weather because they don't break (thanks to modern extremely strong materials) and because their light weight allows them to spend more time above the water and less under it....................

Better at survivng that light weak boats ?

A heavy boat can be designed with considerably more reserve strength than any lightweight regardless of material.

Light weight boats are not any stronger because of their new and expensive materials, these are used to make the boat even lighter but not stronger.

Heavier boats can also be designed with healthy stability with a sensible GM while also having a larger roll gyradius, both mass and a high roll gyradius make the boat more comfortable and harder to knock-down or invert. For example an open 60 has a high roll gyraduis (from a 15 foot bulbed keel) but a cruising lightweight has design constraints.


As for shipping the sea; How much water you get over the deck is a function of many aspects of the hull design and little to do with displacement alone.

Full ends and short heavy boats can be a poor combination both for speed and for motion, which is where many people will find the modern lightweight much more comfortable. But a well designed heavier boat will in most instances give a much more comfortable ride overall.

Biased opinions are easy to form from poor experiences on indifferently designed boats, many of which were compromised from their conception by being designed to be competitive under one or another rating rule.

In the far flung corners of the cruising world the live-aboards sailing happily short handed on long trips away from home tend to gravitate to heavier more comfortable boats with lower accelerations.

The best heavy weather tactic of all is to get on the biggest boat with the most experienced crew and sail the most comfortable course allowed.

[Brent Swain]

Once you have lived aboard a cruiser for any length of time, with all the neccesities, including adequate ground tackle etc , there is no such thing as a light cruiser. Those designed to be light will be much further below their designed waterline than those which were designed to be heavier.
Theories about the advantages of light displacement cruisers are just that , theories, with little relevance in the real world of long term cruising.
I prefer my 3/16th steel plate when cruising at hull speed on a dark moonless night, thinking about all the cargo containers which are lost every year. High teck light wouldn't give me any real peace of mind

[sabahcat]

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned lying to a sea anchor yet..... a lot of the more recent literature on seamanship discusses a big (10 to 30 foot) parachute anchor as a good strategy for staying bow-to-the-waves in seriously rough stuff. Thoughts?

I used one of these http://www.paraanchors.com.au/ on passage to New Caledonia on a 32 ft cat once and loved it.

Went from a way to fast (even with tripple reefed main and a minuscule blade jib) crashy bashy smashy, eyes like dinner plates, green across the deck
to a dinner and a few rum and cokes on deck and a very pleasant nights sleep and well rested crew in the morning.

[sabahcat]

Once you have lived aboard a cruiser for any length of time, with all the neccesities, including adequate ground tackle etc , there is no such thing as a light cruiser. Those designed to be light will be much further below their designed waterline than those which were designed to be heavier.
Theories about the advantages of light displacement cruisers are just that , theories, with little relevance in the real world of long term cruising.
I prefer my 3/16th steel plate when cruising at hull speed on a dark moonless night, thinking about all the cargo containers which are lost every year. High teck light wouldn't give me any real peace of mind

I disagree and lets take 2 examples

If taking for a catamaran that is designed to be built in say, western Red Cedar, Ply, Glass and epoxy with a displacement of 8500kg and a lightship of 4700kg (carrying capacity 3800kg)

And then building the same boat in Foam Kevlar epoxy, so quite a bit lighter, what do you think would happen?

I would suggest that the later would be able to carry more than the former.

[BeauVrolyk]

Better at survivng that light weak boats ?

A heavy boat can be designed with considerably more reserve strength than any lightweight regardless of material.

Light weight boats are not any stronger because of their new and expensive materials, these are used to make the boat even lighter but not stronger.

Heavier boats can also be designed with healthy stability with a sensible GM while also having a larger roll gyradius, both mass and a high roll gyradius make the boat more comfortable and harder to knock-down or invert. For example an open 60 has a high roll gyraduis (from a 15 foot bulbed keel) but a cruising lightweight has design constraints.


As for shipping the sea; How much water you get over the deck is a function of many aspects of the hull design and little to do with displacement alone.

Full ends and short heavy boats can be a poor combination both for speed and for motion, which is where many people will find the modern lightweight much more comfortable. But a well designed heavier boat will in most instances give a much more comfortable ride overall.

Biased opinions are easy to form from poor experiences on indifferently designed boats, many of which were compromised from their conception by being designed to be competitive under one or another rating rule.

In the far flung corners of the cruising world the live-aboards sailing happily short handed on long trips away from home tend to gravitate to heavier more comfortable boats with lower accelerations.

The best heavy weather tactic of all is to get on the biggest boat with the most experienced crew and sail the most comfortable course allowed.

Mike,

I have a few comments where we don't agree. First, while I certainly agree that for any given boat a heavier one can be stronger than a lighter one. This is irrelevant to the issue of what material one uses to build a boat. For a given weight, the issue is how strong a boat can one build. My point is that one should choose a target strength and achieve it with the lightest possible design for all sorts of good reasons. Carbon and epoxy boats are substantially stronger than any other construction materials known for a given weight. While many racers have used modern materials to build lighter boats, there are many examples of the use of these materials to build stronger boats. Clearly the Volvo round the world race boats are vastly stronger than America's cup boats. For cruising I know of a number of folks who have added tremendous strength to their boats with carbon without adding much weight.

A great example of improving strength while making a much better riding boat is to build a carbon rig. Of course one can utilize the better strength to weight ratio of carbon to only build something lighter. But, one can also choose to use some of the vastly greater strength to make the rig stronger while also being a lot lighter. This will improve the ride of the boat substantially.

Second, I think that while there are certainly a lot of cruising sailors sailing along on heavy old fashioned boats, I don't take this as much of a recommendation. I would point out that there are people still sailing the world with boats that have yard arms, fisherman anchors, and oil lamps. While I do enjoy these things, and have an old wood boat built in 1946, I would never claim that these feature are "better". I would, in contrast, point to boats like those designed by Steve Dashew (sp?), Tom Wyle, and Perry. These boats are much lighter weight, have modern underbodies, and while they certainly have a quicker roll speed and high accelerations when pitching they are extremely comfortable sailing boats.

Third, I couldn't agree with you more when you say that many boats out there are the bastard children of some racing rule. But that's certainly not true of all of them. There are plenty of examples of cruising dedicated designs and a number are taking advantage of various new materials.

Finally, regarding water on deck. Some folks have written that they don't care, they're below, or something to that effect. Also, you've commented that there's more to it that fuller ends - which I agree with. However, as a general principle a boat that travels above the water in tough conditions has to be safer, and is in my experience much nicer to sail on, than one that ships the sea aboard frequently. Amongst the things that modern materials can bring is lower polar moment due to a lighter rig and ends of the boat, much stronger sails and rigging for a given weight, and a near elimination of corrosion and rot. All of these things lead to a more sea worthy boat.

Without a doubt, being on a big strong boat is best. Being ashore in a storm is even better.

BV

[DGreenwood]

I have read this thread with interest, as I've (unfortunately) spent a number of days at sea in ugly weather. I would strongly suggest that anyone reading any of this actually go sailing in bad weather and try out the different suggestions made here. Some of these suggestions don't work, in my experience, and some are entirely dependent upon what sort of boat you find yourself upon.

A few general observations:

1) Light and strong boats are always better at surviving bad weather because they don't break (thanks to modern extremely strong materials) and because their light weight allows them to spend more time above the water and less under it. Heavy boats can be strong, if correctly built, but they get buried by large waves and having a lot of water on deck is always dangerous to the crew, regardless of how "traditional" the owner feels his boat is. Progress has been made in yacht design, and much of it has yielded genuinely better designs, ignore that at your peril.

2) Boats with fuller ends tend to do better than those with narrow ends. Long narrow ends with lots of overhang look wonderful, and I own a day sailer like that, but they are always less sea worth and more dangerous than a boat of similar displacement with fuller ends. The buoyancy in the ends allows the boat to go over the waves, rather than through them. This is always safer - see #1 above. This is my strongest argument against double ended boats. The stern needs to have enough volume to lift it over a wave, this is frequently hard if the boat has a long narrow pointed stern. If the stern is short and full, for buoyancy, then why bother making it double ended? Why not have a flat transom that can be tied up to a pier or queue?

3) Boats seem to survive in terrible weather if they can be sailed in high winds and big seas, and don't drive the crew below (by being underwater). It is almost always better to keep sailing that curling up down below with a cup of tea. This, IMHO, is because bad things happen on deck during terrible weather and it's better to be there where you can do something about it, rather than having all hands below. It's no that I enjoy sitting out in a big gale, but I have caught a chafing sheet or failing sail too often to want to abandon my boat to the elements without watching it. Further, if the boat is being sailed it can be guided around the various things that come up, waves, land, other boats, etc... I distinctly remember sailing past a Valiant-40 in 50 knots of wind. I was about three boat length away and there was no one on deck. Sure, we might have missed each other without me sailing away from them, but we might not have. In those conditions, where seas were really large, any contact would have caused significant damage. Finally, I was struck by how well the boats in the 1979 Fasnet did if they were being actively sailed, and how poorly they did when the crew went below to hide.

4) My final comment is that I have never managed to get a boat to lay to any sort of sea anchor and be as safe and comfortable as it is when it's being sailed. I've tried, and the jerking and yanking as the boat comes up on the end of its rode and is held by the sea anchor is quite violent. I would strongly recommend bringing enough crew that you can properly sail your boat 7/24 regardless of the conditions, and count on your sailing skills rather than some anchor or drogue.

Hope this helps, it's the result of over 40 years of sailing a lot of miles.

Beau

Now here is a man with real and varied sailing experience. Not droning a litany of endlessly repeated BS that is so prevalent in these conversations.
Yes, sailing yourself out of trouble is always the preferred and safest method. Drogues are madness, heaving to is a last ditch, lying ahull is death, and sailing a boat that is light and agile enough to stay atop the water and actually sail with a very reduced sail area is easily the most comfortable and safe approach.
Houses and topsides that have so much windage that you lose the ability to actually sail by the time you are to the third reef, is dangerous. Being constantly overrun by waves is extremely damaging to any boat. Not being able to move fast enough to get out of the way of oncoming storms is asking for it and spending more time in ones that do get you is unnecessary.
Light and strong does not mean uncomfortable. It means safe.

Having said that---I agree with Mike---mostly. I think one needs to be careful with using the terms heavy and light...they can mean many different things.

And as far as small boats and heavy weather...! Let's just say get a bigger boat with less interior. If you get caught in a doosey in a sub 30' boat, there is no amount of seamanship that will get me to bet on your survival. My lower figure for a world cruiser has nothing to do with the required accommodation---that figure is around 50'.

[TollyWally]

I think Brent makes an extremely good point. A boat used for long term cruising is going to accumulate a bit of gear over time. It needs to be able to pack a little weight.

On the issue of size and survival I think one might consider the balances between the ability to pack some weight and the desirability of having a more modest rig when handling gear in heavy weather. You've got to size the boat to the crew available. All boats demand comprimises in design, such is life. I'd feel pretty good being in a well built steel hull in a big blow. I'd tend towards aluminum thinking about paint but in the ultimate storm I'd gladly make a deal with God that involved the chance to live in exchange for painting her one more time :)

Brent, I wonder if you could expand a bit on your storm techniques and the galerider construction etc.? What do you do if the wind isn't going in your direction. I wouldn't consider Pardey's bridle to be too much of a hassle if I was facing the bad stuff. I don't like the idea of depending on a swivel like I think he does for the anchor chute, maybe one off a tuna clipper seine net perhaps but I've see a lot of swivels wear out and break.

[bntii]

I think Brent makes an extremely good point. A boat used for long term cruising is going to accumulate a bit of gear over time. It needs to be able to pack a little weight.

.

The point is a popular one though I believe less valid as size increases.
My 41' racer/cruiser carries all the heavy gear and still rides fair on her lines.
My bower has a 300' length of chain I purchased from a dismayed owner of a 32' cruising boat. He put the chain on the boat & she pitched down by the bow so badly that he decided to go with rode. On my boat the trim just does not change with the chain loaded.
I do make a point of occasionally tossing off the beach pebbles that guests manage to collect and leave lying about..

The flock of 35' and less coastal cruisers pressed into longer range voyaging are of the types most often seen overloaded.
It's also important to note that these folks are having a blast in their improper boats.

Brent- Your designs don't appear to be in the heavy cruiser category, am I missing something?

[Tigawave]

For really rough in my last boat, it was heave to with backed storm jib only tha stack pack had enough windage to work as a staysail, go below secure hatch and boards, wedge in by the radio and listen to others in the same storm, or get some rest until the next day. This worked on a Bavaria 390 really well in 15m seas and solid 50+ knots with breaking seas. Fortunately we had plenty of sea room.

In another with very big confused breaking seas we ran at 13-140deg to the wind trailing ropes again with just the storm jib, at a speed that the auto helm could easily cope.

It does depend very much on the boat and sail/mast plan.

[Brent Swain]

You get no more drift with the parachute off the stern than off the bow, but wiith the chute of the stern, you lie a lot more comfortably, without the sheering around. This also applies to windward shorelines, pointing the stern into the wind makes for a lot more comfortable night, as I recently pointed out to South Georgia bound skipper in one of my 36 footers. You do have to have something far less leaky and primitive than drop boards tho, preferably an aluminium door.
My boats are moderate displacement, altho some may overload them a lot. are defilinely not super light displacement, nor heavy.. I try to keep them moderate in all respects , shapes and displacements which have been well proven.

[bntii]

Thanks Brent

[apex1]

Have reliable and redundant electronics to:

know weather!!!

Have a boat long enough to escape weather.

Be NEVER, I mean N E V E R on schedule. There is definetively NO excuse, no excemption.

Have not only sufficient crew, but one more.

Have skilled crew only, when passagemaking (ten miles from shore you do´nt have weather, when you´re mentally ok).

Escape, escape, escape the front, until a point when you are dead sure you cannot. Then turn towards (right in time, not too late) and actively steam against it. Different boats at different settings and techniques, naturally.

The one who leaves the cockpit (or watch position) on a boat I master, is sharkfood the same moment.

Going below is the same as closing the eyes right before the Tramway hits you.

Stay as dry as possible ALL the time you are sailing. The weight and cost of a third sailing suit is a laugh compared to the cost of a passage, but staying warm can save your life.

Leave the drogues or parachutes in the locker. They are good to keep you away from leeshore for another few minutes when it´s dead calm, and old roller is pushing you, and your engine is shot. In severe weather they are not the best solution.

I know that all is not valid for Brent, his equipment has no wear and tear, he does´nt need electronics (Poseidon negotiates his plans with him), and a "Musto" outfit for 1k $ is sure not what he likes to have, let alone three.

My two cents Gentleman.


Regards
Richard
(just back from a short Winter trip on a 9m toy in the Aegean Sea)

[Chris Ostlind]

Richard was last seen, with a tiny gang of loyalists, heading towards Timor in a small, open sailing craft. Many sharks were seen. It is reported that no man left his post during the entire voyage... ;-)

[Fanie]

My biggest fear is if the weather won't let up. We went fishing for two weeks once off the coast so we weren't on the water. The wind was something else, you'd walk at 45 degrees to the wind and downwind you can walk as fast as running. It was like that the whole time and it wasn't much fun.

During all this I saw some boats, and one could see it wasn't comfortable for them. Saw a red help flare one night when we were out but couldn't do anything since we were trapped on a dune in high tide.

During such long spells it would probably be best to find a fishing spot where a bit of protection exists.

I liked the bikini idea, any excuse is good for a woman to undress :D I once read up on some myths, and a bad one is to have a woman aboard, it is however a good one if she is naked, so there you go. Wherever you sail, when you see a cloud somewhere (anywhere) all the wiemen aboard gets undressed :D I bet it will save the boat too.

I like the idea of a drogue, but I've made myself a serie of small drogues instead of one big one. Imo it may handle easier. I can imagine that is the thing to have when you travel downwind.

One reason I'm scared of a power only boat is, what do you do when you run out of resources, fuel the first concern. Someone e-mailed me a few pictures of a boat that was swept aground when it went out of fuel. Couple of mil boat destroyed. If the guy had sails it could have been avoided, unless of course he didn't like the boat and needed the insurance money :rolleyes:

Some nice hints from old :D salties, thanks for sharing.

[apex1]

The real danger, running out of fuel you see on sailing boats! They just have insufficient bunkers for some adverse conditions.
When a motorvessel runs out of fuel, send the skipper to the asylum.
Just the last few days trip has shown again how important it is to have a sailing boat bunkered full. We were in a narrow channel between two islands with a swell coming in, and some uncomfortable rollers, there was deadly no wind, and without the engine we would have definetively stranded on the rocks (in the uninhibited part of course).

Do the home work and be a nasty skipper, do not and never give leave, the rules are cast in iron.
When you cut the problems in half, you triple the fun, even as a nasty master.

Regards
Richard

[sabahcat]

I liked the bikini idea, any excuse is good for a woman to undress :D I once read up on some myths, and a bad one is to have a woman aboard, it is however a good one if she is naked, so there you go. Wherever you sail, when you see a cloud somewhere (anywhere) all the wiemen aboard gets undressed :D I bet it will save the boat too.

.

Dont you have to paint the green on Fridays as well?

[Fanie]

I've read an article where the wind died down for days on end and they could do nothing but float. The guy said it drove them nuts. Unsure when the wind will come and if their supplies are going to make it.

Does that count as rough weather as well ?

I've been in some uncomfortable waves with a boat that requires active steering all the time. I don't want to be in that for hours never mind days. I think an auto steering will be a life saver.

With a power boat you may want an accellerometer to do some throttle control so you don'd speed down the waves and stall up the next. A potentiometer with a counterweight and control may do this.

[Fanie]

Dont you have to paint the green on Fridays as well?
What do you mean by this ?

[apex1]

I've been in some uncomfortable waves with a boat that requires active steering all the time. I don't want to be in that for hours never mind days. I think an auto steering will be a life saver.

With a power boat you may want an accellerometer to do some throttle control so you don'd speed down the waves and stall up the next. A potentiometer with a counterweight and control may do this.

The right hand on the right lever does a hell of a good job Fanie (as on other occasions):D



Does that count as rough weather as well ?

That can be one of the hardest I guess (but do´nt know, I am a motorboat man).
Imagine you come home after a week of "nice" weather expecting applause!??
How different is life when you weathered a 180km storm for just two days?

cheers
Richard

[MikeJohns]

.............Having said that---I agree with Mike---mostly.....................--that figure is around 50'.


..and you a lightweigth man too :) There is a large amount of prejudice and heresay and opinions abound, but also there is a growing mass of facts research and careful experimentation and measurement; AKA naval architecture.


When observing RAO’s for boats of widely varing displacement and hullform there is very little difference in resistance for some wave spectra and courses sailed.
With the weather anywhere on the bow there are definite target displacements for finite spectra , going lighter or heavier than that results in a greater resistance. Adding displacement can make the boat faster up to a point and it will surprise many lightweight advocates that they would consider the ideal windward boat as moderately heavy.That includes less water shipped over the bow and reduced pitching.


Once off the wind for a sailboat in anything above strong wind all displacement vessels will easily travel faster than is prudent, in this situation controllability and lack of vices are very desirable survival features. Since the storm front will travel faster than the boat can it will pass, and then the prudent thing is to slow down relative to the direction of the weather, as Richard said the ship masters prudent course is slow ahead into the teeth of the beast, once in it you can’t outrun it.
To consistently ocean Weather-Route with accurate forecasting to avoid heavy weather you really need a boat that can travel at 17 knots or more average which unfortunately small sailboats cannot . Coastal sailing is a different scenario and flavors many arguments but lets consider mid ocean.

I wonder whether anyone here has ever seen a weights and moments calculation for a lightweight sailboat in cruising trim and considered what was included. ( If so I’d be very interested to see it ). Have a look at the GM and its also very informative to do a roll period calculation. A loaded lightweight boat very quickly become moderately heavy and the reduced GM makes them feel more comfortable with a slower roll. Ironically the very fact that they seem more stable and comfortable is actually due to a dangerous reduction in stability which is counter intuitive to what you feel.

The idea is to design to the constraints from the outset to end up with a vessel that suits all the target criteria including theatre, RAO’s, stability, controllability and motion comfort. Design should be conducted considering the worst case. That includes motion induced incapacity, exposure, noise, vibration, sleep, food preparation, usable heads …all this makes a safer vessel.

[apex1]

Mike

half of the 17kn, I think are a reasonable speed for at least coming out of the most dangerous quadrant.
But that is already something in the 14m wl ballpark? I mean steady speed in open ocean seas for 24 hrs.
Having a 24 hr prediction that may enable you to go over 200 miles in the right direction. (of corse the wrong if you have a destination point!)

Several systems I´ve seen travelling below the common 18 - 20 kn (heavy weather), that gives us a chance to escape sideways, ja hmm, sometimes.....

Sometimes, when there is enough energy in the water, even a 12 hr forecast is unreliable though. The buddies in the northerly parts of your country know that well. (not that you do´nt).
I even could not avoid some adverse weather with a motorboat capable of 17,4kn max. and 16 cont.
There was enough fuel to ride it out for some weeks though. (not at 16kn)

Regards
Richard

[sabahcat]

What do you mean by this ?

Read somewhere that green on a boat was bad luck (or was it good ?) and that it's bad luck to leave port on a Friday.

Of course this is all made ok by having green naked woman onboard

[MikeJohns]

Mike

half of the 17kn, I think are a reasonable speed for at least coming out of the most dangerous quadrant.
But that is already something in the 14m wl ballpark? I mean steady speed in open ocean seas for 24 hrs.
Having a 24 hr prediction that may enable you to go over 200 miles in the right direction. (of corse the wrong if you have a destination point!)

Several systems I´ve seen travelling below the common 18 - 20 kn (heavy weather), that gives us a chance to escape sideways, ja hmm, sometimes.....

Sometimes, when there is enough energy in the water, even a 12 hr forecast is unreliable though. The buddies in the northerly parts of your country know that well. (not that you do´nt).
I even could not avoid some adverse weather with a motorboat capable of 17,4kn max. and 16 cont.
There was enough fuel to ride it out for some weeks though. (not at 16kn)

Regards
Richard


Yes you're right of course, I wasn't actually considering cyclones only normal storm fronts, and gales.

[Zappi]

I have read this thread with interest, as I've (unfortunately) spent a number of days at sea in ugly weather. I would strongly suggest that anyone reading any of this actually go sailing in bad weather and try out the different suggestions made here. Some of these suggestions don't work, in my experience, and some are entirely dependent upon what sort of boat you find yourself upon.

A few general observations:

1) Light and strong boats are always better at surviving bad weather because they don't break (thanks to modern extremely strong materials) and because their light weight allows them to spend more time above the water and less under it. Heavy boats can be strong, if correctly built, but they get buried by large waves and having a lot of water on deck is always dangerous to the crew, regardless of how "traditional" the owner feels his boat is. Progress has been made in yacht design, and much of it has yielded genuinely better designs, ignore that at your peril.

2) Boats with fuller ends tend to do better than those with narrow ends. Long narrow ends with lots of overhang look wonderful, and I own a day sailer like that, but they are always less sea worth and more dangerous than a boat of similar displacement with fuller ends. The buoyancy in the ends allows the boat to go over the waves, rather than through them. This is always safer - see #1 above. This is my strongest argument against double ended boats. The stern needs to have enough volume to lift it over a wave, this is frequently hard if the boat has a long narrow pointed stern. If the stern is short and full, for buoyancy, then why bother making it double ended? Why not have a flat transom that can be tied up to a pier or queue?

3) Boats seem to survive in terrible weather if they can be sailed in high winds and big seas, and don't drive the crew below (by being underwater). It is almost always better to keep sailing that curling up down below with a cup of tea. This, IMHO, is because bad things happen on deck during terrible weather and it's better to be there where you can do something about it, rather than having all hands below. It's no that I enjoy sitting out in a big gale, but I have caught a chafing sheet or failing sail too often to want to abandon my boat to the elements without watching it. Further, if the boat is being sailed it can be guided around the various things that come up, waves, land, other boats, etc... I distinctly remember sailing past a Valiant-40 in 50 knots of wind. I was about three boat length away and there was no one on deck. Sure, we might have missed each other without me sailing away from them, but we might not have. In those conditions, where seas were really large, any contact would have caused significant damage. Finally, I was struck by how well the boats in the 1979 Fasnet did if they were being actively sailed, and how poorly they did when the crew went below to hide.

4) My final comment is that I have never managed to get a boat to lay to any sort of sea anchor and be as safe and comfortable as it is when it's being sailed. I've tried, and the jerking and yanking as the boat comes up on the end of its rode and is held by the sea anchor is quite violent. I would strongly recommend bringing enough crew that you can properly sail your boat 7/24 regardless of the conditions, and count on your sailing skills rather than some anchor or drogue.

Hope this helps, it's the result of over 40 years of sailing a lot of miles.

Beau

Absolute agreement!

[Fanie]

It seems then all one has to do is keep some naked woman aboard.
They will turn green by themselves when the rough weather arives.

[Manie B]

Nothing like hands on experience in the artic circle on a small boat

Mingming, of less than a ton of displacement, carries a series drogue made up of eighty-six mini-drogues fixed to a hundred metres of 16mm warp run from a permanently fixed bridle, a large sea anchor also on 16mm warp, plus a selection of warps and heavy chain for towing.


in later articles that he wrote the SERIES DROGUE is a must and was used plenty

http://www.thesimplesailor.com/articles.html

[bntii]

Nothing like hands on experience in the artic circle on a small boat



in later articles that he wrote the SERIES DROGUE is a must and was used plenty

http://www.thesimplesailor.com/articles.html

Yep- that gear is going on my boat.

