Alpha 42 "Be Good Too" rescue 300 miles off Cape Henry Merged

[Sand crab]

The rescue was at 36° 51m 745s 69° 45m 012s If you look at the sea surface temp you can sea that it looks like it's mostly pretty cold water there but it is a mix. About 50° F.

[boatman61]

Like Gunther... I'd have gone down for a look.. but no way would I try working down there... had a hull nearly knock me out when I was trying to clear some industrial plastic from my prop years back in the Med... and that was only a slight sea..
As for sawing through SS... forget it.. ever tried hand sawing through a stainless prop shaft in the comfort of your bilges...??

[Cotemar]

Am I the only one here that wants to salvage Alpha 42 "Be Good Too"?
It will drift close to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in a few weeks.

I wish "Be Good Too" had an active Spot locator on board.

[sigmasailor]

Wouldn't someone be underway as we speak and play around on this forum? 300 Miles offshore is an 'easy' two day trip on a decent motorboat. The prize is a 500k cat!

[boatman61]

I'll wait till it drifts this way...

[Sand crab]

Originally Posted by sigmasailor

Wouldn't someone be underway as we speak and play around on this forum? 300 Miles offshore is an 'easy' two day trip on a decent motorboat. The prize is a 500k cat!

Most days in this forecast are not what I would call ideal for towing. Just getting there would be rough. And you need a boat with a 600+ mile range.
National Weather Service Marine Forecast

[neilpride]

Wow Wow Wow!! the picture of the rudder post , what a shity way to made the whole thing weird , no place in the top to fit a rudder emergency tiller, no hole plate in in the top, and the shaft holding by a set allen screws...

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Cotemar

"Be Good Too" rudders are foam core and float. You cannot just push the rudder post down and out the bottom of the boat as its floatation would keep it in place.

You would have to dive with a hammer and bust off the fiber glass shell and then all the foam. Doing all that while the hull is going up and down trying to knock you out. This would not be easy in anything but calm water.

The rudder post was up under the stern step, so you would have to drill or hammer a hole through the step and use a rod to push the rudder post down.

Doing all this would have taken hours and they had another weather front coming at them.

For the record, I'm with Palarran on this one. I'm not sure you guys are giving the Strong Persuader (baby sledge) enough credit. I have shifted some extreme loads with one, including plenty of rudder shafts on the hard. I don't think the rudders at most couple of hundred pounds of floatation is enough force to even enter the equation.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

Look all this started when I answered a simple question about boat building standards in the USA, and then goboating jumped down my throat and was condescending.

Boat building standards would seem (to me) to be a completely relevant topic for this incident, given that so many things broke.

As to your comment above . . they had a battery charging failure well before the rudders broke . . . unless you have some inside information . . . you do not know what the cause of that was. And neither do we know the reason for the failure of the generator.

I am done and gone.

I was never condescending at any stage , argumentative yes ,
Dave

[Cotemar]

Originally Posted by minaret

For the record, I'm with Palarran on this one. I'm not sure you guys are giving the Strong Persuader (baby sledge) enough credit. I have shifted some extreme loads with one, including plenty of rudder shafts on the hard. I don't think the rudders at most couple of hundred pounds of floatation is enough force to even enter the equation.

I agree with Palarran and you on the MacGyver, get it done no matter what, energy and attitude.

The problem is that the three of us were not on Alfa 42 "Be Good Too".
We are at our keyboards thinking what we could have done in hindsight.

Hindsight is a great place to make the right decisions.

I carry a rubber mallet and a hammer on board. Your one of the few people that I know of that is carrying a baby sledge hammer on your boat. "Be Good Too" most likely did not have a baby sledge hammer on board.

[LakeSuperior]

We carried a baby sledge hammer on our two year Atlantic circle cruise. We also carried a handful of expensive hacksaw blades in case our rig fell down.

If one looks at the history of tools the hammer is the original tool. All other tools have evolved from the hammer. I consider the "hammer" an indispensable part of a cruising toolkit.

The idea of getting into 50 deg F water to visually inspect the rudders with a heavy sea running comes from Hollywood at best. Perhaps with a wet suit, fins, and small weight belt and a strong young crew one could pull it off but the risk is high.

I have done a number of in situ propeller jobs including one remove and replace through the ice for a 300 lb prop. Accomplishing work on the rudders underwater in this stormy Atlantic scenario is impossible, period.

[promanus]

First of all I don't like the recent trend to produce boats with exposed helm station. I much prefer Antares design where the person at the helm is very well protected from the elements. I wonder if somebody would be at the helm and possibly react in time to avoid the hit if the boat had protected helm position.

Second I wonder if the so called piercing bows contributed to the fact that they were hit so hard. Would bows with more buoyancy allowed boat to float over the "rogue wave"? Please comment. I am very curious what people think especially about the second question.

[Cuttyhunk]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

ABYC also allows unsupported ball valves , seen loads on US boats.


Dave

Not as part of a thru-hull/seacock installation, they don't:

ABYC Standards, July 2013-14 edition

ABYC H-27 Seacocks, Thru-hull Fittings, and Drain Plugs

27.4.4.2 [Definition] In Line Ball Valve - A Seacock designed to be supported entirely by the through-hull fitting.

27.6 Installation

27.6.1 A seacock shall be securely mounted so that the assembly will withstand a 500 pound (227 kg) static force applied for 30 seconds to the inboard end of the assembly, without the assembly failing to stop the ingress of water. See Figure 1.

27.6.1.1 The installation shall prevent any movement of the assembly.

27.6.1.2 Thru-hull fittings and seacocks shall be connected directly.

As for threads…

27.6.1.3 Threads used in seacock installations shall be compatible (eg. NPT to NPT, NPS to NPS).

These particular regs are not new; there have been no changes at all to this section since 2008.

[HappyMdRSailor]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Like Gunther... I'd have gone down for a look.. but no way would I try working down there... had a hull nearly knock me out when I was trying to clear some industrial plastic from my prop years back in the Med... and that was only a slight sea..
As for sawing through SS... forget it.. ever tried hand sawing through a stainless prop shaft in the comfort of your bilges...??

Boaty... I snorted my tea when I first heard the mention of....

"why didn't they saw off the rudder?"

(I'm not even going to look for the first mention, let alone the multiple thumbs up)

PEOPLE..... Steel is somewhat hard... Stainless Steel is a BAZZILION times harder... Anybody who has worked with both, knows that normal tools (blades/drills/taps) that cut steel like butter become useless waste bin filler when the stainless just mocks them.... Yes, there is plenty of special tooling that cuts stainless, but it takes force, cutting oil, and slow speed POWER...

I once drilled two 5/16" holes through a broken 2" stainless ruddershaft in a fairly large bilge... in minimal 4 foot seas... it took 10+ bits and over 5 HOURS... WITH A POWER DRILL.... The resulting discomfort felt like I had been in a rollover car accident... And I was in extremely good physical condition....

PS sailors...never buddy boat with somebody who doesn't have an inverter, power tools, drill bits, etc... On board...

[Sand crab]

Originally Posted by promanus

First of all I don't like the recent trend to produce boats with exposed helm station. I much prefer Antares design where the person at the helm is very well protected from the elements. I wonder if somebody would be at the helm and possibly react in time to avoid the hit if the boat had protected helm position.

I posted the exact same thing but was corrected. I was shown that there is a retractable bimini section over the helm complete with windshield. If you go back to the A42 build blog you will find it. You can also see the support pieces retracted in that helm pic a few pages back. Looks functional.