Maxi Canter, Rambler, capsizes in Fastnet Race

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by Hussong, Aug 15, 2011.

  1. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Rambler

    From the Irish Times.com-more to the story: Read whole story here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0817/1224302580084.html

    Valentia Coast Guard calculations 'crucial' to rescue of five crew adrift
    'I just went into survival mode . . . there were four of us sleeping below deck' LORNA SIGGINS and LOUISE ROSEINGRAVE

    HOW YACHT WAS FOUND: THE CALCULATIONS of three Kerry-based Valentia Coast Guard radio operators were “crucial” in finding the Rambler 100 owner George David, his partner Wendy Touton and three fellow crew who were thrown off the yacht south of the Fastnet Rock on Monday night.

    Without that information, rescue agencies would have found it “almost impossible” to locate the group of five in the water in thick fog, according to Irish Coast Guard colleagues.

    Paying tribute to the information provided by Valentia Coast Guard, winch operator Ciarán McHugh on the Shannon Sikorsky helicopter described yesterday how Ms Touton, was in an advanced state of hypothermia when flown to Farranfore airport and taken by ambulance to Tralee General Hospital, Co Kerry.

    “She was drifting in and out of consciousness, her body temperature was way down and she couldn’t remember where she was,” Mr McHugh said.
    Mr McHugh and winchman Colm Hillary, both of whom are paramedics, administered oxygen and kept her stable. Ms Touton had been lifted on to the aircraft using a double-strap technique, developed after the 1979 Fastnet race in which 15 people died. The technique keeps potentially hypothermic victims in a foetal position to preserve body temperature.

    It has emerged that the Rambler 100 ’s emergency position indicating radio beacons did not activate immediately when the 100ft yacht capsized just before 6.30pm on Monday, three nautical miles south of Fastnet Rock. The beacons did not start transmitting until 4am yesterday.

    However, a weak signal from a personal radio beacon worn by one of the crew was relayed from Kinloss search and rescue in Scotland to the Irish Coast Guard’s Marine Rescue Co-Ordination Centre in Dublin and on to Valentia.

    “They were all a bit shocked but in very good spirits,” Mr Smith said. “They were cold and cramping but we wrapped them up and gave them hot tea once we got them on board. They were extremely lucky.”

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    Rambler floating again-click on image:
     

    Attached Files:

  2. CutOnce

    CutOnce Previous Member

  3. troy2000
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    troy2000 Senior Member

    Amen.
     
  4. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Rambler


    ====================
    You're welcome!
     
  5. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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  6. Doug Lord
    Joined: May 2009
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Rambler

    From Sail-World.com : (read whole story here- http://www.sail-world.com/USA/Rambler-crew-received-safety-training-at-LRSE/87483 )

    In the Rolex Fastnet Race, the crew of Rambler capsized and were subsequently rescued. The entire crew of twenty-one underwent advanced man overboard and safety training just prior to leaving Rhode Island for the Transatlantic Race and the subsequent Rolex Fastnet Race.

    The training consisted of a thorough inspection of safety equipment on shore as well as a five-hour training session out at sea. Experienced, licensed training professionals at Life raft and Survival Equipment (LRSE) of Tiverton, RI conducted all the training. Unfortunately, the training had to be put to use on August 15 th when the 100 ft. Rambler sailing yacht lost its keel in 15ft. waves and capsized immediately throwing all 21 crew members into the frigid water off the coast of Ireland. Fortunately, all 21 crewmembers survived.

    The training primarily involved a two-step process. The first step was on-shore inspection of PFD’s, tethers, personal locator beacons (PLB’s) and life rafts to assure that all the equipment was functioning properly. The second step was a five-hour offshore trip, which included a thorough review of abandon ship procedures, which emphasized the importance of forming a circle to 'stay warm, stay together and stay afloat'. The offshore drills also included inflating a life raft and conducting an exercise to recover a person overboard.

    A separate drill, which involved a one-day exercise in a pool, was conducted for crewmember Wendy Touton, which included in the water survival techniques and again emphasized the mantra of 'stay warm, stay together and stay afloat'.


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    Possibly relevant older thread: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/keels-keels-again-10410.html
     
  7. sharpii2
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    sharpii2 Senior Member

    Perhaps a "Super-Maxie" exceeds the limitations of scale, due to the old square/cube effect.

    It seems the bulb keels I have been hearing most about are the high aspect ratio fixed ones. And that seems to be mostly about poor engineering to keep the keel from intruding into the interior.

