Dutch couple found dead, their sailboat found upturned

[Polux]

Originally Posted by GordMay

“... When a boat loses a keel at sea the first reaction is often to blame the keel bolts, but the evidence does not support this; and other failures are actually more common. In 2008, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) set up a working party on keel losses, and they found 72 cases since 1984 of boats losing their keels. There were defined causes in 44.5% of cases, but only three were attributed to keel bolt failure. Other causes included welded fin failures (11), grounding collision (8), internal structure (8) and canting keel system (2) ...”

➥ Practical Boat Owner | XS Sailing

➥ A study of a keel - The International Institute of Marine Surveying (IIMS)

Note that all that data regarding the 72 cases only in two cases regards cruiser racers (and one of them the one that regards the 2th link you posted). All the others are top racing boats and those welded keel failures regards high performance racers with canting keels or keels built with a foil (that sustains a bulb) made with a structure of welded stell frame (to be lighter) and none of that is regards cruising boat keels.

The study of a keel regards Hooligan V a case where the keel was modified by an amateur increasing the ballast and weakening the keel structure, leading to the keel failure.

Here you have more information about that case, even if what the one you posted is technically very good, maybe this one results more clear for the ones less technically minded. Full reports from the MAIB investigation too:


http://www.sail.ie/wp222/wp-content/.../hooliganv.PDF
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...afetyFlyer.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/keel...loss-of-1-life

If all yacht serious incidents/failures were mandatory investigated like this one the information would prevent further incidents and would contribute for a better overall design and building. Unfortunately that would imply a world organization, or cooperation, dedicated to that and someone that paid the bill. I would not mind to pay a small tax for that since it would effectively contribute for more safety.

[Lizzy Belle]

Originally Posted by Mogga

this boat in heavy surf on a beach somewhere, and pictures of the boat being repaired from a dismasting.
// but indicates that at sometime the boat has seen a lot of action,

Yes, after cruising for 15 yrs, the boat has seen a lot of action. That does not explain what happened, tho.

The dismasting happened around 10 years ago, due to a failing stay.
The pic "on" the beach is them being guided through a heavy surf without any problems. Boat is not "on" anything but water
Also years ago - last update on the website is dated 2008 or something.

--

While having yet another "keels falling off" discussion is very interesting (...), we don't even know what happened here, how or why the Finkes went overboard and what happened to the boat after.

Wondering how something happened makes more sense when you know what happened - imho anyway. And in this case, we may never know as they left Panama om March 25th and nobody has heard anything from them since then.

[boatman61]

Well a decent autopsy should be capable of assessing time of death/time in water.. from that one can figure an average speed from departure point to stated destination.. and rough location of the disaster.. I just cannot see their keel falling of like that without signs being spotted when.. (heavy rust weeping where it meets the hull etc..)
according to Jedi they were on the hard not long ago in Colon..

[estarzinger]

Regarding the internal foam being able to float the boat . . . . The displacement of the steel version of the samoa would be 45,000lbs, with 12,570lbs of ballast - so without the keel would be 32,430lbs.

The design calls for 1" of insulation from the cabin sole up. I roughly figure that is 75 cu ft of foam. Lets say it is 4lb foam, so has a floatation of 58 lbs/cu ft. That means the total foam floatation is about 4500lbs. Pretty far from the 32,430. Now there would be some other stuff with positive floatation (interior woodwork) in the boat but it seems unlikely to come anywhere close to being able to float the boat.

The sail locker, if actually sealed gas tight, would just float the boat. But it is unlikely it would be sealed tight.

Regarding emergency air bags - a company in Maine used to make exactly that for sail boats - but they went out of business pretty quickly. The bags (and tanks) took up too much room, the inflation tanks requires service, and the liability was too high.

Regarding the keel study discussed above - I was a 'observer' member of the working party (helping Stan Honey) and it really has nothing at all to do with this incident, and the folks who wrote the magazine article obviously don't understand the details. The 'welding issue' is with respect to fabricated (eg welded) vs milled vs forged high tensile keels (very high aspect very heavily bulbed - majority but not all canting keels). It has nothing at all to do with welding a cruising fin to a steel hull.

The cruising keel failures fall into four categories: bolt failure, laminate failure, maintenance failure and initial structural design failure - with the incidents very roughly split among those (we dont have failure mode evidence in enough cases to say more).