[BeauVrolyk]

..and you a lightweigth man too :) There is a large amount of prejudice and heresay and opinions abound, but also there is a growing mass of facts research and careful experimentation and measurement; AKA naval architecture.


When observing RAO’s for boats of widely varing displacement and hullform there is very little difference in resistance for some wave spectra and courses sailed.
With the weather anywhere on the bow there are definite target displacements for finite spectra , going lighter or heavier than that results in a greater resistance. Adding displacement can make the boat faster up to a point and it will surprise many lightweight advocates that they would consider the ideal windward boat as moderately heavy.That includes less water shipped over the bow and reduced pitching.


Once off the wind for a sailboat in anything above strong wind all displacement vessels will easily travel faster than is prudent, in this situation controllability and lack of vices are very desirable survival features. Since the storm front will travel faster than the boat can it will pass, and then the prudent thing is to slow down relative to the direction of the weather, as Richard said the ship masters prudent course is slow ahead into the teeth of the beast, once in it you can’t outrun it.
To consistently ocean Weather-Route with accurate forecasting to avoid heavy weather you really need a boat that can travel at 17 knots or more average which unfortunately small sailboats cannot . Coastal sailing is a different scenario and flavors many arguments but lets consider mid ocean.

I wonder whether anyone here has ever seen a weights and moments calculation for a lightweight sailboat in cruising trim and considered what was included. ( If so I’d be very interested to see it ). Have a look at the GM and its also very informative to do a roll period calculation. A loaded lightweight boat very quickly become moderately heavy and the reduced GM makes them feel more comfortable with a slower roll. Ironically the very fact that they seem more stable and comfortable is actually due to a dangerous reduction in stability which is counter intuitive to what you feel.

The idea is to design to the constraints from the outset to end up with a vessel that suits all the target criteria including theatre, RAO’s, stability, controllability and motion comfort. Design should be conducted considering the worst case. That includes motion induced incapacity, exposure, noise, vibration, sleep, food preparation, usable heads …all this makes a safer vessel.

Mike,

I think you're basically saying: Choose the right boat for the task. This is something I completely agree with and have put into practice.

For example, from '91 through '95 I sailed from San Francisco to New Zealand with my family. Two children who were then 3 and 7 (when we left SF), my x-wife, and occasional friends as crew (who were almost all very good sailors). For this trip we decided on a 65' Tom Wyle designed ketch named "Saga". She is steel hull, double bottomed, center board with a stub keel that holds the ballast. Gigantic internal tankage, which allows the skipper to shift 500 gal of fuel and 750 gal of water from side to side to stand her up. A tall rig and an easily driven shape that rides very nicely at 11 knots and starts to leap about a little at speeds of over 14 knots. She would surf along at 15 to 17 knots when pressed - while running away from bad weather. Thus, avoiding being pooped by moving as fast as the waves. But, would beat to windward all day long in 45 knots of wind with the main staysail and triple reefed main. She was, by most people's estimate, a medium displacement boat of 70,000 pounds at 65' LOA, with full ends that were kept entirely empty to make it easy for her to pitch.

In a contrasting example, when sailing with one other person, my first choice is a 40' boat built in epoxy and carbon, with a much deeper keel. A sloop, with deck tacked staysail, and an easily set trisail. She has few hatches or any other places for water to get in, is much stronger than the steel hulled larger boat, and far lighter. Most importantly, she'll go 18 to 20 knots downwind with great control and can easily surf all day with the autopilot driving.

Why the difference? The larger boat required electric winches to allow my and my x-wife to sail her double handed. While she was very seaworthy, everything was larger than could be easily handled by one or two people. The 40' boat is easily sailed by one. Due to the much lighter weight of the 40' boat, the rig is smaller, the cloth of the sails lighter, the lines lighter, everything gets much much easier. The boom on the 65' boat weighed about 280 pounds and was alloy. It also cracked under the strain of one bad storm. The 40' boat has an alloy boom that weighs 50 pounds and is (relative to loads it receives) much stronger. We took the 65' boat cruising in large part because we were a family of four and expected to add two or even four guests at a time when in popular places. However, it was really too large a boat for two adults to sail safely. The 40' boat is much safer.

There has been a great deal of discussion in this thread claiming that larger boats are safer. I don't agree with this in all cases. I race a 24' 2000 pound ultra light boat (Moore 24) out of San Francisco in all manner of terrible weather, and it has proven to be astoundingly seaworthy. In seas where my old 65' steel ketch would be slamming and crashing, the little 24' sloop just climbs up and over the waves. It acts like a cork. I will repeat something believe quite strongly - it is always safer to go over the water than through it. I do think that riding on a larger boat is more comfortable, and in many ways could appear "safer", but there are plenty of times when my little 24' sloop can continue to surf along in front of the seas quite comfortably when the big boats are being pooped hard.

Finally, you are quite correct that most of this discussion is based upon opinion. This has always been the way with sailors as they base their opinions upon experiences and trust those experiences at sea much more than the output of a piece of software or the answer to some formula. Most sailors hold the opinion that a slow rolling somewhat heavy boat feels more safe. This is something I disagree with a lot. Certainly, the smooth ride of a heavy boat is easier on the crew. But, it is not always safer. Often the slow roll rate is the result of high polar moment caused by heavy keels (which could be a good thing), by heavy rigs (always a bad thing), or by a heavy hull. It is my opinion that what most people consider a "comfortable" sea boat are far too heavy to be able to avoid being washed over repeatedly in extremely large seas. I would go so far as to say that any boat that can't easily surf down waves without loosing control is not as safe as a boat that can. You touch on this in an earlier post you made. The issue of control and safe steerage while surfing at the speed of a wave (which is typically about 15 knots) is critical. If you can't do this, you'll find yourself pooped. As my 24' boat (which easily surfs faster than the waves) proves the ability to travel downwind at the speed of the waves is not related to the size of the boat. Again, it's my opinion, but I will happily defend the position that a strong light fast boat, which sails well and in control, while traveling with the waves is always the safest position in truly bad weather. This, obviously, explains why I don't like drogues and sea anchors. The goal is to be surfing downwind fast, not slowing down to let the seas catch you.

I know this position is quite controversial amongst cruising sailors, because most can't bear to leave all their junk at home. But, their desire to bring a lot of stuff on an already heavy boat is putting them at risk, not making them safer.

Best,

BV

[mark775]

The snotgreen sea, The scrotumtightning sea." - James Joyce, Ulysses - In my parts, we call that "puckering" but "scrotumtightening" works for horrible weather.

To find storage for this thing...
38433
....you'll need a bigger boat!

[Fanie]

Imagine you come home after a week of "nice" weather expecting applause!??
How different is life when you weathered a 180km storm for just two days?
In case 1 Richard, I would probably have fresh tan marks :D

In case 2, I hope I would not be there, or parked behind an island for those two days :D I hope this is not the kind of weather following me around ;)


BV, I hear what you say, but it may not always be desirable to run as fast as the waves go. I think a drogue could maintain as close to the current position as can be expected without tying the boat to the sea bed, which of course offer other problems. You'll be testing those big windows if the anchor drags you through them large swells :D

[apex1]

BV, I hear what you say, but it may not always be desirable to run as fast as the waves go. I think a drogue could maintain as close to the current position as can be expected without tying the boat to the sea bed, which of course offer other problems. You'll be testing those big windows if the anchor drags you through them large swells :D

As long as you run away, it is VERY desireable to be as fast as the wave pattern, or even faster sometimes.

When you are not running away, you are steaming towards it, you are much slower than the waves in that case.

I do´nt know (by own experience) another tactique, and are not comfortable with others.
Though I have to confess, that I have absolutely zero experience in light sailing boats on the open ocean!

For motorships and yachts I found one technique only, worldwide, steam towards it. Commonly at SOG zero.

Regards
Richard

[capt vimes]

...
I know this position is quite controversial amongst cruising sailors, because most can't bear to leave all their junk at home. But, their desire to bring a lot of stuff on an already heavy boat is putting them at risk, not making them safer.

Best,

BV

i agree completely to 200% with all of your points... and to the above statement:
its always my wife who brings all the unnecessary/additional stuff onboard... ;)

i neither do see any advantage in drouges/sea anchors... i really never even understood the idea or the whole concept when i learned sailing and did all my courses... this is something i just cannot grasp...

why should i want to 'tether' my boat and expose it to the full force of the waves when running with them would take out a lot of energie of any sea hitting the ship?

@richard - i am not refering to motorboats... with one of those thingys i do never ever want to hit bad weather at all! ;)

[apex1]

@richard - i am not refering to motorboats... with one of those thingys i do never ever want to hit bad weather at all! ;)

Well, each his own!:D

Fact is, that some motorboats are far more seaworthy than sailing boats.

[TeddyDiver]

The goal is to be surfing downwind fast, not slowing down to let the seas catch you.
What about lee shore situation? or being just too tired after 30h of surfing..
Anyway, I don't wonder why you don't prefer long keeled gaffers :D Merry Xmas

[magwas]

i neither do see any advantage in drouges/sea anchors... i really never even understood the idea or the whole concept when i learned sailing and did all my courses... this is something i just cannot grasp...

why should i want to 'tether' my boat and expose it to the full force of the waves when running with them would take out a lot of energie of any sea hitting the ship?


Think of two scenarios:

1. Blue water.
Huge breaking waves. The boat surfs down the wave, gathers huge momentum, and at the bottom hits the next wave. Now THAT causes huge forces.

2. Small searoom. You are running with the waves, right into that rock... Again huge forces.

[capt vimes]

Think of two scenarios:

1. Blue water.
Huge breaking waves. The boat surfs down the wave, gathers huge momentum, and at the bottom hits the next wave. Now THAT causes huge forces.

it doesn't... it just slows you down by burying the bow in the wave - making the ship prone to broaching... any helmsman letting this happen should get keelhauled... ;)

2. Small searoom. You are running with the waves, right into that rock... Again huge forces.

if you have no searoom running with the waves and the skipper is still doing it - he should get shot at the spot!

each course, strategy is always dependent on the loacation and situation you are in...
but sea-anchors are nothing but a reminiscene from the past when it was absolutely impossible to make any way into the wind and the drouges just reduced the way those ships made to windward...
with the modern boats nowadays you have always the option to sail upwind to a certain extend and thus avoid getting pushed to the shore...
you could even move sideways like a crap keeping the distance to the shore and it will be a comfortable ride...

what would a sea-anchor bring if you are facing leeshore?
nothing but extend your suffering a little before the inevitable is going to happen...

[magwas]

(Huge breaking waves. The boat surfs down the wave, gathers huge momentum, and at the bottom hits the next wave. Now THAT causes huge forces.)

it doesn't... it just slows you down by burying the bow in the wave - making the ship prone to broaching... any helmsman letting this happen should get keelhauled... ;)


A boat surfing down from a 10m wave basically obtain the same amount of kinetic energy as it would be dropped from 10m. Would your boat survive if you would drop her to the water from 10m, bow down? (Actually the kinetic energy is a bit more due to the speed the vessel have already had on the top of the wave, and the force is less because the angle of the impact.)

And how the helmsman supposed to avoid collision with the wave she is surfing down to? Every one of them?

[sabahcat]

what would a sea-anchor bring if you are facing leeshore?
nothing but extend your suffering a little before the inevitable is going to happen...

Sea anchor or parachute anchor?

[capt vimes]

A boat surfing down from a 10m wave basically obtain the same amount of kinetic energy as it would be dropped from 10m. Would your boat survive if you would drop her to the water from 10m, bow down? (Actually the kinetic energy is a bit more due to the speed the vessel have already had on the top of the wave, and the force is less because the angle of the impact.)

And how the helmsman supposed to avoid collision with the wave she is surfing down to? Every one of them?

what are you talking about?
wavehight <> wavelength!
10 m seas in the blue ocean usually have wavelengths of ~100 m and more - in really rough weather ~50 m probably... it is not like you skip down a sheer cliff and hitting a wall in front of you...
and noone with more than 2 functional braincell would 'jump' over braking seas!

[capt vimes]

Sea anchor or parachute anchor?

... A parachute sea anchor is basically a drag device. Normally deployed off the bow to windward, it is designed to hold the bow into the wind and waves. This stabilizes the motion of the boat while maintaining a safe attitude to the seas. Forward motion is stopped, but some leeward drift ideally, no more than 1 or 2 knots—occurs...
from: http://www.sea-anchors.com/sail2.htm

so what? you are drifting to the shore... in a leeshore situation (and that was the starting point) no option for me at all!

[mark775]

"you could even move sideways like a crap keeping the distance to the shore and it will be a comfortable ride... " - How would you get it to move sideways and why would you want to?

[Brent Swain]

Have reliable and redundant electronics to:

know weather!!!

Have a boat long enough to escape weather.

Be NEVER, I mean N E V E R on schedule. There is definetively NO excuse, no excemption.

Have not only sufficient crew, but one more.

Have skilled crew only, when passagemaking (ten miles from shore you do´nt have weather, when you´re mentally ok).

Escape, escape, escape the front, until a point when you are dead sure you cannot. Then turn towards (right in time, not too late) and actively steam against it. Different boats at different settings and techniques, naturally.

The one who leaves the cockpit (or watch position) on a boat I master, is sharkfood the same moment.

Going below is the same as closing the eyes right before the Tramway hits you.

Stay as dry as possible ALL the time you are sailing. The weight and cost of a third sailing suit is a laugh compared to the cost of a passage, but staying warm can save your life.

Leave the drogues or parachutes in the locker. They are good to keep you away from leeshore for another few minutes when it´s dead calm, and old roller is pushing you, and your engine is shot. In severe weather they are not the best solution.

I know that all is not valid for Brent, his equipment has no wear and tear, he does´nt need electronics (Poseidon negotiates his plans with him), and a "Musto" outfit for 1k $ is sure not what he likes to have, let alone three.

My two cents Gentleman.


Regards
Richard
(just back from a short Winter trip on a 9m toy in the Aegean Sea)

Stay safe, stay dry, stay on deck and wear a musto suit are contradictions. I know of no musto suit for any price which will keep me as warm, dry and safe as my wheelhouse. Outside only steering stations are just bad seamanship, any way you cut it, as is dependence on engines , and lack of knowledge of how to get along without one.
Drogues are by far the best solution for bad weather . Best avoid getting too close to dangerouse lee shores in the first place. I stay about 300 miles off the US west coast when heading south, which gives me lots of sea room . A boat long enough to escape the weather excludes even going cruising for many of us, which is just plain dense. Feeling you have to have crew aboard means putting up with someone you don't want aboard, in the case of single handers which takes away the reason for going cruising in the first place. That too is just plain dense. .

[apex1]

I was missing your nonsense already Brent!

But the question was: what is your favourite technique...........

so each of us can add their opinion, me as well as you!

The "Musto" suit can be manufactured by any competitor too BTW.

Regards
Richard

[claverton]

How Jordon Serious Drouges work is illustrated in the discussion on the loss of the Winston Churchill in the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart. This can be viewed at www.jordanseriesdrogue.com/D_15.htm

The Winston Churchill was a heavy displacement timber boat and got smashed to pieces in the storm with loss of life. As the discussion on the jordon site points out, the wave that destroyed it was estimated to be 45 ft and moving at about 30mph. So the boat after being picked up and carried by the wave would be moving at atleast 30mph. The damage happens when the boat hits stationary water at the bottom of the trough. This is what Magwas is referring to and he is quite correct. It would be like driving a boat into a brick wall. No amount of good helming/seamanship will save a yacht in extreme conditions when it is picked up by a wave. Hence to jordon drogue. It is simply the best method of protection. The beauty of it is that it acts like a spring and increases the load gradually rather than it "snapping on". The other nice thing about the jordon drogue is its not a commercial product, so no commercial barrow is being pushed. So it up yourself or get someone else to do it.

[claverton]

I mean "sew" not "so"

[mark775]

So? ...

[sabahcat]

from: http://www.sea-anchors.com/sail2.htm

so what? you are drifting to the shore... in a leeshore situation (and that was the starting point) no option for me at all!

Some work better than others
Some people have sea room when using them
Some people use larger than required.

I used one once for a half day and night with winds around 50 knots
Crew was well refreshed and the boat was not broken the next day
We drifted no more than 1/2 nm (0.5 nm) during the night according to gps track, some of it back on itself.

I wont do a passage without one now

[capt vimes]

you are a multihull man sabahcat - aren't you?

i do not like multis and have absolutely no experience whatsover with those types of ships...
but i do think that due to the different characteristics of multis and monos the weathering technique might be considerably different as well...

[Fanie]

Dear Capt Vimes,

i do not like multis and have absolutely no experience whatsover with those types of ships...

Takes a big man to admit he's scared :D

Try it, you'll love it. Now you can't say afterwards 'If only I knew...' ;)

[capt vimes]

Takes a big man to admit he's scared :D

yep - they scare me... :p

this year end of march/beginning of april i had the opportunity to deliver a cat (45' LOA) from northern france via the biscaya into the mediteranean and happily refused it... :D

[apex1]

Dear Capt Vimes,
Takes a big man to admit he's scared :D
Try it, you'll love it. Now you can't say afterwards 'If only I knew...' ;)

They do´nt scare me and I do´nt like them either.

[capt vimes]

fanie
watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_jz708oeVI

do not ask me how this guy on his small mono got in this kind of trouble with a broken forestay and such... just watch what happens to the mono and the cat (yes its not a sailing cat) - coming to aid the striken mono - in this breaking seas.... ;)

[Brent Swain]

I was missing your nonsense already Brent!

But the question was: what is your favourite technique...........

so each of us can add their opinion, me as well as you!

The "Musto" suit can be manufactured by any competitor too BTW.

Regards
Richard

Scroll back, I posted it earlier. Do your research before asking stupid questions.
Brent

[gonzo]

About 24 years ago I had a 34' Wharram. I got into an inlet when the tide was coming out and the waves were seven to eight feet and breaking. By the time I figured it out, there was no turning around. The cat surfed a wave all the way in. A monohull would have been in trouble.

[capt vimes]

not necessarily...
depends on the travel speed of the waves and the surfing/planning capability of the mono...
-> see BeauVrolyks posts...

[Fanie]

and happily refused it...
Now that is desperate :D

Richard, you in a multihull would scare me too :D

I think every tipe of boat have a wow in them. I just don't want to be hooked by someone because there's not enough space to fish from :D

There are some really nice mono's too, just like to discriminate against them a bit ;)

[CT 249]

How Jordon Serious Drouges work is illustrated in the discussion on the loss of the Winston Churchill in the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart. This can be viewed at www.jordanseriesdrogue.com/D_15.htm

The Winston Churchill was a heavy displacement timber boat and got smashed to pieces in the storm with loss of life. As the discussion on the jordon site points out, the wave that destroyed it was estimated to be 45 ft and moving at about 30mph. So the boat after being picked up and carried by the wave would be moving at atleast 30mph.

Sorry, but since when did a wave that 'picks up' a heavy boat instantly impart to the boat the full speed of the wave?

If you get 'picked up' and dumped while bodysurfing, you're not moving at the full speed of the wave. And the entire 45' of the Churchil wave wasn't breaking as that doesn't happen in deep water, so the water in the wave itself would mainly be stationary. Therefore the entire wave would not pick up and throw the boat bodily at the full speed of the wave, surely?

It's not as if a 45 foot wave is composed of 45' of moving water sliding over the ocean - it's a circular motion of water molecules. Only the top (a LOT of top in Churchill's case) is broken water moving sideways so surely it's not just going to pick up the boat and instantly get it moving at 30mph.

Surely in a wave train moving at 30mph the bottom of the wave train is also moving at 30mph, so even if a boat is picked up by the crest at 30mph it would not actually get down to the trough! It can't be a straight drop as your analogy indicates.

Of course, Churchill seems to have been hit by the wave crest which would have had huge power. But no one is saying that Churchill was picked up and lifted clean out of the water by the wave crest, so it was NOT in free fall in mid air as your analogy indicates.

Finally, the other way around the problem is to steer the boat so you don't get picked up by that wall of water in the breaking wave. I wasn't in the Churchill storm but none of those I know who were there have bought drogues, and they are NOT ****** or ignorant - they just sail different types of boats and have different experience, ability and opinions.






The damage happens when the boat hits stationary water at the bottom of the trough. This is what Magwas is referring to and he is quite correct. It would be like driving a boat into a brick wall. No amount of good helming/seamanship will save a yacht in extreme conditions when it is picked up by a wave. Hence to jordon drogue. It is simply the best method of protection. The beauty of it is that it acts like a spring and increases the load gradually rather than it "snapping on". The other nice thing about the jordon drogue is its not a commercial product, so no commercial barrow is being pushed. So it up yourself or get someone else to do it.


Brent, about "Outside only steering stations are just bad seamanship, any way you cut it"

How, logically, can you claim that ALL those who don't share your opinion are poor seamen? Maybe some people (and I'm not claiming to be one of them) can handle different conditions of cold etc without suffering impairment - certainly that seems to happen in other sports. And maybe some of them rely more on senses that are dulled when you are inside.

As an analogy, last year's national champ in a class I sail suffers a significant loss of performance if he wears anything around his ears, because that's where he gets a lot of information about the wind. Being inside a wheelhouse is similar. Getting off a lee shore, or gybing in a gale, such information may be vital and much more important than staying a bit drier and warmer. So surely what suits you may not suit everyone in all conditions.

As another analogy, some top Hobart crews can sail very fast after living for days on Mars bars and soggy sandwiches and sleeping on the rail. Most other sailors can't perform in such conditions. The point is that individuals vary and what they can take without losing performance varies. Therefore, surely, it cannot be a simple matter of 'get a pilothouse like Brent says, because he knows all and everyone else is just like him'.

[apex1]

Well,

Brent is Brent,

and we others (the rest of the world) are the amateurs.

We have to bear that............................

[BeauVrolyk]

(Huge breaking waves. The boat surfs down the wave, gathers huge momentum, and at the bottom hits the next wave. Now THAT causes huge forces.)



A boat surfing down from a 10m wave basically obtain the same amount of kinetic energy as it would be dropped from 10m. Would your boat survive if you would drop her to the water from 10m, bow down? (Actually the kinetic energy is a bit more due to the speed the vessel have already had on the top of the wave, and the force is less because the angle of the impact.)

And how the helmsman supposed to avoid collision with the wave she is surfing down to? Every one of them?

Magwas,

You are right, that a boat has the same "potential" energy when at the top of a 10m wave that it does when hanging 10m above the ground. But, there is a significant and important difference in how you get down from 10m up. If your boat was dropped from the crane and dropped 10m it would then have developed a great deal of momentum that would be extracted from the boat during the relatively brief time it was crashing into the ground - a second or two at most. However, that's (fortunately) not the way one comes down a wave. (BTW, I will leave falling off a breaking wave out of this as that's not been what we're talking about.)

When you surf down a wave you are primarily moving horizontally, being pushed forward by the wave, and only moving downward slowly. This is obvious, when you think about how "heavy" you feel while surfing down a wave. If you felt REALLY heavy all of a sudden, then you'd be feeling the force that the boat was absorbing quickly. But, that's not what it feels like at all. Rather, you feel a little heavier as the wave starts to lift the stern of the boat, which is perhaps a 10 to 15 percent increase in your perceived weight and proportional to your acceleration vertically - upward. Then, while surfing down the wave you'll feel forward acceleration and a slight lightening. This is because the wave is pushing the boat forward, along with the wind on the sails (if any).

Once you reach the trough, if your boat is actually faster than the wave, then you'll feel the boat slow down and your body will gently try to fall forward. There will be a modest increase in your perceived weight again, I'd guess no more than 15 to 20 percent, and then you'd wait for the wave to pick you up again.

The point is that your decent from 10m is over a long period of time and there isn't a "sudden" crash at the bottom of the wave. The drag of the water on the hull uses up a tremendous amount of the "potential energy" stored in your boat, due to its being lifted by the wave, and that's evidenced pretty clearly by the gigantic waves your boat will make as it slides down the wave. Imagine how big a motor it would take to get your boat to go that fast and you've got a pretty good way to estimate the amount of energy.

Hope this helps.

Beau

[BeauVrolyk]

As long as you run away, it is VERY desireable to be as fast as the wave pattern, or even faster sometimes.

When you are not running away, you are steaming towards it, you are much slower than the waves in that case.

I do´nt know (by own experience) another tactique, and are not comfortable with others.
Though I have to confess, that I have absolutely zero experience in light sailing boats on the open ocean!

For motorships and yachts I found one technique only, worldwide, steam towards it. Commonly at SOG zero.

Regards
Richard

Richard,

The difficulty most sailboats have with going against truly large waves is that the typically lack a motor large enough to guarantee steerage as they reach the top of the wave. There, where the wave is the steepest, the boat's rig is in the strongest wind (protruding far above that of a motor yacht) and the difficult of effectively pushing the boat up about a 45 degree slope is simply too much for most small yacht engines. Thus, most sailboats, when trying to power directly into the waves (when they are quite large), end up actually going backwards for quite a time during the period when they are near the top third of the wave. The only way to avoid this, and I have done it quite a bit with my old cruising yacht with the big engine, is to get going really fast - nearly full throttle - while in the trough of the wave, and almost completely cut power about a boat length from the crest of each wave. This is hard for most folks to do in really nasty weather.

The goal of this approach is to make up for the fact that the boat doesn't really have a large enough engine by building up speed when you're not going up-hill (up the front of the wave) and burn that speed off to almost exactly zero when you're at the top so you don't fall off the wave violently. This requires that someone drive the boat on each wave, which is at least as much work as sailing it, that there be a helmsman who can execute this strategy, and that the crew be willing to tolerate the continuous racing and idling of the engine (pretty irritating actually). I did this for about five hours once while holding station next to a life raft that was hanging from a sea anchor and it was terribly irritating.

