Seaworthiness

[Crag Cay]

Just some random observations:

Quote: "In my opinion the other great event of our time is the advent of the IMS handicapping system".

Related comment from a sailor on an IMS Farr 45 last summer: "Just as we were setting up for the gybe a 38 knot puff hit, and we executed one of the most spectacular crashes I have ever had the pleasure of being involved in. A mast-in-the-water, keel-out-of-the-water, carbon-spinnaker-pole-busting, all standing gybe-crash. So we blew the spinnaker halyard, took the kite down, put the jib up and still managed to win the race, from crash to recovery took no more than 1 ½ minutes."

Anyone who has seen the video of the racing from the 1989 Exuma Regatta will have seen me achieve the same thing in a 1973 vintage S&S thoroughbred. After the event we left in the company of 'Syrena', an Ericsson 37 and beat out into the trade winds on our way to San Salvador. After about 5 hours of crashing to windward, Syrena started to break up just forward of her mast as well and had to be run ashore on Long Island. I believe she's still there as a total loss.

In the same way the Contessa 32 was used to illustrate all the 'desirable' qualities in a small offshore boat in the aftermath of Fastnet '79, so the Doug Peterson OOD34 was used to represent everything that was 'undesirable'. You would have thought that after everything that was written, these boats would now only be found rotting away on their cradles in the back corner of some boatyard, both unloved and unwanted.

But they have done rather well in the last two OSTARS including the incredibly stormy 2005 'demolition derby' edition, where oddly, the boats in the smallest class (V) had the least retirements.

In fact one fellow competitor admitted at the weekend he had kept 'a book' on who would do well and who would be the 'no hopers'. Of those he thought would never get to Newport (RI) he highlighted a women racing a 35ft tri for the first time, an elderly gentleman in an Open 40 (?) and the OOD34 as definites for retirement. To his surprise, they all did well, whilst his 'top tips' all retired. But as he added; "after tens of thousands of offshore miles, all you really learn at sea is that you don't know everything".

*****
Is the Jameson photo really of the One tonner? I'm having trouble working out the scale of the thing. The've been so many "Jamesons' it's hard to keep track. I know Cudmore sunk the Davidson One Tonner. My first thoughts it was the IOR50?

[RHough]

Originally Posted by Guillermo

Randy,
Let's choose the Canary-UK trip, which is closer in time to check things. I think it would be better if you open a new thread for the follow up, instead of doing it here.
Cheers.

P.S.
Interesting also to read Alain Maignan's round the world non-stop sailing log, aboard his Jeanneau Sun Rise "Schuss".
http://alainmaignan.sportblog.fr/

Done

Weather Routing and Seaworthiness

I'll be more than happy to discuss the tools and methods that I use.

[RHough]

Originally Posted by Roly

Too right! Me for one.

Randy,I have a couple of questions if you will.......forgive the mundaness of them.

Sounds like a lot of work! For virtual time positioning what program will you use? How often will you download grib maps to convert to boat speed via your 80%
of polar. Will your program do this automatically and does it optimise your course to your polars?
Cheers

Reply Here: Link

[CT 249]

Crag, I'm pretty sure the pic was the one tonner - I'm looking at what I'm sure is a "before" pic at the moment. It was in Seahorse's 1987 Admirals Cup programme. There's also a pic of Turkish Delight/Itzanotherpurla/Red Stripe (big boat of the team) in conditions so similar I'm sure it's at the start of the same race.

[Guillermo]

Not directly related to seaworthiness in the sense it's being discussed here, but most interesting:

