NSW
853 posts
I have always liked reading your blogs, but this one was upsetting for me. It is hard to think of losing ones boat that has taken you so far and so well. Our boats are our protectors and our brethren. To lose Arriba must be awful.
I hope you have good times on the water again with the Rapido, tris can be lovely sailing boats.
Phil
NSW
853 posts
I can hardly tell any difference in the BOM wind and rainfall, it looks the same to me. The radar is different but that is it as far as I can make out. For me, what we have is darn amazing, when has anyone in the history of humanity had free access to such amazing weather info? I am glad that we have such info for free.
Then again, I distinctly remember being amazed by my mates Magellan handheld GPS back in 1992. It cost about $4000 back then and could tell you speed a position. I still get amazed that a black box can do that - a good free forecast and a good position on your phone or $10 GPS dongle and old laptop. How can anyone complain about what we have? I just have to remember all the times I would have killed for that decades ago.
NSW
853 posts
I have a barometer and used to use it a fair bit before Meteye and Windy. What it couldn't tell me were upper level troughs, and differences in localised effects that Meteye shines at. It was good at letting me know that the trades were back, or that we may have a change at getting south as the high left, but it was a fairly blunt tool.
Meteye/Windy/Predict wind is a total game changer, it shows so many localised effects that broad air pressure cannot. I find it truly amazing and use it even for my Laser racing inshore. Old style and radio forecasts - Seal Rocks to Broken Bay and others, are so different that they are an order of magnitude less reliable. I truly don't understand how anyone can think that the modern forecasts are not a massive step forward.
Couple a modern forecast with the ability to watch in real time the wind at different coastal stations, and you have an amazing ability to - eg - know when a nasty southerly is coming up the coast.
I did this about 6 years ago. I really wanted to get home and the wind forecast was nasty, building to over 40, but I had to get home. I left Jervis Bay early, sailed fast and tracked the increase coming up the coast behind me on the observations page. I could see the front feeding in behind me off Kiama and dropped the main, then we sat doing 10s under a tiny scrap of genoa as Wollongong issued a Securite. Meteye had huge breeze offshore and about 12 inshore - lo and behold, I had to motor across Middle Harbour to anchor it got so light. That Tassie trip had me loving the models.
The other time we were waiting near the top of Tassie tryign to come home. The models all lined up that in 4 days there would be a stationary high. So we cruised up Flinders and when it went light, we motored across Bass Strait. We got into Eden about 6 hours before the noreaster started coming in. Same on the way down - the models all lined up, we put on the speed and we got into St Helens about 10 hours before fully forecast and super times nasty sou wester. I would never sail offshore without looking up the models and checking their agreement.
NSW
853 posts
I don't get how a barometer can tell you an exact wind direction and speed. I certainly don't think the weather forecasts are bad, they are excellent. It is pretty simple to go onto Windy or similar and even check that all the different models agree. If they don't then you know that the forecast is less reliable. I certainly remember the bad old days in the 90s when we would hear forecasts saying it was blowing 15 from the north east in the Whitsundays when it was blowing 20 from the southeast. Modern forecasts are certainly worth every cent we are taxed for the BOM, especially when you can back them up with Windy and Predict Wind.
NSW
853 posts
I was thinking about their amazing hideaway tiller extension. It really may be a bit of a pain. One of the things many people do is to helm with the tiller extension, quickly place it on top of the tiller to tack or gybe (especially if there are others in the cockpit) and then jump onto the new windward side with the extension. That's why the normal design works well - it is so quick to pop onto the tiller.
I like learning stuff from Youtubers but these guys make money from stuffing up, or spending more money than a normal person can justify. For most other Youtubers, they must have an alloy expedition catamaran. Then there is the Physics lecturer building an electric cat that will cost millions. It is so huge she will lose family members for days.
The amount of money these guys blow through is an order of magnitude greater than me, and I am not poor. So watching rich people flaunt their ability to waste money on stupid carbon stuff sits badly with me. Spirit XL and Fantasia are good to watch, real people who don't monetise their content, even if the boats are big. Low cost sailor is always worth a watch.
A big gripe is with the carbon tubes in the video. Now if you do want carbon tubes, or glass tubes, then you can use windsurfer masts. My foam/glass hard top I am making at present is made from foam and E glass. I looked into carbon tubes to hold it up and choked when I got prices and then worked out I could use old windsurfer masts as struts. I have done this before and it saves thousands.
NSW
853 posts
Wow Gary. I am more and more nonplussed by popular YouTubers. It is confusing as to cost but in one instance they say 10 grand, probably 15 AUD, for a tiller.
But they probably make that doing the videos on the tiller so all good for them, but carbon, really? Why?
Some nice laminations and epoxy can be done for 200 AUD.
What the Uma people may find is that tillers suck on yachts going down hill, because you have to push as much as pull. There is a good reason boats over 32 feet have wheels. I had a tiller on my cat for over a decade. Eventually I tired of having a sore back and installed a wheel. I made my own composite parts, no carbon, for beer money and fell in love with the wheel after about 15 seconds of use.
