New Boat 4 Sled

[Wylieguy]

CHICO is in the San Rafael Marina. I sailed on CHICO some in the 1980s; she was berthed a few berths down from my Newport 30.

[Philpott]

So there I am, minding my own business on Crews Nest yesterday when Bob Brainard, Ray Irvine's crack driver, pulls out his phone and shows me this photo of canvas laid out in a yard. Whaa? I recognize Rreveur! "Hey! I know that dog!" Bob brags about how Synthia did this canvas work for his client. Sailing is sure a small world.

[MAGICdreamer]

To drop back a post or so, Vicky wondered whether you had ever heard the Playmates recording of "The Little Nash Rambler"? Here it is put to some silly video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNAdGSpfBmM

Back in the late 50's, her dad imported one of the first (and perhaps the only?) Nash Rambler Station Wagons into Venezuela for the family to use. As the two sisters remember, it was painted powder blue and cream.

<Now we return you to to your regular sailing broadcast...>

[sleddog]

Loss of life due to falling overboard is particularly tragic, especially when the boat is highly maneuverable, crewed by 12 experienced hands, daylight, warm (70F) water, 20-25 knot winds, and 5-8 foot seas.

The recent release of a report of the loss of a crew off the TP-52 IMEDI in last summer's Chicago Mackinac Race is sobering reading.. https://www.cycracetomackinac.com/as...ent_Report.pdf

Primary blame was laid on the apparent lack of inflation of an auto-inflate PFD. Though that was certainly a factor, there are many others to be gleaned and some mentioned in too brief passing.

A big one in my opinion was a lack of safety ethos on board. There were few, if any, hand or footholds on the aft deck for security. Somehow, the MOB went through or under the lifelines. Unfortunately, the report does not mention if the intermediate lifelines were taut, or had been loosened to facilitate hiking, as is often done on this type of boat.

IMEDI's PFD's were never properly inspected and cylinder dates ascertained. In addition, having a hat overboard while under power in calm seas and winds behind a breakwater, with some crew below, and calling the attempted recovery a "Man Overboard Practice" doesn't cut the mustard, nor the Race Rules. This detail is little mentioned in hindsight also.

Once the recovery was underway, no attempt was made to launch the single most important piece of equipment, the LifeSling. Why not? Was anyone detailed for this? Confusion reigned, the jib wrapped around the forestay and could not be fully lowered. Violent crash jibes were undertaken, endangering both the rig and most everyone else on deck.

As Chuck Hawley comments, "Practically, modern race boats make terrible rescue boats. They are very difficult to depower (no reefs, halyard locks); difficult to operate under power (Saildrives 20' in front of the rudder(s), high aspect keels that stall, engines that have to be started below decks and hull forms that don't power slowly without falling off the wind."

Stan Honey adds to the point about characteristics of high aspect keels:"Once the keel stalls, at about 3 knots of boat speed, the boats make very rapid leeway, and as you point out rapidly spin. That is why boat captains of modern boats come ripping into slips at such high speeds (4 knots) and then stop. They’re not showing off. If they try to maneuver to a dock or into a slip slowly, they lose control, but when motoring over 4 knots or so they have terrific control."

Stan continues, "The hard bilges, i.e. flat bottoms of modern boats make them more dangerous to the MOB. If you try to pull the boat alongside a MOB, you slow down, suddenly make significant leeway, spin, and can easily drift over the MOB and in a seastate the boat can slam on their heads. Older slack bilged boats would make much less leeway, would hold their heading longer, and would tend to shove the MOB to leeward with the boat because of the slacker bilges. The flat bottomed bow and stern are particularly dangerous because of the pitching."

In the case of IMEDI, on the 2nd pass, now with the engine running, the boat went over the MOB, came down hard, and the MOB surfaced on the opposite side, likely on his last breath. By the third pass he was no longer able to grasp a line, and sank just feet from the boat.

Stan's analysis continues, " With 20:20 hindsight, what a boat in IMEDI's situation could consider would be to first make a “fly-by” of the MOB with no intention of stopping but instead to pass very closely under good control, and just hand off some flotation. This would be perfectly safe as the boat would keep speed up and could easily pass within 6 feet of the MOB assuring that you could get them a cushion, foam PFD, MOM, or whatever.

Then knowing that the MOB had flotation you’d dowse your sails.

Then circle them underway with the LifeSling trailing.

When the MOB reaches and puts on the LifeSling, then stop the boat, in some location not upwind of the MOB. The boat will start to drift to leeward at about a knot, towing the MOB slowly. The bitter end of LifeSling line remains belayed at the stern as usual. Then hook a halyard onto the LifeSling line, outboard of the boat, and hoist with the 1:2 disadvantage of the halyard snap shackle. By the time the MOB is close to the boat they are being pulled sufficiently vertically to keep them from getting swept under the boat."

"The key to this is Robin Knox Johnston’s observation that it is important to not try to hook the halyard to the MOB harness or to detach the tether or LifeSling line from the boat to get a fair lead. Instead just hook the halyard outboard of the boat to the tether or LifeSling line and hoist. You might bend a stanchion or kink a lifeline but it works and it’s quick."