Finally, the most dangerous point on a wave is as you actually go through the wave top. This is true regardless of surfing with it or trying to power towards it. Some waves are steep enough to actually break, and I don't mean just form a white cap here I mean really curl over and break as you see at the beach. When most sail boats try to power into these sorts of waves their greatest risk is being pushed backwards, as they reach the crest of the wave, and falling onto their sterns. I've watched this in video of a boat being pushed ashore here in San Francisco. The sailboat was powering directly into 20' waves and each time he reached the top of the wave the wave and the boat moved back towards the beach at about 10k. What made this much worse was that the sternward movement of the boat caused it to broach while going backwards and allowed the wave to knock the boat onto her side. Eventually, the helmsman was washed overboard and the boat and swimming sailor were washed up on Ocean beach.

Hope this helps explain why I go down wind and adore lots of sea room.

Beau

[apex1]

Richard,

The difficulty most sailboats have with going against truly large waves is that the typically lack a motor large enough to guarantee steerage as they reach the top of the wave. There, where the wave is the steepest, the boat's rig is in the strongest wind (protruding far above that of a motor yacht) and the difficult of effectively pushing the boat up about a 45 degree slope is simply too much for most small yacht engines. Thus, most sailboats, when trying to power directly into the waves (when they are quite large), end up actually going backwards for quite a time during the period when they are near the top third of the wave. The only way to avoid this, and I have done it quite a bit with my old cruising yacht with the big engine, is to get going really fast - nearly full throttle - while in the trough of the wave, and almost completely cut power about a boat length from the crest of each wave. This is hard for most folks to do in really nasty weather.

The goal of this approach is to make up for the fact that the boat doesn't really have a large enough engine by building up speed when you're not going up-hill (up the front of the wave) and burn that speed off to almost exactly zero when you're at the top so you don't fall off the wave violently. This requires that someone drive the boat on each wave, which is at least as much work as sailing it, that there be a helmsman who can execute this strategy, and that the crew be willing to tolerate the continuous racing and idling of the engine (pretty irritating actually). I did this for about five hours once while holding station next to a life raft that was hanging from a sea anchor and it was terribly irritating.

Finally, the most dangerous point on a wave is as you actually go through the wave top. This is true regardless of surfing with it or trying to power towards it. Some waves are steep enough to actually break, and I don't mean just form a white cap here I mean really curl over and break as you see at the beach. When most sail boats try to power into these sorts of waves their greatest risk is being pushed backwards, as they reach the crest of the wave, and falling onto their sterns.

Hope this helps explain why I go down wind and adore lots of sea room.

Beau

Fully concur Beau!

Steaming into it, is´nt easy with a motoryacht either. And controlling the throttle is a task too. (much easier with a CPP btw.)

As for the wave crest, that is the most dangerous point for a motor vessel as well, too much windage make them behave like a sailing boat sometimes.

A overpowered, lightweight, low windage boat, like Dashews "Windhorse" behaves much better of course and gives one a choice between heading into, or running off.

At the end I like to repeat: avoiding weather is the best tactique! Weather systems are more or less well known, for different seasons in certain waters, one should plan far enough ahead to get not trapped (by own ignorance).

Regards
Richard

[BeauVrolyk]

How Jordon Serious Drouges work is illustrated in the discussion on the loss of the Winston Churchill in the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart. This can be viewed at www.jordanseriesdrogue.com/D_15.htm

The Winston Churchill was a heavy displacement timber boat and got smashed to pieces in the storm with loss of life. As the discussion on the jordon site points out, the wave that destroyed it was estimated to be 45 ft and moving at about 30mph. So the boat after being picked up and carried by the wave would be moving at atleast 30mph. The damage happens when the boat hits stationary water at the bottom of the trough. This is what Magwas is referring to and he is quite correct. It would be like driving a boat into a brick wall. No amount of good helming/seamanship will save a yacht in extreme conditions when it is picked up by a wave. Hence to jordon drogue. It is simply the best method of protection. The beauty of it is that it acts like a spring and increases the load gradually rather than it "snapping on". The other nice thing about the jordon drogue is its not a commercial product, so no commercial barrow is being pushed. So it up yourself or get someone else to do it.

Claverton,

I went to the web site you've referenced, thanks for that. I would like to point out that this is a web site promoting the product, not an independent source. That said, some of what he's saying does make sense. However, there are a number of factual errors. The entire discussion about the speed of the water is simply wrong. The movement of water in a wave is a well understood and well studied phenomena. If you'd like a quick example, have a look at a surfing movie. While the water that falls off the top of a true breaking wave is falling through the air, it doesn't have either the distance or the density to develop the speeds described above. All one need do is watch a really big (>20') wave at the beach.

In a true breaking wave the water circulating up the windward side is pushed along by the wind on its surface (a small force, but significant over time) and the momentum of the wave (a much bigger force). Once the wave has been built by the wind over a long long period of time to the point where the wave will break at the top, the wave then topples over itself. You can observe this at the beach all the time. We have a Big Wave competition here in N. California at a place called Maverick's and we all troop out to watch the 30' and 40' wave with surfers riding on them. What we have at Mavericks, and what the poor racers had in the Fastnet, are waves in which tons (and I literally mean tons) of water is falling from the top of the wave and landing onto the down wind side. But, at no time does that water get to break the laws of physics. While the water is certainly very heavy, and its horizontal component (meaning how fast the water is going sideways) is just slightly faster than that of the wave, its vertical component is the same as if you'd dropped all that water off the top of a single story building. This means that the absolute fastest the water could be moving would be at the speed it would pick up falling about 12 feet. The water isn't falling the entire height of the wave, but only the height of the breaking crest. This is a speed of about 15 miles per hour. As an example, people jump off single story buildings all the time without hurting themselves.

But, there's a second problem with this. Water is not solid. As a result, as it falls it breaks up into foam. Again, observe the top of a wave at the beach. The foam is billions of small droplets and globs of water that are trying to move through the air. The movement through the air is what breaks it up and as the water attempts to travel through the air it slows down. Of course it also speeds the water up, you see the foam moving along with the wave at the beach, but that foam is NOT ever going faster than the wave. If it were, the foam on the waves would arrive at the beach first, long ahead of the wave. It doesn't do this.

On the basis of these simple observable facts, which you've seen at the beach, you know that this persons calculations are simply wrong.

Finally, as with my earlier post, no one arrives at the water in the trough (not even a surfer trying to go "over the falls") all at once. Just as it takes a long long time to surf down a big wave, it takes a boat a long time to slide down a wave. If you watch surfers you'll see that the only way they can achieve speeds higher than the speed of the wave is to go across it - this is not something a boat will ever do, so we'll ignore this option. But, the surfer clearly illustrates that the surfer riding on the fastest part of the wave and the mass of water in the wave arrive at the shore at the same time. While the water at the bottom of the wave is certainly sitting still relative to the water falling from the top, the difference in speed is a maximum of the wave speed plus whatever gravitational acceleration the water from the top achieved. In the case of a keelboat, in dramatic contrast to a surf board, there is massive drag. As a result, the keel boat is going a fraction of the speed of the WAVE, not the water. Keep in mind that the wave has picked up a relatively stationary sailboat and is accelerating it forward. That acceleration takes a while, which is why the boat climbs the face of the wave at all, and at no time does the boat go faster than the wave.

What you've really got is a boat that is about 1/2 way up the wave face, sliding down into the trough at about 1/2 the wave's speed. All things that fit perfectly with my experience in large waves surfing down them. Think about the waves that pass under your boat, they are going about four or five times your speed. Now, imagine making that wave a lot steeper and you might get going faster, now you're going at most half the speed of the wave, not twice it as the author of the web site you quoted cited.

While gigantic breaking waves are terrible - we'll all agree - the danger is the weight of the water crushing the boat and the circular action causing the boat to roll over. It is not the speed of the wave or boat, and it is certainly not crashing into the trough.

Best,
BV

[BeauVrolyk]

Dear Capt Vimes,



Takes a big man to admit he's scared :D

Try it, you'll love it. Now you can't say afterwards 'If only I knew...' ;)

Fanie,

I adore cats, tris are even better. But, that's because they are so fast that you can usually outrun the weather. I would NEVER turn around and try to go bow into big seas and wind with a multi. We were trying to bring a big cat up to San Francisco from S. Calif. and going over 15' waves with about 35 knots of wind the darn thing kept trying to fly as the wind got under the beams and decks. It was a wild experience. In a really bad storm, greater than 60k of wind, I think the thing would have easily blown over backwards when the wind got under that big broad deck as the boat crested waves going up wind.

How do you stop that from happening? Turn around?

Beau

[Fanie]

There are different types of rough weather water, the waves aren't just always long waves.

My favourite is the washing machine. A bit like some of the members on this forum, each wave on his own heading. Imo this is the most dangerous and tiresome water you can get into besides of course huge breaking seas and rogue waves.

I have no advice on this except to get out of it. Other than that I think just common sense, good knowledge of how your boat will behave, and how your crew including yourself will behave.

[gonzo]

The Eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico has a nasty pattern. Waves come at several angles and create a very confusing sea. It is common to get rolled both ways by opposing moving waves.

[Fanie]

Sorry BV, I had some visitors and had to bail -

As for the catamaran flying over the waves, isn't that what one expect from a cat :D

Ok, that opens another point of design. Maybe we are too fixed on designing all in the water only, but how about what's above it. I experienced a similar trait with the little tri in really strong wind, it is too light to bite and turn, instead the wind just blows the bow leeward.

All racing cars and I'm sure racing boats too use the wind to enhance water (road) holding. Now in cruiser boats we don't need to race, the wind does.

How big a difference would it have made if the design was so that it tends to push / suck the boat into the water instead of trying to lift it out - similar to what an outboard does when you trim the boat's nose down.

This may be one way of improving water (road) holding of a boat. One can also possibly trim the trampoline so it sucks the bow down instead of the lift up.

Any comments ?

No, I cannot tell the wife to go sit in the front to keep the nose down :D Poor aerodynamics ;)

[Fanie]

Hi Gonzo,

I've never been in the gulf of mexico but I've been in where the waves were going in all directions. Boy is that fun.
Thinking back the only thing I can think of is to have a big enough boat and a boat that would not make water.
A small spash can add a ton or two at a time and there usually is very little fish in there :rolleyes:

One of the reasons why I think the bilge pumps we buy are rubbish. Their capacity is way too low and the motors are cheap scrap that doesn't last at all.
One needs a low pressure high capacity pump, not a high pressure low volume one.

[BeauVrolyk]

All,

I collected some film of folks sailing in heavy weather. The first is a Dashew (sp?) going along quite comfortably at 20+ knots and turning in 330+ mile days. This shows that if you build a relatively light long boat you can go cruising with all the goodies and still go fast and safe. Note how little movement there is in a boat with a 10' sea running and strong winds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4zg5vD_jvI&feature=related

Second, I just wanted to toss in a great example of a lightweight boat, albeit a big one of 80', sailing in a full gale. They are still racing, with everyone on the rail. The waves were about 25' high that day and the wind was 40k gusting to 55k. Note how well sailed the boat is. Also, when you're watching the video keep in mind that she's got 12' of freeboard at the bow (which is still piercing the waves) and 10' of freeboard amidships. Interestingly, on a tight reach like this, the crew stays pretty far out of the water as the boat is heeled so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvkWjQYzuCM&feature=related

Third, I'd like you all to watch this boat sailing along at speeds of 25 to 30 knots. You'll note that the 15' waves are being left behind. The boat is sailing smoothly up and over the wave in front, as the closing speed between the boat and the wave in front of it is only about 5 knots. There is no "crashing" into the bottom of the trough. At about 2min and 10seconds into the film the driver even takes his hands off the wheel and the boat does just fine. Moreover, the boats sail along without a lot of drama considering there is about 35k of wind and BIG seas. Now, imagine going the other way! You can see how "easy" this is by watching how gently the flag is flying from the backstay. When the boat is really moving, the flag is hardly flapping at all. The wind over the deck is about 10 knots, no water on the boat, no one in a panic, not even any real sheet trimming going on. If one were cruising you'd just pull two feet of spin sheet in and there would be nothing to do but steer. I'm not saying this if for everyone, but once again, imagine how painful this would be going the other direction or even sitting still hove to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnqUYRRMl0I&feature=related

Finally, in case you have trouble imagining what it's like to go up wind, or at least on a tight reach, in these conditions. The conditions and locations are almost identical, the effect it has on the boat and crew is dramatically different. Here's a video from the BT Global Challenge. For some reason they insist on going around the world the wrong way - up wind the entire way. Enjoy, and sail down wind whenever you get the chance, I think the films speak for themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXuzy0k9mZQ&feature=related

I adore the old saying:

"Gentlemen never sail to weather."

Beau

[marshmat]

Re. multis getting caught by big winds:
I would think that a multihull designed for serious offshore use would have to consider wind/bridgedeck interaction right from the concept stage. A solid bridgedeck extending all the way to the ends of the boat is going to catch the wind. (Consider tunnel-hull powerboats: this is taken to the extreme, with the bridgedeck being given an aircraft-wing shape and supporting much of the boat's weight in this manner.) For a boat that's going to see storms- and anything that goes offshore is eventually going to see a storm, right? - the design should be such that the boat can't easily be picked up and tossed around by the wind. The large, lightly netted forward sections of Chris White's big Atlantic cats seem a logical solution.


Re. Beau's first video above (the Dashew boat):
Long, light and well balanced- Dashew yachts are reported to be some of the more comfortable and more easily handled passagemakers, as well as being rather on the fast side. The many advantages of this design philosophy are obvious. The downside, of course, is that it only seems to work for relatively large (thus expensive) boats. A Sundeer 60 is only 36,500 lb (D/L of 80) and has the interior space of many yachts ten feet shorter, with 15-year-old examples costing well into the $500-600k US range; apply similar proportions to something around 40 feet and you'd have a narrow, cramped and pricey boat that simply wouldn't have enough space for extended cruising.

From what I've read in the Dashews' articles, they seem to prefer that a full complement of drogues should be carried: a large parachute anchor to hold station in case of an engine or rig failure, a Jordan series drogue and/or GaleRider to slow the boat from astern if things get rough, and several other devices for different conditions. After all, the studies that led to the development of the JSD did indicate that drogues can be much more effective than changes to the boat itself when conditions are near the boat's limit.


Re. Beau's third video above (the racing mono running in 15-footers):
All well and good, but I would hate to see what would happen if the boat broached in these conditions.... it's one thing to run like this with a full racing crew, but surely not all boats (or crews) can do this in a safe, stable manner?

[mark775]

or, "Gentlemen puke if it gets a little rougher..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7FddPO5QM&feature=related

[mark775]

"Re. Beau's third video above (the racing mono running in 15-footers):
All well and good, but I would hate to see what would happen if the boat broached in these conditions.... it's one thing to run like this with a full racing crew, but surely not all boats (or crews) can do this in a safe, stable manner?"
- I think likewise.

[Fanie]

Good link ther Mark, one can clearly see the water movement as it was descibed by BV there.

[BeauVrolyk]

"Re. Beau's third video above (the racing mono running in 15-footers):
All well and good, but I would hate to see what would happen if the boat broached in these conditions.... it's one thing to run like this with a full racing crew, but surely not all boats (or crews) can do this in a safe, stable manner?"
- I think likewise.

Guys,

I know that blasting along down wind in big waves and a big sea looks terrifying, and I agree that if one does crash it's ugly.

I would simply point out that people had exactly the same reaction to automobiles when they first came out and the results are similar. If you do screw up and crash - it's really ugly. If you've never gone 70 miles per hour down a freeway - it's terrifying. I had the astounding opportunity to take a guy from the back bush of Australia in a car for the first ride of his life. At 45 he climbed under the dash board. Keep in mind, fear and risk are directly linked to experience. Until you've actually sailed a really well designed boat, and I'm happy to provide a list, in these conditions and in this way, it is completely reasonable to be fearful of the conditions and the results of an error. Just remember than in the New York time circa 1890 there was a serious article saying that people would not be able to breath when traveling at 30 miles per hour in a car.

Best,

Beau

[apex1]

We have a saying in northern Germany when the Winter storms and storm floods are hammering against the dikes:

Imagine,


now at sea..............


and then no boat......


and a suitcase in each hand.

Avoid weather........
Richard

[Fanie]

How about this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAnHEWPFzEg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHK18Plnw4I

[TeddyDiver]

Beau, those (3 first) video's were not more than, what we call here " mild kuling", and I've been out with open outboard boat in a lot worse weather than that.. ;) Thou got to say I wouldn't even think about videoing in a severe storm bcs mostly you can't see a ****.

[apex1]

You like blue water cruising when you agree that here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JShGZXCpLeA&feature=related


the fun starts!

You need new tableware yes, so, not every day of course.

[Fanie]

The waves always looks smaller on video.

[capt vimes]

or, "Gentlemen puke if it gets a little rougher..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7FddPO5QM&feature=related

that happens with slow - in this case longkeeled boats - not making, or being able to make, efficient speed through the water...
they get tossed around by the waves like a cork... :P

[capt vimes]

How about this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHK18Plnw4I

funny fanie... exactly the same video i posted earlier on this thread as an example for NOT being in a cat when the shite hits the ven... :P

mono: turned over but still afloat upright after turning through 360°...
cat: turned over.... end-of-line :P :p

[capt vimes]

thank's for the videos beau...

in your second one could see quite good how to run almost parallel to the waves...
building up speed when running into the through - going a little bit into the wind and over the crest - off the wind again and catching up speed running down into the trough again...

i like that way of sailing in big seaways... very smooth ride, no chopping around and fast! :D

[Fanie]

Vimes, sorry if I duplicated your video. I was looking for a video that I saw before of a cat in big waves. They have not even taken the stuff off the tables.

The guy wasn't sailing, but the waves were substantial. Looking through the ports as the video was taken you can see the cat going down and water all round and then it goes up again.

I'm sure it would become unpleasant if you sail fast to wind.

[MikeJohns]

that happens with slow - in this case longkeeled boats - not making, or being able to make, efficient speed through the water...
they get tossed around by the waves like a cork... :P

Looking at that video clip I disagree. That boat looks safe and comfortable in those conditions and under control. It's probably moving faster than you credit, and being filmed from an accompanying ship so it's hard to really see what's happening.

It could probably do with a little more sail but the crew are probably worn out after the storm that generated that sea and happy with the speed they are making.
There is less than gale force wind in the video. This is the most uncomfortable phase of heavy weather for a small vessel; when the sotrm initially abates. If all the wind dies but the seas are still rough then there are only passive techniques. Then a lightweight really becomes the cork and with their high GM and low roll gyradius it can be dangerous on deck and more prone to being flipped by a breaking wave.

The other videos show very benign sea-states and conditions and plenty of wind but far from what I'd call heavy weather. I doubt you will see any footage to compare in real storm conditions but that's what's lacking is a true comparison, (like a light and heavy boat going to windward in a heavy chop).

I'd like to see the fast boats in the south pacific trades they are never as suitable for fast transits and that's only with 20 knots continuous but often with a heavy underlying swell.

Longer keels don't automatically produce a slow boat wave making is far more important as to max speed, why should they be slow? And relative to what ? You can't simplify hull design to such reductionist blocks.




Beavrolick you said before "heay masts are always dangerous"
I was wondering what you based that on? There's evidence that heavy masted boats survive breaking beam seas with reduced chance of knockdown much better because of the added roll gyradius.
If a boat is so designed it can benefit from a heavy mast.

[BeauVrolyk]

Beavrolick you said before "heay masts are always dangerous"
I was wondering what you based that on? There's evidence that heavy masted boats survive breaking beam seas with reduced chance of knockdown much better because of the added roll gyradius.
If a boat is so designed it can benefit from a heavy mast.
[/FONT]

Mike,

The reason that heavy rigs are bad, in my opinion always bad, is that while they do resist a roll initially once the boat starts to roll the heavy rig causes the roll to go much further than a light rig would.

Also, each and every time the boat sails into a wave and tries to get her bow to rise over the wave, and each and ever time a sea comes up on the boat from astern and the boat tries to get her stern to rise over the wave rather than getting pooped, the greater resistance to pitching (which is for exactly the same reason you're citing as a resistance to rolling) increases the chance that the wave with come over either the bow or the stern of the boat.

The basic rule of thumb is that an increased polar moment of inertia is bad.

Polar moment in increased by putting weight in the ends of things, like the bow, the stern, the keel and the mast. Because the Polar Moment increases as the square of the distance from the roll center, NOT in a linear way, this makes weight in the rig particularly evil.

For all the same reasons that you wouldn't park a pair of 200 pound anchors on the tip of the bow during a long beat to windward, and you wouldn't hang a dingy fully of fuel tanks off the stern while trying to run before a bad storm, you shouldn't have anything heavy in the rigging either.

I do agree, that the momentary resistance to rolling caused by a heavy rig, or a large deep bulb keel for that matter, is nice on the one occasion of being smacked by a steep wave from abeam. However, the vast majority of waves are not the sort that will roll a boat over, they are the sort that will just toss a couple of tons of water on the deck if the boat can't get over them. These are far more dangerous because they are nearly infinitely more common. The heavy rig will keep the bow or stern from rising (and will keep the boat from rolling when hit amidships) and thus greatly increase the chances that the sea will come aboard.

Like everything in Yacht design, it's a trade off and I'm claiming that one should optimize for the most common sort of problem and danger, not for the very rare occurrence of a breaking wave from abeam.

BV

[marshmat]

Valid points, BV. However, we should note that, at least anecdotally, the point in many "situations" where things start to get really nasty is when the rig comes down. Large chunks of expensive rig flying around the deck is bad enough, but there are so many reports of boats that developed a dangerous motion and a tendency to capsize repeatedly after being dismasted..... as suggested by the Fastnet '79 investigation, a slightly overbuilt rig can help increase the roll moment of inertia (good for capsize resistance) as well as reducing the chance of dismasting.
I'd rather put up with a bit more pitching and the occasional wave over the deck than lose my rig.....

[sabahcat]

funny fanie... exactly the same video i posted earlier on this thread as an example for NOT being in a cat when the shite hits the ven... :P

mono: turned over but still afloat upright after turning through 360°...
cat: turned over.... end-of-line :P :p

Perhaps you should do some research before you comment on things that you admitted you had little knowledge about


i do not like multis and have absolutely no experience whatsover with those types of ships...
.

Here I posted some Info from Loch Crowther where he did studies on wave induced capsize with various vessels with the multihulls very fairing well in same wave heights that rolled monos.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f48/lock-crowther-design-notes-as-promised-5910.html

[Frosty]

If you don't have those silly escape hatches that let the air out I would imagine an upside down cat with mast and sail still intact would be a very stable platform on which to stay till help arrived, and even longer. assuming that it floated flat.

[TeddyDiver]

For all the same reasons that you wouldn't park a pair of 200 pound anchors on the tip of the bow during a long beat to windward, and you wouldn't hang a dingy fully of fuel tanks off the stern while trying to run before a bad storm, you shouldn't have anything heavy in the rigging either.

Same is true with high aspect rigs. Momentum comes from height and mass. So with the same argument we could argue against high aspect ratios.. Staying away from extremes :)

[MikeJohns]

The reason that heavy rigs are bad, in my opinion always bad, is that while they do resist a roll initially once the boat starts to roll the heavy rig causes the roll to go much further than a light rig would.



But the energy in the systems is exactly the same so it doesn’t work that way. The light boat rolls faster and further, the heavy boat rolls slower and with a smaller angular displacement. To look at the heavy boat in an even higher energy situation then also apply that to the lightweight !

Damping is also very important.

Several investigations have found that a high roll inertia considerably reduces the angle rolled to following being hit and significantly increases the roll period



Also, each and every time the boat sails into a wave and tries to get her bow to rise over the wave, and each and ever time a sea comes up on the boat from astern and the boat tries to get her stern to rise over the wave rather than getting pooped, the greater resistance to pitching (which is for exactly the same reason you're citing as a resistance to rolling) increases the chance that the wave with come over either the bow or the stern of the boat.

The pitching gyradius is effected far less by heavy rigs than is the roll gyradius and whether the boat is dry has to do with its ratios of reserve bouyancy and rate of change of sections. So it has little effect on a properly designed boat except that in some conditions it will pitch more heavily, but then that approaches oscillatory conditions and we can alter the lines somewhat to compensate .

Pitching is more important in racing boats because it tends to reduce speed and this is one reason that light rigs are very much in vogue.

The basic rule of thumb is that an increased polar moment of inertia is bad.

Whose rule of thumb? I’d like to see that substantiated with a decent reference since it's not a rule I have encountered and I'd be very interested in the authors reasoning since it runs counter to modern naval architecture.

Polar moment in increased by putting weight in the ends of things, like the bow, the stern, the keel and the mast. Because the Polar Moment increases as the square of the distance from the roll center, NOT in a linear way, this makes weight in the rig particularly evil......................

Actually polar moment is the section property of a shapes resistance to being twisted not moved, you mean roll inertia. If you take the square root of the sum all the transverse roll inertias divided by the total mass you get the gyradius or radius of gyration which is a common figure in naval architecture. Along with GM it’s quit informative of the vessels likely behavior.

From what I said before I’d re-iterate that a heavy rig is far from evil but can actually make a much safer and more comfortable vessel.