One problem they will have is using the long tiller in slop. There is no way they will have enough angle to steer straight.
Anyway, no one really uses a helm much when offshore so where the autopilot and wind vane go are the critical jobs.
NSW
853 posts
I am pretty sure an assertion is a statement without data whereas the data is provided. Regular exercise provides balance benefits to old people. Pretty rudimentary science.
Saying someone is triggered is a way of dismissing a viewpoint we may not like. I think it is important to be able to refute ideas properly.
Lifejackets are great, but they are not the constant go to in safety. I think Ramona is right on the button when he uses his experience to analyse risk and then work out what is the best approach. Sometimes this means putting on a lifejacket, but not always.
NSW
853 posts
The thing that irks me about my inflatable lifejacket is that rowing is a pain. It catches on the oars readily. It also makes clambering into a dinghy harder.A dinghy style pfd is probably the best idea, I sail my Laser in one with no issues and can clamber pretty well in it.
Still, if I hit my head then nothing will help.
NSW
853 posts
I don't have Navionics, but what is a community edit?
NSW
853 posts
I had a look on my Open CPN and there is no way I would be travelling there at night, especially with my family on board. I mean who tries to make their own way out through the reef?
Just a few hours north there is a proper passage at Palm Passage, there are heaps more passages too further north or go south and go through Hydrographers. So the question for me is - Why would anyone try to sail at night through an area that is probably poorly charted to save a few miles and not go through a well charted passage through the reef. It seems totally barmy to me. Coral is scary enough in good weather with great visibility in well charted zones. To DIY a passage through the reef at night is baffling. And what is with the dinghy being towed - I mean who does that offshore? What was the guy on?
He calls it unacceptable for the E chart to be wrong. All charts are wrong to different degrees. I would think it is far more negligent to be sailing in coral at night, through a DIY passage offshore, through a part where OPEN CPN shows less charting accuracy with the dinghy down and being towed. Nothing I read from the article has me thinking the guy was being seamanlike. His family were let down by a dad who was being reckless.
A good skipper would have doen something like
- Started at about 1-2am from Cape Upstart - it is 50 miles on a beam reach in a SE to the start of the Flinders Passage - You would get there after first light, better to sail slow and be able to see when you start the passage.
- It is 20 miles through Flinders passage - done by lunchtime,maybe by 10am or earlier if you push it. Follow thr track of the big boats.
- Then about another 70 miles to Flinders reef. Hard to work out what to do - you may get there by dark if lucky but it may be better to sail slow and heave to in the big lee of Flinders till the morning.
No need for super accurate charts - just don't act like an idiot and expect everything else to be error free when you make basic mistakes. Stay on the main road and all is good. No charts are totally accurate is a basic first step of staying safe.
NSW
853 posts
Sheesh - that winch must have had some load in the past to shear the bolts. Do you think a previous owner did not use a snubber or something?
NSW
853 posts
Scuttlebutt from a friend of a friend says it was again the escape hatch that failed. Lagoons have an issue with escape hatches. Considering how few Lagoons capsize and how many sink from escape or saildrive issues it does seem strange that there are any left with escape hatches in them. At least put the hatches in the bridgedeck floor if you need one, then you won't sink the boat if it fails.
NSW
853 posts
Yeah, interesting. Back in the good old days, cats used to not sink. Not so much the case nowadays, although some may say that being awash is not sinking, it is much more than a light composite cat would do.
NSW
853 posts
I was sleeping and worked out that one reason monos that hit something are vulnerable is that the keel bolts are then put in shear. Sailors have had problems with shear for ages. Wooden sailing ships have hogged and leaked for aeons because designers and builders did not understand shear. Seppings started putting diagonal bracing on ships and that made British ships much better than others.
So when keel hits a rock, all the bolts are put in shear. This bad news because they are sized for tension. This is usually okay because the shear loads are way lower than tensile loads. But in a dramatic stop the bolts fail in shear. So one way around this would be to have one keel bolt at the front aligned at about 45 degrees down and aft. This would be excellent at taking the shear load and save the other bolts. It would cost bugger all and could save the boat.
I think working out how loads are distributed from sudden stops is important. When I hit the bottom in my cat, one reason the case did not split is that I had wrapped uni kevlar sideways aft of the case and also even more around the back of the case, which was then led forward and spread out, just in case the daggerboard tried to go back through the hull. Took a couple of hours to do, cost bugger all. Maybe saved the boat when I hit the rock.
NSW
853 posts
Energy going somewhere is a good point - it is what car designers have to do. back in the bad old days, car makers didn;t want to know about adding safety features like crumple zones, safety cells, soft interior furnishings and air bags. In the end, the US government got around the industry's reluctance and the big car companies head in the sand mentality by stipulating that all government cars would have to have air bags. With such a big contract on offer, one of the big companies blinked and now we all have air bags.