"The Volvo Race allows everything on the boat except for sealed safety equipment to be "stacked," i.e. moved to the windward side after a tack or gybe. That adds dramatically to the brutality of sailing a VOR 70. A routine tack or a gybe becomes a 45-minute endurance event involving the entire crew in preparing for and executing the maneuver, and then restacking the boat so that the thousands of pounds of food, sails, tools, personal gear, and spares are moved to the new windward side.
The boats are unpainted pitch-black carbon below making it hard to see without a flashlight even when it is daylight on deck. The boats are nearly always wet on deck and below, and because the boats don't have a bilge or sump, there is almost always a sheet of water sloshing around. The boats are required to carry a heater but the heaters seldom survive the pervasive water and so in the Southern Ocean or North Atlantic the boats are bone-chillingly cold. The food is a dreary repetition of freeze-dried dinners, one every eight hours.
On ABN Amro One, we had enough food, but the combination of being cold much of the time and not eating enough due to the unappetizing food causes most crewmembers to lose about 20 or more pounds over the course of the race. Thegalley has one insulated bowl with a lid that is set into the countertop, and two gimbaled burners each with a kettle. "Cooking" involves dumping a plastic bag of powder into the bowl and then dumping two kettles of boiling water on top. A quick stir, wait 15 minutes, and the salty-brown slurry is ready to eat."

More at: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ne...vor/index1.asp

[bobothehobo]

Originally Posted by Guillermo

Not directly related to seaworthiness in the sense it's being discussed here, but most interesting:

"The Volvo Race allows everything on the boat except for sealed safety equipment to be "stacked," i.e. moved to the windward side after a tack or gybe. That adds dramatically to the brutality of sailing a VOR 70. A routine tack or a gybe becomes a 45-minute endurance event involving the entire crew in preparing for and executing the maneuver, and then restacking the boat so that the thousands of pounds of food, sails, tools, personal gear, and spares are moved to the new windward side.
The boats are unpainted pitch-black carbon below making it hard to see without a flashlight even when it is daylight on deck. The boats are nearly always wet on deck and below, and because the boats don't have a bilge or sump, there is almost always a sheet of water sloshing around. The boats are required to carry a heater but the heaters seldom survive the pervasive water and so in the Southern Ocean or North Atlantic the boats are bone-chillingly cold. The food is a dreary repetition of freeze-dried dinners, one every eight hours.
On ABN Amro One, we had enough food, but the combination of being cold much of the time and not eating enough due to the unappetizing food causes most crewmembers to lose about 20 or more pounds over the course of the race. Thegalley has one insulated bowl with a lid that is set into the countertop, and two gimbaled burners each with a kettle. "Cooking" involves dumping a plastic bag of powder into the bowl and then dumping two kettles of boiling water on top. A quick stir, wait 15 minutes, and the salty-brown slurry is ready to eat."

More at: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ne...vor/index1.asp

Ok, Guillermo, they look something like this first one:
And yours, is what, maybe this second picture???

Do you not see that you are comparing diffrerent horses designed for specific courses

[Guillermo]

Of course I'm not comparing them! Banjers are much more sexy!
Look at her: Isn't she pretty...? Has she not beautiful lines...? Not like that kind of aggressive volvo-penis exploding out of the water....!
Oh my god, that poop, that poop....!

Cheers.

[CT 249]

Originally Posted by charmc

"I've come to believe that we have passed two great turning points relating toYacht Design, in recent years, both of which have been under-recognized and I would like to put in my two cents to correct that omission.

The first is the publication of this book, Seaworthiness, by C.A. Marchaj. Written partly in an attempt to sort out the 1979 Fastnet Race disaster, it is an effort to scientifically determine what constitutes a seaworthy yacht, one that has the maximum chance of surviving an offshore gale. And what do you suppose it says? It says, and in my opinion scientifically proves, that those old fuddy-duddies of decades past were right, and what you want for optimum offshore safety is deep ballast, long keels, attached rudders, V-shaped sections, non-planing hull shapes, and guess what else? A fair amount of weight in the rig. And the lighter you make the displacement, the more careful you have to be to keep the ballast deep, and the beam narrow, like the pre-IOR light displacement boats which first started the light-displacement revolution. I think every yacht designer and every race organizer and every magazine design editor should read this book--This is progress!


Number of people killed in the Fastnet and Hobart aboard boats with deep ballast, skeg-hung or keel-hung rudders, vee-shaped sections, heavy rigs and non-planing hull shapes - at least 6.

Number of people killed in the Fastnet and Hobart aboard boats with spade rudders, flat sections, light rigs and surfing/planing sections - about 6.