    Correct me if I'm wrong. With a canting ballast set up, the machinery to cant the strut takes up a considerable amount interior space. At least a tab must project past the pivot point for the machinery to act on.

    With the fixed high aspect bulb keel, the temptation is to just weld it to a mounting plate. Sometimes the weld fails; some times it is the hull where the plate is attached.

    The real problem with metal is it doesn't like concentrated bending loads. You may make it very strong and make it look like it doesn't move at all, but it does. This lesson was impressed on me when I working in a stamping plant. The four inch by four inch parallels bulged like they were make of rubber every time the press made a hit. The bulge was quite small, but still very noticeable.

    Perhaps keels of this sort should have a useful life span attached to them. After so much use, they must be replaced. But how many hours of smooth sailing equals one hour of rough going?

    The use of very high form stability hulls in addition to this type of keel only aggravates this problem, but is a must, if maximum performance is the goal.

    Add to that the need to have wasting near the attachment point to get optimal hydro-dynamics and you have a stress riser as well.

    I think somewhere along the line, you just have to quit. You have to say this type of vessel has a limited life span and dubious reliability, not to mention safety.

    Perhaps a size limit of some kind can be used, measured in either physical dimensions or kg/meters of righting moment.

    Maybe there is a reason certain technologies are banned from time to time. Maybe it isn't just a bunch of fuddy duddies refusing to move along with the times.
     
  8. peter radclyffe
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    peter radclyffe Senior Member

    i dont think we can discount the alternative,
    which is to design them properly
     
  9. sharpii2
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    sharpii2 Senior Member

    Certainly, if it can be done.

    For larger sizes, such as super-maxies, I suspect it cannot.

    The level of localized strength needed all but dictates metals, such as stainless steel, or metaloids, such as carbon fiber. Both are subject to work fatigue and will fail after so many bending cycles.

    If a super-maxi were a scaled up Open 60, which it most likely isn't, it would be be over 4.5 times as large. The difference in initial stability would be enormous, which it probably is anyway, though not to the same degree.

    This can quickly become a political as large crews of affluent sailors put to sea in boats they know have a high likely hood of structural failure and expect the tax payers, most of whom can't even afford dinghy, to pay for their rescue when their ridiculously expen$ive boats break.

    IIRC, canting ballast keels were introduced in long distance single handed races, which by then, had the lengths of the boats limited.

    These races occurred so far out to sea that often the only hope of rescue was by a fellow competitor. And there was only one life to lose.

    I stand by my original statement. Such keels should be limited to boats within a certain size range, say 60ft and 20ft beam.
     
  10. peter radclyffe
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    peter radclyffe Senior Member

    of course it can
     
  11. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  12. sharpii2
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    sharpii2 Senior Member

    If so, there must be a lot of dumb engineers, boat designers, and boat builders out there.

    If such keels can be successfully designed, please enlighten us on how.

    I suppose a less competitive canting keel can be designed that will meet the muster. The problem is that it will be continually beat by less safe keels. That is, as long as they don't fall off. It seems there is less than a one out of three chance of that happening, which means if there are two boats racing with unsafe keels, at least one will finish, leaving the safer boat in its wake.
     
  13. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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    Sharpii, canting keels are far more reliable than you seem to believe. Wild Oats has won the Sydney-Hobart 5 times using the same keel in most of those races(as far as I know). They are used exclusively in the toughest races in the world-the Volvo and Vendee by VOR 70's and Open 60's.
     
  14. CutOnce

    CutOnce Previous Member

    Well, putting a very high weight on the end of a long minimal low drag lever arm, and then subjecting it to cyclical loading and unloading of wildly varying frequencies (on primarily one axis) is a perfect recipe for crystalline metal fatigue.

    There are limits to every material, and it appears that canting keels push against those limits with alarming frequency. Failure is not so much a question of if, but when. All materials subject to repetitive stress loading will eventually fail. Plastic deformation becomes aplastic over time.

    The structure of metal changes over time with cyclical stress, and it eventually adopts a crystalline structure that becomes brittle and subject to fracture.

    --
    CutOnce
     

  15. sharpii2
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    sharpii2 Senior Member

    Absolutely.

    I'm talking about using the same technology on much larger vessels.

    A super-maxi may be 2.35 times the displacement of a Volvo 70. And, if the Volvo 70 beam is scaled up exactly, it will have 16 times the righting moment, where as the keel strut, if scaled up exactly, will be only eight times a strong, and maybe not even that.
     
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