"You folks might remember when we asked RKJ how the Clipper boats retrieved folks being dragged by tethers. He said that it took them years to figure it out but the answer was to just immediately hook a halyard onto the tether outboard of everything, completely ignoring whether the tether ran under, through, or over the lifelines, and then hoist."

"I hesitate to suggest that we teach it, but if in the first drive-by, when you pass flotation to the MOB, if the MOB was obviously in trouble another crew, with a working PFD, could jump in to help."

"Downwind things change. On most race boats, in much wind, you’ve got to dowse conventionally so that the halyard lock will work. Then turn around and go back. You probably have time on the way back to reef or dowse the main. It still might make sense, however, to do an initial flyby of the MOB to make sure that they have flotation and then do the LifeSling recovery as described above. I think the key is knowing that the flat-bottomed, drifting, boat is deadly and you don’t want it near the MOB until the MOB is being pulled vertically and so can’t be run over by the drifting boat."

Amen.

My observation is can a short handed crew (DH or otherwise) use a standard halyard winch to lift a MOB from the water if the halyard is clipped to the LifeSling tether (1:2) as RKJ suggests? This would be a good test for someone to conduct.

I would add that there is no such thing as a usual MOB or textbook recovery. Each one is unusual, unexpected, and though required, likely unpracticed (or practiced in unrealistic conditions.)

I've been involved in several MOB's, including a crew person having fallen asleep on the weather rail while short tacking at night up the coast of Molokai, a person bathing in the sugar scoop, as well as a crew cleaning kelp from the rudder. A bowman doing a back flip from the bow pulpit when the boat hit a rock. 3 MOB's flipped from another boat attached to WILDFLOWER's LifeSling was problematical, especially as I was singlehanded.

We are also reminded of a MOB with a crew aloft when the mast broke, a bowman hit in the head and knocked overboard by the spinnaker pole, a skipper in a Farallone's Race dragged astern by his harness until drowned, hiking racks breaking, a crew trapped under a tramp, a skipper going overboard while fending off the bow of a (starboard tacker) about to collide, and a crew being flipped over the lifelines when the back of the boat flexed..

If there was going to be a good outcome, IMEDI's should have been textbook. But it wasn't.

[AZ Sailor]

. . . There were few, if any, hand or footholds on the aft deck for security. Somehow, the MOB went through or under the lifelines. Unfortunately, the report does not mention if the intermediate lifelines were taut, or had been loosened to facilitate hiking, as is often done on this type of boat.

In his latest book, “Sailing to the Edge of Time”, John Kretschmer says:

The way we discuss and practice man-overboard emergencies is ludicrous. It finally dawned on me a few years ago that we go about it completely backward. Just think of how you teach your children to cross a street and behave around busy roads. You don’t say, "Now, honey, after the car hits you, do this . . ." We say, "Look both ways, pay attention, make eye contact with the driver, assume the driver is not paying attention. Don’t get hit by a car!" Of course, if an accident happens an emergency plan is vital. But the same first principle applies on a boat: "Pay attention, assume gear will fail, don’t fall of the damn boat!" That’s the starting point for crew-overboard procedures.

Seems that paying more attention to this 'first principle' out to be one of the take-a ways from this tragedy.

[Dazzler]

Sled, This is truly great stuff. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Lots to think about.
I totally agree with your statement:

I would add that there is no such thing as a usual MOB or textbook recovery. Each one is unusual, unexpected, and though required, likely unpracticed (or practiced in unrealistic conditions.)

To add to that, what is needed is a mindset to be always prepared to adapt.

Tom

[sleddog]

As a kid crewing for 2-time Snipe World Champion Fred Schenk, the mast of our fiberglass 12 foot Lehman Dinghy went through the bottom, ultimately hanging up on the lower boom vang bale. With the mast sticking 3" out of the boat's bottom, water coming in at a rapid rate, Bill Ficker nipping at our transom, and only 3 tacks left to go, I thought surely our race was finished. But no, Freddy, no shrinking violet, looks astern at Ficker and says to me, "bail like your life depended on it!" Hmm, I thought, all we have is a sponge...nevertheless Freddy's toughness prevailed, he just pulled the now droopy boom in a little tighter, and we went on to win..

Not with all the sponges in the world, bailing like Freddie and me wouldn't have worked the day an 80 foot America's Cup racing sloop broke in half and sank in under 2 minutes. "Crack!" How did they do that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yau9A7XDHs

1) Hire the best designers and builders available to build the boat. Spend unlimited funds to achieve the goal of the lightest, longest carbon fiber hull ever built, 2,200 pounds less rig, keel, and deck gear. No bulkheads or longitudinal stringers, only two ring frames for strength.

2) Attach a keel that weighs 34,000 pounds with a bulb down about 13 feet hung from a solid stainless steel strut with small keel root footprint.

3) Tension the rig tautly so 80,000 pounds (!) of downward force is exerted on the 135 foot mast, achieving a straight headstay.

4) Sail to windward in 4-6 foot seas at 11 knots, with a jib sheet led to a running backstay winch, exerting 20,000 pounds of bending force between the chainplates and the back of the boat.