The point AK made before is worth considering, after a boat is knocked down and dismasted it is considerably more prone to being rolled again from the reduction of its gyradius even if it is proceeding under control under a jury rig or under auxiliary motor.

[yipster]

from Marsja the inertia changes in a seaway, a very interesting subject and ofcourse a trade off yet i lean to BV's side

[bntii]

All well and good to talk about design and staying in the bar during blowy weather but....
The heart of this topic must lie in what the heck to do when our caution fails and we are caught out in the boats we in fact own.

Vocabulary:

Inertia: "The tendency of a body to resist acceleration; the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force."

In other words, in our application a heavy rig damps the tendency for waves to roll the boat. Something Marsja seems to acknowledge in his pie graph above.

A poorly researched bit i have heard:
Ships of old hoisting heavy anchors aloft to damp roll in hard weather.

Further vocabulary.
I believe the conversation covers two topics:
Heavy weather, where one might still sail, and storm conditions.
I believe many heavy weather tactics will fail in storms.
For instance, I don't think a sea anchor has any chance at all of dealing with a yacht caught in a large breaking wave.

[capt vimes]

Perhaps you should do some research before you comment on things that you admitted you had little knowledge about.

Here I posted some Info from Loch Crowther where he did studies on wave induced capsize with various vessels with the multihulls very fairing well in same wave heights that rolled monos.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f48/lock-crowther-design-notes-as-promised-5910.html

very nice PR article.... ;)
do not get me wrong...
i know the advantages of multis and i know their disadvantages... and that includes their behaviour in rough seas as well... i do not like them nevertheless and i do not want to get caught on a multi in really bad conditions...

for me it is a wrong 'feeling' being on a multi...
you know the differnce in car driving and motorcycle riding?
both are machines to move one along... on a bike you feel the thing with every fibre of your body - heck, you steer it with all of your body - you feel the tires and every peble on the road... in a car you do not...
i feel lost and detached on a multi... thats why I do not like them... i need to feel the ship, its heeling and motion and this feel for the ship is not the same if you compare multis and monos...

but everything to everybodys liking... don't you think? ;)

@mikejohns
i know that longkeeled does not automatically means slow... never wanted to let it look that way but this boat in mark775s video is making no speed at all... just drifting and geting tossed around by the waves...
and you are right: the worst one may face is heavy seas from a storm and no wind... been in this nightmare more than once - even experienced a knockdown by some freak wave - and did not like it... :(

[marshmat]

Re. hoisting anchors aloft
Not sure if this particular tidbit is accurate. But some offshore powerboats (Dashew FPB 83 comes to mind) carry ballast tanks on the flybridge, that can be pumped full of water to increase the roll moment of inertia if necessary.
Of course, many powerboats can't handle the weight without creating a dangerously low AVS. And that Dashew boat seems to get by just fine with its oversized active fin stabilizers, I haven't seen any of Steve or Linda's articles yet where they talk about actually having the tanks full.


There have been a lot of good points made on this thread. But it's also clear that each of us has strong personal biases according to what we sail:

- The powerboat types have come out strongly in favour of (a) having enough speed and weather knowledge to stay clear of anything heavy, and (b) if caught in something heavy, relying on careful modulation of the throttle and steering to keep in control.

- The monohull sailors have again said they'd rather stay clear of the bad weather, but have exhibited distinct preferences for particular combinations of boat characteristics that they're comfortable with if the storm does hit. A few seem to prefer running downwind, a few would rather heave to, lie ahull or break out some sort of drogue. Each is probably at least somewhat appropriate for the boat associated with the poster.

- The multihullers again would rather watch the weatherfax and get clear of anything nasty. If bad weather does hit, they seem to have a stronger preference for some form of drag device, not necessarily the same device for all boats though. Perhaps a cat/tri/proa's ability to easily carry a wide bridle, coupled with its inherently high roll moment of inertia, alleviates the nasty motion that some of the monohullers have reported when lying to a sea anchor.

Perhaps the most illuminating thing I've seen come out of this thread so far is this:
No one technique (except avoiding the storm in the first place) will be suitable for all boats; storm tactics must be planned in advance according to the characteristics of the particular boat involved.

[apex1]

You perfectly summed it up Matt!

Thanks.

[TollyWally]

Indeed Matt.

[gonzo]

Go out in heavy or even moderate seas in a sailboat without the mast and you will see how violently it rolls.

[Fanie]

Richard, I have a question. In an earlier post you said you steam right head on to the eye of the storm. Ok so when you are in the eye, what then :D

Makes sense Gonzo, the boat will be more sensitive to react. Never thought of it that way. So, if the boat is too 'reponsive' you need a longer or heavier mast... :D

[Brent Swain]

Mike,

The reason that heavy rigs are bad, in my opinion always bad, is that while they do resist a roll initially once the boat starts to roll the heavy rig causes the roll to go much further than a light rig would.

Also, each and every time the boat sails into a wave and tries to get her bow to rise over the wave, and each and ever time a sea comes up on the boat from astern and the boat tries to get her stern to rise over the wave rather than getting pooped, the greater resistance to pitching (which is for exactly the same reason you're citing as a resistance to rolling) increases the chance that the wave with come over either the bow or the stern of the boat.

The basic rule of thumb is that an increased polar moment of inertia is bad.

Polar moment in increased by putting weight in the ends of things, like the bow, the stern, the keel and the mast. Because the Polar Moment increases as the square of the distance from the roll center, NOT in a linear way, this makes weight in the rig particularly evil.

For all the same reasons that you wouldn't park a pair of 200 pound anchors on the tip of the bow during a long beat to windward, and you wouldn't hang a dingy fully of fuel tanks off the stern while trying to run before a bad storm, you shouldn't have anything heavy in the rigging either.

I do agree, that the momentary resistance to rolling caused by a heavy rig, or a large deep bulb keel for that matter, is nice on the one occasion of being smacked by a steep wave from abeam. However, the vast majority of waves are not the sort that will roll a boat over, they are the sort that will just toss a couple of tons of water on the deck if the boat can't get over them. These are far more dangerous because they are nearly infinitely more common. The heavy rig will keep the bow or stern from rising (and will keep the boat from rolling when hit amidships) and thus greatly increase the chances that the sea will come aboard.

Like everything in Yacht design, it's a trade off and I'm claiming that one should optimize for the most common sort of problem and danger, not for the very rare occurrence of a breaking wave from abeam.

BV

You are dead wrong on this one. By the time a boat is knocked far enough to be in danger of capsize , with a heavy rig, the wave has passed, and the weight of the rig then become irrelevant. With a heavy rig it's far less likely to go anywhere near that far, than with a light rig. I'd rather have heavy water over the bow than a drastically increased risk of capsize, which you get with a lighter rig. From inside my wheelhouse, water over the bow is a non issue. As I prefer to stream the drogue from the stern , water over the stern is also a non issue in a steel boat with lots of reserve buoyancy there, far more than I have at the bow..

[apex1]

Richard, I have a question. In an earlier post you said you steam right head on to the eye of the storm. Ok so when you are in the eye, what then :D


No Fanie I did never say that. Sorry..........

[apex1]

Go out in heavy or even moderate seas in a sailboat without the mast and you will see how violently it rolls.

It will capsize in the right (wrong) conditions, no doubt.

[BeauVrolyk]

Mike, thanks for taking the time to have a look at what I wrote, I've responded mixed in below....

But the energy in the systems is exactly the same so it doesn’t work that way. The light boat rolls faster and further, the heavy boat rolls slower and with a smaller angular displacement. To look at the heavy boat in an even higher energy situation then also apply that to the lightweight !

Let's start to "standardize" a few things. In this thread we've all be talking in generalities. So, let's assume exactly the same sized wave etc... applied to all these various boats. My point was about the "rig", not about the weight of the boat. If you have the exact "same" boat hull etc... with a heavy rig vs a light rig then the following will happen in exactly the same wave size/energy.

First, the wave will strike the boat from abeam, if the rig is lighter then you are right the boat will roll more quickly. In addition, the wave won't have nearly as much tendency to climb up over the boat as the boat will present the beam of its hull to the wave whilst rolled over.

Second, once the initial impact of the wave has been felt and absorbed, then the boat's ability to get back on her feet will be a combination of the hull form (form stability) combined with the ballasts stability (weight in the keel). However, the ability to come back up again will be reduced by the weight in the mast - this is an important point oft overlooked. Moreover, the ability of the boat to start to recover is not just the effect of the various stability forced balanced against the weight of the rig, the polar moment must be considered. This is where the weight of the rig becomes a large problem. It is also why I pointed out that the resistance to acceleration, which is what we're talking about here, goes us as the square of the distance from the roll center.

In conclusion, the same identical boat with a light rig vs a heavy one will start to roll more slowly, will roll further (because of the momentum of the rig once it's moving), will start to right itself more slowly (for the same exact reason it started to roll more slowly - momentum), and finally the heavy rig will overshoot and actually roll further to windward as the momentum of the rig continue to push the boat back past vertical.

This is all really well described in Marchi (sp?)



Damping is also very important.

Several investigations have found that a high roll inertia considerably reduces the angle rolled to following being hit and significantly increases the roll period


Exactly, but the "cost" or "problem" with the "reduced roll angle" is that the water goes up and over the boat. As I've said before, when you increase stability and resistance to roll, the water will simply go over the boat rather than moving it. This happens in exactly the same way for rolling and pitching.



The pitching gyradius is effected far less by heavy rigs than is the roll gyradius and whether the boat is dry has to do with its ratios of reserve bouyancy and rate of change of sections. So it has little effect on a properly designed boat except that in some conditions it will pitch more heavily, but then that approaches oscillatory conditions and we can alter the lines somewhat to compensate .

Pitching is more important in racing boats because it tends to reduce speed and this is one reason that light rigs are very much in vogue.



While I agree, that pitching doesn't feel as bad as rolling in a heavy rigged or heavy ended boat, I would point out that the inertia involved is identical. The mast still weighs the same amount. Most of the time yacht designers (non-racing designers) will pretty much ignore the polar moment of the boat in the pitching axis. This is exactly what I was objecting to. Sure, you can make the ends of the boat fuller so that there is more force created to stop the pitching. Note, that you are increasing the forces on the hull and rig, and if you have a boat with a great deal of reserve buoyancy in the ends you'd better design the rigging accordingly. When a long narrow boat hits a wave with her bow the deceleration is gradual as the bow pierces the water, the water flows around and over the bow and then the boat starts to slowly lift. I own an IOD (a lot like a meter boat) that does this on every wave. Where as when a boat with full bow sections hits a wave the deceleration is much more abrupt as the full bow resists being submerged. The full ended boat will put much more load on the backstay as the bow hits the wave. I also own a Moore-24 with a very full bow. The difference is dramatic. All that energy (the kinetic energy stored in the rig) has to go somewhere, and when the bow stops, it puts it into the backstay. The more quickly the bow stops, the stronger the force on the backstay.

Having sailed a long way on both narrow and beamy boats in large seas, I would continue to argue that a full bow is better, but this is because it reduces what I see as the most common risk in sailing in really heavy weather - being washed off the deck. The occurrence of crews being injured by being pushed around by the water on deck or by being washed overboard is vastly higher than that of boats rolling over. There's simply no comparison. Take really good boats, like the Volvo boats. None of them has rolled over in recent years and they sail in truly terrible conditions. Yet, numerous (well over 20) crew have been injured by water coming aboard and one person the race before last was washed overboard and killed. The primary goal of a boat's design should be to deliver the crew safely and keeping the water off the deck is one of the best ways to increase safety. Making the rig as light as is safe (note, I'm not recommending an ultra light racing rig.) is an easy and simple way to make the boat a lot safer.



Whose rule of thumb? I’d like to see that substantiated with a decent reference since it's not a rule I have encountered and I'd be very interested in the authors reasoning since it runs counter to modern naval architecture.



Mike, as I think I said in my original post - it's my rule of thumb. I do not accept that making the lightest safe rig runs "counter to modern naval architecture", quite the opposite. I think Marchi (sp?) and Skene would both agree that increasing the Polar Moment of Inertia is a bad thing is all cases.



Actually polar moment is the section property of a shapes resistance to being twisted not moved, you mean roll inertia. If you take the square root of the sum all the transverse roll inertias divided by the total mass you get the gyradius or radius of gyration which is a common figure in naval architecture. Along with GM it’s quit informative of the vessels likely behavior.



By Polar Moment I meant the moment of inertia around an axis. I used it in talking about the rig because the rig does, indeed, bend when loaded by inertial and its the way we've always talked about rigs and keels when the boat either rolls or pitches. You are correct, if one is simply talking about the forces then "Mass Moment of Inertia" is actually more accurate. But, the change in the terms doesn't alter the physics at all.

The reason I was picking on rigs is because the distance from the roll center, around the horizontal axis running fore and aft, is relatively large and so many sailors simply don't attempt to reduce the weight aloft. I can't tell you how many times I've seen folks "beef up" their rigging and put things aloft like heavy radar antenna etc... and then wonder why their boat doesn't sail well.



From what I said before I’d re-iterate that a heavy rig is far from evil but can actually make a much safer and more comfortable vessel.

The point AK made before is worth considering, after a boat is knocked down and dismasted it is considerably more prone to being rolled again from the reduction of its gyradius even if it is proceeding under control under a jury rig or under auxiliary motor.

Well, you and I will just have to disagree on heavy rigs. I strongly hold that no rig should be any heavier than it has to be to hold the sails up safely. I certainly don't think one should build something that is too light to be safe, but to have a "heavy" rig and believe that that's the best way to make the boat ride well is simply wrong, IMHO. Take, as an example, a second to consider other ways to change the roll characteristics of the boat, such as chines in the hull or a deeper keel, and then consider if weight aloft really is the best way to do this.

AK's point is based on the following: There will be waves that are still small enough to allow the damping effect of the rig to help keep the boat upright. But, we weren't really talking about those. We were talking about near terminal conditions. I would point out that simply increasing resistance to roll is a two way street. Sure, the boat will initially resist rolling over and if it still has its rig it will resist righting itself with exactly the same force. Thus, a sailboat without a rig that is rolling more quickly in a seaway is rolling both ways - over - AND - back. By reducing the moment of inertia around the fore and aft vertical axis you will certainly have a boat that rolls more. But, can you really tell me you believe that a boat with its keel in tact and no rig is somehow "less stable" than one with a rig? Think about the massive increase in righting moment without the rig. I will accept that the ride will be less comfortable, but there is a reason that the old timers used to cut the rigs down in terrible storms, it was to keep from being rolled over.

I have been aboard numerous boats without rigs in all sorts of conditions and while the ride was ugly and uncomfortable, the boat was actually much less prone to rolling over with only one exception, that exception is when the boat is struck by a breaking wave from the beam end. Thus, after all this discussion, we have one situation in which a rig (heavy or light) would help. Whilst we have numerous situations in which the heavy rig makes things worse. I'll repeat, naval architecture is a series of compromises and defending an unnecessarily heavy rig just to allow some small benefit in this near terminal and extremely rare condition seems a very odd choice when it works against good sailing and seamanship in every other condition.

I fear we have been focusing on the "dramatic" and extremely rare in this thread and have chosen to ignore what really injures most sailors in seriously terrible weather - which is water on deck not rolling over.

Again, Mike, thanks for engaging in the discussion.

Beau

[BeauVrolyk]

You are dead wrong on this one. By the time a boat is knocked far enough to be in danger of capsize , with a heavy rig, the wave has passed, and the weight of the rig then become irrelevant. With a heavy rig it's far less likely to go anywhere near that far, than with a light rig. I'd rather have heavy water over the bow than a drastically increased risk of capsize, which you get with a lighter rig. From inside my wheelhouse, water over the bow is a non issue. As I prefer to stream the drogue from the stern , water over the stern is also a non issue in a steel boat with lots of reserve buoyancy there, far more than I have at the bow..

Brent,

You're talking about much smaller waves than I. Off Oregon we were attempting to survive a storm with 90 to 100 foot waves. The breaking tops were fifty feet tall. There is no rig - no matter how heavy - that had enough momentum to keep the boat from rolling over if we'd gone beam on. The only way to stay right side up was to run and keep steering. Fortunately, the boat was a good enough design to run along quite nicely without much water on the deck at all. Wind speed was 50 to 70 knots and it lasted for three days.

Beau

[Fanie]

For motorships and yachts I found one technique only, worldwide, steam towards it.

Post #70

I saw this movie where this guy landed in the eye of some storm after ducking for some cows, houses and other flying stuff. As bad as it was outside so peacefull it was inside.

I was thinking, if one has a boat as big as your's, it's not going to fit in that quiet inside... :D

[apex1]

Fanie may I ask what is your intention?

I made very clear, that running away is my preferred method!
Quoting parts of a statement is not gentlemanlike practice.

Regards
Richard

[Fanie]

Fanie may I ask what is your intention?

The intention is to pull your leg.

Quoting parts of a statement is not gentlemanlike practice.
I agree. I have to do abuse small parts of your posts or it will not work :rolleyes:

As for your method of handling bad weather I would do exactly the same.





BV, you should standardise on the same type of boat in the same weather. Different types of boats behave differently.

If you're in a sub, stick to 60m below.

[marshmat]

If you're in a sub, stick to 60m below.
LOL. Best places to be in a storm: (1) Nuclear fallout bunker; (2) Submarine at a few wavelengths below the surface. A modern attack sub, if it drops a couple hundred feet, can easily outrun both the wind and the waves of a Force 8 gale. Of course, few of us have eight hundred million bucks to spend on a boat and crew....


Re. rigs and rolling
A couple of months ago, there was a great example of the effect of a rig's roll moment of inertia down at the yacht club. (I didn't have my video camera, but wished I did.) Two nearly identical boats were moored in adjacent slips, with a hell of a wind blowing and the seas bouncing off the shore and reflecting back inside the breakwater, resulting in 2-foot swells at the docks. One of the boats was just riding it out, rolling four or five degrees but not moving much. The one beside her (about the same size and of a very similar design) had just had its mast unstepped for the winter- and this one was bucking and kicking about like a rodeo bull, rolling about 15 degrees and pitching like crazy. But, like the first boat, she wasn't heaving up and down much; the CG motion was about the same on both boats, but the roll and pitch motions were greatly exaggerated on the one without a mast.

[Fanie]

Something I have experienced is that the length of a boat vs the length of the waves plays a big role in the discomfort on a boat. If a boat is longer than a few waves it is comfortable.

Then when the waves stretch it suddenly becomes difficult. The nose dives down each wave and up the next. Imo this is where it is most uncomfortable, the boat takes a bashing and is can be dangerous.

If the waves stretch even more it becomes a matter of going up the wave and down again, like driving over a hill, and is more comfortable again.

There are of course conditions that no one on a boat should be in.



Matt, it may well be that the wave length was just in tune with that specific boat's roll moment, hence the excessive reaction. I'm almost sure it the wave's frequency changes, some of the other boats may also start acting up.

I have actually seen this at a marina. As the wind picked up and the waves get bigger, different boats started bobbing, then subsided after a while, while others started jiving.

Only the cats in the marina kept still :D

At the time I didn't pay any attention to it specifically. The fact that your observation didn't have a mast would defenately contribute to some degree, there is no doubt.

[Fanie]

Here is an example, the wave length is just right for this boat...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eZiNrdsdQ4&feature=related

[mark775]

"Off Oregon we were attempting to survive a storm with 90 to 100 foot waves. The breaking tops were fifty feet tall."
Wow, that is incredible! How far off Oregon were you? Got any pics or video?

[BeauVrolyk]

"Off Oregon we were attempting to survive a storm with 90 to 100 foot waves. The breaking tops were fifty feet tall."
Wow, that is incredible! How far off Oregon were you? Got any pics or video?

Mark,

It was back in the early '60s. Although serious storms of hurricane strength happen up there a lot. In the '60s people didn't have cameras they toted around, let alone video. I think I got my first waterproof Nikonos camera in about '75. I was pretty young and my skipper estimated the wave tops by watching a tattered flag at the masthead, 70' up. It went limp in the troughs and we measured the wind at about 55 to 60 knots at the wave tops, so he figured the troughs were deep enough to get the masthead into the lee of the waves. Not exactly NOAA, but all we had. We were about 40 or 50 miles off of Coos Bay headed south as fast as we could go.

I couldn't be certain, but if it was the storm of 1962, then the measured wind speed (NOAA) ashore at Newport Oregon was 138 MPH before the wind instrument blew off. You can read about it here on the NOAA site (it's item #3):

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/paststorms/index.php

There was a similar storm with sustained 60 MPH winds and frequent gusts to 90 MPH in '07 you can read about here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004049894_webcoast03m.html

There is a wave measuring buoy off the straits of Juan de Fuca and I've been told it sees 80 to 90 foot waves nearly ever winter. I coudn't lay my hands on any documentation of that, however.

BTW, I would not ever recommend anyone sail around in such stuff. We would have headed into port but didn't make it before the various harbors were closed by surf.

B

[mark775]

Having spent nearly half of my fifty years asea, and only seeing 45' a few times and 70', maybe, once (a combined sea of a 30' north and 25' so'east that sometimes seemed to cancel each other and sometimes shortened, combined and peaked into...I don't know... I'm reluctant to say 70', I guess I have to say that I have been a better mariner than your captain in '62.
You offer a lot to this thread, a depth of knowledge obviously borne of experience. I havn't always agreed with you but your points are well considered and I do appreciate. BUT, when you talked of a hundred foot wave, I was resisting the urge (in my previous post, I measuredly used the word "incredible") to say "BS". I'm glad I did. As you tell it, I'm just glad that I have, for the most part, not confronted such weather. I've seen plenty of wind. If I ever see a seventy foot wave, I will put an oar on my shoulder and start walkin'...

[kistinie]

Multihulls are up to 2X faster than a monohull so escaping is easier when wind blows stronger.

In heavy short sea, multihull speed offer high manoeuvrability but to the cost of an important stress to hulls and links

Multihulls structure are stressed by heavy short seas so anything above 50 Kts should be avoided, unless the boat is very light and ultra oversized just like most new racers are.

Wingover had a drogue, a modified mushroom parachute. it was tested, then used with success when coming back to England from Tortola. (http://www.multihullpages.com/heavyweather.html)
Since, never again.

If i can find the available space and $ for a spectra Jordan, it will certainly be a good security improvement for her as Jordan's conception allows the drogue to be lifted in/out from the cockpit.

From my experience, i never had the need to slow a boat in any weather but i have had the luck to never get more than 55Kts.

[MikeJohns]

It’s a little off topic this, but this is a boat design forum and the tactic adopted in any weather condition depends on the design of the vessel. So in a round about way you can choose a vessel which suits your desired survival tactics best. I still maintain that the better choice is a heavier, high gyradius, high righting moment with a generous GZ curve. I’d like to follow up on BV’s post becasue this is relevent.


let's assume exactly the same sized wave ......... .If you have the exact "same" boat hull etc... with a heavy rig vs a light rig ….. the ability to come back up again will be reduced by the weight in the mast............ .

You are qualifiying things at least, and we are a long way from "a heavy rig is always bad or evil‘

Of course you will always get a higher righting moment if you put more lead in the keel or reduce the weight aloft but that’s not the issue. Naval architecture considers the roll gyradius(k) as a target figure for design similarly the metacentric height (GM) and the static curve of righting moments all are chosen (or compromised) to give the desired characteristics, comfort safety speed whatever. The Roll gyradius incorporates all the elements including the rig, so the decision to incorporate a heavy rig is made early in the design spiral.

What we should consider if you want a sensible comparison is two boats with different gyradii but identical righting moments. If you have access to seakeeper you will quickly see the effect of changing the gyradius with instant illumination.
You’ll also find that roll gyradius changes a lot with a mast present or absent but pitch gyradius doesn’t change that much . If you don’t accept this do the figures, or I’ll give you some from a design .

Moreover, the ability of the boat to start to recover... the polar moment must be considered. This is where the weight of the rig becomes a large problem.

It doesn't; the acceleration from the wave energy is considerably higher than the natural recovery of the vessel, the inertia resists the knockdown but has little effect on the recovery because it is has a considerably lower acceleration. You don’t actually want a high acceleration in any direction, particularly recovery since the vessel will overshoot and oscillate, ideally you want a strong slow well damped righting characteristic.


... the problem with the reduced roll angle is that the water goes up and over the boat. .

I wouldn’t agree, a knocked down vessel has a lot more water on deck and lightweights often suffers severe damage from the leeside impact with the water. This is ‘solid‘ water not aerated breaking wave. The damage is always worse on the lee side.

While I agree, that pitching doesn't feel as bad as rolling in a heavy rigged or heavy ended boat, I would point out that the inertia involved is identical. The mast still weighs the same amount.

The longitudinal pitch roll gyradius is affected considerably less than the transverse roll gyradius by the weight aloft. If it was a small vessel or a special go-fast boat this would be considered. Once you are over 50 feet on a medium displacement it’s largely irrelevant.

Again whether or not the mast is heavy or not is something to consider at the design phase. You can choose a longitudinal roll gyradius and design accordingly for the lowest or highest acceleration, or wave piercing or surface following ….whatever. The requirements depend on the entire design from size to intended use and nothing should be considered on its own as a single factor.

The occurrence of crews being injured by being pushed around by the water on deck or by being washed overboard is vastly higher than that of boats rolling over.


That doesn't fit with observation, for example the 98 Sydney Hobart, by far the majority of injuries result from violent knockdowns and inversions.

Take really good boats, like the Volvo boats. None of them has rolled over in recent years and they sail in truly terrible conditions. Yet, numerous (well over 20) crew have been injured by water coming aboard and one person the race before last was washed overboard and killed.

