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

[onestepcsy37]

6 Going south against winter northerlies

cotemar - doe818 is correct. winds are known by the direction they are coming from, not going to. a northerly wind would be coming from the north and blowing south, so it would be behind them.

in any case, not a good situation. in my neck of the woods we don't cross the gulf stream when we have northerlies against the north running gulf stream...

[downunder]

Originally Posted by maytrix

"At one point the boat experienced 50 knot winds and 20 foot seas but the wave piercing bows worked great."

So the definition of a rogue wave is one that is substantially larger than the typical waves. So if these were the sea conditions, how much larger was this wave to be called a rogue wave? Would it have to be 30'? 40'?

With conditions such as these, shouldn't someone be at the helm (it noted autopilot was on, but not whether or not someone was actively under control). I understand the weather wasn't great, but if you were paying attention, might you not get some warning of the wave? How was the visibility? If the rogue wave was as big as 30-40' isn't it likely it would have taken out the genoa, main sail or knocked the dinghy from the davits?

And shouldn't a blue water boat be able to handle these kind of conditions, rogue wave aside (if it really was a rogue wave)?

Just wondering if the story matches the pictures?

With the design one would be exposed to the weather in those conditions no doubt why the autopilot was being used.
To me protection both cold weather and in the tropics sun and rain need improving. Invariably I am sure it will be modified over time.

Weather protection definitely is not ideal in Atlantic weather conditions.
Even Boatman would need a dry suit rather than his shorty wetsuit.

Rogue wave is certainly overused by the press but as any surfer knows periodically one double the average size comes along.

Cheers

[nimblemotors]

I guess if you have insurance, no big deal for you to just leave it instead of fix it,
but I really have trouble that this could not be fixed enough to make progress.

[Coops]

Too even consider insurance at that stage goes against everything I ever felt about sailing. It seems so wrong to me that it could be any factor in making a decision.

Coops.

[yeloya]

"I just can't imagine doing 8 knots in a well found cat one minute and going backwards the next just out of the blue."

That's a very good point.. 10 tons of mass travelling at 8 kts coming into full stop or even worst,going backwards puts massive loads on the rigging (like you hit the wall..) and if this is true, I am surprised that the rigging is still in place..

"One rudder spun around the stock, the other rudder reversed against the hull and was jammed forcing the boat to port. Even with the stbd motor at full throttle the boat would only go to stbd."

Am I reading it correctly ? If the boat is forced to port , pushing the starboard engine will make it worst, the boat would spin anti clock wise in this case.. How a cat can go to starboard by pushing the starboard engine ??

Cheers

Yeloya

[sigmasailor]

Originally Posted by colemj

Massive 1.5" tube? Does this sound massive to anyone else? Our old, smaller, lighter, wimpier, and less macho Manta catamaran has 2" solid stock.

Mark

Thick walled pipe of the same weight is stronger than solid bar. Most of the load will occur in the outer fibers of a shaft. The farther away these are from the neutral line (the center) the stronger the pipe gets. Compare this with oversized tubes on bicycles. Strength increases by at least the square (close to cubed) of the diameter. I know of similar sized cats with 70 mm rudder shafts.

[Sand crab]

He does say it's a "solid" tube so I'm not really sure what is in there.

[DoubleWhisky]

Originally Posted by colemj

Good god, Tarjan can spin anything. On his website, he now states that no other monohull or catamaran could have survived intact what this boat did. We will never know if this was really a "massive rogue wave" or just a bit of unpleasant ocean that schooled a new design.

He describes the rudder construction as such: "It should be noted that the rudders of the boat were built of massive 1.5 inch solid stainless round tube"

Massive 1.5" tube? Does this sound massive to anyone else? Our old, smaller, lighter, wimpier, and less macho Manta catamaran has 2" solid stock.

I have been pulling all along for this boat and this business, even while throwing up inside my mouth a bit every time Tarjan writes his over-the-top PR fluff (Artic gales?), but I am now thinking he is not a good designer or builder and he screwed the pooch on this boat.

I may be projecting badly and wrongly on the boat just because of Tarjan's latest round of oral diarrhea, so I reserve the right to return to routing for this boat and business.

But right now, I don't see myself doing so.

