Tragic!

[dchemist]

Plan and simulate emergency drills

As an experienced dive instructor and tech diver, I know what happens in a crisis. Planning, practice, and drills (even if only visualized mental exercises) are essential to survival in a crisis. Being in a crisis is like being drunk, you can do what you planned to do marginally well, but little to nothing else.

• Can you close your eyes and visualize the widest path to exit the cabin upside down as well as upright?
• Do you know where all the critical safety equipment is located, and how to remove it?
• Can you relax underwater, calmly determining your exit path and removing lines, etc. that block your exit in complete darkness?
• Do you know to stay with your boat (or largest floating pieces), even if you can see land?

If you passed this test great, keep working on it. If not, visualize and practice some of this with a blindfold. Do have a safety observer, and remove dangerous objects. DO NOT attempt underwater drills without a suitable professional instructor. The military have special equipment and training to practice helicopter immersion drills. We can at least do dry run drills.

I not mean to argue, and I may not understand the statement properly, but I believe that mass market/mass produced vessels are normally stronger-engineered than single purpose racing boats.
Like racing cars, the winning driver/helmsperson will have the lightest vessel that is just strong enough to clear the finish line... and not too much further.

As long as no one is harmed, that's why watching masts occasionally snap and hulls fold in half is considered an "entertaining" subset of international competition.

All in all, and with exceptions that prove the rule (like the infamous O'Day 302) production boats have keel-to-hull connections that will withstand regular groundings and extreme lack of preventative maintenance. That's to avoid liability, and given their target audience makes a lot of sense.

If you look at number and size of the keel bolts (actually threaded rods) in an Ericson or Olson, they are more numerous and larger than any minimal spec.
"Overbuilt", as it were.


Like another poster here, we "tested" our boat (not intentionally) by running it a foot deep into a sand bar at 6 kts. That stop was Sudden!
No harm or change in the joint. No problem. The yard owner where I had a precautionary haul-out done a week later told me that he would not expect to find anything amiss, give the builder and engineering.

So, any high tech racing boat could indeed be built stronger, but the designer is always trying to limit weight overall.
Also, when the designer does his/her job to the Nth degree of engineering excellence, there is much additional stress on the builder (sometimes using minimum wage laborers) to Exactly... follow those precise scantlings. And that's where a future disaster can start, too.
:0

Interesting topic, but it's still just awful that those guys were killed.
(big sigh)


Regards,
Loren

 

[Vagabond39]

Boat design has leaqrnes very little since the 1979 Fastnet Tragic DISASTERThe 2011 Chicago to Mackinac Race and the Kiwi 35 "Wing Nuts" loss of life is another example.Like cars, build it faster, cheaper, and ignore deadly problems.Technology is not the answer. But, it contributes to the problem.When you design in versitility, you design out reliability.

 

[Afrakes]

No Keel Bolts

When I disassembled my 81' 28+ I was surprised to see that there were no keel bolts at all. Zilch, nada, nothing. It was well encapsulated but nary a mechanical fastener.

 

[Vagabond39]

Encapsilated ballast

Al:Yes the hull was cast as one piece, with the fin adding to the stryctual intregrety. Often the lead was lowered into the cavity, after epoxy had been poured into it, bedding the lead into place.Keel bolts streach and leak.The weight of the keel is concentrated at the small areas of the bolts.Which would you rather have for your safety?

 

[Loren Beach]

Hull thoughts

Al:Yes the hull was cast as one piece, with the fin adding to the stryctual intregrety. Often the lead was lowered into the cavity, after epoxy had been poured into it, bedding the lead into place.Keel bolts streach and leak.The weight of the keel is concentrated at the small areas of the bolts.Which would you rather have for your safety?

You're absolutely right. And, those who prefer an external ballast keel are also absolutely right, too!


Engineering, design, and attention to detail when constructing the hull & ballast is what Really counts.

Both design schemes have their strong points and either one can, with poor QC in the build, have significant weaknesses.

The take-away for me is that Bruce King designed his boats to be strong enough for offshore use and the general Ericson ethic was to build them up to his spec.
If you look at the smallest Ericson (23) and compare the build detailing to the rest of the design family in the 70's, it's a reduced-size "big boat" and not a ramped-up dinghy.

Apropos of this, I recall shopping for our first 'real boat' in 75/76, and we looked at the Catalina 22, San Juan 21, and the Ranger 20. While the Cat was solid enough, it's sailing reputation was only so-so, and the swing keel system gave us pause for thought (I had to repair the keel and CB trunk after grounding our prior dinghy - the 'damage' was mild but still took some real effort to get it back to workability again).

The SJ-21 showed poor strength in the hull layup, the deck joint was also cheap, and while fast it was really an amped-up planning dinghy with sitting headroom and limited sleeping room.

The R-20 had internal lead ballast and the deck joint was an overlap, thru bolted. Bridge deck with traveler, and as a plus even had positive floatation. It was really like a larger boat in engineering and construction. We bought one and sailed it hard for five years.

Next boat was the Niagara 26, and it was the smallest Niagara model from a top-quality builder, Hinterhoeller Yachts. External lead fin, with obvious huge bolts, through massive floors of unidirectional glass. We "sailed the socks off" of that speedy cruiser for a decade.

Next, we almost bought an E-32/200, and then did buy the (EY built) Olson 34.
The Olson is way over-built compared to most production boats, pretty much like all the Ericsons I've been on.

One other aside: All fastenings do have some tensile stretch, but the idea that our keel's hreaded rods will routinely "stretch and leak" is just not happening. While this might possibly take place on a poorly-designed vessel, that's not us.
Leak? on the other hand... yup. If... not bedded properly -- like everything else on a boat.

It's a bit like my old rant about the innate horrible-ness of the "coffee can" hull to deck joint on the older Catalina's (among others) and my recall of the one (70's series 30') that reportedly sunk in big seas near SF. Boat reportedly was knocked over hard on one side by a large cross sea and hull was pushed in - separated from the deck. Lots of water came in and it eventually sunk - no loss of live, IIRC.
Some years ago I did a delivery down the coast to Newport in summer weather with no worries, in an old Catalina 30. While I would not take one in "harms way" they are an OK boat for fair weather.
Horses for courses, as the saying goes.

Just one other point about the hulls, LOTS of builders, including Ericson would layup the halves of the hull and then glass those halves together. It's actually not always a "one piece" hull -- although it's finished out to look that way. Then the ballast is lowered into the cavity and glassed in place with a poly resin slurry.

So, either type of hull & ballast can indeed be strong and leak-free.

Loren

 

[Afrakes]

Observation

My comments were observations not criticism. The 28+ lead keel itself seemed to be cast in a form as its sides were smooth and uniform. There were the remains of two protrusions at the bottom. I suspect they were there for handling purposes as no other attachments points were evident. The guys at the scrap yard had a heck of a time removing it from my trailer because they had nothing to grab 3200 lbs. with. The lead was covered in foam and then FRP which varied in thickness from 1/4" at the bottom to 1 and 1/2" thick at the hull attachment point. The very bottom of the lead had two inches of solid FRP below it. I'm just curious as to the exact process by which this keel was created. What came first, the keel or the FRP shell?