MOST boats in the Hobart and Fastnet were closer to the light fin keel type than the heavy type, yet they killed fewer people proportionate to their numbers. So why the hell is there this concentration on boats that (in reality) kill a smaller proportion of people?

Whether you can "scientifically prove" something that is not supported by real-world experience seems a bit doubtful. The number of "old style" boats in the Hobart '98 and Fastnet '79 (the two best-studied offshore racing disasters) was very small and yet they contributed a very high proportion of casualties. Given that fact, singling out lightweights for their poor inversion characteristics could possibly seem to be like a witch hunt. Surely a scientific attempt to isolate the problem would NOT have centred on a boat (Nich 303) that caused no more deaths than a classic cruiser (Ohlson 35)?

I know I'm pushed towards extremism on this point........I may be overstating the case. Still, all the concern over boats that didn't kill more people than heavier boats seems to leave room to cast doubt on the motivation of the studies. In hard cold truth, out there in the ocean when we had lots of boats in the same area going the same way, the lightweights didn't kill more people - and having looked at some aspects in detail I cannot see that the usual excuses (like "all the lightweights needed rescuing or retired") apply. In the last bad Hobart, for example, the % of "cruising style" boats that pulled for shelter or retired was about as high, or higher, as with the racing machines.




In my opinion the other great event of our time is the advent of the IMS handicapping system. From the earliest days of yacht racing, designers have struggled to beat the various handicapping rules. In many cases the success of a design office has been completely based on their ability to beat whatever rule was in place at the time, and sometimes when a loophole they were exploiting was closed, those offices closed. Every rule was an effort toward objectivity, but every rule ended up encouraging a certain type of boat, often an unhealthy one. And to make matters worse, cruising boats have always imitated contemporary racing boats because yachtsmen are victims of style-consciousness like everybody else, and racing boats are assumed to be fast, even when in reality they were only designed to be fast for their rating. But with the IMS we have finally broken the objectivity barrier that has eluded us for the entire prior history of yachting. The rule seems to do an excellent job of rating boats of all types in a fair manner, and this seems to be born out by the race results, in which we see Concordia Yawls and Hinkleys and other boats more typical of traditional offshore yacht types, winning races and doing well.


Funny thing was that boats like the Finnisterre type Sunstone and the pre IOR S&S boats like Clarionet and Carina were enormously successful under IOR even late in the day. IOR allowed well-sailed older boats to do well, it's just that most older boats weren't sailed well and their sailors liked to blame the rule rather than look at themselves.



Still I don't think the full implications of the IMS are well understood. When I see a boat billed as "an IMS racer" in the magazines it usually looks like an old IOR racer, smoothed up and moderated perhaps, but still basically expensive, uncomfortable, difficult to sail, and not well suited to offshore storm conditions. To me, an IMS racer would be something quite different. She would be designed to keep sailing in the worst possible conditions with the least strain on her crew, partly because this is inherently desirable and partly because there are races to be won when the competition has retired or ceased to function effectively." Address by Daniel MacNaughton, brother of Tom, MacNaughton Associates


For the sake of argument, I think it is essential to eliminate the idiots who go underprepared, but to recognize that there is a major difference between a crack racing crew, which will typically include professionals who do little but race and work out, with their expenses paid for by sponsors, and a cruising crew, which will be much smaller, and composed of people who must live in the real world when they are not sailing. They will be skilled in seamanship, but probably not as physically fit as the pros. On a scale of 10, the average overall rating (seamanship and fitness) of an offshore racing crew will be 8.5 - 9.5. For a cruising crew, it may be 7.5-8.5. That does not make such a crew a bunch of unprepared fools. It means what I said, they are people who live in the real world when they are not cruising offshore.


Sounds good to me. Some people can handle some boats, and vice versa. To use an analogy - a top class crew on a 49er can sail fast and almost flawlessly in conditions a typical Snipe or Enterprise crew may not be able to handle at all. Why use the same criteria of seaworthiness for both crews?

PS no disrespect to cruising crews but few are used to racing boats at their limit.