Mark

Mark, I’m not so sure Mr Tarjan is the person (or only person) behind this PR nonsenses we can presently read

From the builder website:
“ALPHA YACHTS of Long Island, NY are the premier builders of the ALPHA 42 dynamic cruising catamaran. Alpha Yachts are born from a long tradition of building high quality sailing vessels. Founded as Atlantic Yachts more than 30 years ago in Europe the builder was one of the biggest manufacturer of yachts and eclipsed well known giants such as Benetau and Janneau. Alpha Yachts has unsurpassed experience in high tech composite manufacturing for large government organisations such as NASA, the US military and large luxury resorts. The builder has successfully crafted more than 850 mono and multihulls ranging from 31-95'. They can be found in any part of the globe. TAZA MAS one of the many hundred cruising yacht built by the builder.”

Did You hear anything about Atlantic Yachts? Which eclipsed Benetau and Janneau?
Please, note, not Beneteau but Benetau and not Jeanneau, but Janneau!
I just do not believe in two typos in so well known names. But it makes more difficult for Beneteau Group to complain about…

If You browse a little You can find a site of very fine Dutch yacht builder:

http://www.atlanticyachts.nl/home/?lan=english

I can assure You they have nothing to do with Alpha Yachts.

Still from the builder website:

“Alpha Team
Marc Anassis - Alpha Yachts
Founder of Atlantic Yachts, a passionate yacht builder and naval architect, who has constructed more than 850 mono and multihulls ranging from 31-95' in his own Atlantic Yacht shipyard. With more than 35 years of master yacht building experience and working for many years as the head of lofting for C&C yachts, Marc's drive to build the best boats has taken him around the world.”

It happen I know some things about Atlantic Yachts.
It was low-mid scale Greek yacht builder. You can call it big one, by only by local standards, with the production capacity in teens or low tens, never a hundreds. It operated for not very long time, but I can not recall the exact dates now. Anyway – impossible for them to built 850 yachts during they whole existence. As far as I know they never built a single multihull. They produced several designs. The following were best known:
Atlantic 44
http://www.hellenic-charters.gr/sailing-yachts/greek-sailing-yachts/atlantic44-bareboat-yacht.html
Atlantic 49
http://www.hellenic-charters.gr/sailing-yachts/greek-sailing-yachts/atlantic49-bareboat-sailing.html
Atlantic 61
http://www.fyly.gr/mil/crewe_sailing/aegeo/aegeo.html

The last one, quite clumsy, was for sure designed by Mr Anassis. About others – I do not know.
The company was owned by several shareholders and I have no knowledge regarding Mr Anassis involvement. Anyway the yard went into administration/liquidation after several years of trading. Tale is the problems were caused by over-aggressive developement based on EU funding and keeping prices too low to gain share in market, but I can not confirm it. Anyway – the boats were sound (some are still used in charter operations) and well built, but nothing very special about them.
After liquidation the assets (moulds included) were used to start two other businesses, namely Ocean Yachts and Alfa Yachts. Their first boats were the modified clones of Atlantic 49. Mr Anassis had nothing to do with Ocean Yachts. I’m not sure if he was involved in Alfa Yachts, but I’m in doubt regarding this. Anyway – Alfa Yachts were small scale operation (several yachts per year), so still the production of Atlantic Yachts together with Alfa Yachts is a far cry from 850 yachts.

I do know nothing about Mr Anassis involvement in C&C Yachts, but surely You can not add C&C production to the claimed number of “850 mono and multihulls ranging from 31-95' constructed in his own shipyard”.

The sole and only involvement of Mr Anassis in multihull building I'm aware of is this one:

http://sailingparadise.com/new-construction/

Of course I can not exclude the possibility of such an involvement on Mr Anassis side during his professional career in America, just did not found any trace of this.
On the Alpha Yachts site the yacht TAZA MAS is mentioned. It was designed by Mr Anassis, but as far as I know was built not by Atlantic Yachts, but by Argo shipyard.

Mr Tarjan was apparently impressed by Mr Anassis background (or was keen to impress the others):

http://windcheckmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1655: gregor-tarjan&catid=94n-watch&Itemid=427

Generally – Alpha Yachts pretend to be a kind of established yachtyard, descendant of really big European yachtbuilder, Atlantic Yard, with the great expertize, resulting from the hundreds of builts.

For me it is not true. My feeling is, that quite real possibility exist of the prospective owners of Alpha 42 boats being purposefully driven into the mistaken views regarding the builder.