Back in the day when I worked for a yacht designer doing America's Cup designs, I was told a minimum safety factor of 3.5:1 would be used in engineering calculations. That was 1968. ONE AUSTRALIA sank in 1995, 27 years later. It would seem whatever safety factors had been used in the design had exceeded 1:1

Two improbable things occurred just before the sinking. Round-the-World racer Don McKracken was last to jump from ONE AUSTRALIA...his hesitation? He couldn't swim.

Rod Davis was helming the boat that day and almost casually remarked to designer Iain Murray "Big fella, are we going to sink?" The equally unflappable Murray said: "Yes. We are going to sink."

They'd considered just about every contingency. Except having the boat break in half.

Curiously, Dennis Conner's STARS and STRIPES also sank. But during practice, and in shallow enough water (55') that it was recovered.

[sleddog]

On another thread, the subject of used boat hull and deck construction arose. And whether there should be concern about the "re-coring" of the deck and hull.

Delamination in sandwich construction does happen, especially in older, poorly built, and harder sailed yachts. "Delam" can take two forms: 1) the core becomes soft due to water entering the core material, either through osmosis through the outer skin, or through poorly bedded fittings. Or both. I was once installing below deck fittings upward into the underside of the deck of an almost new raceboat, when a gallon or more of water poured out of my drill hole. WTF? The foredeck foot rails had not been bedded with any goop, and water was wicking into the core through the screws. 2) Delam can also occur when the core loses adhesion to its outer skins. This happens when the hull or deck flexes, likely because of lack of sufficient or ill placed stiffening.

Recoring seems to be a common practice of older designs. DOMINO, 2016 SHTP winner, had a core that reportedly had, at one time, turned to sawdust.

Before buying a used boat, I would have a surveyor test for delam and moisture content. If the boat was recored, I would ask "why" and "by whom." Recoring is not by itself an indication of faulty construction. But proper procedures, including drying out dampness, must be used.

Every boat is different. There's no absolute answer without investigation.

For RTW sailing, not in ice, a cored boat, especially in the deck, is mandatory. Not only is it lighter, but provides insulation.

[sleddog]

Speaking of hulls cracking, yesterday, from Land's End, with mixed emotions, the Matson MATSONIA was sighted outbound from Oakland to Hono. Two weeks ago, while berthed in the Alameda Estuary, she suffered a bunker fuel leak from a hull crack amidships and 15 feet below the waterline.

Several days earlier, MATSONIA had departed Hono and sailed directly into nasty easterly weather, pitching badly for two days, likely causing the crack, though no one knows for sure. Worth noting that MATSONIA is 46 years old and in January had been diverted to Long Beach to pick up cargo from one of Matson's newer vessels that had also cracked.

I say "mixed emotions," as MATSONIA has reached the end of the line and her replacement is due to be launched in two years. For more than 40 years and almost daily, MATSONIA and her sisters have experienced relentless and sometimes grueling motions such as hogging, sagging, twisting, yawing, heaving, pitching, rolling , swaying, surging, hull drag, slamming, force of propeller, water pressure on the entire hull, water driven up against the bow etc. In short the bending and twisting motions that a hard working ship can experience during its lifetime.

MATSONIA is one of two Matson Ro-Ro ships, the other being the MOKIHANA, that will return 2020 SHTP and Pac Cup racers to the Mainland. (Pasha also has a service.)

[sleddog]

We're supposed to be sailors and boat builders, not birders...Nevertheless, we'd be remiss to not report a good story.

Capt. Bob has been reporting on the albatross nesting on Kahuku Point, on the N. Shore of Oahu. And I've offered introductions to our local Anna's Hummingbird "Andre'". .

Though we don't plan on joining the circus just yet, Andre's been a never ending source of amusement. A couple of days ago, between showers, I walked to the Cliff.. It had been stormy, and the breeze was still up, about 20 knots from the south, judging from the whitecaps below. I didn't expect to see Andre'. But there he was, on a nearby willow twig. less than 2 feet from the fence barrier. I greeted him, and he lit into his raspy little song, the loudest I heard him. I grabbed my willow stick, and slowly extended it towards him. Andre' didn't seem to mind. Pretty soon I was scratching his feathered breast.

I didn't want to overdo a hummingbird massage... I pushed the twig under his little feet. He stepped aboard, and grasped on. What do you know, for about 2 minutes I was waving Andre' gently back and forth, like an iridescent, ruby and emerald, Fourth of July sparkler.

A mile inland, good friend DKW, builder of Wyliecats, was having a different bird experience with a much larger bird than Andre'. Dave watched from his deck as a Great Blue Heron stalked his hillside, eyeing the ground with his long beak. We've all seen Great Blues at the waterline and flying overhead. Dave was about to witness a Great Blue skewer a gopher for lunch. Who would have thought, gopher kebob?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIq41PfrQaM

On a happier vegan dietary note, Gary in Anacortes, WA sent this photo of a wild bunny eating an apple chunk, apparently unafraid of the large, nearby human.



And in a possible case of mistaken identity, a family of squirrels has taken up residence in an as yet to be occupied owl box erected in CBC's backyard. Calling Charles Darwin, white courtesy phone please.