Regarding welding on this boat - I would just comment that the dutch shipyards are not backyard operations and are not back yard welders - they are probably the most skilled metal ship building 'community' in the world - take a look at SL's boat construction thread if you want to see their typical work. Something might have gone wrong on this particular boat - but I personally would rate poor welding to be well down the list of most likely possibilities (yea possible, but not the occam's razor choice).

Personally, Almost no matter how this keel was attached I dont think it likely to just fall off at sea (without a bunch of warning). I think an impact would most likely be required. And a reef impact to be by far the most likely impact.

Jetii - any way you could find out how this keel was actually attached? That must be known in the Dutch boat building community. We could tell with a high rez picture of the hull, but not sure we are going to get one.

[Lizzy Belle]

Originally Posted by boatman61

I just cannot see their keel falling of like that without signs being spotted /
according to Jedi they were on the hard not long ago in Colon..

Yes, that's what I understood too. A few people here knew the couple and have been in contact with the son (who lives in Rotterdam).

I didn't know them, but I am willing to assume that two sailors with their background AND over 15 years of cruising under their belt know how to check their keel (and everything else) for warning signs - and did exactly that when on the hard.

So far, all we know is that they left Colón on Monday, March 25th (headed for Providencia), their bodies were found on Thursday and the boat a day or two days later, on April 1st.

What happened between March 25th and March 28th/29th (I'm unclear exactly when their bodies were found, sorry) ... we don't know. Let alone why.

From what their son said, there was no contact with the couple after March 25th -- which was unusual, as they would normally send their location every 24 hrs or so. The last contact was a simple "we're underway" message on the 25th.

So it seems something went wrong within the first 24 hrs or so after they left Colón ... But even that is just guessing, based on them normally contacting home and missing all usual check-ins after leaving Panama. But not being able to contact home can have many reasons. So we really don't know anything as of yet

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by Polux

I like your attitude and if I am wrong I will be the first to tell but the link you provide does not work. Please try again, maybe something missed when you posted it.

Edit: I accessed it and it is an odd list. Almost all the boats are race boats and they even got wrongly one of the few that is not a race boat but a cruiser racer. It was a Bavaria Match 42 and not 38 that lost the keel, as it is stated there and even I know about some more keels lost on cruising boats than the ones that are listed there.

And yes you are right nothing of that has to do with steel or aluminium boats but with canting keel boats, canting mechanisms, welds there and probably on the type of keel structure that I mentioned previously.

Who would thought that on an article about cruising boats they would refer information regarding keels lost on pure racing boats whose keels have little to do with the ones of cruising boats, even with the ones of cruising racers.

Pollux,

Thank you for taking the time and applying you experience to this.

I'm quoting and BOLDING your relevant words because I think they bear repeating. One needs to be very careful when reading even respected sources and weigh the positions against ones own experience and intellect.

I also appreciate your later comments on the number of high end racing boats vs. cruisers. It seems the average cruiser is in pretty good hands, given sane inspections and maintenance.

[Panope]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

Regarding the internal foam being able to float the boat . . . . The displacement of the steel version of the samoa would be 45,000lbs, with 12,570lbs of ballast - so without the keel would be 32,430lbs.

The design calls for 1" of insulation from the cabin sole up. I roughly figure that is 75 cu ft of foam. Lets say it is 4lb foam, so has a floatation of 58 lbs/cu ft. That means the total foam floatation is about 4500lbs. Pretty far from the 32,430. Now there would be some other stuff with positive floatation (interior woodwork) in the boat but it seems unlikely to come anywhere close to being able to float the boat...........

Thanks for the data, Evans. I guess I can assume that bigger boats will generally be more difficult to make unsinkable than smaller. Law of floatation similtude

[LakeSuperior]

The waters off the coasts of Columbia and Venezuela are not exactly without nefarious incidents, missing yachts, and attacks on cruisers over the last 10 years. In my book they are elevated risk cruising grounds.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

The waters off the coasts of Columbia and Venezuela are not exactly without nefarious incidents, missing yachts, and attacks on cruisers over the last 10 years. In my book they are elevated risk cruising grounds.

Columbia is a place somewhere in the USA. The islands of San Andres and Providencia belong to Colombia but are off the coast of Nicaragua, very far away from Venezuela.

