Lost Keels-Request for Information

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by Doug Lord, Aug 18, 2011.

  1. Steve W
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    Steve W Senior Member

    Castaway, yeah thats it, thanks CT. So, how many of these 100ft motorsailer canters are there anyway, i count Scandia, Wild Oats, Alfa Romeo, Rambler. Can someone refresh my memory of the others please?
    Steve.
     
  2. powerabout
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    powerabout Senior Member

    I would also hazard a guess that the older a canter gets the higher the chances of dropping it will be due to mainatenence or lack of or chinese replacement bolts.

    Saying that I might be sailing on the old Nicorette shortly..
    golden rules always have jacket on when on deck
    dont go downstairs unless its tied to the dock
    sail in warm water in daylight
     
  3. BATAAN
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    BATAAN Senior Member

    I don't know about Chinese bolts but do know that my western made, $400 Harken "hi-load" halyard block exploded aloft at sea and was replaced with a $40, 3 ton capacity, logger's block from China thousands of miles ago, shows no wear and gives me no worries.
     
  4. timothy22
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    timothy22 Junior Member

  5. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Dont know how many cant keelers are around. When I visit major shipyards in Europe I see cant keelers stacked up like cordwood. Cariboni, a major supplier of keel gear, lists 25 or so yachts with their product .

    http://www.cariboni-italy.it/public/caritec/products/datasheets/CantingKeel.pdf
     
  6. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ====================
    Thanks ,Michael! Sorta changes the odds a little as speculated upon by some in this thread and another thread:

    The list has been moved to here: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/sa...iser-cruising-sailboats-39460.html#post482546
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2011
  7. BATAAN
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    BATAAN Senior Member

    4) "Numerous canting keel cruising boats".
    Name me one of these that has run aground hard in their "cruising", and then tell me how much it cost to fix so they could continue.
    Voyaging on a tense high tech machine as fast as humanly possible on deep water is not cruising by any stretch of the febrile and sponge-like imagination, but a form of competition, even if with oneself.
    A cruiser explores shoal interesting places and this type of boat has a severe allergy to shallow water.
    Canting keels are nothing new and LF Herreshoff shows one in COMMON SENSE OF YACHT DESIGN in 1946.
     
  8. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  9. Gary Baigent
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    Gary Baigent Senior Member

    No, CT249, it was Castaway Fiji, Enterprise was NZI, a Farr maxi. The thinking of CF's demise was that she grounded in Melbourne which weakened keel connections.
     
  10. CT 249
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    CT 249 Senior Member


    It doesn't change the odds if we compare like to like. No one said that all canters lose their keels. What appears to be very true is that a canter has a much higher chance of losing its keel than a conventional boat, and bringing in another few canters that haven't lost their keel doesn't change that when there are hundreds of thousands of conventional boats that don't lose their keel.

    The fact remains that WHEN COMPARED TO THE NUMBERS BUILT, canters are losing keels at a higher rate than conventional yachts.

    If we compare the full-size maxis of the IOR days, for example, we get 60+ boats built (I forgot the 80' Frers Javelin, the 80' Farr Hispania, the two Matadors, Buccaneer, the 79' S&S Tempest/Jader when I made the earlier list ) with two lost keels over almost 40 years. If we compare the full-size maxis of the canter days, we get 6 boats with two lost keels over about 6 years.

    There is no comparison in the failure rates, that of the canters is vastly higher. With some 10% of the boat number and 34 fewer years, the number of lost keels is the same!

    I also looked at sleds and 50s because there were leading-edge big boats of their day, but I didn't do any comparison against their canting rivals. I'm not going to try to count every sled and 50 ever built and also try to count every canter ever built, which is what you have to do to compare loss rates.

    As noted earlier, if we are going to try to bring in ALL canters to the database so we can work out the keel-loss rate, then by simple logic we also have to bring in ALL conventional boats. That includes the 20,000 registered PHRF boats, the thousands of IRC and HN and LYS boats, etc, plus all the club racers, one designs and cruisers. We are then talking many hundreds of thousands of yachts and a few dozen (maybe) lost conventional keels.

    If we include the database to include canting non-maxis like Magnitude, Genuine Risk etc, big cruisers or "over size" boats like Mari Cha, then we also have to include IOR-era non-canting non-maxi big boats such as:

    Emeraude (the 62 Frers)
    Cannonball (66' Frers)
    the 62' Frers Siska and Freight Train
    Club Med
    Vendredi Trieze
    Il Moro (66' Frers)
    Amazon (Stienman 75?)
    Brindabella 1 (Farr 65)
    Ceramco (Farr 66)
    All of the dozens of Swan 65s. 651s, 76s etc.
    Christine
    Disque D Or III
    Flyer 1
    Charles Hiedsick
    Kriter X
    Kriter XI
    Xargo
    Gauloises III
    Quasimodo
    Fazer Finland
    Phillips Innovator
    Tristar
    L Esprit D Equipe
    All of the Volvo 60s

    None of these appear to have lost a keel.

    BTW many, perhaps most, of the Cookson 50s now fix their keels. And there have been two lost keels out of the six (???) Schock 40s built, so bringing them into the list certainly doesn't change the stats to help the canters.