Yes but they are large fast racing machines designed accordingly, ironically they have a large gyradius and high RM from the deep bulbed keel both transverse and longitudinally. However don’t you think their crews show a disregard for prudent seamanship on boats with low freeboard, lean bows and little to impede the waves once they are rolling down the deck. They could be designed to be a lot safer, even if they slowed down it could be quite a different scenario.

… it's my rule of thumb. I do not accept that making the lightest safe rig runs "counter to modern naval architecture", quite the opposite. I think Marchi (sp?) and Skene would both agree that increasing the Polar Moment of Inertia is a bad thing is all cases.

I don’t think Norman Skene is really in the picture but Marchaj certainly is and I think you’ll find him a proponent of a larger roll gyradius as a means of reducing the violence of motion and increasing habitability. It certainly reduces the angle of roll in a knockdown. This in turn lessens the risk of a following wave delivering a coup de grace, but must be considered along with the natural roll frequency and the wave period.

…By reducing the moment of inertia around the fore and aft vertical axis you will certainly have a boat that rolls more. But, can you really tell me you believe that a boat with its keel intact and no rig is somehow "less stable" than one with a rig?

Sure GM goes up but roll gyradius goes down making the boat considerably less habitable even prone to injure those aboard or completely incapacitate them. High roll angles result from the reduced roll gyradius from an impulse rolling moment (wave strike). A heavily ballasted sailboat sans mast is a very poor craft indeed. The likelihood of inversion has everything to do with the angle the vessel is at when struck and the area of the GZ curve between that angle and its vanishing stability. It has to be considered as a dynamic event.

Think about the massive increase in righting moment without the rig. I will accept that the ride will be less comfortable, but there is a reason that the old timers used to cut the rigs down in terrible storms, it was to keep from being rolled over.

I thought it was principally to reduce windage not to increase stability.

I fear we have been focusing on the "dramatic" and extremely rare in this thread and have chosen to ignore what really injures most sailors in seriously terrible weather - which is water on deck not rolling over.


This is not the issue with cruising boats only with racers which seems to be flavoring your opinion considerably. You can make a deck drier and safer, or wetter and more dangerous…it’s all in the design.


[/quote]

You are correct, if one is simply talking about the forces then "Mass Moment of Inertia" is actually more accurate. But, the change in the terms doesn't alter the physics at all.
………..By Polar Moment I meant the moment of inertia around an axis. I used it in talking about the rig because the rig does, indeed, bend when loaded by inertial and its the way we've always talked about rigs and keels when the boat either rolls or pitches.


This is a common mistake. Polar moment is not its resistance to angular acceleration. The polar moment is the resistance of an object to torsion or in-line twisting due to torque, eg if you fix on one end and apply a torque to the other how much will it distort. Its got nothoing to do with mass related inertia.
For future use you’d should call it Roll inertia.

[MikeJohns]

Something I have experienced is that the length of a boat vs the length of the waves plays a big role in the discomfort on a boat. ........

The most uncomfortable for most vessels downwind is in a sea with the wavelength around 1.2 times the boat length. This tends to produce the worst pitching.

Coastal sailing often has more challenging wave patterns from winds that produce quite benign waves in deep water.




Talking of catamarans, running can be quite dangerous in heavy seas for two reasons the first is loss of stability on the wave crests the second is the bridge deck contacting the wave crest and the vessel surging. Both of these lead to a high likelihood of broaching and or inversion.

[RHough]

Multihulls are up to 2X faster than a monohull so escaping is easier when wind blows stronger.

In heavy short sea, multihull speed offer high manoeuvrability but to the cost of an important stress to hulls and links

Multihulls structure are stressed by heavy short seas so anything above 50 Kts should be avoided, unless the boat is very light and ultra oversized just like most new racers are.

Wingover had a drogue, a modified mushroom parachute. it was tested, then used with success when coming back to England from Tortola. (http://www.multihullpages.com/heavyweather.html)
Since, never again.

If i can find the available space and $ for a spectra Jordan, it will certainly be a good security improvement for her as Jordan's conception allows the drogue to be lifted in/out from the cockpit.

From my experience, i never had the need to slow a boat in any weather but i have had the luck to never get more than 55Kts.

NO! The JSD uses NYLON for good reason. Part of the design is based on the line stretching and absorbing/storing energy then releasing it gradually.

The tension in the system is no constant and the whole premise is to reduce shock loading on the vessel. Using Spectra would defeat this and transfer more shock loading to the cones and the vessel.

Yes, Nylon is heavy but the material selection is part of the design. Read the accounts of vessel motion whilst using a JSD, it is described as feeling like being slowed by a bungee. The boat is allowed to accelerate as the drogue loads up, there is no shock when the drogue is fully loaded and as the force on the drogue is reduced the drogue does not pull the boat back, the stored energy in the drogue pulls the drogue forward. I don't think Spectra would be a good choice.

[kistinie]

I used to have the same idea about spectra and a drogue and it remain true for all large drogues

Jordan is a serial drogue where each drogue slips, so enven if line is hard, the result is soft movement.

Jordan sales a spectra version that seems to perform exactly the same as nylon version

Best would be to get a feed back from a spectra Jordan owner.

[jonr]

In a 60 kt wind, you might head into it at 5 knots or run with it at 20 kts.
That's about 2.5x the force. 30 degrees deviation can also double the force (increased windage).

Seems to me that a drogue also provides significant downward force - ie, when you are titled down 45 degrees on the face of a wave, the drogue (off the stern) is helping to prevent pitchpoling or broaching.

[RHough]

I used to have the same idea about spectra and a drogue and it remain true for all large drogues

Jordan is a serial drogue where each drogue slips, so enven if line is hard, the result is soft movement.

Jordan sales a spectra version that seems to perform exactly the same as nylon version

Best would be to get a feed back from a spectra Jordan owner.

Thanks for that. When I built mine 3 years ago I had never heard of anyone using Spectra. Trying to find good quality Nylon double braid was a challenge. It would have been much easier to use Spectra.

Do you have a link to the company that sells the Spectra versions?

R

[gonzo]

As much as I don't care much for drogues, Spectra has no stretch and would defeat the purpose.

[BeauVrolyk]

Having spent nearly half of my fifty years asea, and only seeing 45' a few times and 70', maybe, once (a combined sea of a 30' north and 25' so'east that sometimes seemed to cancel each other and sometimes shortened, combined and peaked into...I don't know... I'm reluctant to say 70', I guess I have to say that I have been a better mariner than your captain in '62.
You offer a lot to this thread, a depth of knowledge obviously borne of experience. I havn't always agreed with you but your points are well considered and I do appreciate. BUT, when you talked of a hundred foot wave, I was resisting the urge (in my previous post, I measuredly used the word "incredible") to say "BS". I'm glad I did. As you tell it, I'm just glad that I have, for the most part, not confronted such weather. I've seen plenty of wind. If I ever see a seventy foot wave, I will put an oar on my shoulder and start walkin'...

Mark,

I know a "BS" call when I hear one, and no offense was taken. I've sailed in a number of 60+ knot blows and not seen seas like I saw off of Oregon that time. I was pretty young, so the memory may have enlarge. But, as the data from the storm of 1962 says it can blow true hurricane force out there and there's nothing in the way up wind for a long long long fetch. I think what makes the Washington and Oregon coast so tough is the combination of along fetch coming out of Alaska, no ports to hide in or islands to hide behind, and a counter current that runs up the coast at times in the winter. I seem to remember it being called the "Davidson Current", described as:

"During the winter, a weak countercurrent flows north- westward, inshore of the southeastward flowing California Current, along the west coast of North America from Baja California to Vancouver Island. This is called the Davidson Current."

You'll find this described in more detail here: http://www.irbs.com/bowditch/pdf/chapt32.pdf

I am pretty certain that I've seen the boundary between the California Current, going with the wind, and the Davidson Current, going against the breeze. It's a gigantic version of what we see in the San Francisco Bay when the wind is pushing against and Ebb tide vs running along with a Flood. That time in the '62 we were too close to shore, because we wanted to try and make port, and it took us a long time to get back out to sea. Once we were about 70 or maybe 90 miles off shore the water became much flatter. My guess is that we were in the Davidson and didn't know it. It's the only time I have ever seen waves that big and I hope to never see them again. My other reason for thinking that these were wind-counter-to-current waves is that they were so steep! They were like vertical walls.

I'm with you, I hope to never see those waves again - ever!

BV

[bntii]

In speaking of Jordan series drogues:

Spectra has no stretch and would defeat the purpose.

My thought as well but in talking to Ace sail makers it appears this is not the case.

His explanation is that the elastic properties of the series drogue is provided by the change in position of the drogue in the water, from a j curve behind and below the vessel to straight back.
Apparently the highest load case provided for in the design is not dependent on a elastic response of the line.
He reports that this was all outlined by the designer before he passed away.

Unless I hear differently before I get it purchased, I will go with the spectra version to save weight and bulk.

[RHough]

In speaking of Jordan series drogues:



My thought as well but in talking to Ace sail makers it appears this is not the case.

His explanation is that the elastic properties of the series drogue is provided by the change in position of the drogue in the water, from a j curve behind and below the vessel to straight back.
Apparently the highest load case provided for in the design is not dependent on a elastic response of the line.
He reports that this was all outlined by the designer before he passed away.

Unless I hear differently before I get it purchased, I will go with the spectra version to save weight and bulk.

I wish that had been explained to me when I built mine! The bulk/weight of the Nylon rode is considerable.

When the relative ease of splicing the cones into 12 stand Spectra is considered the time saved compensates for the added cost of the line.

I'm going to ask Dave at Ace for Spectra sizing used to replace the Nylon and for his permission to post that information here.

R

[jonr]

You might look at "Amsteel Blue" - way lighter/thinner/stronger.

I see that what is used for weight on the end doesn't matter - might be nice to use an anchor. Hopefully won't matter, but if it does get shallow...

[RHough]

You might look at "Amsteel Blue" - way lighter/thinner/stronger.

I see that what is used for weight on the end doesn't matter - might be nice to use an anchor. Hopefully won't matter, but if it does get shallow...

That is just what I do. I rig my lunch hook and a bit of chain as the weight.

[claverton]

Hi BeauVrolyk

Thank you for your considered reply. I'm not an expert on this topic but it is of great interest on various levels to me, not the least that I expect to be sailing into areas where this topic is very relevant.

I went to the web site you've referenced, thanks for that. I would like to point out that this is a web site promoting the product, not an independent source.

Sure, the site does promote the product in an intellectual sense, but the Jordon family make no money out of the product, the design of the Jordon drogue is in the public domain and there is no patent over it. There is a sailmaker on the bottom of the site who makes them, but you can get them made up anywhere or make them yourself. Jordon donated the IP of the product the the sailing community.

That said, some of what he's saying does make sense. However, there are a number of factual errors.... This means that the absolute fastest the water could be moving would be at the speed it would pick up falling about 12 feet. The water isn't falling the entire height of the wave, but only the height of the breaking crest. This is a speed of about 15 miles per hour. As an example, people jump off single story buildings all the time without hurting themselves.

Incorrect (with respect). The breaking part of the wave will move at the same speed (or slightly faster) than the wave speed. If the wave is moving at 30mph, then the breaking part of the wave will be moving at atleast 30mph. If you are for example a body surfer and catch a breaking wave, you will be moving at the speed of the wave. A yacht caught within a breaking wave will be moving at the speed of the breaking wave.


But, there's a second problem with this. Water is not solid. As a result, as it falls it breaks up into foam. Again, observe the top of a wave at the beach. The foam is billions of small droplets and globs of water that are trying to move through the air. The movement through the air is what breaks it up and as the water attempts to travel through the air it slows down. Of course it also speeds the water up, you see the foam moving along with the wave at the beach, but that foam is NOT ever going faster than the wave. If it were, the foam on the waves would arrive at the beach first, long ahead of the wave. It doesn't do this.

We agree with each other. The foam is travelling at the speed of the wave.

On the basis of these simple observable facts, which you've seen at the beach, you know that this persons calculations are simply wrong.

A big call. The person in question was a senior aeronautical engineer and lecturer, and got into drogue design when he retired.

While gigantic breaking waves are terrible - we'll all agree - the danger is the weight of the water crushing the boat and the circular action causing the boat to roll over. It is not the speed of the wave or boat, and it is certainly not crashing into the trough.

The speed of the breaking wave is the issue. A yacht travelling with the sea with drogue off the stern will rise over the breaking swell at very slow speed. But in serious stuff without drogue if it gets çaught in the break it will for a period of time be travelling at the speed of the wave. The winston churchill was an extreme case. but rollovers >180 degrees are not uncommon in seas such as the southern ocean and to my mind the series drogue off the stern is the most sensible strategy to prevent knock downs and rollovers. Their disadvantage is they are hard to retrieve, but it is a minor disadvantage.
Regards Ian

[RHough]

I'm going to ask Dave at Ace for Spectra sizing used to replace the Nylon and for his permission to post that information here.

R

Here is the reply from Dave at Ace sailmakers:

Hi Randy,

I have sold many Spectra rode drogue,
large multihulls love them.

I have been matching or exceeding Spectra tensile strengths
with the nylon versions.

I use New England Ropes 12 strand Endura.

Typically 1/4" 12 strand Spectra replaces 1/2" nylon.
5/16ths replaces 5/8ths nylon.
3/8ths replaces 3/4 nylon.

7/16ths replaces 7/8ths.

Most power applications have been large, heavy trawlers that get a 250 cone version.

Happy New Year!

Thank you,

Dave Pelissier

This gives a 70% weight savings and a 75% reduction in the bulk of the line.

The JSD for my boat is a storage problem, I keep it in the lazerette in a bag packed like a spinnaker so it is ready to deploy. The bag is heavy and unwieldy, saving about 50% of the total weight and bulk would be great.

Thanks to kistinie for posting about a Spectra version! There is always something to learn here!

[kistinie]

In case it was missing

http://www.jordanseriesdrogue.com/

[capt vimes]

No one technique (except avoiding the storm in the first place) will be suitable for all boats; storm tactics must be planned in advance according to the characteristics of the particular boat involved.

this is the perfect summarization and the only valid 'technique' their is...
just recently i stumbled over an important aspect of modern fin keelers...

while long keeled boats have motion damping from its keel at 0 speed already, fin keels develop a sufficiant reduction in roll movement only at higher speeds!

[gonzo]

Any fin produces roll reduction. The deeper it is the more leverage and therefore reduction it produces. Also, saying that avoiding bad weather is the only valid technique shows complete ignorance of life and conditions at sea.

[Fanie]

The most uncomfortable for most vessels downwind is in a sea with the wavelength around 1.2 times the boat length. This tends to produce the worst pitching.

Coastal sailing often has more challenging wave patterns from winds that produce quite benign waves in deep water.

Talking of catamarans, running can be quite dangerous in heavy seas for two reasons the first is loss of stability on the wave crests the second is the bridge deck contacting the wave crest and the vessel surging. Both of these lead to a high likelihood of broaching and or inversion.

Hi Mike,

That sounds about right to me. I will be using a drogue when required.

[RHough]

Any fin produces roll reduction. The deeper it is the more leverage and therefore reduction it produces. Also, saying that avoiding bad weather is the only valid technique shows complete ignorance of life and conditions at sea.

There is a range ... :)

Set off with complete ignorance of the weather forecast and rely on rough weather technique/equipment to handle any rough conditions.

or

Set of with complete ignorance of rough weather technique/equipment and rely on weather forecasts to avoid any rough conditions.

IMO there is a middle ground between the extremes. Each vessel and master finds the combination that suits them. My safety/comfort zone is avoiding rough weather as much as possible making use of the best weather information. This includes flexible sailing schedule, passage planning based on historic data and local knowledge, and having access to the most current weather information on board. It should be much easier to avoid the worst weather now than it was even 20 years ago. Even a 5 knot boat can cover 120 miles in 24 hours. That allows a great deal of weather avoidance if the information is available.

I certainly do not assume that all rough weather can be avoided so I have prepared as best I can whilst practicing learning about weather prediction in hopes of never being "caught" in extreme conditions.

IMO having the best equipment you can find/afford on the boat including weather data for the passage is good seamanship. Ignoring avoidance as a primary tactic makes no sense to me. Not being on a fixed schedule alone reduces the probability of ever needing the rough weather gear I have.

I think "be prepared" just about covers rough weather techniques. :)

To be prepared you have to know what works for your vessel and what situations require what techniques. I submit that much too much time is spent talking about what to after you are in extreme conditions and not enough time is spent looking at how much easier it has become to avoid it in the first place.

Just my opinion.

[BeauVrolyk]

Mike,

Thanks for all the comments on my post. I'm simply going to summarize, as opposed to going through things point by point; for the sake of others here. I'm happy to communicate directly if you'd like.

First, you are right that my thinking is generally flavored by racing boats and not cruisers. This is because my experience is that whilst cruisers can (and certainly should) choose when to make a passage and exactly what craft to make it on, racing sailors can not. As a result, my experience of many many years has been that racers find themselves in serious heavy weather much more often than cruisers. Some here have said that avoiding a storm is the best technique, something I completely agree with. But, that isn't possible for most racers as starting times are fixed, or even worse one leaves when a front is arriving to make a record attempt precisely because of the arrival of the storm and heavy winds. I think you'll find that many, if not all, of the examples given of what happens to boats have been from races like Fastnet and the dash to Hobart. Perhaps that's because the cruisers didn't survive to tell the tale, but I doubt it. As a result, I think that a significant amount of the "experiences" cited in this thread are based upon information and experience gained in relatively light and fast sailboats which were not heavily loaded with gear.

Racing sailboats, just like racing cars, yields experiences that reasonable normal cruising sailors will probably (hopefully) never encounter. We can learn from those experiences, but one must really be careful when trying to extend what we know to radically different craft. For example, the general perception that racing boats are made weaker due to a quest for light weight and that they are damaged more easily in storms. Anyone who has sailed a IOD two tonner made of alloy from the '70s will tell you it's massively stronger than the vast majority of cruising boats, it is also much less stable in almost every way due to its shape. Similarly, the current crop of Volvo boats are quite strong, but nothing like the older generations that included things like New Zealand Endeavor, which is built like a tank. The difficulty in translating racing experiences into cruising designs, IMHO, is that people don't realize that the primary difference is crew. I have never bumped into a cruiser with the quality and size crew of a racing boat. Thus, many of the best race-boat survival techniques, like running off fast and enjoying the surfing, may not apply. More on this later. The point is that the entire package: Hull, Rig, Sails, Engine, Crew Strength, Crew Size, Duration of Storm, etc.... needs to be included in deciding what sort of strategy one is going to take to survive a storm. In a BOC race boat one can simply beat into it far longer than in a Island Packet. With 12 able seaman aboard, one can keep sailing far longer than when I'm with my girlfriend.

Second, my personal experience of many decades in every kind of craft from a 24' clinker built model of a Danish coastal cutter which I sailed extensively as a child, through a 103' LOA Alden gaff headed schooner which I served as skipper of, a 65' steel Wyle ketch, and including almost every kind of racing sailboat built, has lead me to believe quite strongly that while there are certainly good reasons to be conservative in the design of sailing yachts, we are generally far too conservative. Generally, we fail to adopt obviously better equipment and designs which have been made possible by advances in technology.

My favorite example was the arrival of the Cal-40, a wonderful Bill Lapworth design from the early '60s, which was greeted at my yacht club in Los Angeles as a "death trap". The very things which made the Cal 40 a more sea worth boat were bemoaned by most of the "experts", including even her own designer. If you look carefully at the trailing edge of the Cal 40 keel you'll see it is dead straight and at exactly the right angle to accept a keel hung rudder. This is because the first Cal 40 was going to George Griffith who insisted the boat have a balanced spade rudder, yet Bill Lapworth was so convinced that the spade would fail, be too twitchy, etc... that he designed the boats to fixed later with a traditional rudder without too much expense. Needless to say, by today's standards the Cal 40 is vastly overbuilt and her keel, referred to as a dangerous fin, at the time is now considered almost a "full keel". During this same debate supposed experts, without any actual factual data, expressed with certainty that the relatively new fiberglass construction techniques, including the absence of floor frames in the Cal 40, would would result in stress cracks and all manner of failures to occur. Obviously, none did. Sadly, I still find people who will tell me that all fin keel boats, including the Cal 40, are less sea worth and even dangerous compared to full keel boats, clearly not true. As you have pointed out repeatedly the design of a boat is a complex set of trade-offs and the keel is only a small part of what makes up a boat. Cal 40s have now raced across every ocean I know of, one was won the last two Bermuda Races, the race to Hawaii, trans Atlantic, etc... the boats have been driven VERY hard and yet none of the problems the guys at LAYC swore would happen ever occurred. The point being, we as a group of sailors, depend far too much on hearsay and not enough on experimentation.

Finally, I think the best point you've made, which was also made by others, is that the strategy for survival of a storm isn't a stock standard answer. It will be different in different circumstances. It will depend upon the characteristics of the boat you're on, the skill and condition of the crew, and numerous other factors. The skipper must make judgements based up their experience and the situation that are critical and may have wide variation. Therefore, I do object to the sailors on this forum stating things like: Use a drogue, they always work. They don't and we can cite numerous examples where they wouldn't. The same thing applies to running off, heaving to, and all the other examples given. There isn't "one right solution" just as there isn't one right boat. I know that many folks want to know the "best" answer to a question like this, and would like to figure out the "best" boat for all occasions, but it simply isn't possible. There is simply too much variation in the conditions, crew and equipment to allow those sorts of simple answers. Examples abound in this thread so I won't repeat any of them.

I think we've probably pounded this topic into the ground, so I'll conclude by thanking you for the time and tutelage. I learned a long long time ago that you can always learn new things from your boat, the sea, and the sailors who sail if you're only willing to listen.

BV

[gonzo]

I agree that techniques have to take into consideration location, type of boat, crew, etc. I strongly disagree that it is possible to avoid rough weather at all times. For example, a passage from Bahia, Brazil to Barbados took me twenty three days. Is someone claiming I could have avoided rough weather and made the trip?

[mark775]

Why did it take you twenty-three days, Gonzo? What do they think of your nickname, "Gonzo" in Spain?

[gonzo]

It is about 4000 miles.

[Fanie]

He took the wrong way around the continent :D

You must have had fun fishing that whole distance though :cool:

[gonzo]

The only way to get through the doldrums is to take an easterly course getting close to Africa. Check the pilot charts.

[capt vimes]

gonzo

No one technique (except avoiding the storm in the first place) will be suitable for all boats; storm tactics must be planned in advance according to the characteristics of the particular boat involved.

is that now better or easier to understand for you or should i take out the sidenote in brackets completely? ;)

i know quite well that avoiding bad weather is not always possible and especially not on long passages... i am not such a dumb fart... ;)

and yes - fin keels produce resistance to roll also at stand still depending on draft but not as much as comparable long keels... a fin keel operates a lot better when there is a sufficient waterflow at a certain angel of attack...
but whom am i telling this - you know that, don't you? ;)

[gonzo]

Where are you getting the data?

[Brent Swain]

Twin Keels make even better roll dampers. As the keel is the centre axis of the roll, two centres tend to counteract one another, greatly damping roll.
The distance to a lee shore also determines ones storm tactics.

[capt vimes]

Where are you getting the data?

no data here - just experience...

while the moment of inertia will be comparable between a long keel and a fin keel with similar draft and ballast the long keel has a considerable greater lateral area...
this lateral area is moved sideways through the water when the boat rolls - thus producing drag which adds up to the roll damping...
a fin keel now has probably 4-6 times less lateral area than a long keel and especially on the tip where it matters most for this sideward movement far less area depending on its aspect ratio....
on the other hand produces a fin keel good lift when the boat is in motion and thus stabilizing the ship... no speed - less roll damping

[gonzo]

A fin keel 4 to 6 times less area? Are you serious? Fin keels have more area and that is why they are more efficient upwind. Don't throw stupid numbers around to try to win an invalid argument.

[TeddyDiver]

You better to check your facts too... ;) Thou Vimes exaggerated some..

[gonzo]

Measure the actual lateral area of a long versus a fin keel

[MikeJohns]

Without specifying the vessel and the ‘fin’ and the ‘full‘ you can’t put numbers on it.

Generally and for most of the vessels I can think of the lateral plane area is lower for the fin keel version.

The dual role of the sail-boat keel as the ballast carrier usually dictates the span (depth) and for the same beam and same righting moments this will result in a full (or ¾) keel with significantly more lateral plane area, perhaps cut-away creatively fore and aft to reduce wetted surface a little or to shift the CLR. The fin shaped foil will not usually be deeper than required for the righting moment and will have a smaller lateral plane projection.

Fin keels have a better lift to drag ratio but they stall more easily. When stalled they are not as good at damping or entraining mass as a keel with a longer chord.

[BeauVrolyk]

no data here - just experience...

while the moment of inertia will be comparable between a long keel and a fin keel with similar draft and ballast the long keel has a considerable greater lateral area...
this lateral area is moved sideways through the water when the boat rolls - thus producing drag which adds up to the roll damping...
a fin keel now has probably 4-6 times less lateral area than a long keel and especially on the tip where it matters most for this sideward movement far less area depending on its aspect ratio....
on the other hand produces a fin keel good lift when the boat is in motion and thus stabilizing the ship... no speed - less roll damping

While the keel's lateral area certainly inhibits rolling around the horizontal fore/aft axis, in large waves that are attempting to knock the boat down (which is what we were discussing) it actually works the other way. Consider the action of the wave on the boat.

First the boat is sitting relatively upright. Second, a wave smashes into the beam of the boat attempting to hurl it down the wave front. Third, the keel (providing lateral resistance) resists moving sideways through the water. This causes the boat to heel much more than a boat with little or no keel.