Also, Colombia is just fine for cruising, not at all like Venezuela and should not be thrown on the same pile.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Polux

I don't know the exact shipyard. On that newspaper notice the son said that it was a very solid boat built in Groningen. Groningen is known to have several high quality steel and aluminum shipyards, I don't know in what shipyard the boat was built neither it is mentioned on the article.

You get me confused with that Breehorn case. You are certainly referring to Hooligan V that it was indeed built by Breehorn but it was not a Breehorn, it was a Max Fun 35, a sportive cruiser racer. The boats commercialized under the name of Breehorn are sturdy voyage boats.

Anyway the type of boat was completely different and we know what happened on the case of the Hooligan V: A modification of the boat keel by somebody that had not the knowledge to do that, adding not only more 200kg of ballasty but weakening also all structure.

About this one we don't know what happened but I am certainly curious to know why the keel on a steel boat come lose so easily. But being the boat on the caribbean I doubt that would be made a research on that.

Too many assumptions. "Groeningen is known to ..." but we do not know at this point which boatyard and so I would not make any assumptions on implied quality (or lack of).

And Hooligan was built by Breehorn. Full stop. Or, in your words: "was indeed built by Breehorn but it was not a Breehorn". I give you your right to put things your way but to me if HR builds any boat, I will expect HR quality, not a Fiat Panda quality.

And it was not just adding the ballast but the errors were made at build. You know the source of all this but just in case I attach it here. Please note other boats of the series, without modified bulbs, suffered similar keel problems:

https://assets.digital.cabinet-offic...ganVReport.pdf

Now my point: a boat built in a region known for many good boatyards can be a lime just a s much as a boat built in any other region. Even when she is actually build by one of the good boatyards. See recent Oyster accident.

b.

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Columbia is a place somewhere in the USA. The islands of San Andres and Providencia belong to Colombia but are off the coast of Nicaragua, very far away from Venezuela.

Also, Colombia is just fine for cruising, not at all like Venezuela and should not be thrown on the same pile.

Thank you for your largeness in gently correcting my typo and the fine geography lesson. You are indeed a generous individual.

Furthermore, technically I did not quantify risk off either coast I just pointed out that risk is increased off both coasts in my (and others BTW) frame of reference.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Too many assumptions. "Groeningen is known to ..." but we do not know at this point which boatyard and so I would not make any assumptions on implied quality (or lack of).

And Hooligan was built by Breehorn. Full stop. Or, in your words: "was indeed built by Breehorn but it was not a Breehorn". I give you your right to put things your way but to me if HR builds any boat, I will expect HR quality, not a Fiat Panda quality.

And it was not just adding the ballast but the errors were made at build. You know the source of all this but just in case I attach it here. Please note other boats of the series, without modified bulbs, suffered similar keel problems:

https://assets.digital.cabinet-offic...ganVReport.pdf

Now my point: a boat built in a region known for many good boatyards can be a lime just a s much as a boat built in any other region. Even when she is actually build by one of the good boatyards. See recent Oyster accident.

b.

Sometimes you can be very pissing. Do you know that this was not a class A boat but a Class B boat? Do you know that in what regards Class B boats:

"Other than in respect of stability and buoyancy requirements, the RCD does not require Design Category B compliance to be externally validated, thereby relying on the manufacturer having robust self-certification procedures in place.?"

The problem with the boat had nothing to do with built quality but with a modification to the original design made by the NA. They did not modified it only on this boat but on all boats.

The only blame that falls on Breehorn is to believe that someone not qualified could know better than the NA that designed the boat but probably they discussed this with Max Fun before they accepted the suggestion to modify the keel design.

This particular boat had more problems than the others because they increased later also the ballast.

No recommendation was made on the final part of the report regarding Breehorn, having the fault of this accident been entirely attributed to the builder of the keel and to Max Fun boats, even if I think that the NA should have also some limited blame on this.

Read the conclusions and recommendations on the report and stop blaming Breehorn for what they are not responsible for. Not a single word on the report says that Brehhorn did not built the boat to the exact specifications provided by the plan that Max Fun provided.

The problem with the boat was not a building fault but a design fault and it should be said that if the original design was much better, it was rather on the limit in what regards scantlings, this time not on the keel structure but on the keel itself, on the upper part of the foil.

