Vendee Globe 2012

what a shame that the only 2 advertised on their homepage were the first 2 dropping out of the race... safran and group bel.
http://www.vplp.fr/flash/index_vplp-3.html

 

And now PRB's damaged. Seems the faster you go the harder you hit things!

 

Virbac-PaprecIII is Verdier designed I'm pretty sure-uses the same curved lifting daggerboards as Saffron.

 

Way too much boat carnage. They really could do a lot better with the two big items.

Item 1:

I have a hard time blaming those that crashed into fishing boats when grabbing a few winks. When a race like this is organized, common sense tells you that they will have to sleep multiple times along the way. I am not sure that the organizers do not need to be challenged to do more. Heck, use of UAV technology keep track of the fishing boats along with a warning system to wake them up in time could be considered.

Item 2:

Keel damage. I know it is not popular, but many classes of fast ocean going boat may need to deal with the floating junk issue in a more positive (i.e. safer for the crew) fashion. A crippled boat on the high seas is just dangerous. Canting keels are probably among the most vulnerable for a number of reasons.

I did a lot of my early sailing in a man-made reservoir with lots of tree stumps below the surface. Centerboards and kick up rudders were real popular.

Any boat can be designed with "kick up on impact" boards. You just install a hinge, possibly a shear pin, and make allowance for it to swing up. You really do not even need a slot for it to swing up into, just make "full up" as folded up against the bottom of the boat.

Even with a pivot, a solid impact up high impact on a lead keel can result in excessive hinge loads. Keel rake of say 30 degrees goes a long way to address this.

Few will implement anything like the above if they are not forced to due to the small increase in hydro drag. If forced to, all would do it and it would not be a big deal.

Is it really that hard to ask the boat designers if they can do better and then mandate some form of solution.

The above was thrown together off of the top of my head. I may not have the right answers to the problems. However, the problems do exist as do better solutions than what we have now.

 

PRB damage

Outrigger and hull damage:
click-

 

Goodness, the size of that carbon component just looks like asking for trouble.

Carbon is stiff and will fail under impact conditions quicker than something more flexible.

If a carbon item is not much bigger than a thumb, it needs to be in a location protected from any significant impacts.

 

You can see the crew danger presented by filement carbon rigging. Many crew have suffer injury from loose " needles " of carbon. Nasty stuff. When I see Carbon stantions proposed my eyes roll.

Not much you can do about collisions other than slow down. Even an alert, fully crewed
boat cant see things at night or in restricted visabily like bright sun.

Very much thought is put into the design and safety of those boats. They are safe and seaworthy.

 

vincent riou retired from the race:
"Even though he thought he was going to be able to fix the hull of his boat, Vincent Riou found himself unable to find a solution regarding the shroud underneath his outrigger. It was therefore just not possible to consider sailing in the Southern Ocean and Vincent Riou's decision came this morning: He's surrendering in this 2012 Vendée Globe and retiring from the race."

more here:
http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news/article/4443/vincent-riou-retires-from-the-race.html

@flados:

how should the race directory track down fishing vessels in the open ocean if they are not required to use AIS or any other surveillance system?
and i do not think that the fishers will agree on anything which reports there position constantly...
why?
no more longer fishing in restricted areas, which is done on a regular basis!

 

Some fisherman are poor and their craft are very basic. Best to avoid routing the race inshore along coasts.

One of the racing boats in th last race tested a very advanced collision avoidance system . Military gear, infrared I believe, to see semi submerged objects

Seems it didnt do the job because Ive not heard anything about it.

 

Oh and if youre a small craft sailor, AIS is a winner. I see this new combo VHF AIS is now on the market. No reason not to upgrade.

http://www.standardhorizon.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&DivisionID=3&ProdCatID=83&ProdID=1560

 

Aren't there robo/drone boats with collision avoidance systems? My feeling is that's not far off.
http://www.harborwingtech.com/
https://www.rsmas.miami.edu/users/prynne/AUV_files/MTS.pdf
http://www.microtransat.org/
http://www.roboat.at/en/home/
http://www.sailbot.org/
Until that's perfected my feeling is doublehanded races are more responsible than singlehanded.

 

it was riou himself who experimented with a sonar collision avoidance system before the race...
he learned that they were unreliable, heavy and power consuming and thus not suitable for a racing yacht...
in terms of weight, we talk here of half the weight of the whole boat!

we are not talking robotic sailing boats here, where weight is a non issue, also those boats go at a snails pace and not with 20+ knots...

read this:
"“We did some research with an institute in France on a sonar system but it is not practical because it is half the weight of the whole boat and it uses lots of power,” he said. “It needs a lot of energy and the boat is very fast and so to use a sonar to predict 200m ahead of the boat when you are travelling at 20 knots you need a very powerful system and it’s impossible to find one that is not too heavy. You have to be realistic these kind of devices are so impractical we are not going to install them and so we can’t even consider them. It’s too heavy and it’s uses too much power.”"
from:
http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news/...-damaged-after-collision-with-metal-buoy.html

 

That's for submerged objects. A system to avoid hitting objects that project above the surface, such as fishing boats or large buoys, would not be so heavy. Most of the boats in SailBot and MicroTransat are two meters long. I don't know that much about it, but I would imagine radar locates suspect points, then range-finding lasers are trained on it and the combined data is analyzed by an on-board computer.

 

Vendee

Alain Thebault of Team Hydroptere answered a question in a recent interview about the sonar system they were rumored to have under development. He said it is still not working satisfactorily. The idea was to identify an object just below the surface to the depth of the foils in time for them to avoid it while flying.

 

there is a pretty old, well developed system already on the market - its called RADAR...