The greater the lateral resistance to the water, when trying to move the boat sideways down a wave, the more the boat will heel.

This is precisely why I used to pull the centerboard up in really bad weather in my big ketch. I could actually observe a wake from the boat streaming off to windward as the waves and wind pushed the boat sideways down wind. Saga heeled much less and was far easier to ride upon. It is also why a dingy will be much easier to keep upright going down wind with the board up a bit than all the way down. Try this in a Laser or 5O5.

The effect is precisely opposite to rolling induced by waves that are smaller than the depth of the keel, such as those found when out for a sunday sail in fine weather. There, the long keel helps keep the boat stable and the bigger the better, as you've correctly noted. But, when the waves get really big the big keel works against you. It is a bit like imagining a sea anchor attached to the bottom of the keel as the boat is being tossed down a wave; the lateral pull of the sea anchor would make the boat heel more not less.

BV

[TollyWally]

BV,
That is an interesting concept that I had never thought of before. This bears careful consideration.

[gonzo]

Bringing the centerboard up in really rough weather lessens the rolling. However, a bit of board down helps. Got to find the right spot.

[TeddyDiver]

But but... what are you doing having board up.. I mean running of perhaps bare poles or storm sails, hove-to, lying-a-hull :confused:
The most weird storm tactics I've ever heard of..

[gonzo]

If you are beating and heeling too much, it will reduce heeling.

[BeauVrolyk]

BV,
That is an interesting concept that I had never thought of before. This bears careful consideration.

TW,

Perhaps I should give a few more details on what happens with a "board up" vs "down" and also the difference between a dagger board, like in a Laser, and a centerboard, like in a 5O5.

The daggerboard lift vertically, which is good from the point of view of keeping the center of lateral resistance closer to its original position. However, there are times when a boat tends to develop weather helm. This can be for a number of reasons. The advantage of a centerboard is that one can start to raise it; and because the board rotates around a pin at the head end, the bottom of the centerboard moves aft. This moves the center of lateral resistance aft and helps counterbalance the weather helm. In old long keel designs these sorts of centerboards are evident on boats like the J class, some of which had two centerboards (one in front of the other) and the crew would balance the helm by raising and lowering the boards.

Why this matters in this discussion is that in addition to reducing the lateral resistance of the hull/keel combination, by raising the board, in the case of a centerboard moving the center of lateral resistance (you naval architects must have a name for that) aft also allows the bow of the boat to turn down wind when struck by a wave from abeam. Turning down the front of the wave is exactly what you want to do, IMHO, when faced with a "survival" wave. This is because you are going to go with the wave no matter what you do. If you're bow on to it, you'll simply start to go backwards down the face of a really big wave, which is why some folks want a drogue or sea anchor to try and help keep them from traveling backwards. If you're beam on, you'll be tossed on your beam ends and pushed along on your side. If you're stern to the wave your boat will travel in the direction it was intended to travel and either surf down the wave or fall off it. But, in either event, traveling bow first is usually a good idea.

Why? Because the bow is most likely the strongest part of the boat and when you hit the green water in the trough you'd like to hit it with the bow and not the side or stern of the boat. Earlier in this thread someone correctly pointed out that many failures in the Fastnet Gale were to the lee side of the boat. This is because the boat was struck by the top of a wave on the windward side, which is mostly foam and is relatively soft, and it fell upon the trough which is not full of foam and is hard to land on when falling 15 or 20 feet. If one is going to land on anything with one's boat, and here we're are really talking about gigantic waves, wouldn't one want to land with the strongest bit of the boat, heading in the direction that the boat was designed to go? The alternatives: The side of the boat, which typically has windows or hatches and is relatively weaker than the ends, doesn't seem a good idea. The stern has the rudder, which would be jammed up by going backwards, and also seems like a poor choice. (I won't even discuss landing on the deck, although it happened to Sorcery in the N. Pacific in the '70s.

Those of you who have been following this discussion will already know I much prefer going with the waves. The reason that a lifting keel or centerboard is so nice is that if you can move the center of lateral resistance further aft the boat becomes much easier to steer as you are trying to go down waves. A great example of something designed to go down waves is a surf board. Look at where the skeg is: right at the back of the board. Moreover, having driven a mini-sat race boat down big waves I can personally tell you that pulling both foward daggerboards all the way up, setting the keel in the middle and having the drag of the twin rudders way back in the boat makes it much easier to drive safely.

In conclusion, I'd suggest that the ability to move the center of lateral resistance aft has big advantages in surviving large waves. The reasons are that the boat will naturally tend to turn its bow down the wave and try to surf, even without you steering it; and that once surfing the boat will have far less tendency to "trip" over its forefoot and keel as it travels at speeds that it was never designed to proceed at.

BV

[TollyWally]

I've perused this thread with interest. I've always sailed, but the bulk of my heavy weather experience has been in commercial powerboats. Inevitably when worse comes to worse we jog into it. I have heard of some boats hanging onto their gear which is much the same as lying to a sea anchor.

Carry on.

[BeauVrolyk]

But but... what are you doing having board up.. I mean running of perhaps bare poles or storm sails, hove-to, lying-a-hull :confused:
The most weird storm tactics I've ever heard of..

TD,

Let me try to explain. Storm tactics in truly awful weather are typically about avoiding an ugly monster wave. One can read about the occurrence of monster or "rogue" waves all over the place, but I have found that they are typically worst in places that have two (or more) crossing wave trains. Good examples of places where this happens is the coast of Oregon and Washington, where the major low frequency swell is from Alaska, coming in from the NW, and the storm generated waves are typically arriving from the SW as the gale moves in. The same effect occurs in the western Caribbean SW of Jamaica when the long trade wind waves from the E cross with those coming from the N around the west end of Jamaica. The problem is that when these wave trains cross the make either additive peaks/crests or subtractive nulls/troughs. The result is that when sailing in a storm that has a "normal" wave height of 10' from one wave train and 20' from another that is from a different direction, you'll find the occasional 30' wave as the two pile atop each other. (You don't get all of 30' but it sure looks that way.) Similarly, when you find a place where the two troughs intersect it will look as if someone dug a big hole in the ocean. When these two events happen to occur next to each other - additive crests and subtractive troughs - you get a wave that is itching to break and steep as hell. I think that this is what we're all trying to talk about surviving.

Now, the options (and you've listed a lot of them) are to lay-a-hull, heave-to, run-off, keep-sailing, and maybe a few more if you include that for some of these options you could also ride to a sea anchor or trail a drogue.

My points about having a centerboard, that is most of the way pulled up, is that it allows you to safely keep-sailing or run-off in much larger waves than other alternatives, because the boat is much easier to control. My favorite is run-off.

Why? Because the helmsman can typically see these monster waves developing. Hell, my cat saw one just before it hit us. (but, that's a furry sea story for another time.) When sailing fast down wind, one can turn to avoid the big holes and bumps in the ocean. It's as simple as that. When hove-to or laying-a-hull you are entirely at the mercy of the sea and wind.

I can't count the number of times I have chosen to go around a big bump or hole in the ocean. When racing upwind we do it all the time. When racing downwind in modest seas we actually steer to get in front of the biggest waves so we can ride them. But, in survival situations I strongly believe that the best technique is to have one person on the helm and one person looking aft calling the waves. This gives the helmsman warning when something ugly is coming and the boat can be sailed a number of yards to either side to avoid being precisely where the two wave trains cross and the big breaker forms. The reason I recommend that the helmsman not be turning around constantly to look over his/her shoulder for waves is that almost everyone looses a bit of their balance and perspective as they spin their head around; when they turn back to look forward they take a second or two to re-stabilize and that few seconds matter. This is particularly true given that the boat's stern is lifting and the boat is accelerating as the wave comes up on you. Also, if the helmsman doesn't see the really big wave, they won't be as fearful of it and will do a better job steering. Remember, it's all about controlling the boat so that you don't hit holes or fall off bumps.

Now, to answer your question about what sort of sails, you want to have something up that lets you move along and have good control even when in the lee of the crest, so you'll feel overpowered at the crests and underpowered in the trough. Second, it is easiest for a cruiser to do what my father's sloop did, which is set a storm jib on one side and a small staysail on the other side of the jib stay. If the LP on these sails (overlap) is small, you don't need a whisker pole to hold the sail out (although Dad had two poles - one for each jib), and you can drive all over the ocean without fear. What you do not want is something that is dangerous if you need to gybe. This means getting the mainsail down and setting a storm jib or storm trysail. You want to be able to steer quickly on either side of dead downwind to get out from in front of the wave and avoid being lifted up on top of a big bump. Then, you sail hard, have fun, and shower later - 'cuz you'll be all wet.

BV

[TeddyDiver]

Thanks.. answers my question. Not the best option for shorthanded cruiser me thinks..

[capt vimes]

While the keel's lateral area certainly inhibits rolling around the horizontal fore/aft axis, in large waves that are attempting to knock the boat down (which is what we were discussing) it actually works the other way. Consider the action of the wave on the boat.

First the boat is sitting relatively upright. Second, a wave smashes into the beam of the boat attempting to hurl it down the wave front. Third, the keel (providing lateral resistance) resists moving sideways through the water. This causes the boat to heel much more than a boat with little or no keel.

The greater the lateral resistance to the water, when trying to move the boat sideways down a wave, the more the boat will heel.

This is precisely why I used to pull the centerboard up in really bad weather in my big ketch. I could actually observe a wake from the boat streaming off to windward as the waves and wind pushed the boat sideways down wind. Saga heeled much less and was far easier to ride upon. It is also why a dingy will be much easier to keep upright going down wind with the board up a bit than all the way down. Try this in a Laser or 5O5.

The effect is precisely opposite to rolling induced by waves that are smaller than the depth of the keel, such as those found when out for a sunday sail in fine weather. There, the long keel helps keep the boat stable and the bigger the better, as you've correctly noted. But, when the waves get really big the big keel works against you. It is a bit like imagining a sea anchor attached to the bottom of the keel as the boat is being tossed down a wave; the lateral pull of the sea anchor would make the boat heel more not less.

BV

very good point...
i must say that i appreciate your statements to this thread very much...

ps:
haven't read yor post 192 when i put my reply on...
what you are explaining in this post (rougue waves, steering, 'wavewatch' and such) are absolutely in line with my experinces and i doubt that mine are comparable - in terms of amount - to yours...
nevertheless - i also do think that with modern yachts it is the best way - have personally sailed storms out that way - as you post... but never had the idea or the material to sail 2 stormjibs like your father learned you...
i will memorize that!

gonzo:
4-6 times is a bit too much... sorry
my apologies!

[LyndonJ]

TD,

Let me try to explain. Storm tactics in truly awful weather are typically about avoiding an ugly monster wave. ........

I thought in extreme circumstances it was more about having a boat that could adopt a passive survival technique.

Really well manned very fast slippery boats with lots of very experienced operaters on board end up mashed by the sea when the sea conditions get ugly. We've seen that now in several ocean yacht races and how do we account for the fact that it's the beamy light fin keelers that get mashed and the full keel heavier boats generally don't? That's what led to Southampton putting so much time effort and expertise into the question and also what lead to Marchaj writing his tome on seaworthiness. He pointed out that the old full keeled sail boats were almost unknown to capsize over millions of hours of representitive use in the foulest of conditions.

Surely a boat that can adopt a passive technique is what you should aim for with a shorthanded crew and heavy weather makes you sick and exhausted.
In 50 knots and over thers's no seeing anything or calling anything, unless you have a wheelhouse. If that goes on for 3 days like the Southern ones that the racers encounter then it's sitting in shelter watching the autopilot. Then it's down to vessel design.

Many cruisers are very short handed.

Then there's pretty irrefutable studies that larger area keels are more seaworthy becasue they reduce the sideways surfing and simply roll and present the topsides to the breaker. What you call tripping over the keel. The light beamy skimmer skims sideways tips, digs the deck edge in and catapults over in a very fast inversion. Typically it's "I didn't see it coming and suddenly we were upside down"

But all this was talked about to death in a couple of other threads too.

I dont think you can claim superiority for any design without considering the scenario. Have you read Heavy weather sailing ? They are the accounts of survival conditions and the tactics used, very well worth reading.

I think you really need to do a meta-analysis ( look at all the studies and accounts and draw new conclusions ) not get stuck on one charismatic opinion whoever that may be.

The best tactic is going to depend on your boats design and how well you can avoid its poorer seaworthiness aspects.

But I think lightweight racers don't have a scintillating record in rough weather and rescue is a big bussiness from those boats at times.

[gonzo]

It's also a matter of personality. I tend to drive boats hard regardless of conditions.

[BeauVrolyk]

I thought in extreme circumstances it was more about having a boat that could adopt a passive survival technique.

Really well manned very fast slippery boats with lots of very experienced operaters on board end up mashed by the sea when the sea conditions get ugly. We've seen that now in several ocean yacht races and how do we account for the fact that it's the beamy light fin keelers that get mashed and the full keel heavier boats generally don't? That's what led to Southampton putting so much time effort and expertise into the question and also what lead to Marchaj writing his tome on seaworthiness. He pointed out that the old full keeled sail boats were almost unknown to capsize over millions of hours of representitive use in the foulest of conditions.

Surely a boat that can adopt a passive technique is what you should aim for with a shorthanded crew and heavy weather makes you sick and exhausted.
In 50 knots and over thers's no seeing anything or calling anything, unless you have a wheelhouse. If that goes on for 3 days like the Southern ones that the racers encounter then it's sitting in shelter watching the autopilot. Then it's down to vessel design.

Many cruisers are very short handed.

Then there's pretty irrefutable studies that larger area keels are more seaworthy becasue they reduce the sideways surfing and simply roll and present the topsides to the breaker. What you call tripping over the keel. The light beamy skimmer skims sideways tips, digs the deck edge in and catapults over in a very fast inversion. Typically it's "I didn't see it coming and suddenly we were upside down"

But all this was talked about to death in a couple of other threads too.

I dont think you can claim superiority for any design without considering the scenario. Have you read Heavy weather sailing ? They are the accounts of survival conditions and the tactics used, very well worth reading.

I think you really need to do a meta-analysis ( look at all the studies and accounts and draw new conclusions ) not get stuck on one charismatic opinion whoever that may be.

The best tactic is going to depend on your boats design and how well you can avoid its poorer seaworthiness aspects.

But I think lightweight racers don't have a scintillating record in rough weather and rescue is a big bussiness from those boats at times.

Lyndon, I have indeed read Heavy Weather Sailing. I think the first time I read it was in the mid 1960s when I was a teenager. I looked at the Amazon listing and they have updated the book. I have to admit I have not read the latest (6th) edition. But, earlier editions did not even consider planing hulls which could attain speeds similar to the wave speeds and therefore have very little differential speed between the wave and the boat, and much reduce apparent wind speed. I may buy the new edition just to have a look.

Please don't confuse ultra light boats (I'd use the TP-52 as an example) which are not particularly tough and don't have a very good record in storms, with what I'm talking about. There is a massive difference in seaworthiness between a TP-52 and a Volvo 70, and the older fixed keel Volvo 60s are even more seaworthy. The various (primarily French) single handed 'round the world racers are also extremely seaworthy, although the violate a lot of theories about beam vs draft etc... Finally, it is a gigantic mistake to consider almost any boat designed to the old IOR rule as seaworthy, IMHO (I know I'll raise some hackles for this comment.) This would immediately exclude nearly all the racing boats designed during the late 1970s and through to the early 1990s. (I may have the time span a bit off here.) While IOR boats were generally heavy, they had extremely low initial stability and the pinched sterns and tiny rudders made the boats terribly difficult to steer downwind in any substantial sea or wind. They were so unstable that with their small rudders, small mainsails and big chutes one had to frequently set a blooper just to go in a straight line down wind. Unfortunately, it was boats like this that were most often responsible for the terrible reputation as "cruising" boats that fin keel boats have. If, in stark contrast, you were to look at a Cal-40 (CCA rule boat) or a Moore-24 (no rule at all) or a Open-60 you'd find boats that are certainly extremely seaworthy - I would argue strongly that they are more seaworthy than something like a bristol channel cutter.

Regarding the number of rescues at sea, I would suggest that you have a look at all the boats racing, examine what percentage of them are "full keel" boats and what are more modern racing boats. I believe you'll find it quite difficult to find any "full keel" (things like channel cutters) racing in places like the Sidney/Hobart, Fastnet, Bermuda, TransPac. A quick look at the last few years of races and I couldn't find more than a very small handful. These tend to be folks who are using the race to get someplace and when the weather gets ugly they go home (which certainly happened in the ugly Fastnet) rather than keep racing. The newer designs, crewed by aggressive crews, tended to stay out and keep racing. As a result, I don't think you can draw any conclusions at all from the number of rescues unless you do it as a percentage of miles sailed in a given condition.

To the question of a passive approach and your assumption of the passive approach being required due to being short handed. I don't know how to answer this other than to point out that people have been racing around the world, across the Atlantic, from California to Hawaii and all over the place single handed for decades. I do single handed sailing, and while it is certainly very tiring at times, I would not modify my suggested technique. It is certainly true that a good autopilot is a mandatory requirements - one of the ones with the ultra smart six axis gyros to guide it - but there is no need to just lay there hoping the designer will save the day when you could be sailing the boat. In conclusion, on this point, I would ask that you have a look at the number of boats in the Fastnet (nearly all of them fin keel racing boats) that managed to survive long after their crews had abandoned ship. The most poignant was a sloop who's crew had all perished in their life raft while the small boat of about 40' soldiered on with her main hatch open and her sails in rags; at the end of the storm she was still floating.

Finally, I completely agree that one must adapt the strategy to fit the boat that one is aboard when the bad weather arrives. But, that said and given your own proposal that at some point one is in the hands of the builder and designer, I would stress that some boats have many more strategies that will allow for survival than others. This, IMHO, should be determined experimentally by examining the results of two dissimilar boats in similar conditions, rather than any generalization or even theoretical model.

Thanks for your comments,

BV

[nikkitan108]

where can i learn how to sail, are you in florida, can you recommend someone who will not overcharge me

[LyndonJ]

A volvo 60 may very well be seaworthy but we need to ask why that is.

Anyone quickly looking over the specs will notice immediately that it has a 15 foot keel with a ginormous lump of lead on the end. It's hardly illustrative of a sensible boat, it's a blue water racing machine, and as a class they are horrifically wet with endless water on deck and have a high crew injury count. You really want to hold that as an example of a seaworthy boat :confused:



____snip_____
I would stress that some boats have many more strategies that will allow for survival than others. This, IMHO, should be determined experimentally by examining the results of two dissimilar boats in similar conditions, rather than any generalization or even theoretical model.

But this has been done enough to indicate very clearly the trends assocated with designs

the book "Heavy weather sailing" has moved on considerably since the early versions.

Read Heavy Weather sailing 5 and the chapter by Andrew Claughton on the established differences between various types. The results are informative.


Here's just a couple to chew over:

In survival seas a narrow fuller keeled boat surfs just as easily under better directional control than a wedge shaped hull and is far less prone to broaching.

A beamy boat is more prone to tripping over the deck edge and inverting when it's hit side on than a deep full keeled boat which has a higher wave height requied to invert it.

But best to read the book, there's also incredible accounts such as Alan Webb staying on the helm for nearly two days on an Adams steel 45 foot boat called Supertramp as he and his wife surfed for survival, he said he owed his survival to the strong boat with excellent directional control.

Heavy weather also looks at centre boarders and the trade-offs which should be of interest to you.

[CT 249]

About
"Regarding the number of rescues at sea, I would suggest that you have a look at all the boats racing, examine what percentage of them are "full keel" boats and what are more modern racing boats. I believe you'll find it quite difficult to find any "full keel" (things like channel cutters) racing in places like the Sidney/Hobart, Fastnet, Bermuda, TransPac. A quick look at the last few years of races and I couldn't find more than a very small handful. These tend to be folks who are using the race to get someplace and when the weather gets ugly they go home (which certainly happened in the ugly Fastnet) rather than keep racing. The newer designs, crewed by aggressive crews, tended to stay out and keep racing. As a result, I don't think you can draw any conclusions at all from the number of rescues unless you do it as a percentage of miles sailed in a given condition."

Yes, in a recent bad Hobart (2006?) the rate of retirements for heavier cruising style boats was NO higher than the rate for modern racing boats. However, there was a significant rate of people ASSUMING that the heavy boats did better! :-)

Lyndon, re

"really well manned very fast slippery boats with lots of very experienced operaters on board end up mashed by the sea when the sea conditions get ugly. We've seen that now in several ocean yacht races and how do we account for the fact that it's the beamy light fin keelers that get mashed and the full keel heavier boats generally don't?"

Please provide statisics. I've crunched the numbers on several occasions for several major races, and found NO tendency for beamy light fin keelers to get mashed while full keel boats don't.

For example, out of the very small number (2 or 3?) of full-keel boats in the 1998 Hobart, there were two sinkings - Winston Churchill (several lives lost) and Miintanta (no lives lost). As a proportion of entries, that was a vastly higher loss rate than lightweights. Two of the conventional '60s designs suffered significant issues, despite their type being in a minority in the fleet.

Someone here at BDS quoted a study that had supposedly analysed the full-keel boats in the '98 Hobart and found that they had a much better rate of survival than the fin keelers. However, no matter how I look at it, it seems that he has the number of full keel boats wrong, indicating a lack of homework. Secondly, IIRC the 'analysis' left out the fact that at least one of the longer-keeled boats rolled. In other words, the analysis was either sloppy or intentionally misleading.

Re

"But best to read the book, there's also incredible accounts such as Alan Webb staying on the helm for nearly two days on an Adams steel 45 foot boat called Supertramp as he and his wife surfed for survival, he said he owed his survival to the strong boat with excellent directional control."

But without other boats of different types nearby and experiencing the same conditions, who can be sure to what extent the boat's design was responsible for surviving the storm? WIthout another boat surfing in the same way, how do we know the A 45 did so well?

Let it be known that the Adams 45 has one hell of a reputation, but surely we cannot use a sample size of 1 as proof, when conditions vary so much?

And different boats suit different sailors. As an analogy, some people can sail a Laser downwind at high speed easily while grabbing a drink, but most regular good Laser sailors in such conditions may capsize once a leg in such conditions, club racers may capsize three times a leg, beginner racers 10 times, and beginners may not be able to keep the boat upright at all. In strong winds in a class I sail, the top 5 racers nationally will sail around the course at 25 knots or more, 5 more will struggle to the finish, and 40 won't complete the course. To some of the sailors, it's a fun challenging sail, to others it is a case of hanging on for rescue.

When there is so much variation between sailors, and when sailors can vary so much in their ability to handle different styles of boat, who can lay down the law on what is safe enough or not?

Claughton's tests are interesting. What is also interesting is that so much of the testing about the 1979 Fastnet centred on inversion. Inversion is not nice, but more people died on heavy, conservative or non-IOR boats than died aboard fat 'lightweight' IOR boats. Those deaths just didn't attract as much attention.

A VO 60 doesn't attract a high injury count compared to the earlier boats that did the same race. There were two or three deaths in the first crewed RTWR, in a fleet largely composed of cruisers. No such death or injury rate has been seen since. And a VO 60 tends to be pushed to the max in hairy conditions - more conservative boats are very rarely (if ever) pushed by pro crews who depends on wins for their livelihood.

It's a bit like comparing a F1 car to a rusty old tradesman's van with bald tires and no shock absorbers. The F1 car is much safer but it's crashed much more often, per km travelled, but that's because it is being pushed to the limit.

Some time ago, I interviewed two of the most experienced offshore racing owners in the world. Both have been racing from the days of 1960s heavyweight long-keelers, through to modern IRC boats. Both did, for example, the 1979 Fastnet. Both have won Hobarts, and won a Fastnet and a world title.

Interestingly, both said that in reality, they felt that there was no difference in seaworthiness across the board. Their old boats wore out crew because they took so long to finish. Their IOR boats (of various eras) could be ornery or could be beautiful, depending on the particular boat and its conditions and trim at the time. As one noted, the fat light IOR boats could remain inverted, so you just didn't invert them, just like you don't drive your car into a lightpost and blame the car.

OTOH, some vastly experienced and successful offshore racers prefer one of the heaviest boats around. It's slow for its length, but hugely successful because (despite all the rubbish thrown around) many rating rules are quite kind to slow boats.

Since so many vastly competent and successful sailors prefer such different types, maybe they can all be pretty damn good?

[LyndonJ]

_____SNIP_____________
Yes, in a recent bad Hobart (2006?) the rate of retirements___________snip___________

"really well manned very fast slippery boats with lots of very experienced operaters on board end up mashed by the sea when the sea conditions get ugly. We've seen that now in several ocean yacht races and how do we account for the fact that it's the beamy light fin keelers that get mashed and the full keel heavier boats generally don't?"

Please provide statisics.___________________snip_________

Claughton's tests are interesting. What is also interesting is that so much of the testing about the 1979 Fastnet centred on inversion. _snip________


Retirements are sensible people dropping out of a race they have zilch to do with what I called getting mashed. Sword got mashed thats the sort of mashed I meant.... a broken boat particularly immediately after being rolled. Broken by the sea in one single simple event.

It should be rolling that you look at , who cares iof the mast touched the water or not.
Its the weak boats and the poor stability boats that end keel up that kill people more.

Yep Winston got broken and sunk (but not rolled) but Winston was both apparently weak since they had already noted problems with the fastening of planks and a had unusually poor stability for a heavy boat. So I reckon she was compromised too and bears zero usefull resemblence to anything else. And would be predicted as a ppor design by Claughtons reasoning.