Final thought: I recognize that discussion tends to sound black and white . There are not 2 types of sailing hulls, heavy and light. There are many good designs which attempt to realize the best of the 2 extremes. My point is that a seaworthy cruiser design must factor in the possibility of being sailed shorthanded. Everyone will have a preference, and there is ample data to support arguments on both sides.

WELL SAID!!!

IMS certainly was not a cure-all. The last IMS boats were about as bad as the worst IOR boats.

[hiracer]

Originally Posted by RHough

"Cruisers are hacks." (Bitch at Robert Perry not me.)

Isn't this the crux of the matter?

A chain in only as strong as its weakest link. With a lightweight cruising design, that weakest link is the crew--always.

Designing a boat that responds to storm conditions only if the crew is up to the task is inherently unsafe when you look at the reality of cruisers.

And injury, illness, or broken equipment can reduce the most competent cruising couple to hack status without warning.

The whole concept of lightweight boat design involves taking a concept intended for racing venues and then transfering it into a completely different venue. It works only so long as you ignore the reality of the typical cruising couple.

* * *

Further, analyzing the survivability of boats during racing events should not be used to draw conclusions about cruising designs. The most important factor, captian and crew, is complete different in the cruising context, thereby nullifying any conclusions about boat design uncovered in a racing context.

As a matter of logic, a professional captian and crew may be able to nurse a bad design through a storm, while the typical cruising couple will have a greater propensity to fail miserably.

[hiracer]

Moreover, a racing event lasts how long and involves a crew number of how many? And a cruise lasts how long and involves a crew number of how few?

As a matter of simple statistics, the odds of an injury, illness, or equipment failure are much higher on a cruise--the point of a near certainty. Not insignificantly, the effects of these problems are magnified greatly by the smaller number on board. The cruising design must reflect this reality or it's not seaworthy.

At rock bottom, lightweight design is premised on a bias in favor of best case scenario, while the better cruising designs are premised on a bias of worst case scenario.

Which is not so say that all heavy designs are good. That simply is not the case. Bad design is bad design, even if its heavy. But skinny fin keel, canoe body, lightweight designs presents larger potential problems to the typical cruising couple precisely at the time when they will need the most help from the boat.

[KevlarPirate]

CT: My quote “ Is it unfair that I may be smarter than you “
was not to imply me personally, but instead people in general. Retro, being superior, more fits this image, why don’t you go after him instead. I only defended the right of wealthy people to enjoy folly. You admit it was rhetorical, yet you scold me again.

I also said I have guys on board my own boat who (I implied) are smarter than myself and (I implied) more successful. You did not recognize my humility, fine, still I fully stand behind post 689

Funny that people have no problem accepting a superior athlete has the luck of the genes. So why can’t wealthy (likely smarter) people enjoy folly, who is to say that either (brains or brawn) is not fair to the rest.


My statements, which have attracted so much fire, was also in defense of, and to counter the attacks of a post saying; a Naval Architect ,having mastered the physics and supporting math, will come up to speed very quickly on someone else’s problem which he may be NEW to. This is very true and working in high science, I see it regularly.

As for Retro; you have a complex, fragile model of survival, which all data coming in must be either overweighed or discounted or dismissed to support your model, an example of highly opinionated people being biased.

And yes, CT, I made essentially the same statement to someone on another board who also has a lightweight fat boat he champions, yet I find his boat, with the “brilliant engineering” he claims has “known” problems with the keels falling off and people drowning, because the 6 mm hull thickness was not strong enough to keep the keel washers from shearing through.

Good engineering requires safety margins to deal with dynamic systems and the impulsive forces encountered. These margins are DELIBERATELY reduced (not a mistake or a QC thing) when something more important to the builder (speed ie. sales) takes over; consequences are guaranteed to arise.

My positions on what I call a superior offshore boat is based mostly on the physics. Newton’s 2nd law for one. Physics was not something I invented to support my conclusions. Physics put me where I ended.

Mass and moment of inertia will always make a boat more seaworthy (waves vs.: boat) and will prove value when (not if) the boat encounters severe weather. Retro of course doesn’t have to care about this.
The authors of the books I mentioned, although not physicists, are plenty technical and also support this. You may call it bias? Just facts backed by scientific data, not a heap of high sigma anecdotes.
And yes, it gets in the way of the enthusiastic support for many speedy boat designs. Probably just as tough a pill to swallow as my “wealthy people” statement.

