Four crew rescued from disabled sailboat off coast of Nova Scotia

[BrianDubya]

The caption below one of the pictures indicates the boat was “demasted” but I clearly see a mainmast on the boat (flying the tattered jib). I cannot see where a mizzenmast would fit, so how was it “demasted”?

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by mindsofman

Just finished a delivery out of Portsmouth,, it
was fkn freezing,, i only did it because there
was a heater in the pilot house,, but getting out
on deck to unhook sheets was murder..
ducked into Newport because of forecasted
bad weather,, also Moorehead City..
They may have had a legit reason for being out
there but for the life of me, i cant imagine what.
260mile sth east of Halifax is only 2days out, they
had to have known about that gale coming down.
WTF.

We need to hear from them, but since the boat was listed, was a European boat, and now is "Sale Pending" and was under command of a delivery skipper, this points to an East to West crossing of the North Atlantic. They might have been two weeks out, not two days out of port.

[bvimatelot]

I can attest to the fact that it was extremely chilly and rather lumpy a couple of weeks ago up there. I was bringing a Moody 54 (Hanse) down from Newport to BVI. Didn't warm up before Bermuda! We had a broken autopilot (actually, I've come to consider this to be a normal state of affairs!) and the jib, furled to smaller than spitfire, also shredded in winds gusting up to 55 kts but steady 40's for 3 days. Wave heights? No idea, but about the height of the top spreader at times and seemingly coming from all directions at once.


As for the delivery, of course the skipper made the right decision! With gear failures of that nature, and failing again after jury rigging, he could not guarantee the safety of his crew so a mayday was inevitable, and correct. Tony

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by bvimatelot

With gear failures of that nature, and failing again after jury rigging, he could not guarantee the safety of his crew so a mayday was inevitable, and correct. Tony

WHAT gear failures? Do you know something we don't know? What exactly happened to their steering and rig?

And Tony, your Moody 54 would have a top spreader about 50 feet from the water (15 meters). Are you seriously telling us that there were 15 meter waves?

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by wingssail

WHAT gear failures? Do you know something we don't know? What exactly happened to their steering and rig?

And Tony, your Moody 54 would have a top spreader about 50 feet from the water (15 meters). Are you seriously telling us that there were 15 meter waves?

an 8 meter wave would appear to be 16 meters tall when you are in the trough.

[bvimatelot]

Don't know exactly what happened to the steering other than it failed, was repaired, then broke again in worsening conditions. Don't know how the head sail shredded, but mine did in 50-odd knots and I reckon mine was in a newer condition than theirs. As for top spreader height - well, hey, it was dark, I was rather busy (not to mention freezing cold, tired and a tad concerned about life in general) and maybe we were pointing downhill when I looked up!

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by wingssail

WHAT gear failures? Do you know something we don't know? What exactly happened to their steering and rig?



And Tony, your Moody 54 would have a top spreader about 50 feet from the water (15 meters). Are you seriously telling us that there were 15 meter waves?

If you don’t believe they were that big, try sailing out there this time of year and take a look for yourself! He said they were about up to his spreaders and I don’t question that’s how it looked to him because I’ve seen the same thing in 45 knot winds out of the north in the Gulf Stream. I don’t know how high the waves were measured to be but I’ll never forget how they looked when we were in a trough looking up at one after another that looked like they were taller than our 65’ mast. I’m not claiming they were 65’ waves but I’m pretty sure that when we were in a trough they were all at least even with the top spreaders. Yes, it was very frightening and I can’t even imagine trying to deal with that in freezing conditions. So when someone says they saw something similar out in the North Atlantic this time of year, I tend to believe them. If I had to deliver a boat south right now I’d look for good weather windows and not go out of sight of land so at the first sign of worsening conditions I could duck back in and hole up until the weather improved again. No way would I try to sail directly to Bermuda from New England or be out where the 4 sailors were rescued from December through March in a medium sized cruising sailboat.

[kristjan]

Originally Posted by bvimatelot

I can attest to the fact that it was extremely chilly and rather lumpy a couple of weeks ago up there. I was bringing a Moody 54 (Hanse) down from Newport to BVI. Didn't warm up before Bermuda! We had a broken autopilot (actually, I've come to consider this to be a normal state of affairs!) and the jib, furled to smaller than spitfire, also shredded in winds gusting up to 55 kts but steady 40's for 3 days. Wave heights? No idea, but about the height of the top spreader at times and seemingly coming from all directions at once.


