Open boat capsize recovery demos

I have been asked to give some capsize recovery talks and demos at this years Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival which runs Sept 9-11

The first demo is at noon on Saturday and starts with me giving a 1/2hr talk onboard the old ferry "Victoria 5" on the theory of capsize recovery with videos (some are quite scary!) and photos explaining various techniques used on boats from Optimists to 23ft heavy open boats. Then Jamie Orr and Ben Fuller will be capsizing and then righting Jamie's 20ft Bolger designed Chebacco. Pumped out courtesy of the Maritime Center, so there may be time for one of you to do a capsize recovery as well.

Then on the Sunday I am doing a 'walk through" of the potentially capsizable open boats checking them out and suggesting any necessary modifications to make the boats safer. That is something I did a few years ago at Sail Oklahoma and proved very useful

So we hope to see some of you on the 10th. More here https://2016wbf.sched.org/event/7i5z...capsizing-demo

and there is now a list of boats on display at the festival here http://nwmaritime.org/2016-wooden-bo...ccepted-boats/

You will see that I am exhibiting both my 10ft 2 sheet ply Duo dinghy and also my 14ft Zeta trimaran, no Skoota 28 powercat this year - it's in Florida - so I will be in front of the Maritime Center if you want to discuss the demos.

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

 

Hope to see you there (if I can get my butt out of bed early enough to make the 2 hour drive to Port Townsend)

 

I am from the UK. Ben is flying over from Maine and Jamie is sailing down from Canada. All just to put on the demos for you....So see you in the front row!

RW

 

I may show up, sounds like a good time, and great information to be shared.

 

Excellent, hope to see you. Looks like it will be good weather for the festival

RW

 

Just so you know Richard, the only reason I ever miss a Woodenboat Festival is if I am too sick to go (2015), or some family obligation that I can't get out of (2008). My comment about getting out of bed was meant to be funny.

 

my apologies. I have no sense of humour when it comes to stability

RW

 

I hope to see you there on Saturday Richard. That will be the only day I can attend this year, thought I will be in the area on Friday, we may not make it to the show.

 

I commend you for presenting it.

For those of us who cannot attend, if you would post some of the training video material on this thread it would surely be appreciated.

 

I hope to get some video and I will have my talk online next week

One of the photos I am using in my introduction talk to the capsize recovery demo is the Guillemot seen in the Small Boats Monthly heading sequence (although the open "Viking" style boat would have done almost as well, neither crew wear PFDs and the boat has no built in buoyancy.) See here

http://www.woodenboat.com/

It's a scary photo of a dangerous boat. No buoyancy at all, the crew doesn't appear to be wearing a lifejacket. "Ah!" you say, "it won't capsize so what are you worrying about?"

Well look at the top mainsheet block, see the sheet lead? no swivel! So what are the chances of it running out freely in a sudden gust?

One problem with boats like this is that their crews get complacent, whereas racing dinghy crews are much more aware of the risks

Anyway, all that and more on Saturday and Sunday

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

 

Excellent presentation. Great demo. Here's some photos I took.
Going over:




Coming back up:

 

Great photos, thank you

I gave my capsize talks on both days to a very attentive and knowledgeable audience. The highlight of course was Jamie Orr, Ben Fuller and two seascouts capsizing Jamies Bolger Chebacco. Here is a video I took, plus comments below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fNc3XkzO_c

"I apologise for the poor quality, circumstances beyond my control. The video shows Jamie Orr's Bolger Chebacco "Wayward Lass" being capsized and righted. You can see that at 90deg the boat was easy to re-right and it came up almost empty of water. The agile righter got back on board without even getting his feet wet!

However it was a different story when the boat was inverted to 180degs. Although the crew got the boat up again unaided it took some time. And the boat was then completely awash. A 6000gal/hr pump on the RIB took about 20 minutes to pump it out.

As Jamie said "had it been for real and had I inverted it completely I would have died"

Nevertheless, a very good demonstration. It showed that even bigger boats can be crew righted, but you do need to think about adding flotation somewhere if you want to survive a capsize."

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

 

It was very a dramatic demo. I would have taken video but I just bought this camera (A Canon 70D) and I am still learning all the still pic functions. I don't even know how to turn on the video function yet. My old Canon doesn't have video at all so it's all new to me.

What you said about not getting his feet wet - a lady behind me said, "look at that, he didn't even lose his hat".

I just wanted to mention what you said in your presentation about sails preventing the boat from being righted. I had a Thistle class sailboat many years ago, and the only way it could be righted was to take down the mainsail which as you know is very hard to do when it's laying on it's side. Even standing on the board, which had 75 pounds of lead in it, would not get it back up.

Also you might want to add something about not getting caught under the sails when it capsizes. Many people have drowned that way. The two women in your presentation came very close to getting caught under the jib. We were always taught (when I was a kid learning to sail), if the boat is going and you can't stop it go over the windward side. It is the side where the board will be and It keeps you away from the sails.

But excellent presentation and demo.

 

Agreed, we were pleased with how it all went. We are already talking about how to do it next year so that more people get a good view. Its hard with a bigger boat in the confines of the marina. Even in Jamie's case he needed a minimum of 30ft (mastheight-hull-c'board) and he had the sail dropped slightly as the waterdepth is only 20ft

Not sure if it is still the case, but in the past no one could race a Cadet dinghy unless they could swim 20ft underwater just in case they were trapped under the sail

BTW for those who weren't there, the inflatable fenders weren't needed/used they were just in case.

Richard Woods

 

And get someone to tell the people in the kayaks an longboats to give you a break. They kept getting in the way.

I'm looking forward to next year.