Multihull Capsize Prevention <split>

On topic?

Could a newbie who is trying to find some practical, reasonable and sensible advice raise a trembling arm above the inverted hull of his yet to be built trimaran and ask: "how could I have prevented this situation and what can I do to stay alive now that the worst has happened"?

Or, more simply, can we stay on topic?

So far, after 10 pages of 'commentary' all I have learned is that a bloke named Robert James wrote a potentially useful book....

...and a 'drogue' might be useful, or a 'parachute'....

Fortunately I have already read a bit about ofshore sailing and I know what these two animals are...but not how, why or when to use them....

As to 'reefing'....well, which is better: storm jib or roller reefed jib pulled almost right in? And mainsail reefing? Roller mast; roller boom; dutch type; lazy jacks????? Reef early or outrun the weather?

And yes, I wil read a lot more and go out with others before I attempt any serious ocean crossing myself.....like the celebrated Mr Rumsfeld, I don't know what it is that I don't know, so am seeking the advice and experience of those who have less 'known unknowns' in their kitbag than I do.

Despite the rhetoric, there have been kernels of sense popping out here and there. More please!

 

Mike, we all accept that any boat be it a mono, catamaran and trimaran can capsize given the right situation. When are you going to provide some solutions, All I have noticed is you put reports forward.

As to the trimaran in the round island race that was a racing situation and carrying a spinnaker and had released all spinnaker sheets, which would have created a lot of drag high up. As with a lot of cases sailed over, human error pushing to hard.

a possible solution, not thought of may have been to release the halyard, it may be a nesence to lose the halyard but compared to inverting the boat.

I read some where that Francis Joyon had a halyard system for the mainsail on one of the Idec boat.

Slightly of topic, in the late seventies I was trapped in a upturned trailer sailer in a winter series race So I may have had some experience in a upturned boat all be it half an hour to an hour. It was tied be righted by those on board, adults swinging out side the children inside jumping in unison inside to try and help.The boat could not be righted with out outside assistance as the mast had got stuck in the sea bed.

The possible reason for that capsize was unfamiliarity with that boat as my father could not launch our own boat due to weather condition for the ramps. One boat had a mast head rig, the other a 3/4 rig. There was four on board my self and my father and the owner and his son. My father died of hyperthermia as result being out side.

 

My apologies Buzzman we are just a touch sensitive when obvious crew failures like the 28' dragonfly trimaran that inverted in the round the island race get mentioned. If you have ever seen the series of photos the crew did nothing to ease sheets and basically allowed their boat to blow over while flying a masthead spinnaker. It was innapropriate sail selection for the conditions and a total lack of action when things that started to go pear shaped that caused that capsize luckily nobody was injured and I'm sure it was a much chastened skipper who received his righted boat back to sail again with a better understanding of the term seamanship in conjunction with racing.

In answer to your question a storm jib is preferable and it's good to fit an inner forestay on which to fly it the advantage is you keep the sail area low to the deck. Storm jibs also have a different cut and are made of a fabric that will survive a pounding as the wind gets up.

Parachute anchors are a fairly passive method of safety in high breaking seas they are set from the bow of a multihull and the objective is to hold the bows of the craft into the seastate without much drift, this link to the para anchor product should give you some useful information.

http://www.paraanchors.com.au/

Drogues have a lot of uses but are mainly used off the rear of the boat (with a bridle in quartering seas) to help steady the boat while travelling with the seastate they are useful for preventing pitchpoling which occurs when your boat travels too quickly down the face of a very steep wave and drives into the rear of the wave in front and trips over the immersed bows. They also have other uses such as being set off the windward float of a trimaran to ease the motion in a dangerous sea and reduce rotational pressures on the craft. It's also something that it's great to always have on hand because apart from anything else it could simply make your life more comfortable in rough conditions really every boat mono or multi should have one. It's important that your boat when constructed has suitable strong cleats to transfer the pressures into the boats structure safely.

http://www.seabrake.com/pages/productsFeatures.html

 

Thanks Corley for your use full post you just put up.

Buzzman thanks for pointing out the topic of the thread.

I have been trying get help for people like you and myself, to have more options if any one faces the situation. By getting solutions a well as the incident.

I feel it is better to be for armed as well as for warned.

Another book that may be of help for trimarans is Cathy Hawkins book return in the wake. It covered their first capsize and survival tactics afterwards, as well a storm she sailed through single handed with bull frog/Australia child.