As for the delivery, of course the skipper made the right decision! With gear failures of that nature, and failing again after jury rigging, he could not guarantee the safety of his crew so a mayday was inevitable, and correct. Tony

Hey, buddy, long time, next time you see me I’ll be bringing my own boat into port! Sail as safe as you can, most here don’t and can’t understand the bread bad butter of our trade.

[Mr B]

Some thing I have learned from reading this thread,
Roller Furlers Can disintegrate in high winds,
I hadnt heard that before,
I have a Genoa on a Roller Furler,
Some thing for me to look into,
What would I do if my Genoa ripped to shreds,
I only use a foot of it out at the bottom in high winds,
Main is in its cover and tied down,
Food for thought,

I also have twin rudders, That have failed, One Steering cable exploded internally, No steering,
Thinking back on that one, Maybe cutting one cable off with my Bolt cutters would have given me steering on one rudder, ????????

I always think on the worst side of things, Nothing bad happens in a Millpond,

[boatman61]

Mr B.. sails in general can disintegrate in high winds.. weakened stitching is the usual reason, admittedly its never happened to me but I have had a furler line snap and that was a buga, luckily not in high wnds just a f6 so was able to manage with the full genny out till I managed to wrap enough line on the drum to furl it half in and lash to a cleat till I got near to Alcudia, Mallorca and then let it out and dropped it before anchoring. The next day was quieter and I got new line from the chandler in the marina and sorted it then continued on my way.

[TrentePieds]

Mr. B:

You are wise to give throught to these things now – BEFORE anything goes pearshaped :-)

I am known variously as a sailing Luddite and as a hopeless romantic. The reason for that is that I have little patience with the sort of newfangled devices that not only are prone to malfunctioning, but are unreceptive to repairs at sea. MySaintedMother usta tell me: “If you can't repair it with a piece of codline and a shiv, don't go to sea in it!”

There are certainly circumstances in which a roller furling sail is “nice to have” but the trade off between, on the one hand, the safety afforded by not having to go on deck and, on the other hand, being unable to repair it with codline and shiv when it goes sideways – as it necessarily must, sooner or later – must be carefully considered.

Here, where I sail in the Salish Sea, roller furling sails are nothing but an affectation IMO. I only have them because the boat we got for a damn good price already had them. The price of the boat was low in part BECAUSE the boat had had five and thirty grand spent on installing them three years before we bought her for a fraction of that. Nobody else had wanted her, mangled like that :-) So I put up with them, but if I had ten more years of sailing life left in me, than I can reasonably expect to have, I would dump them in favour of a main on slides and hank-on headsails. Simpler, cheaper, and nearly failure proof.

In days of yore, long before the devil visited roller furls on benighted sailormen, I was an instructor on a 65 foot ketch. A mono of course. Being an instructor means, basically, that you are single-handing at all times. When the students are “in class” you are ten times as busy as when you are just sailing all by your lonesome, so your routines, in regards to deckwork, have to be dead on, so you can save the bacon for students that mess up. In this particular boat I could, myself (and I did it by way of demonstration prior to letting the students have at it), start the main sheet, clip my tether to the jackline, get from the cockpit to the foot of the mast, cast off the main halyard and set it to its mark for the desired depth of reef, take up the downhauls for the third reef, belay them, sweat up the tension on the halyard, get back to the cockpit and trim the sheet in about four minutes. “What about the robbands?” you say. Fine, do 'em now, if you have time. Else leave them for now. They are not critical. You can let the bunt flap about for a few minutes till all else is ticketyboo, then go back and tidy up the bunt. In my present thirty-footer it takes ten minutes of bugger-about to reef the mast furling main! So what, I ask you, is the advantage of roller furling?

I know very little about catamarans, so I looked up your boat type. What struck me immediately looking at the pictures is that your first problem in going on deck would be to negotiate the hard dodger. When you've done that, you have to cope with side decks so narrow that in any kind of sea they would not, IMO, be safely negotiable. So your alternative to going along the sidedecks is to go through a hatch. Operning a hatch in hard, reef-demanding weather is not, usually, a good idea.