    PS - in the spirit of fairness, add the Fast 42 Moquini, which lost its conventional (but high aspect) keel off South Africa with the loss of all crew.

    Why risk anything when it comes to keels? Conventional ones almost always stay on!

    EDIT

    So far the list comprises 31 fixed keels that were lost. Even if we only include the 60,000 boats included in ISAF-listed empirical handicaps (LYS, ECHO, PHRF, HN, etc) plus the 9,000 (I think) in measured rating systems*, we can see that there are about 70,000 yachts racing in the world at a very conservative estimate.

    31 losses over a time span of around 25 years is not a very high loss rate. While we are dealing with vague figures, the overall fact is clear - keel losses are a very small problem with conventional racing yachts, affecting perhaps 1 boat in 2,250.

    Doug has listed 31 named canters, plus several classes. These include;

    Volvo 70s - there have been 22 entries in the Volvo, so let's assume that's roughly the number of such boats.




    "All Open 60s" - this is incorrect if one is speaking historically (and this is a historical collection of incidents) as there were many fixed keel Open 60s.

    The Open 60 class history shows clearly that not all Open 60s are canters, and to be honest I can't be bothered to check each boat to identify the number of canters, partly because the fixed keel boats were also extreme in their aspect ratio and I'm not trying to defend extremely high aspect ratio keels, whether fixed or canting.

    So one point is that we CANNOT count all Open 60s in any list of safe canters - many of then are not safe, many of them are not canters. The second point is that 44 Open 60s have been built (class official report to ISAF) and

    Lost/severely damaged canting keels in Open 60 include;

    2008 Artemis Transatlantic - leader Vincent Riou loses PRB after keel damage caused by hitting a shark.

    2008-09 Vendee

    1) Veolia Environment day 85 Vendee (canting fillet clearly visible at http://sailracewin.blogspot.com/2009/02/vendee-globe-veolia-environnements-lack.html) but the boat stayed upright. Boat had suffered keel damage before a rebuild - seehttp://yachtpals.com/roland-jourdain-4070
    2) VM Matériaux lost her keel bulb and capsized (info from http://www.vendee-family.com/cafe/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=261
    3) Marc Guillemot's Safran lost the keel but the boat stayed upright and finished.
    4) Temenos II sailed by Dominique Wavre retired "after sustaining damage to his keel." which "came loose shortly after a big broach." Canting keel.

    2006 Five Oceans - Hugo Boss loses canting keel and is abandoned.

    Skandia (Nick Moloney) was a canter according to SA but she kept upright when she lost her keel - something the 60s are good at, being so beamy, but that doesn't really apply to skinnier boats designed for different rules and purposes.

    2005 Vendee

    Ecover lost canting keel near finish, stayed upright. See http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...ping-home-after-major-keel-trauma-485360.html

    Same article noted that "Australia's Nick Maloney and France's Roland Jourdain are already out due to keel problems and Britain's Conrad Humphreys, in ninth place, has a damaged keel."

    Jourdain's keel did not fall off but suffered "irreparable damage" - see http://www.segel.de/oceanarchiv/vendee2004/2004-12-172.html

    Transat 2004 - Bernard Stamm lost keel


    So a quick check gives 10 lost or severely damaged keels in Open 60s, out of 44 boats built of which (at a guess) 35 are canters. That's about a 1 in 3 cchance of major keel problems, just like the supermaxis - lucky the Opens are fat enough to normally stay upright, and of course the fixed 60s were very far from perfect.

    Minis

    Some Mini experts reckon there are 200 canters and they don't seem to have many structural problems at that size range.

    Shock 40 - six built (if memory serves), two capsizes due to keel/bulb loss. Back to 1 in 3 chance of major failure again.

    numerous canting keel cruising boats(as described by the designer and/or builder), including:
    a. JP 54
    b. Cookson 50


    They are certainly NOT "numerous" compared to the hundreds of thousands of conventional fixed keel boats, and their record must be seen in that context. Cookson Boats list 10 Cookson 50s, of which at least some have fixed keels.

    So sure, the cruiser/racer canters don't seem to have significant problems, but from the figures given here we seem to be looking at only a small number of boats.


    * Yes, a fairly small number of boats are rated empirically and under measured systems, but they would be compensated for by the many, many thousands of active boats that do not have an ISAF-listed rating but still race- for example, the vast majority of Australian racing yachts are not rated under any system.
     
  11. CT 249
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    CT 249 Senior Member

    Mea culpa and thanks for the correction.

    Whether grounding is an acceptable cause of a fatal loss of keel is another matter. It probably didn't help the relatives of the lost crewman deal with his loss much.
     
  12. powerabout
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    powerabout Senior Member

    fixing the keels has got everything to do with rating and not risk of failing
     
  13. powerabout
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    powerabout Senior Member

    Nicorette
     
  14. SloopJohnB
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    SloopJohnB Junior Member


  15. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ==================
    Thanks SJB-it's in the list now. The links to these reported incidents are very important-I appreciate you including it!
    This thread is dealing with boats that have lost their keels not failures where the keel remains with the boat as it did with "Q". See this thread about "Q" http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/sa...g-keel-extraordinary-innovation-30806-11.html and another similar boat.
     
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