Why I'm Following Sven Yrvind

Bow facing right

Freeboard Comparison

The winner of the 1979 Mini Transat, 85 cm at the bow, 60 cm at the stern

The 1 Ton Windsurfer: 1.05 meters at the bow with 1 crew member and little load

(The length is different but I have drawn it the same)

 

So here is

(Copy, paste, automatic translation):

Capsize of the Yacht "Zinzolin"

"So here is the whole story as I experienced it.
Benoit had another vision of it, not much more pleasant, from outside Zinzolin.

We are sailing port tack on Zinzolin this Thursday, January 29, 2015, heading 230, about 1000 miles from Madeira and 1700 from Martinique.

Since leaving on Saturday 24th from Quinta do Lorde the wind has been stronger than predicted by the weather files, most of the time around 30 knots instead of the 15 announced.

This Transquadra is for Benoit and me a way to end our story with the 'Mini Transat', a race for which we both failed to qualify, for me officially because of a torn ankle ligament during my 'qualification' in June 2003, 3 months before the start of the race, but especially because I did not yet feel ready to set off alone at sea for 3 weeks on a 6.50m boat.

Zinzolin, 2m longer than a 'Mini' but in all respects similar, allows us to close a loop left open for 10 years. I, like Benoit, continued to race in Mini, participated in Class40 in the Transat Quebec - Saint Malo 2012, but I was a crew member on this race and I was left with a taste of unfinished business.

This Thursday the wind is around 30/35 knots on average, reaching nearly 40 knots in the squalls. The sea is getting rough, the swell is reaching 5 meters. Above all, it is crossed, a main swell coming from the NE crossing a train coming from the SE. Sometimes adding up, some waves are becoming really impressive and a few
breaking waves have already shaken me and pushed me to my helm station. However, nothing that we have not already experienced before and several times in Mini.

Around 6 p.m., I ask Benoit to take over for me, telling him to tie himself up well so as not to risk being ejected from the cockpit. Under jib poled to windward and mainsail with two reefs, the boat, ideally balanced and maneuverable, descends the swell at 150 degrees from the wind with a speed of about 10 knots. It is not a question of performance at this point but rather of preserving the boat, its sails and its mast, before putting on more coal once the gale has passed. We have moved up from 50th to 30th place in 5 days and are hopeful of doing even better in the next 10 days.

For the first time since the start, with the arrival of a squall, I close the companionway hatch, an element that I will later take as the source of all my problems but which may have saved us by preventing the boat from filling up all at once and making it no longer possible to find survival equipment there.

I must have been in the bunk for an hour when suddenly the boat starts to list abruptly with a thunderous rumble, emits a dry and loud crack, and suddenly finds itself upside down, head over heels. I stand up, walk on the ceiling of the cabin. The boat remains upside down. The keel must have broken, I tell myself, which explains the big 'bang' and the fact that the Zinzolin does not right itself. No other explanation. I bang on the hull and call Benoit, who answers me. He is there, alive, next to the boat, that's the main thing.

Then begins the most horrible hour of my life.

The water begins to enter Zinzolin, mainly through the joints of the companionway hatch and through the engine control panel located halfway up in the cockpit. It is impossible to get out of the boat, the companionway hatch being submerged, compressed by the pressure of the water. And a boat with its keel broken does not right itself. Nothing to do, I am done for. Prisoner of a cage that fills with water and in which I will drown when the water has completely invaded it, which is only a matter of hours at the speed at which the level rises. I can't believe it, it's unreal, I can't die, not here, not today, not like this.