So what this type of boat offers is maximum below-decks accommodation bought at the cost of sacrificing handiness of operation. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with choosing that trade-off. However, it has consequences. One of them is that you condemn yourself to such unnecessarily complicated devices as roller furls. That, in turn, means higher acquisition and installation costs as well as higher maintenance costs and a higher probability of gear failure. But most all – in my opinion – you subject yourself to higher risks at sea precisely because such devices are extremely difficult to repair at sea. Ultimately, that can result in the loss of a boat that could have been saved if it had been repairable with MySaintedMother's codline and shiv. We have just, in the last week or two, seen a case of that, where a mono was lost off Nova Scotia apparently due to a steering failure that was not repairable with what was aboard, and a, possibly consequential, failure of the headsl roller furl.

As you yourself point out: You need to imagine all the worst things that can happen to you and your boat, however frightening doing so may be. That is the essence of skipperhood. “Doing an ostrich” simply isn't acceptable! Then you have to learn any skills you may still be innocent of, that might be required to cope with/repair all these “worst case” things than can go wrong. Then you need to carry a stock of repair parts for these eventualities.

As I said, I know very little about catamarans. But I would think your boat is driven basically by the genny, so do make sure that that roller furl is mainatained to the highest of standards. And since you are cable steered, and since cable is cheap, make sure to give the set-up a good butcher's at least once a year, and renew the cabling at the least sign of fraying :-)

Cheers

TrentePieds

[Mr B]

The Roller Furler came with the boat, I quite like it,
The steering cables are an inner and outer cable and is not cheap,
The Genoa is operated from the cockpit, So I dont need to go onto the bow for any reason in bad weather,
Its also very slippery out there and it does bounce a lot at the front, I do have a chest harness That is short enough that even unconscious, I wont go over the side,
Its hooked up to a Jackline under the boom, Which is tied off and cant move,

Im not frightened of it, But I do like to be aware of what can go wrong and be prepared to fix it with spares I carry,
I have changed a few things in my boat dramatically since I wrecked it, Batterys up high so I dont lose power,
New Pumps that do work, Hahahaha, I could pee stronger than the ones I had,
Deflated Tractor tubes that I can blow up in minutes and keep me afloat,
New anchor that wont drag,
Sealing of holes in the boat that could sink me, Steering cable access holes thru the bulkheads, Water ingress from the rudder lockers into the rear bedrooms, Thru the rear lockers which are supposed to be floatation chambers, A following sea and a foot of water would have filled the back lockers thru the rudder lockers,
Thicker Hulls, From 5 mm to about 13 mm,

I dont use the main any more, It gave one knot extra using the GPS to find the best speed, So I only use the Genoa,
Im no great sailor by any means, But common sense and being capable will get me thru most things,

Being single handed, and well out to sea, And no internet, So no weather info, I take it as it comes,
And learning from others mistakes, Helps a lot,

[bvimatelot]

Cheers Kris and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to you! I'm spending a couple of days recovering from "boat rash" then out again for more out of season deliveries!

[jtsailjt]

A shredded sail on a roller furler isn’t any bigger problem than a hanked on sail that’s shredded is. It can be removed and replaced with a smaller sail just like a hanked on sail can. The problem is that lots of boats with furlers don’t carry any back up sails because they plan to use their primary sails deeply reefed. But for Luddites who find themselves “stuck” with roller furlers, the same level of safety can be achieved by having a set of storm sails with bolt ropes that fit in the slot in your furler.

[MartinR]

Originally Posted by jtsailjt

A shredded sail on a roller furler isn’t any bigger problem than a hanked on sail that’s shredded is. It can be removed and replaced with a smaller sail just like a hanked on sail can. The problem is that lots of boats with furlers don’t carry any back up sails because they plan to use their primary sails deeply reefed. But for Luddites who find themselves “stuck” with roller furlers, the same level of safety can be achieved by having a set of storm sails with bolt ropes that fit in the slot in your furler.

A shredded sail on a furler is a big problem if partially furled. If the furler is stuck, the only way to get the sail down is to wrap it around the foil by hand. Not easily doable in strong winds. Been there, done that.