 

Why? Isn't this level of paranoia one of the real problems discussing multihulls.

There's a fantastic series of photographs that show a Trimaran inverting. It's blown over in a squall carrying too much sail. It's a mistake you'll see many monohulls making too. But I was saying before that monohulls are more forgiving and this is a classic example. A ballasted monohull would simply spill the wind in this situation. If you look at the pictures I'd argue that it's the main sail that continues to drive the boat around after the spinnaker has spilled its wind.

 

Mike, may be the lack of paranoia as you put it, is because we are trying to put solutions in place to help others.

In terms of seamanship Cathy Hawkins put it quite well there is different forms as mono hulls is quite different from multihulls when replying to comments made by Peter Blake after the round Australia race in 1988. Both were very experienced in their own form of sailing but Peter Blake was possibly marginal in steinlager 1.

Ian Johnston and Cathy Hawkins with as much mile as Peter Blake had with mono hulls.

 

Well the problem is that we are talking about multihull capsize prevention not monohulls it makes me wonder whether you are simply flogging a dead horse for fun you have made some valid points and as I initially said I'm not infering multihulls are unable to capsize which they can and do. With proper care and a bit of preperation the situation where that boat capsized could have been avoided does that mean that multi sailors have to be more careful with sail selection well yes. In that case too they still had options they could have blown the spinnaker tack or as a last resort the spinnaker halyard better the sail ends up in the water under the boat than your whole boat upside down. It's a bit hard to tell from the pics whether they released the mainsheet but it doesn't look like they did. I actually think the boat did it's best to save them and gave them fair warning of the impending capsize. The capsize itself was quite slow and gave them the opportunity to get out from under the boat safely. So no fatalities and little damage except the skippers pride hope that he learnt something from the situation that will help him make better decisions next time.

 

This all boils down to 2 aspects. 1) design, or rather knowledge of the design and its limits and 2) seamanship, or experience, in the design one is sailing.

A rather simplistic overview, and no real bias (hopefully) in the basic difference between mono's and multihulls, here:-

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/sailboats/perils-edgy-design-offshore-38903-10.html#post476845

Reason for this is to highlight the rather obvious difference from a purely naval architectural point of view. Thus these differences lead directly to #1 and #2. From this one should explore all the aspects of sailing the vessel safely.

Referring to your comment about sail selection. Did the skipper know how much sail is required in certain wind/wave states?...did he know the effect of too much etc etc.

Knowing the simple basics of one hull type over another, and its limiting factors in varying conditions, should make the skipper make better choices. But how often is this information readily available and how often do multihull designers provide all this "what if" scenarios data anyway? ..relying on first hand experince with the boat..is fine, but also may be too late too!

The MCA in the UK require far more "what if scenarios" about such gusting conditions etc than other regulatory bodies do in the stability booklet.

All this leads to a simple "operating manual", as we call it in the commercial field (as noted previously). But I suspect that many multi skippers would feel patronised if they had to read such a manual. "Why is this book telling me what I already know..." attitude. Each multihull in fact every yacht behaves differently, as it is a reflection of the characteristics and principal dimensions. Yet in multihulls, it is somewhat exacerbated and thus, an operating manual should be a requirement of sorts, showing the 'safe' limits, regardless how experienced the skipper is or claims to be.

 

Thats a fair question I know Ian Farrier has an operator manual for his multihulls but not sure if Dragonfly release a similar document to cover their designs or it suggests wind speeds in which to reef.

I found this manual for the dragonfly 1000 it looks like the entry listed in the index on suggested wind speed general guidelines is missing so I gather they do make some suggestions for sail area vs wind speed.

http://www.dragonfly-trimarans.org/DF1000_Manual.pdf

The safety oriented approach is to reef your sails in accordance to potential gust strength not sustained average wind speeds.

 

thanks Corley and Ad Hoc for being objective about the dragon fly capsize.

like Corely says it looked like the boat did the best it could giving ample warning. Thanks Corley for pointing out the idea of the halyard idea. Another point may be is did the crew have a contingency plan for the spinnaker, it appears not. apart from wrong sail choice.

Another point is that it was a racing incident, would you be carrying a spinnaker in similar conditions if you were cruising, which I doubt.