In case an improbable coincidence causes the boat to right itself, I hurry to gather in this mess already bathed in 10 centimeters of water and diesel (the 30L of the tank have emptied into the boat), everything I can and must take before it is no longer possible to find it. It is still daylight, through the portholes of the roof I see the sea under my feet; it lights me up with a pretty turquoise blue. I note the time, it is 19:30 UT, I still have about 1 hour of daylight ahead of me.
I rush to the Sarsat distress beacon, which I try to trigger but my panic is such at this moment that I cannot manage to remove the cover and press the 'ON' button, something about as complicated as opening a box of Tic Tacs and which normally takes 3 seconds for a 5 year old child. Panic overwhelms me. My brain short-circuits. Probably what people subject to claustrophobia attacks experience."

...

 

...

"This beacon is my most precious possession at the moment, I put it with my trembling hands in the pocket of my fleece, while waiting to find my most basic means, and go in search of the small personal beacon that was permanently in the pocket of my watch jacket. I find it, hesitate to try to trigger it but tell myself that it is better that I activate the big Sarsat and keep the personal beacon on me for later, as a second chance, if the rescue has not found us in the 24 hours that I believe lasts, the time it takes for a beacon to be transmitted.

I calm down a little, end up triggering the Sarsat, put it back in my pocket, praying that the signal is strong enough to pass through an overturned hull.

I take a big waterproof projector, attach the strap to my wrist. Go looking for a 20L water can and the survival can, a legacy of the Mini races, in which we have stored everything necessary for survival at sea (distress flares, food rations, survival blankets, etc.). I attach them near the companionway. Everything is ready. I then remember what I was told in the survival course, that it is important to take your papers. I find my suitcase, open it, take my wallet and come across the drawing that I had asked my son to make and give me as a lucky charm for the crossing. I cross the sea and come back with it, I told him.

Like a premonition, Leo had not drawn a boat, a sun or a dolphin but had asked me how to write 'you will come to my 6th birthday'...

He had copied me in large on his sheet and embellished his request with flowers and hearts of all colors.

I am seized with hiccups and can't hold back my tears. You bet I'm going to come to your 6th birthday son, you bet! It's not my day to die! I don't want to die!

Already 50cm of water. It's starting to get dark, objects that don't float, especially waterlogged, are blocking the portholes.

I can't believe I'm going to be able to get out of it. The prospect of my imminent death seems as inevitable as it is unbearable. I want to get out of this prison, I'm going crazy. I
grab a wooden slat that is floating nearby and start smashing like a madman a partition that I think gives access to the cockpit. It ends up bursting... but opens onto the engine block.

The air is saturated with diesel. My head is spinning, I'm suffocating.

I then decide to use the marine toilet as an air supply. I put my head under the throne strangely suspended upside down like a chandelier above me and activate the pump to be able to breathe a little fresh air. It's better. I come to my senses. And only then do I remember that the Pogo are unsinkable.

I look at the arrangement of the unsinkability foams and tell myself that Zinzolin may not fill completely and that I may have
20 to 30 cm of air left. Not a viable solution but maybe a few hours gained while waiting for help (I prefer not to think about the question of righting the boat which would remain problematic anyway).
So I stay in the toilets, the only place where I could renew the air with the toilet pump. I can only wait. Death or help.

Benoit, outside, keeps asking me if I have activated the beacon, I shout to him 'OK, beacon activated'

but he can't hear me because of the ambient noise and keeps asking the same question.

The water level in Zinzolin has exceeded one meter, maybe 1.2m. Everything is floating and colliding. A wave suddenly makes the boat heel, for the first time. Zinzolin's liquid hull (the tons of water moving inside) seems to be doing its work. The heel increases gradually... and the boat turns over very gently!

I rush to the hatch, which I open frantically, and come face to face with Benoit, just as haggard as I am, who shouts at me 'fxxx, we're alive, man!'.

Still alive for Benoit, alive again for me who's come back from the dead. I'm free, free, out of my coffin!

We lost the keel, I tell him!

Benoit tells me that no, it's still in place, he was holding on to it.

How come the boat was upside down for an hour?"