Of course, it is only my feeling, and I can be completely wrong about this…

Best regards

[sigmasailor]

Either way; 38 mm is 38 mm. At a given diameter a bar will be just a little stronger than a thick walled pipe. Putting the available material at work in a hollow bar (hence pipe) of larger diameter will add to strength substantially.

[Doe818]

Double whisky, very interesting.....amazing....although Gregor seems to be good at massaging information...

Re that 1 1/2 inch rudder stock, from the pic of them installing a rudder on their site, it looks like it could be even less than that, but the angle could be deceiving, but using the closest man's thumb as a ref, it could be closer to 1 inch, unless he has very big thumbs...

[Doe818]

[yeloya]

Originally Posted by Doe818

Double whisky, very interesting.....amazing....although Gregor seems to be good at massaging information...

Re that 1 1/2 inch rudder stock, from the pic of them installing a rudder on their site, it looks like it could be even less than that, but the angle could be deceiving, but using the closest man's thumb as a ref, it could be closer to 1 inch, unless he has very big thumbs...

Sorry but this is totally irrelevant.. Would the things go better if the rudder stock was half a inch thicker, or tube, or rectangular or whatsoever ???
We have repaired many damaged rudders, both on of various multis and mono's. From what I have seen the rudder of this boat has nothing different than any other multis' rudder.
The boat can have many other design errors if any, but I don't think rudder design is among them.

The established boat builders have learnt a lot from their mistakes in the past. Buying # 1 boat is OK, but buying # 1 from a company new to the business is not. If they did as much boat as Jeanneau and Beneteau we would have heard about them earlier.
Yeloya

[sigmasailor]

2 Inch instead of 1.5 inch would make it at least twice as strong; it could make a difference. It might have also failed; we do not know what really happened.

Given the available material and the fact that forces try to bend the stock in different positions a round shape is ideal.

[DoubleWhisky]

Originally Posted by yeloya

If they did as much boat as Jeanneau and Beneteau we would have heard about them earlier.
Yeloya

They definitely didnt. Even a claimed numer of 850 is nothing in comparison with Jeanneau/Beneteau.

But 850 is also very doubtful...
May be third "typo" on the page?
85 is quite a realistic figure for Atlantic Yachts

Mr Tarjan told:

"I designed the exterior and interior, trying to combine the best features of all the cruising catamarans in the world into one package, and he (Mr Anassis) did the engineering and hydrodynamics."

So it looks, that overall design was made by Mr Tarjan (not a yacht designer, as I understand, but may be I'm wrong), and then this design was engineered by Mr Anassis (with not known record in catamaran design and rather dated design experience at all). Wonderteam, really...

[Southern Star]

I had suggested the possibility of a rogue wave driving the boat back so that the rudders were not only damaged, but bent at an acute angle making it impossible to steer the boat. This now seems to be the case, if one accepts the word of the captain (and I do). Yes, Yeloya is correct that running the starboard engine would only push the boat further to port - rather obvious and hardly a mistake that a captain with the experience of Captain Schmitt would make and not realize over several days. Surely it is far more likely that he misspoke.

One can scoff at the notion of a rogue wave, but they exist and in greater numbers than had previously been thought. Remember, in 2004 European Space Agency satellite images were used by scientists for three weeks to study the phenomenon and in that short period they were able to pick up 10 rogues that were 82 feet or higher! Remember, a rogue is defined as being AT LEAST 2 time the significant wave height (rather than just the mean). The scientists were also able to confirm that they occur on every ocean on the planet.

Certainly, to drive a boat backwards that has forward momentum and 18,000 lbs displacement would take a very large and powerful wave. Would other rudders have survived this event? Possibly, but unless someone has evidence that the rudder stock on most cats of this size are substantially stronger, I would be hesitant to call it a design or construction flaw.

Is it surprising that the rig would have survived this event? Not unless the boat did a backwards pitchpole - something which has happened to boats encountering rogue waves in the past, but which blessedly did not occur here.

The captain indicates that the diesels were functioning after the event - but again, with the boat only able to go in circles, they were of no more use than the sails. After a few days at the mercy of the waves in a disabled boat in a very cold North Atlantic, what were they to do with a forcast for worsening conditions? Wait until they were at imminent risk and rescue might be impossible? IMO that would have been irresponsible.

Brad