Then if they hadn't lost the bulwark and part of the planking they would have survived. Relative to this are relatively recent designs that failed.

As for the Volvo and people being injured, there was a good spread on this in Yachting World not that long ago you can also log onto UTUBE and look at the videos of these boats to windward and you'll quickly get the idea. Yep they stay on their feet and are driven hard but BV was arguing that that was a + strategy. Then the deck has 5 foot waves rolling down it both up and downwind at times.


Andy Claughton has his chapter in Heavy Weather and it's not about the Fastnet (that was Marchaj), it's about vessel styles and characteristics and it's fully supported work by others even our own testing in Oz by Martin Relnison.

The Japanse did one exhaustive idependatn comparison after the Osaka Guam tragedy .

So look at the damage and breaking of boats in races and try and account for the experience of the crew. Racing boats ususally have a huge fresh and able crew. Cruiing boats have a couple of retired sextagenarians ( or so).

Cruiing boats often have to stand on their own miles from support in unforcast storms, I mention Supertramp, the Adams 45 not as an argument of hullform (its a strong moderate fin keel boat ) but as an example of seamanship surfing in survival waves for nearly 2 days with 2 people on board. He notes that the fact that the boat was strong considerably reduced their anxiety-terror since they knew the boat would not be broken.

So go read that chapter then have a fight with Andy Claughton since it's him I'm learning from.

[Paul B]

I'm sure if someone was interested they could do a study showing how much safer you would be in a horrific collision if you were driving a heavy mid-century Buick rather than a modern automobile.

Yet we have all moved on from the mid-century Buick type automobiles.

This is with full knowledge that we have a far greated possibility of being killed in an auto accident rather than on a yacht in rough weather.

There are many, many boats that would be considered "light" that have been out cruising and crossing oceans for decades. Old IOR boats, old ULDBs, and production "fat sterned clorox bottles" are out there doing it, and I have not heard any more horror stories of their demise when compared to what I hear about older, heavier boats issues.

Of course there is a small community whose livelihood depends on instilling fear into the gullible. I wonder if they all get to the boatyard in their Packards and deSotos. Better yet, maybe they drive to the market in retired Sherman tanks. Safety first!

[BeauVrolyk]

Lyndon and CT,

I won't go through all the details, but I will buy the latest "Heavy Weather" and have a look at it.

My comments about how seaworthy a Volvo 60 is are statements I'll stand by. Sure, they are wet when you RACE them. But, having sailed boats like that in a more conservative manner, I have found them to be astoundingly good boats. Easy to control and with tremendous strength. Perhaps they do have a big keel with a big old weight way down low, so what? We were talking about what makes a boat seaworthy, and I'd strongly suggest that deep heavy fin keels are a big piece of that. I'd also include small hatches, no windows, no darned deck houses to get torn off, and bomb proof hatches. I do not agree that the injury rate is higher on these boats than it was on the ancient deep keel boats (like the Swan 65 Syula (sp?) who won the first race. The old boats maimed a lot of my friends.

My point about the Volvo 60, and other boats like them, is that it's not the boat you ride on so much as the way you ride it. Blasting along in a canting keeler at max speed is wet, ugly, and a little dangerous. But, cut the sail area by 50% and you'll have a tame astoundingly strong boat that is trivial to control and simply won't break.

BV

[Frosty]

It wont be fast and dangerous when its loaded with all the stuff you need to cruise with.

Theres is not many marinas round here could take its draft.

[BeauVrolyk]

It wont be fast and dangerous when its loaded with all the stuff you need to cruise with.

Theres is not many marinas round here could take its draft.

Frosty, the "stuff" you take is entirely dependent upon what sort of lifestyle you want. I have sailed all my life and really enjoy leaving all the "stuff" on shore. No more generators, freezers, hot water, showers, flopper-stoppers, jet-ski, wind-surfer, the list goes on and on and on.... none of them for me. Not again!

Cloths, food, a few spare parts... compared to what a Volvo boat carries to feed and house it's entire crew, I'd be riding very light. Probably need more ballast (LOL!).

As to depth, last I checked the Volvo 60s (they don't have canting keels) the draft is about 12'. While that's deeper than most Channel Cutters, it's hardly going to keep you out of places like Sydney, Auckland, San Francisco, New York, Cowes, Cannes, indeed I'm having trouble thinking of a place I want to go that it wouldn't fit. You can even get into Makemo in the Tuamotu Islands without a problem. I spent years in the S. Pacific and other than the backside of Bora Bora, where it's 10' deep, I don't think you'd have any trouble with 12' draft.

Anyway, no way I'm going sailing on one of these for Cruising:
http://www.boatshed.com/volvo_60-boat-53476.html
I'm more into this:
http://www.easternyachts.com/thalia/index.htm
Of course I'd take some stuff off it.

BV

[Frosty]

Those are natural harbours and yes of course you can get in there but the marinas are at the side where its shallow.

I will not go cruising without the comforts of home or its basically like being in prison. Ive never been a minimalist.

Surely you cant cruise with out satalite TV?

[BeauVrolyk]

Those are natural harbours and yes of course you can get in there but the marinas are at the side where its shallow.

I will not go cruising without the comforts of home or its basically like being in prison. Ive never been a minimalist.

Surely you cant cruise with out satalite TV?

Frosty, I never told you - I HATE MARINAS! I love riding at anchor and not hearing the drunks on the dock, the horns honking, and the idiots on the dock saying things like: "Herbert, they have children on that boat!! That's child abuse!" So, I don't tend to wander in too close to the shore. A fella could run aground in there! LOL!

Now, on to the comforts and our discussion of Volvo boats. Have a look at this thing:
http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/2000/Baltic-Custom-78-2003372/Cogolin/France

This sloop has the canting keel, all the toys, and I'll bet is sails gangbusters. Looks like you can have all your toys AND have a real sailing boat!!

Best,

BV

[Frosty]

You must stay in some terrible marinas, Im in one now as I type with free WiFi, there is a regatta on right now and the last race has just finished , big party tonight and then they all fck off home thank god.

http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Royal-Langkawi-International-Regatta-2010:-Joined-at-the-hip/65454


It looks much more exiting that it really is believe me,---I hate racing, stupid --if you want to go fast put an engine in it.

[Manie B]

I agree wholeheartedly

I love riding at anchor and not hearing the drunks on the dock, the horns honking, and the idiots on the dock saying things

and whats more

Surely you cant cruise with out satalite TV?

i most definately dont want a TV anywhere near me

No more generators, freezers, hot water, showers, flopper-stoppers, jet-ski, wind-surfer, the list goes on and on and on.... none of them for me. Not again!

couln't have said it better - thanks - i fully agree :D

[Frosty]

I know an ol German that lives like that , no showers ,no water, he comes ashore for toilet. The guy STINKS you can smell him coming.

He thinks he is a minimalist and we are waisting resources, I think thats what he said ,I don't get too close to him.

Actually what he means is he cant afford it. His name is stinky Hanz,--nice eh?

He is as popular as a pork pie at a Muslim wedding.

In the tropics personal hygene needs attention you will get rashes and all sorts of sores, I suppose you intend living alone, with no crew?

Sounds wonderful.-- forgive me if I shake my head.

We have friends that dont have tv" oh we dont like TV" they come on my boat , sit down with knees together and have a drink in the air con. I cant get rid of them, they stare at the Tv like they had never seen one before.

[LyndonJ]

I'm sure if someone was interested they could do a study showing how much safer you would be in a horrific collision if you were driving a heavy mid-century Buick rather than a modern automobile________SNIP_____________

Of course there is a small community whose livelihood depends on instilling fear into the gullible. I wonder if they all get to the boatyard in their Packards and deSotos. Better yet, maybe they drive to the market in retired Sherman tanks. Safety first!

Yes good point,

Heavy weather and ultimate survival breaking seas and you have a choice.

It's just like driving through Iraq on a motorbike and sidecar or in a Hummer and those folks at Hummer sure crank up the instilling fear thing to sell their product :rolleyes:

And while we are in your analagy, do You want to drive from Paris to Capetown with all your gear in a light low fast light Maserati or a heavy well sprung all wheel drive? Your analogy.

[Frosty]

European cars can now take such collisions that the human being could survive if the internal organs could, even though the cage (where you sit) is not damaged.


Mercedes Micro 60MPH impact into concrete barrier, leg room , seats , steering etc all clear of the body. You will not be hurt externally but the internal organs can not take it.

It is design that does this, not bigger and stronger, thats is obsolete USA car design thinking and why the American auto industry is in difficulties.

[CT 249]

Retirements are sensible people dropping out of a race

Yes, some of them are sensible people dropping out of a race. Others are caused by boats and people getting beaten up.

Of course, if a boat retires to get out of the weather, you can hardly compare its safety record to a boat that stays out there, racing hard through the worst of it.

they have zilch to do with what I called getting mashed. Sword got mashed thats the sort of mashed I meant.... a broken boat particularly immediately after being rolled. Broken by the sea in one single simple event.

The boat WAS badly damaged, no doubt about it. It also got itself home, even after the crew was lifted off.

The only (and tragic) fatality on SoO was fatally injured by being thrown with such force that his lifeline snapped, causing massive internal injuries that gave him no chance to survive. That is, of course, terrible.

So that was one death from injuries in a roll/harness damage. In the 1979 Fastnet there were TWO deaths in a similar fashion after a boat was severely knocked down while reaching at 7 knots. One of the harnesses suffered a snapped safety line, the other went over with its user when the guardrail to which it was snapped failed.

Sure, Sword was knocked down. So were many heavy boats. Sure, there was a difference in that Sword was badly damaged - but that had no part to play in the tragic death of Glynn Charles. And at least two of the heavweights lost rigs, so they were not exactly in showroom condition.

So why is there a fixation about Sword's design, when craft of conservative design have seen more deaths in a similar fashion?


It should be rolling that you look at , who cares if the mast touched the water or not.


Certainly there's one hell of a lot of evidence that people DO care when they stick their mast in or near the wet stuff, because it causes crew to be injured and/or go overboard (as on the 43' 13 ton Kingurra) or loss of vital safety gear (the Adams 40 cruiser Gundy Grey) or worse.

And heavy boats rolled. For example, the S&S 34 Solandra rolled (or at least inverted) violently enough to stay down while its course changed 180 degrees and its mast went. The S&S 34 is not exactly a radical lightweight.

The Cole 43 Solo Globe Challenger rolled and lost its mast and had other serious damage and injuries. The Cole 43 is not exactly a radical lightweight.

The Swan Loki was badly knocked down, lost cabin windows etc. The Swan is not exactly a radical lightweight.

As Professor of Engineering and NA Peter Joubert (owner of the 13 ton 43 footer that stuck its mast in and lost a man overboard and suffered damage and injury) said, the waves were so bad that if you got hit by a bad one, 'it doesn't matter whether you're in Mr Syd Fisher's Ragamuffin or the biggest boat in the race or the tiniest boat in the race, if it falls on you you'll get rolled...if (another good seaman) gets a big wave he's gone, light boat, heavy boat, whatever boat".

So a veteran naval architect and engineering professor, who was actually out there copping it, says it didn't matter what boat you had, you copped it if you were in the wrong place. If NAs and scientists are to be our experts (which is fine) why not listen to the one that was there?


Its the weak boats and the poor stability boats that end keel up that kill people more.

Yep Winston got broken and sunk (but not rolled) but Winston was both apparently weak since they had already noted problems with the fastening of planks and a had unusually poor stability for a heavy boat.So I reckon she was compromised too and bears zero usefull resemblence to anything else. And would be predicted as a ppor design by Claughtons reasoning.

Where is your evidence for those claims?

Richard Winning told the police and the coroner that the boat was surveyed on purchase by an extremely experienced boatbuilder and sailor. He said "there were no structural deficiencies of any sort".

Winning owned a marina/boatyard, so it was not exactly a drama to work on the boat. Prior to the '97 Hobart, the stem and stern were refastened with 3000 2.5 to 3" screws. The caulking was done by very experienced shipwrights. A previous owner (a dentist) had sold his Porsche to maintain WC well.

The evidence to the inquest gave no indication that there were weaknesses in the boat; the vastly experienced boatbuilder Cec Quilkey said that if the missing putty seen by 'Megga' Boscombe (1) before the race was in fact a structural issue, the boat would have been leaking before she was overwhelmed. The sworn testimony of several people is that the boat was, in fact, handling the conditions very well until that overwhelming wave destroyed the lee side.

It could be that the boat was 'apparently weak' and 'had problems with the fastenings' and that the police seargents, superintendents and inspectors, the three barristers and the coroner all missed something, and that the skipper and crew and tradesmen involved in the boat lied, and no one ever picked them up.

Or it could be that an extremely experienced crew and a very experienced owner with his own boatyard made sure that the boat WAS in good condition, and that it just got smashed by the power of the elements.

I'm not pretending that WC wasn't an old boat, or that carvel is as tough as alloy. However, either the sworn testimony of several people is wrong, and none of the investigators picked that up, or your information is incorrect is this respect and therefore possibly in other respects.

Then if they hadn't lost the bulwark and part of the planking they would have survived. Relative to this are relatively recent designs that failed.

Yes, some of the new designs failed. That's not good. No one is defending them from the issue of weak decks. However, if we can say 'if they hadn't lost the bulwark and planking WC would have survived' then logically we can apply the same restrictions to Stand Aside and other lightweights; 'if they hadn't lost the cabin top the boat would have survived'.

Significantly, all of the lightweights that suffered major structural damage stayed afloat until their crews were rescued. That may have (in at least one case) been luck, but maybe it's also significant.

Also significant was the fact that of the very small number of traditional long keelers in the race, two of them sank. The long keelers had by far the worst record, statistically, in terms of boats and lives lost.

Yes, the numbers are too small to be of much use - but then again the number of modern lightweights that lost lives (1) was an equally small number. Why put so much significance on one small sample and ignore the other small sample?

As for the Volvo and people being injured, there was a good spread on this in Yachting World not that long ago you can also log onto UTUBE and look at the videos of these boats to windward and you'll quickly get the idea. Yep they stay on their feet and are driven hard but BV was arguing that that was a + strategy. Then the deck has 5 foot waves rolling down it both up and downwind at times.


Sure, a VO 60 driven hard in big conditions is a wet machine. So are many boats driven that hard in such conditions. An S&S driven hard in heavy
conditions can get lots of water on the deck.

Ease up on a modern boat and they can become very dry, because of the freeboard and hte ability to go over waves rather than through them.

You can't compare the conditions aboard a boat being raced by pros to conditions aboard a boat not being raced by pros. It's like pointing out that Lance Armstrong pants when he's racing the Tour de France and therefore his carbon bike must be harder to ride than a 20kg K-Mart special with fat tyres.

Andy Claughton has his chapter in Heavy Weather and it's not about the Fastnet (that was Marchaj), it's about vessel styles and characteristics and it's fully supported work by others even our own testing in Oz by Martin Relnison.


Andy Claughton also did work after the Fastnet; I have an article of his on it. Some of his own work is also NOT supported by Martin Renilson.

That's cool, experts differ. However, if we are prepared to listen to Martin when he differs to Andy and vice versa, why can't we listen to other experts who may disagree with one or both of them?

The Japanse did one exhaustive idependatn comparison after the Osaka Guam tragedy .

So look at the damage and breaking of boats in races and try and account for the experience of the crew. Racing boats ususally have a huge fresh and able crew. Cruiing boats have a couple of retired sextagenarians ( or so).

Right - so when the crews are so different, why apply the same criteria to their boats?

Cruiing boats often have to stand on their own miles from support in unforecast storms, I mention Supertramp, the Adams 45 not as an argument of hullform (its a strong moderate fin keel boat ) but as an example of seamanship surfing in survival waves for nearly 2 days with 2 people on board. He notes that the fact that the boat was strong considerably reduced their anxiety-terror since they knew the boat would not be broken.

So go read that chapter then have a fight with Andy Claughton since it's him I'm learning from.

Well, it's great to learn from people - but why not learn from the NAs who actively ocean race, and who say that modern boats are safe? Or from the NAs who say that light boat or heavy boat, if you got hit by a big wave in the 98 Hobart you would be in trouble.

No one's saying that we want boats to be dangerous. However, some of us
are dubious about the examples and statistics that are used to 'prove' that modern boats are more dangerous.

An example that strikes me is Claughton's work on capsizing following the '79 Fastnet. I'm not, of course, saying it's wrong. What I do wonder is why the issue which caused from 1 to 3 (tragic) deaths gets so much attention, when issues that caused more deaths get less attention.

Similarly, why are problems with heavy boats so often said to be a specific issue with a specific boat (as is the case with WC, for example) whereas problems with light or fat boats are often used as examples that the entire type is dangerous (a la Grimalkin)?



1- Megga saw some missing putty (there was putty over the caulking) when he was swimming near WC before the race, which lead to a lot of speculation. However, there is no evidence that there were fastening issues there, and note that Megga, a vastly experienced ex navy man, kept on delivering lightweight racing yachts shorthanded until he recently died of natural causes on board a Volvo 60 in a delivery. If he hated lightweights, he wouldn't have delivered them around the world as a hobby.

[capt vimes]

to my knowledge and information the Winston Churchill had the windward chainplate(s) ripped out when hit by a huge wave - this caused the mast to 'jump' and on coming down crashed through the deck and piercing a rather large hole in the hull as well... sinking it within less than 20 minutes...

i am still searching for this article...

[CT 249]

There's no mention of a hole in the deck anywhere in the crew's statements, and certainly no mention of the mast foot going through the hull.

The chainplates and the area around the mast foot were rebuilt when Winning bought the boat.

See

http://www.equipped.org/sydney-hobart/Volume%2005.htm

for the sworn testimony of the crew and shipwrights.

[BeauVrolyk]

I know an ol German that lives like that , no showers ,no water, he comes ashore for toilet. The guy STINKS you can smell him coming.

He thinks he is a minimalist and we are waisting resources, I think thats what he said ,I don't get too close to him.

Actually what he means is he cant afford it. His name is stinky Hanz,--nice eh?

He is as popular as a pork pie at a Muslim wedding.

In the tropics personal hygene needs attention you will get rashes and all sorts of sores, I suppose you intend living alone, with no crew?

Sounds wonderful.-- forgive me if I shake my head.

We have friends that dont have tv" oh we dont like TV" they come on my boat , sit down with knees together and have a drink in the air con. I cant get rid of them, they stare at the Tv like they had never seen one before.

Frosty,

We're a long way from Heavy Weather sailing, so I guess this thread has ground to a halt - about time. I have some simple rules for cruising, and after this I'll sign off:

1) Never sail upwind unless absolutely necessary - it usually isn't.
2) Never sail on a schedule - ever - it can kill you.
3) Never sail where you can't swim off the boat - solves showering.
4) Never sail with people who can't sit quietly for four hours without needing radio, tv, etc... Books are ok, but only barely.
5) Never sail for money - never again.

Having done many many thousands of miles at sea, I'm convinced that bringing along a lot of "stuff" means you're spending your time maintaining a lot of "stuff". During that time, you could be sailing someplace. My goal is and has always been to actually go sailing, not to hang about in ports any longer than necessary, and certainly not to "move in" to any place. Thus, maintenance of complex systems, while I know how to do it well and get paid to do it, is not something I ever want to do again.

The point of sailing is to get into the sort of zen state that one can occasionally reach while sailing a long leg, completely concentrating on the feeling of the wind/waves/boat, and without a sound.

It's probably the reason I like to sail alone, and I certainly no not stink! LOL! That's what rule number 3 is all about. Even if painful, you always go for a swim before going ashore - the girls don't like smelly sailors.

Best,

BV

[Fanie]

Oh hell I just bought a car radio with a TV, DVD player and all the bells and whistles for the boat.

Must I rather give it back :D I was thinking those long times there are no wind ;)

I've got a 21" and an 11" 12V monitor, the radio has an extra video input, be nice if you can play the GPS through it to the big screen.

[LyndonJ]

Yep Winston got broken and sunk (but not rolled) but Winston was both apparently weak since they had already noted problems with the fastening of planks and a had unusually poor stability for a heavy boat.

Where is your evidence for those claims?.


Many of the interpretations rest on saying "look at Winston, she was an old heavy full keeler but she sank..."

But is it really useful or is it just very creative :?:

If you look at the vessel and do what others have said already that you need to crunch the numbers and compare those rather than the broad generalisations.

1:Old trad timber vessel that had already had refastening work required in other areas of the hull. It sprung or had a plank ripped off rather than stove in, to the trad wood boatbuilders that's important .

2: The stability figure from her certificate: AVS you can probably quote yourself was abysmally low for a "trad full keel" , it was a go-fast boat from a transition period of design . So it was more likely to fall off a wave or trip on the deck edge.

Lets apply an illustrative real simple test:
If it had made of GRP to the same stregth as wood planking would it have sunk : very unlikely
Metal: definately not
Would it have rolled: It didn't anyway , didn't even lose it's rig

If it had a narrow hull and a higher AVS would it have been damaged : a lot less likely according to Marchaj, Claughton, Renilson .

Did the other full keeler than sank invert? Was it a design issue? No one even knows why it sank it was filling with water from somewhere.
Recently I saw a report where a steel barge sank beacasue a bad weld cracked and a plate sprung. Then there's a bad weld on a keel that caused it to break off, it's definate that it's not a design issue of the boat form, and this needs separate consideration.

Now apply those to Sword and the others that were mashed .

By all the measures Niad was in danger from the moment the wind blew hard. That's real illustrative, if any vessel was going to be rolled it was Niad.

Seems you need to actually compare the figures, like the posts previous on Roll intertia, the volvo 60 , 70, has a huge roll inertia even though it's lightweight. So it's far less likely to invert.
Seems Inversion really kills a boat, removes the rig and injures the people and nearly always floods the boat.
Even though it's still floating it's not viable except as a survival platform till after the storm and with that rig gone its far more likely to be inverted again and again. With people inside with loose gear and partial flooding you may well be safer in the blowup raft.
To imply the vessel was afloat after the storm and after the airlift so it was safe to stay on is a load of cobblers mate.

[LyndonJ]

Heres a good powerpoint presentation with maps of of the sea conditions that developed.

www.australasiancoroners.org/conferences/2003_papers/water.ppt

Note the actual wave heights and the fact that the east coast blocks a lot of directions the underlying swell that's present in the open ocean.

How much worse would it have been if the sea generated by the wind had been superimposed on a large SW swell which would have added teirs and results in superposition and massive waves.

[CT 249]

Many of the interpretations rest on saying "look at Winston, she was an old heavy full keeler but she sank..."

But is it really useful or is it just very creative :?:

And many other interpretations say 'look at Sword (etc), she was a beamy liightweight and she sank' despite the fact that there was no statistical evidence that such yachts are more likely to be involved in fatalities etc

If you look at the vessel and do what others have said already that you need to crunch the numbers and compare those rather than the broad generalisations.

1:Old trad timber vessel that had already had refastening work required in other areas of the hull. It sprung or had a plank ripped off rather than stove in, to the trad wood boatbuilders that's important .

Once again, the sworn testimony is that the boat DID HAVE extensive work. Where is the basis for your claim that the extensive work that was carried out missed important areas and therefore there were suspect areas that had not been fixed?

Where is your evidence that it had a sprung plank? Steamer Stanley's sworn evidence said that the intake of water was greater than that of a sprung plank. Why should we disbelieve the information of the man who was there and believe the evidence of unnamed people who were not?

The witnesses said that the boat DID NOT SPRING A PLANK. They spoke of massive damage around the lee chainplates.

You have provided no evidence for your claim, which goes against the information presented by those who were there. On what logical basis can we reject the information from those who where there, in favour of an unproven allegation by persons unknown?

Yes, the exact reason of the cause of an old timber boat may not be significant. However, when one 'side' keeps on making claims that are NOT based on fact and are contradicted by the evidence, they cannot claim the high ground of scientific logic in other areas.

EDITED

I forgot to add that Jim Lawler, who was lost on WC, was by profession a marine engineer who had been a ship surveyor for ABS for 31 years.

Does that sound like the sort of guy who would sail on a dangerous boat, or would not notice that a boat had issues?



2: The stability figure from her certificate: AVS you can probably quote yourself was abysmally low for a "trad full keel" , it was a go-fast boat from a transition period of design . So it was more likely to fall off a wave or trip on the deck edge.

Where is your evidence that the boat was a 'go fast boat' of its era?
Having gone through a lot of the history of Australian ocean racing, I can find no evidence of this claim. The boat was quite radically different from the go-fast boats of the day, which were metre boats.

There's no evidence in the works by Illingworth that I have; there's no evidence that I could find when I went through the Seacraft magazines of the period at the ANM; there's no such evidence in any of the other histories I have.

Please, if there is to be any use in such a discussion, give us some proof of your claims. Winston was NOT a go-fast boat of its era, an era which was pretty much before ocean racing had even started in Australia and when 8 Metres were the grand prix class.

Lets apply an illustrative real simple test:
If it had made of GRP to the same stregth as wood planking would it have sunk : very unlikely
Metal: definately not
Would it have rolled: It didn't anyway , didn't even lose it's rig

If it had a narrow hull and a higher AVS would it have been damaged : a lot less likely according to Marchaj, Claughton, Renilson .

And according to the NA and professor who was out there at the time, if you were in the wrong place you were going to get rolled.

Okay, so we have duelling academics and duelling NAs. Once again, why place more weight on the opinions of the ones who were NOT out there, than on the opinions of those who WERE?

I'm not saying that we should ignore those who weren't there, so why ignore the reputable NAs and academics who WERE there?