 

Well, this is my fantasy

The arrival of a gale is announced

The boys and girls set sail Upwind fighting against the wind

Some drones filming for the entertainment of the public

They rest and spend the night anchored in the sea facing the wind and waves

And the next morning the waves surfing towards port

Some drones filming for the entertainment of the public

Fraternity dinner. End of Party

 

The truth is that Yrvind's sarcophagus makes a lot of sense because the problem of the modern yacht is more complicated than it seems if it is studied in depth and carefully.

The solution i find to the question of "the brave little tailor", the capable small sailboat, is a huge, deep daggerboard with a lead bulb... and the mast completely closed

 

The candidates ...

Z-190: 1.92 kg/m
Z-230: 2.29 kg/m

Sparcraft S 67: 2.2 kg/m

Selden C116: 2.26 kg/m
Selden C126: 2.54 kg/m

and the winner is ...

Selden C126 (!)

And the tremendous lead bulb measuring 1.2 meters in length and weighing 245 kilos, which would be nice to see hoisted in front of the transom

 

The final question

Now the old man can enjoy the machine of a young highly competitive athlete, and while sailing along the coast in an efficient sports machine he can fantasize, as Roger Taylor wrote in an emotionally accurate expression: "the sailboat dreamed of by a boy and a man"

but going down from fantasies to the real world we arrive at the final question

The final question in port is easy to solve by walking a little, and at sea it is also very simple, whether with a bucket or even without a bucket

but anchored in front of a beautiful beach it is partly a question of hygiene and in any case aesthetics and good social customs.

In this case the final issue is resolved with a huge and well-ventilated bathroom in the cockpit under tent-awning with the mainsail boom

 

(The first autumn gale arrives, now the immediate thing is to fix the damn outboard motor, and let's see if i have a little luck with the monetary issue that lately i have been going from shipwreck to shipwreck. This is all)

 

Have you ever sailed a boat with the extreme "wedge" planform you are proposing?

You speak a lot about surfboard design. Have you surfed much?

There are very good reasons why top dinghy and skiff designers don't use extreme 'wedge' planforms, partly because they handle so badly downwind in heavy air and partly because there's not much advantage in any other way.

 

If one were to come up with a small mono-hull sailboat design for high speed, the windsurfer seems to have everything you would need. A windsurfer held the world's speed record for awhile in the 80s.

I have talked to many "experts" across numerous fields from computer science, physics, to sailing, who didn't consider a concept because their assumption was other experts before them must have already eliminated the concept before them. Maybe they did, maybe they just assumed someone else did.

-Will

 

Is that the shitter? Surely a porta=potti would be easier, no thru hulls and can empty offshore, just like the holding tank.

 

Or became a 2-handed event......

 

The keel, the centreboard, pivots towards the stern, the 240 kilo lead bulb stays just in front of the transom: the cockpit is a catamaran and the two water intakes for the two 200 liter ballast tanks for beating upwind and the entrance and exit of the toilet go to that centerboard box

Jib: 9 sm
StaySail: 7 sm
MainSail: 14 sm
Total: 30

The bow boom-sprit of the jib pivots towards the stern and reaches my hands, yes: i have to stand up in the cockpit which has a seat with a 55 cm backrest: it is a sports car, a convertible

 

(WC Tank exit: Keel box)

CG: Center of Gravity
CB: Center of Buoyancy
CF: Center of Flotation

 

After a lot of brain sanding ...

now i see it clearly (the international epoxy primer ... when dry ... costs 100 (!) Euros per kilo)

so

105 Epoxy Resin - Wessex Resins & Adhesives https://wessexresins.co.uk/west-system/resins-and-hardeners/105-epoxy-resin/

105 West System Epoxy resin, and everything else locally produced

Sector Naval - Pinturas para Barcos de Calidad | Pinturas Proa https://www.pinturasproa.com/es/industria/naval

and the profiles of the daggerboard and rudder, although i am a determined enthusiast of the NACA 0012, well more or less the same: 64-012A which is very nice