 

Unfortuantley there are no absolutes, What you do and when you do it will depend on the size and design of the craft and the skill and ability of the crew and of course the sea state. What we’d all like is hard fast advice, probably the best advice is to slow the boat down and keep it slowed down with drogues.

Either sailing on, up to the point where the waves get dangerous or lying to a drogue from the bow and slowly drifting astern.

You can study the reports of success and failure but a smaller multihull certainly isn’t a good craft to lie ahull or heave to. It needs a high level of skill to operate as the weather builds, you need to adopt more active measures and deploy whatever paraphernalia you favor.

Above all be prepared, if you are lucky enogh to have a forecast event, get weight as low as possible. Reduce windage, get the roller furling genoa off and stowed below, rig your heavy weather sails. Get your drogues ready to deploy, set up the drogue harnesses and the chafe protection. And practice the use of these beforehand in more clement weather, something no-one seems to do.

A catamaran has been shown to be much less likely to invert with it's bows to windward/weather-ward than downwind. Lying to a drogue (parachute anchor) with bows into the oncoming seas has been a very successful survival tactic to date and is the reliable last resort if you have sea room.

But when you experience a very deep low as it moves onward there can be a very confused sea states that would be very hard to find a good tactic, large breaking cross waves and underlying swells confuse the situation a lot. In those situations you might want to keep actively helming and sailing the boat if you can to reduce wave interaction, being aware that this is probably the most dangerous part of the storm.

As waves build it would be advisable to tow a drogue ( series drogue) to reduce the risk of surging and pitch poling. Accurately assessing wave height is helpful to what tactic you adopt.

Keeping your engines running can be very useful for emergency maneuvering if you have the fuel reserves. But a lot of sailing cats don’t develop much bollard pull and the props can be ineffective.

But be aware that drogues can foul rudders and props and sometimes the boat towing a drogue can have it catch up or even overtake from wave action .

Once the wind has blown from the same direction for a while the sea gets more ordered and lying to a drogue from the bow (parachute anchor) is a very good survival option.

But if you haven't experienced heavy weather ( strong gale or above) in a small craft be aware you will have an awful time of it. You’ll be miserable, sick from motion and stress, and can be very careless. The more able crew you have the better it is for you and the vessel. Count on 1/3 of your crew even experienced hands being too ill to do anything useful

and your ability down to something like having the flu with some fear thrown in and standing in the back of a van engaging constant S bends dips and humps with a stereo wailing at high volume ! That's the reality of heavy weather and it's too easy to be arm chair experts in hindsight which makes it hard to assess what you'd actually be capable of doing.

 

Indeed. This should be the first course of action for any sailor in such conditions. But I am sure,for some....slowing down seems like an admission of failure, in what ever capacity one wishes to imagine. Although I must add, I have no hard evidence of this, apart from reports from friends and what I have witnessed myself.

Well said.

How much emergency training is done prior to going offshore, with all the crew and how often is the procedure repeated so it becomes second nature?

Just look at those working on offshore Oil rigs, the training they must go through to fly in the helicopters. If they can't escape from an upturned cabin in a set time..they can't fly to the rigs.

There is no substitute for repeated training of such an event. No matter how unrealistic it may seem.

The problem is to enforce this requires legislation. As soon as this occurs, there shall be the usual cry of fowl...interefernce...etc etc. Freedom, total freedom, has its consequences....are you willing to risk your life for the sake of your personal beliefs on freedom of choice?

 

It seems like upsideup have released a basic module that handles sheet release only. Something along those lines could be very helpful if caught out by a wind capsize situation.

http://www.oceandatasystem.com/?titre=upsideup-new-improvements-and-developments&mode=developpement-ods-upsideup&id=1089

 

Sorry I've caused confusion, guess you mean Richard Woods, the Richard I meant is another one and the same as CatBuilder was referring to as Apex1, I've added that in a PS to the post, which btw isn't relevant anymore as Cat's location info is now changed to "Unknown"

Cheers,
Angel

 

Another useful book would be Catamarans the guide to cruising sailors by Gregor Tarjan (it is listed on page 10 in the book store). It has a chapter on heavy weather survival tactics.

I was reading an article on the capsize of ocean emu one of their ideas/lessons mentioned was to have emergency lighting in the hulls to guide people from the bridge deck saloon. It could be a good idea combined with an escape hatch.

Mind you prevention is still the best cure to a capsize.