This physics thing creates my preference for heavier, not beamy, deep fin keel with not too high aspect or too thin (stall), with a tall, stout rig Moment of inertia). This boat will have a high static curve, good sea motion and upwind performance. Oversized hardware and lots of winches, and a good galley to keep me full of food. The best of all worlds.

As for “how a boat is sailed”, I said these boats (like mine) had small IOR rudders, was one issue easily fixed. Many Cal 40’s, as have other newer boats I know of did rudder upgrades. Express 37’s, SC’s

The “one ton” picture I think has more issues. There maybe no simple fixes there. It looks to me to be a design issue, and it plays into the physics, for one, low moment of inertia. Extremely quick response to input forces (Newtons law + CSF) this case causing rudder and perhaps keel ventilation.

Also because of high buoyancy in the beam, the hull rotated through an axis higher and to leeward “port side (CB) shifted” therefore lifting the lightweight keel up and out.

I did the same thing on my 41 and we kept on sailing; 4 seconds it was over ,hull never lifted out. High wind, big beam on wave, no scrambling to ease sheets.

When you talk of people not liking my boat type; most all those cases lead to small IOR rudders and lots of “down wind” (sail flying) scenarios (too much sail vs. hydrodynamic control)
Leftover racing stories from the past.

My point was with a rudder upgrade (now with the IOR ended), and reasonable SA downwind, these boats make very seaworthy cruisers. The peak of the curve in performance, safety and comfort as a package. Not a teacup that can be kicked like a football.
Any newer boat of this design is fine by me , they are also out there too. And will be way better than a clunker at one end and that picture at the other.
I think any other dislikes relate to the boat being a displacement hull and not being able to plane and therefore not being fun and wild. Not a valid complaint if this thread is about “seaworthiness”.

The boat in the pic. could have been de-powered more and had not crashed and that would have made for better control and more closure to a cruising platform, but still you are held hostage to low mass and low moment of inertia. In a sentence why go out there if you are going to get beat up?

It is constantly proven small statistical samples
are inconclusive. Empirical data from races are high sigma.
This fact is not overcome by all the empirical data you present.
“So why the hell is there this concentration on boats that in reality kill a smaller number of people”

The reason is that there are laws of physics that stand between the low sampling rate conclusion and a different conclusion when more data is added. People suspect this and need more data because the data so far is still lacking in quality and quantity and is suspect. The data can also be very squewed.

Much data involves cruisers which many are hacks as Retro says in the same sampling pool with trained crews on race boats.

A Westsail which got into trouble, or dozens of accounts of other boats in trouble have all been in different situations. Still not enough of those samples share enough controlled parameters to make for valid conclusions.
Each patch of water is different from the next. You may be lucky to be in the good ones. It only takes one bad patch to mess you up.

Data leading to statistical significance to validate theory is developed in a controlled environment where parameters are varied typically one at a time.

When many variables are happening together in a dynamic situation, It then takes huge sampling to draw conclusions. Huge , that is the point!

The Westsail I gave as an example was near enough to show reasonable conclusion because there was a reasonably controlled environment (beam on sea) with the boat’s trim stabilized, not much variation.

If the wave was big enough however to roll the boat, removing the mast, lowering the moment of inertia and subsequent rolls become frequent, then you are in highly dynamic (changing) environment beyond the boats limits to resist.
The boat is very capable of being rolled on a big enough wave. It is only 32 ft.

I am talking of (probability of roll vs: wave size and inversion time) comparing one design to the next.

One conclusion you can make is that small, lightweight craft and their crew get punished way more.
And that wide and lightweight are downright dangerous.

Consistent with my earlier statement. If the boat and crew are broken and the occupants have to retreat, how will the boat act when lying ahull, which is what it will do unattended. That is my first criteria for seaworthiness.
One must establish a first criteria and that is mine. It is a very simple one.