Getting energy somewhere is pretty easy IF someone thinks about it. First, put a small crumple zone on the bottom and front of the keel, a crash box. Cats and tris have been doing something similar for decades. Newick even designed a crash box into his dagger cases. In my case the entire tip of the board is cut off and reglued back on. It broke off when I hit a rock at 7-8 knots - zero damage to the case. How much hassle to implement? Almost none. Weight, performance, build issues? None. Upside - I still have a boat, instead of a waterlogged cat with a case ripped through its bum. Tens of thousands maybe vs me in the shed with some cedar and glass.
A good fast cruiser could easily have a small foam/glass section at the front and bottom front of the keel - with a layup sufficient to slip it fine but with enough foam to cushion any 11.5 knot impact. All you need is to increase the time - doubling the time of stopping halves the force. It could be small and do a huge difference. As time of impact is directly proportional to distance - if the Oyster's keel deflected 1cm in the above example (lead deforming) and you put on a small 10cm crash edge, you would increase the distance by 10 times and reduce the force by something similar. At virtually no cost or hassle during the build. So the guys would still have a boat.
Also make that root long and add one extra tight but weaker than normal keel bolt at the front on the centreline. This one would take the initial load and break. Rock climbers have tight stitching that lets go on safety devices to reduce impact loads when falling. Its a oncer but it saves the boat.
I needed to make a new tip and glue it on my cat when I hit the rock at 7 knots or so. If my 500mm chord, 1.6m deep board, into a cedar and 600gm glass hull show absolutely no damage after hitting a rock when I was stupid, then a boat built like a brick dunny can also do it. You just have to do what I did when I built it. Think just a bit about what could happen and work a fix up.
Sparau - As for Leopards - no they are just dumb. To not dry out is awful in a cat and it causes issues when lifted. A yard near me doesn't lift some Lagoons because they put one on its kesl and it crunched and caused a court case. Considering it is really easy to build them properly, I can't understand it. Again there is no reason that an engineer couldn't do this - the builder just cant be bothered. As for Seawinds - you must have got bad one. Most sail pretty well and almost no Schionning has had a racey window designed in about 15 years - those days are gone thankfully.
I do shake my head at dumb design because, having built and designed boats, I know that you can make the boat better with a bit of forethought. It aint hard but it does require you to acknowledge the problem. The fact that any cruising keel falls off is a problem that can be fixed. It is just engineering and building, it aint hard.
NSW
853 posts
I really do think a keel should never go. There will be ways to reduce load on the root - one - increase root area and length as it attaches to the hull or stub, two put a reasonable rake on the front of the keel, third, increase keel bolt size at the front to cater for tension loads when hitting, fourth , round off the bottom of the keel so that it rises up as it hits the bottom. Easy to do and it will make the boat better for cruising.
I think the idea that an IMOCA should not be expected to hit a rock makes sense, but an Oyster is a cruiser. It is not impossible to build a keel so that it can't fall off at normal speeds - it is just engineering. Who cares if you get a little heavier in a keel, or you have a 25% longer root. The fact that any builder could produce a boat that couldn't is worrying. I mean people have died because of short root keels. It aint hard to build them so they never fall off, has anyone seen a shoddy Tophat lose a keel after 60 years?
I don't get many modern boats, dagger keels on some cruisers (although I usually like Sayer boats) . I once recommended Percy Island Lagoon to a Leopard catamaran owner. It is great I said, you dry out every low tide but you are secure and able to walk all over the island. He told me the cat was not designed to sit on its keels - I was flabbergasted. What is the point of having a cat if you can't sit on the keels. Who designs these stupid boats? Why would anyone buy one?
NSW
853 posts
It isn't okay for a keel to fall off because owners shouldn't hit a rock, because eventually we all do stuff up. That is why we wear seat belts in cars, have crumple zones and other safety features and why we wear harnesses and inflatable vests on boats. Because things can and eventually do go wrong, including hitting rocks at speed with our boats. I have hit three in about 35 years in my boats and I reckon I am pretty good on the water, twice going at more than 7 knots - all the times the boats were fine (but my heart rate and daggerboards were not). In all cases I was an idiot, but for 99.99 percent of the time I care properly for the boat, just sometimes it has to cater for me neglecting my duty or for a multitude of bad choices to line up the Swiss cheese.
So it should not matter what the boat hit, ANY boat should be able to hit the ground at a good clip and not fail. So it doesn't matter if the Oyster hit a whale or rock, there is no way that the keel should fall off - it was poorly designed or built. There is no getting around the fact it was found to be unfit for purpose. Oysters don't do 20 knots so you don't have to design for hitting a rock/whale/container/sunfish/log at those speeds, but you do have to engineer and build the keel to hit something up to 10 knots or so.
NSW
853 posts
What direction, I am guessing soueast otherwise you wouldn't anchor there? There are no hills as far as I can remember, so no katabatic winds. Perplexing.