On WC's beam;

You are making a case that her beam was an issue - please provide evidence of her beam.

She was in fact quite a narrow boat by almost all modern standards; I'm 99% sure she was considerably narrower than an Adams 45 or Contessa 32 etc.



Did the other full keeler than sank invert? Was it a design issue? No one even knows why it sank it was filling with water from somewhere.
Recently I saw a report where a steel barge sank beacasue a bad weld cracked and a plate sprung. Then there's a bad weld on a keel that caused it to break off, it's definate that it's not a design issue of the boat form, and this needs separate consideration.

So the simple fact that the large amount of interior furniture apparently prevented the location of the leak from being identified means that we will ignore the fact that the other heavyweight sank?

If Sword etc had furniture that prevented their damage from being seen, would you have held to the same line that we cannot judge their design because the source of the leak could not be identified?

Personally, as far as I can see a boat that has sunk in heavy conditions for unknown reasons is not demonstrably better than a boat like Sword, which did not sink for any reason.

Yes, of course we can separate construction from design. SO LET"S BE CONSISTENT AND DO IT.

If we are to separate construction and design in Miintanta's case, we must separate construction from design in the case of lightweights in general. If we are to allow for the fact that WC and Miintanta could have been built stronger or without defects, then we must also allow for the fact that Sword etc could (perhaps with minor alterations in ballasting etc) have been built stronger or without defects. We could assume that the deck on the Jarkan 39 was a little bit stronger. We could assume that they may perhaps have failed due to the same sort of building error that some have hypothesised as the cause of the loss of Miintanta.



Now apply those to Sword and the others that were mashed .

Interesting that we again bring up Sword, when the unfortunate structural damage did not cause loss of life; did not cause injury; did not cause the boat to sink.

Why so much concern about Sword's design, and not about (say) the boat that lost two crew in a similar fashion in the 1979 Fastnet? Is one death worse than two?

By all the measures Niad was in danger from the moment the wind blew hard. That's real illustrative, if any vessel was going to be rolled it was Niad.

By what measure?

The Farr 1 ton in its various types is an extremely popular design. There are dozens in use around the world and they have been doing major ocean races since 1983.

Can you supply some information on a similar type that has done so many similar races with just one major incident?

Are you aware that a very close sistership did a singlehanded Round the World race with no problems?

Yes, her roll was serious - but the evidence indicates that the boats have NOT been particularly dangerous in their 27 years of ocean racing.


Seems you need to actually compare the figures, like the posts previous on Roll intertia, the volvo 60 , 70, has a huge roll inertia even though it's lightweight. So it's far less likely to invert.
Seems Inversion really kills a boat, removes the rig and injures the people and nearly always floods the boat.


So why not criticise the heavy and slender S&S 34, which inverted with damage?

So why not criticise the heavy and slender Cole 43, which inverted with damage?

Have you seen the AVS and displacement on some of the boats that inverted? The S&S 34 has a AVS of over 130; the Solo Globe Challenger was just under 140. What AVS and displacement, out of interest, does Claughton recommend?

Interestingly, three of the boats that inverted had sisterships or near sisters that have done singlehanded round the world passages via the southern ocean, with no major issues. In one case, the very same boat did the circumnavigation.

Surely it is significant that boats as seaworthy as the S&S 34 rolled with damage, and that boats with their ability proven by some 6 singlehanded circumnavigations through the Southern Ocean got into trouble. That shows the conditions.

So if inversion is so bad (no issue with that) and AVS is such an accurate measure of a boat that will not invert, why did heavyweights with very high AVS invert, with damage and injuries?


Even though it's still floating it's not viable except as a survival platform till after the storm and with that rig gone its far more likely to be inverted again and again. With people inside with loose gear and partial flooding you may well be safer in the blowup raft.
To imply the vessel was afloat after the storm and after the airlift so it was safe to stay on is a load of cobblers mate.

I didn't say that a damaged boat was particularly safe to stay on - I merely pointed out that all (or just about all) of the lightweights got through the storm when two of the heavyweights didn't, and that it's safer to be on a damaged lightweight than a sunken heavyweight.

If you really think it's better to get out of a damaged boat and into a raft then you must have completely missed the Fastnet report, and everything else ever written on the comparative safety of a damaged boat v a liftraft.

And if you asked the crewmen of Winston Churchill whether they were better off drowning or suffering hypothermia rather than sitting on a damaged boat, I'm fairly sure of the answer they would give.

What is a load of cobblers is ignoring the fact that one heavy boat with a good record sank, merely because the crew could not find where the water was coming in.

[CT 249]

Heres a good powerpoint presentation with maps of of the sea conditions that developed.

www.australasiancoroners.org/conferences/2003_papers/water.ppt

Note the actual wave heights and the fact that the east coast blocks a lot of directions the underlying swell that's present in the open ocean.

How much worse would it have been if the sea generated by the wind had been superimposed on a large SW swell which would have added teirs and results in superposition and massive waves.

Police evidence states that extremely experienced rescue helicopter crews (like the one who had also done the '79 Fastnet rescue) saw their radar altimeters registering 90 foot waves.

Those were bloody awful conditions, far outside the experience of almost all of the very experienced people in many of the crews.

To quote one of the Tasmanian meteorologists' testimony, "the winds that occurred were of the order of the strongest winds that have been observed at the various reporting points, but not greatly and in some cases not, not greater than the highest winds ever recorded at those stations. But it was of, in that range. In decades of measurement tht was the sort of winds that, the strongest winds that, that could be encountered in that area".

The BOM official response to the CYCA report said that it was a "one in eight to ten years event", based on wave conditions at Kingfish B, with extreme wave heights to 15m.

Therefore there was no doubt that this was NOT a run-of-the-mill bit of nasty weather.

As I understand it from the BoM official response, the graphics you presented were a model of the Bureau's estimate of the wave height and were NOT actual measurements.

There are many who believe that the conditions around the eastern strait, where the swells are chopped up, are far worse than in more open waterways like the west coast of Tassy. For example, I know of one cruising couple with 140,000 nm experience, including Alaska and the Horn, who state that the Sydney-Hobart route includes the nastiest bit of water they know - and their S-H was in a westerly pattern year that was much kinder than '98. In 2000, there were half a dozen Round the World crews who did the Hobart in their VO 60s as a lead-up event, and reported to Seahorse that the Hobart was harder than any part of the RTW. And I know two merchant officers, with experience on runs like the one around the Cape of Good Hope and Agulhas and on oil rig vessels in the Strait, who rate the weather in that area at that time as quite exceptionally bad.

[gonzo]

Rough weather techniques, to a certain extent, assume a boat with structural integrity. However, boats break in rough weather for several reasons. The reasons themselves do not matter in this discussion, but techniques to survive them do. Structural and design discussions are covered in many other threads.

[Frosty]

So you gotta know where your boat will break? Like you gotta know its weak points. That might not be as daft as it seems I think we all know our boats and deep down we know their weaknesses. Maybe that mast repair you did last year or that skin fitting that was never replaced.

If you were really really honest with yourself you know what will break on your boat.
Honesty beyond honesty would be yourself that would break first.

[capt vimes]

There's no mention of a hole in the deck anywhere in the crew's statements, and certainly no mention of the mast foot going through the hull.

The chainplates and the area around the mast foot were rebuilt when Winning bought the boat.

See

http://www.equipped.org/sydney-hobart/Volume%2005.htm

for the sworn testimony of the crew and shipwrights.

thank's for that link...

from winnings testimonial I:
"...the vessel had aslo sustained some sort of, of underwater damage because she was making water very quickly, wether it was a, a sprung plank or the mast pushed the bottom of the boat ... i, i didn't know..."

so you lied in your first sentence already... ;)

i remember reading an article on this tragedy and it came to the conclusion that the mast actually pierced the hull!
what i mixed up, where the side of the damage to the chainplates... it was the leeward side from the knockdown... resulting in loose shrouds and a loose mast pushing through the hull...
that was the findings several qualified experts came to...
although my memory might be foggy about the details, i definitely recall the result and the agreed cause for the loss of the winston churchill... ;)

[sliderule]

Favorite Rough Weather Technique - We call it "Rope a Dope" on our boat - so named for the famous Ali/Foreman fight where Ali exhausted his hard punching opponent to the amazement of the pundits. More commonly called fore reaching. More specifically "fore reaching" on starboard tack because that is where the "way out" or the exit sign usually is. In most cases reaching on starboard tack will take you most quickly out of a low pressure circulation in the northern hemisphere.

The first rule is to avoid really bad weather. Recognize that the type of boat has a big impact on the tactics available to you. I have a 44 foot moderate displacement sloop (21k) with a spade rudder and a 7 foot fin keel with a "foot" or semi bulb. It starts becomes dangerous (although very fast) to run away in heavy seas because it wants to broach if you get inattentive at the helm. Alternativel the boat gets hammered going upwind. Going slow and losing steerage seems to be a really bad strategy, and seems likely to snap the rudder off. A wallowing or backing boat feels out of control and vulnerable to me. The boat is amazingly controllable reaching parallel to even very large seas with significantly reduced sail (flattened to the max), vang off to let the top twist parallel to the wind and the boom up. You want the boom high because you may dip it and break it. A very small jib or unrolled part of the working jib to keep the boat balanced. Fore reaching is like skiing in moguls, you watch the sea formation and breaking patterns avoid the worst patterns. Your storm reef should be cut cringle high so that the boom sits up higher than normal. Fill the bottom of the sail and let the top fall to leeward.

Even though I carry storm sails, I have tried to create faster ways to reduce sail. I have four reefs in my main. Two pretty normal reefs, a third reef for gale force, and a fourth reef for storm force winds (the sail numbers are at the boom). I have a spectra 85% working jib that I can roll down to a handkerchief. I actually prefer this to hauling down 1100 sq foot of wet sails at great risk to the crew and finding a place to put them below. That said there is nothing wrong with having the storm jib and trysail for a desparate situation.

Forereaching (usually on starboard tack), with steerage, under control, with the right amount of sail up as quickly as possible out of trouble is a good strategy. We can average 12 or 15 kts at this angle in these conditions and that is a significant enough speed to get away from the worst of a storm or depression. We use Sirius Satellite Weather and then 48 mile radar to track squalls and storms.

This has worked for me during four Bermuda Races and returns, but I'm open to anyone's suggestions on this topic.

Scott

[mark775]

"thats is obsolete USA car design thinking and why the American auto industry is in difficulties." Frosty, I believe you. I need to get my family of seven to Anchorage once a month for shopping. On your advice, I am selling my Ford Expedition and am curious what European production car I should buy to replace. We have a winding road along Turnagain Arm...
39614
...where it gets quite icy, has falling rocks, rock climbers, dall sheep and belugas that silly people are always looking at while driving and just getting into cell phone range, so everyone is a little busy... in short, many head-on collisions.
Sometimes I drive this alone so if the above scenario doesn't include many safe, efficient, comfortable, good looking cars - just tell me which one does best against the 2,700 kilo Expedition in a head-on with one passenger. I am so looking forward to trashing this outdated technology as I only get 19 miles a gallon and want to be as Earth-aware as possible. Four-wheel drive is, of course (sticking with my new European theme), de rigueur.
I Googled "big European car" and the S-Max and my Expedition came up - Both Fords - how corrupt is that!? I definately want something I have to wear driving gloves and fashionable shoes to drive...something that shouts "EUROPEAN"!

Same for my boat. I'm listing it and would like to replace with the latest in lightweight construction. Here's the design criteria; Carry 20 passengers. Withstand hit on 5,000 kilo vertically oriented log. Occasionally beach (It's kinda rocky here). Able to run from most weather and take mean **** when necessary. Under 300,000 Euros cost. My heavy lay-up with a steel shoe under the keel is so damn...American (read: "obsolete")! Yuch!

[gonzo]

Please get your stupid cars off this thread

[mark775]

"Gonzo" is slang for "dick".

[TeddyDiver]

just tell me which one does best against the 2,700 kilo Expedition in a head-on with one passenger. I am so looking forward to trashing this outdated technology as I only get 19 miles a gallon and want to be as Earth-aware as possible. Four-wheel drive is, of course (sticking with my new European theme), de rigueur.

5 miles a gallon... supreme :P and SIX wd

[gonzo]

Get the stupid cars off this thread. Learn to sail

[Frosty]

Get the stupid cars off this thread. Learn to sail

Oh come on,-- thats 2 things.

[mark775]

As a valid comparison I, for one, understand the relation of lightweight cars to lightweight boats. I didn't bring up the cars but it is valid to do so. The point being that lighter weight, higher tech, if you will, is not always superior. I also believe it is verging on unseamanlike to go to sea on a boat that depends on the vagaries of wind to survive. Belay that attitude, dick.

My wife will adore it, Teddy!

[gonzo]

Cars do not float through displacement. The comparison is farfetched at best. Also, you are turning this into a string of personal insults and political diatribes.

[TeddyDiver]

This one floats.. ;) http://flickr.com/photos/markrellison/485320269/
Sorry mate.. couldn't resist..:)

[mark775]

Now we're talkin', Teddy!

[Frosty]

Cars do not float through displacement.



Can you explain in further detail your suggestion.

[gonzo]

I accept that there are differences of opinion and we all get off topic at times. However, I will flag you to the moderator if you insist on insults.

[mark775]

Okay. Belay the attitude, Gonzo.

[CT 249]

thank's for that link...

from winnings testimonial I:
"...the vessel had aslo sustained some sort of, of underwater damage because she was making water very quickly, wether it was a, a sprung plank or the mast pushed the bottom of the boat ... i, i didn't know..."

so you lied in your first sentence already... ;)

i remember reading an article on this tragedy and it came to the conclusion that the mast actually pierced the hull!
what i mixed up, where the side of the damage to the chainplates... it was the leeward side from the knockdown... resulting in loose shrouds and a loose mast pushing through the hull...
that was the findings several qualified experts came to...
although my memory might be foggy about the details, i definitely recall the result and the agreed cause for the loss of the winston churchill... ;)

My apologies - I missed that sentence and therefore overstated my case.

I should have said that there's nothing in the final conclusions that said that the mast could have come out of the steel channel it was set in, and pierced the hull. That passage of Winnings (from about one day after he was rescued) certainly does say that at that stage he thought it was possible that the mast went through the hull, but it certainly does not say that it definitely did and certainly did not say that there was a deck hole.

The main thrust of the evidence was that there was damage around the lee chainplates, NOT that the mast went through the garboard. However, I lent my copy of the transcripts to someone, I no longer have the notes I took at the inquest, and it's too hard to download it all so I don't have all my info at hand.

There were rumours that there was a weakness in the garboard, apparently because people thought that the missing fairing putty that Megga Bascombe saw was under the water (as did Cec Quilkey in his first day of interviewing). This was not the case, as is clearly apparent from Bascombe's statement and sketch.

The Coroner's final findings were;

"It is clear from the evidence that "Winston Churchill" suffered
serious damage to her port side, probably at or near the chain plates, that
caused her to founder. According to the evidence I have heard from Mr.
Perdriau and Mr. Quilkey this damage was unrelated to what was
observed by Mr. Bascombe at the port bow.
Accordingly I find that "Winston Churchill" foundered when she
sustained damage to her port side when she was struck by a wave as
described by her surviving crew. As a result of her foundering the crew
were obliged to abandon her and take to her life rafts."

WC was on starboard tack, so the mast would not have gone through an area along the port side near the chainplates.

I don't know who the experts in your article where, but none of them would have had the power to compel people to give statements and to be cross-examined, so one wonders why they would have a better chance of interviewing the witnesses than the coroner. On balance, surely the coroner's final findings should be considered more authoritative.

There was intensive public and media interest in the inquest here. Submissions from the general public were accepted. If anyone had information about WC's cause of loss, it is highly unlikely that it remained unknown to the Coroner.

However, the main point was that there is no evidence that WC had weak fasteners or was otherwise in poor condition at the time of her loss, apart from the weaknesses of sheer age - and she was quite a heavily-built boat made by an expert in the field.


PS re the cause of loss of the heavy boats. Out of interest, while checking to see what 'The Fatal Storm" said about the loss of WC, I came across the piece where the owner of the 12 ton 42 foot doble-ender Miintanta is giving information about her sinking. He is said to have believed that there was a crack in the hull under the starboard settee berth, but that he could not see the leak; 'because of the way the yacht was constructed however, he could not get into the area to confirm that'. This is similar to the evidence that the crew gave to the Coroner, where they confirm that they checked the engine compartment and all the through-decks and could find no sign that they were leaking through those areas, and therefore that it appeared that the hull was damaged.

So the available information appears to confirm that both heavyweights sank through hull damage. One was old and timber, the other a very solid and well tested cruising boat. Both had done previous Hobarts with no issues.

PPS - By the way, no one is saying that the loss rate in the Hobart was good. What many of us say is that there is no evidence that the lightweights were demonstrably unsafe, and that this is backed up by the statistics of loss and severe damage.

It would be interesting to see the sort of boats that the anti-light-brigade would like to see racing, and some evidence (ie results when raced against lightweights) that they are just as fast, as has been claimed here.

[gonzo]

I think that just comparing boats by weight is not enough. Too many other aspects come into play. Some heavy structures don't have all the weight where it makes them stronger. Light structures are not always less stressed either.

[CT 249]

Yep, that's pretty much the point I'm trying to make.

However, for some reason the evidence is often viewed in a way that concentrates on the problems with light boats, and ignores the problems with heavy boats or excuses them by saying that there must be some other reason for the loss.

They seem to come to these conclusions by, for example, assuming that Winston Churchill was 'very unlikely' to have sunk if it was "made of GRP to the same stregth as wood planking", by ascribing her loss partly to a sprung plank that did not exist according to the sworn testimony of crew and shipwrights. Or by repeatedly bringing up Sword of Orion (1 death caused when the boat was rolled and a crewman was tragically flung so hard that his harness snapped) while repeatedly ignoring Flashlight (a heavy, slender Ohlson 35 that lost two lives in a similar fashion in the 1979 Fastnet).

The light boat that had one death is repeatedly pointed out as unseaworthy, whereas the heavy boat that had two deaths in a similar fashion is all but ignored.

Same mechanism of death, worse death toll - why ignore one and concentrate on the other?

EDIT-

It turns out that the 'go fast yacht' Winston Churchill was actually modelled by her builder, Percy Coverdale, of his famous fishing smack "Storm Bay", which is still around (and looking, not surprisingly, a lot like WC).

Funny how a boat modelled from a fishing smack can be called a 'go fast' design!

Interesting also to find an article on the boat, before its sinking, that says $270,000 was spent on refurbishing the boat when Winning had her.

"Mr Winning bought the yacht for $90,000 last year and has spent about $270,000 restoring it" says the Sydney Morning Herald article.

"The yacht, built from huon pine, was stripped inside and its wooden mast was replaced with a longer, aluminium one. It has also been given new hydraulic steering gear, its water and fuel tanks were reconditioned and repairs made to the rudder. Nevertheless, the yacht, which took part in the inaugural Sydney to Hobart race in 1945, looks little different from what it looked like when it was built.

"He was a master boatbuilder and he didn't cut any corners," Mr Winning said.

"That is why she has lasted so long and will be here long after we have all gone."

Doesn't sound like someone cutting corners with a boat known to have suspect fastenings, does it?

[gonzo]

I've been knocked down and rolled on heavy and light boats. It is bad either way.

[capt vimes]

The Coroner's final findings were;

"It is clear from the evidence that "Winston Churchill" suffered
serious damage to her port side, probably at or near the chain plates, that
caused her to founder. According to the evidence I have heard from Mr.
Perdriau and Mr. Quilkey this damage was unrelated to what was
observed by Mr. Bascombe at the port bow.
Accordingly I find that "Winston Churchill" foundered when she
sustained damage to her port side when she was struck by a wave as
described by her surviving crew. As a result of her foundering the crew
were obliged to abandon her and take to her life rafts."

well... it could be my bad english but this statement just mentions that she took damage to her port side leaving the crew with no other option as to abandon ship...
i do think that anybody would doubt that... ;)
but it gives no explanation of the actual cause and damage which sank her in the end...

However, the main point was that there is no evidence that WC had weak fasteners or was otherwise in poor condition at the time of her loss, apart from the weaknesses of sheer age - and she was quite a heavily-built boat made by an expert in the field.

i never said that and never would!

PPS - By the way, no one is saying that the loss rate in the Hobart was good. What many of us say is that there is no evidence that the lightweights were demonstrably unsafe, and that this is backed up by the statistics of loss and severe damage.

i am completely with you....
i just threw that piece of information in because i read it somewhere... if i find this article again, i PM you...
and i would never say that heavy ships are unsafe in general - but neither are lightweights...

for me personally i prefer lighter ships with appropriate sailing performance to be able and sail a strom like beau describes because this is in perfect accordance to my own experiences... but that is just me... ;)

[gonzo]

I like light boats but not ultralights, they move too fast and are generaly uncomfortable. I mean on monohulls.

[Ramona]

"The yacht, built from huon pine, was stripped inside and its wooden mast was replaced with a longer, aluminium one. It has also been given new hydraulic steering gear, its water and fuel tanks were reconditioned and repairs made to the rudder. Nevertheless, the yacht, which took part in the inaugural Sydney to Hobart race in 1945, looks little different from what it looked like when it was built.

"He was a master boatbuilder and he didn't cut any corners," Mr Winning said.

"That is why she has lasted so long and will be here long after we have all gone."

Doesn't sound like someone cutting corners with a boat known to have suspect fastenings, does it?

For six months before Mr. Winning bought her WC was on a mooring here at Greenwell Point. I used to walk past her most days, the mooring about 80 metres from the bank. Either side of her were fin keeled yachts. During westerly gales and opposing tides I was always impressed how settled she seemed compared to the other yachts "sailing" about their moorings.

[BeauVrolyk]

For six months before Mr. Winning bought her WC was on a mooring here at Greenwell Point. I used to walk past her most days, the mooring about 80 metres from the bank. Either side of her were fin keeled yachts. During westerly gales and opposing tides I was always impressed how settled she seemed compared to the other yachts "sailing" about their moorings.

Ramona, I think that the way a boat sits at a mooring, or at anchor, and the way it behaves when moving through the water are really two entirely different things. I do agree, that long keel boats tend to sit at moorings more calmly than their fin keel brethren. However, that is due to a number of factors that have nothing to do with their ability to deal with really bad seas and wind. For example, the cut away fore foot of a fin keel allows the bow to be blown down wind quickly, letting the boat rotate around the keel; this increases the "sailing" at a mooring. But, I believe the primary effect is caused by most modern designs having the mast well forward of the keel. This, plus whatever freeboard there is at the bow, pushes the bow to the side in a puff and gets the boat sideways to the breeze a bit, she then accelerates because she's light, and sails up on her mooring. BTW, if you'd like to anchor or moor a modern boat and keep her from sailing around, just tie her up by the stern rather than the bow. Then, because the forces are in balance in a puff instead if out of balance, the boat will lay to the wind perfectly. It's the one and only reason I can think of for a double ended boat.

The reason that the modern design is stable hanging at anchor by the stern is for reasons quite similar to the reason that I prefer heading down wind rather than up in a storm. The forces are in balance, meaning that the center of effort and aerodynamic drag is well forward of the center of forward resistance. So, the boat naturally wants to go down wind. It requires very few steering inputs. Whereas, when a boat like this, or even an old full keep boat, is attempting to go up wind the breeze is always trying to blow the bow down and unless one keeps a pretty good sized sail up, it is hard to keep the boat headed up wind smoothly. One can usually reach or even tight reach without a lot of steering input, but in a serious blow it becomes hard to reach real stability while breeching wave crests when on the wind and being caught aback in a blow can be really really bad.

BV

[TeddyDiver]

Whereas, when a boat like this, or even an old full keep boat, is attempting to go up wind the breeze is always trying to blow the bow down and unless one keeps a pretty good sized sail up, it is hard to keep the boat headed up wind smoothly. One can usually reach or even tight reach without a lot of steering input, but in a serious blow it becomes hard to reach real stability while breeching wave crests when on the wind and being caught aback in a blow can be really really bad.

And to avoid such characteristics is why some of us prefer longkeeled gaff rigged ketch or yawl.. :)

[apex1]

And to avoid such characteristics is why some of us prefer longkeeled gaff rigged ketch or yawl.. :)

....or motoryachts?:cool:

[TeddyDiver]

Right.. :D

[BeauVrolyk]

And to avoid such characteristics is why some of us prefer longkeeled gaff rigged ketch or yawl.. :)

LOL - Yes, I used to think about how much nicer it was sailing about on the apx 100' Alden schooner I used to drive.... until I had to go out to the end of the 15' bowsprit to get the damned infernal outer jib down or until I had to round up a gaggle of folks to get both running backstays set during a gybe so we wouldn't loose the rig.... Then, it dawned on me that yacht designers weren't idiots and there was a reason that marconi mains and knockabout rigs took over.

Salee, the Alden schooner, was a lovely ship and still holds a special place in my heart because of her beauty. But she could be an evil woman to sail. Putting a reef into her main in a heavy sea, or even worse trying to take the mainsail down, was not a job for the faint hearted. The gaff, being a hollow spruce spar of about twenty feet would flail and thrash just above the forty foot boom. While we did our best with the lazy jacks, sheets and even what we called the lariat (we'd lasso the end of the gaff and tie it as tight as we could) I can certainly understand how a superb sailor like Tabarly was killed trying to reef in heavy weather.

I am on the cusp of buying an old gaff headed cutter right now, but I wouldn't be doing it if she wasn't just for fair weather sailing. I'll take a modern rig any day in a blow.

BV