In comparison, look at Retros:


If the computer models that create the routing are accurate
and not conflicting.
If the hopefully accurate model has enough weather data inputs to reliably predict and interpolation and extrapolation
are at an absolute minimum.
If you have infallible electronics, power source ,antenna and reception.
If your boat is in operating condition and nothing breaks to slow you or disable it.
If you remain in fully functioning physical condition.
If you never make judgment mistakes.
if you have good visibility.
If your charts are absolutely accurate. (some are off by 8 miles)
If your compass, engine ,fuel, injectors, water pump, alternator, solar cells etc. are perfect. Need I go on.

Essentially if you and your boat start perfect and absolutely nothing goes wrong, you will be OK.

Retro good luck , I admire your enthusiasm and hope your are blessed to never have to go through a real storm. These weather models being sold may be relying heavily on interpolation and extrapolations, I would not trust them alone. Just the Typhoon run to NZ every year guarantees storms.
Also your faith in your capabilities seems past what experience teaches us. New boats have problems too, that is why they have warranty periods. New rigging breaks, I have been there, including rudder and steering (on new IMS boats)
I am sure you can rationalize this butsave your strength, you will need it.

I have to say (the real truth and confession) that having raced into storms, I am drawn to them. I want a boat which will do well in tough conditions.


BTW, CT, the post you sent, the owner on the 39 ft. had removed structural stuff to open her up forward, I have more on that story. The issue is not the “style” here. Nor was it a deliberate reduction in weight, which would test the strength of materials as in the example I gave with the keel bolts (big difference!). These boats were well built, 200+ copies, many cruising. I don’t know much of the 37, few built. Incredible story you sent!

My 46, at 32000lb dry, over double the 37’s weight, I don’t know what you mean by it “being lighter by a fraction”, Not even in the same solar system! And at 13,000 more than the 39, is very comfortable and very soundly built and surveyed. Not that it is indestructable, you can put one on the rocks, someone did (Miami to Nassau, SORC 1974) Great Issac light Northeast rocks.
One thing I was wrong about with the 46 was that I thought she would be slow in light air, very much the opposite.
Let’s see if a Pogo will be sailing in 34 years?

[hiracer]

Originally Posted by KevlarPirate

So why can’t wealthy (likely smarter) people enjoy folly, who is to say that either (brains or brawn) is not fair to the rest.

1. Ask anybody in the estate planning field, you will learn that most wealth in the U.S. is inherited, not made. For every Bill Gates, there will ultimately be 20 to 1,000 progeny resting on his coattails.

2. The really smart people I have known have figured out that wealth is a false god, and you almost never see them on TV or in the papers.

[Crag Cay]

As we are talking statistics and reports of incidents, it's perhaps worth noting that the UK Government 'Information Commissioner' has now published his findings into the Marine Accident Investigation Branch's (MAIB) report in 2005 that was so critical of safety in the leisure sailing world.

He has concluded that the report was entirely flawed as the MIAB keeps no records of leisure accidents, had conducted no detailed analysis of leisure incidents and could not provide any evidence in support of its claims because it did not have any.

Its motivation in publishing a report claiming over 1000 incidents and 24 deaths in one year was in order to portray boating as a dangerous activity that should be more heavily regulated, with the MIAB's parent body (The MCA) being funded to administer that regulation.

It would seem that MIAB moles have infiltrated this forum to advance such an agenda, equipped with equally flimsy statistical evidence of their being a real, measurable problem with boats based on modern lightweight, high ballast ratio, deep keel yachts.

[KevlarPirate]

Wealth is no false God.
It is made from brains and it moves society forward.
That is why we live vastly better than our ancestors.
Think about it next time you go to the doctor and ask him to make you better.
I thought this post was on Seaworthiness of boats. Is somthing else going on here?

[hiracer]

Originally Posted by Crag Cay

It would seem that MIAB moles have infiltrated this forum to advance such an agenda, equipped with equally flimsy statistical evidence of their being a real, measurable problem with boats based on modern lightweight, high ballast ratio, deep keel yachts.

That's a straw argument. The statistics you require are not offered because they don't exist. Nobody is keeping track of sailboat designs involved in cruising mishaps.