"The keel fitted to all of the Max Fun 35 boats was at variance with the “original” design. Breehorn BV, the boat builder, contracted Konstruktiebedrijf De Jong BV, a small steel fabricating company based at Oudega Gaast Sleat in The Netherlands, to construct the keels. ...The original design was forwarded to the fabricator but
he wanted to change the design to ease manufacture, enable more thorough hot dip galvanising, and in his view, to strengthen the fin connection to the taper box....

Even though a Safety Factor of 2.0 was not achieved, there is no doubt that the“original design” of the keel was more satisfactory to accept the “in service” loads than the “as built” version.


In the “as built” design, the position of the fillet welds at the fin to taper box connection, and the shortened support frames which were not welded to the underside of the taper box, meant that the fin flexing was taken up in the vicinity of the weld and not satisfactorily transferred through to the internal GRP supporting structure....

The original design did not have any welds in the critical stress areas where the fin is attached to the taper box and is seen externally at the hull juncture."



Regarding the conclusions no fault goes to the builder (Breehorn). As I said, and it seems that you did not have understood this was not a Breehorn, the boat the builder build as its own product, it was a sub contracted boat and Breehorn has done correctly the boat according to the designs provided by Max Fun boats BV, the owners of the boat brand and that is all they had to do.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Polux

Sometimes you can be very pissing. (...)

Not to the point where I would use offensive language on a thread where loss of human life is being mentioned.

Please tone your language, or ask the moderators to move the argumentative part of this thread to a separate thread.

b.

[Snowpetrel]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

Regarding the internal foam being able to float the boat . . . . The displacement of the steel version of the samoa would be 45,000lbs, with 12,570lbs of ballast - so without the keel would be 32,430lbs.

The design calls for 1" of insulation from the cabin sole up. I roughly figure that is 75 cu ft of foam. Lets say it is 4lb foam, so has a floatation of 58 lbs/cu ft. That means the total foam floatation is about 4500lbs. Pretty far from the 32,430. Now there would be some other stuff with positive floatation (interior woodwork) in the boat but it seems unlikely to come anywhere close to being able to float the boat.

The sail locker, if actually sealed gas tight, would just float the boat. But it is unlikely it would be sealed gas tight. <snip>

Good points Evans, looking again at the figures,you are right, the normal amount of insulating foam alone would not float the steel version without the keel. Thanks for taking the time to look at this.

But because I always like to beat a dead horse, I do think the displacement to be floated by the foam might well be less than the 14 t or so that you have used. VDS give 18t disp and 5.1t ballast. The displacement is normally quoted at half load, so I will make this assumption here, though its quite possible that VDS quotes lightship values?

18t-1.5t internal joinery, 0.8t liquids, approx 0.5t? of payload, and 5.1t of keel gives something like 10.1t of steel in the hull, this will displace something like 1.2t itself, so we end up with about 9t of bouyancy to be found. 25mm of foam gives about 2t, 50mm 4t, 75mm 6t. Its unlikely we would have more than three inches of foam so we are going to have to hope that trapped air can do the rest. I am thinking things like dinghy, fenders, fridge space, lazarette, sail locker (is there a WT door through this bulkhead?) etc. But it is looking like more of a longshot that she would float, but still I think just possible if she had 3 inches of foam and reasonably good WT compartments that can trap some air while she is inverted.

However I am thinking its highly unlikely the keel would go in the first place without hitting something very solid for a long time, and certainly without giving enough warning to enable at least a radio message or epirb to be used. So Evans scenario of a double MOB I think is a very plausible one.

[sy_gilana]

A few points.

1 Sincere condolences to the friends and family. A tragedy.

2 Arrived in San Andres ColOmbia this morning, aware of the incident but today I saw a day-old newspaper on the ground with the photos. I will go to the reef and have a look at the hull in the next weeks. We wanted to stop there last night but kept on.

3 So many assumptions, and as many theories. The keel might not have been lost in a single event. The unfortunate couple might have been MOB, or one MOB and another rescue attempt. We will probably never know. The boat might have lodged its keel in a reef and then wave action tore it off by repetitive loading.

4 IMHO the Dutch are some of the finest builders and designers in the world. Ahem..I also own a Van De Stadt, in Corten A steel, and I feel safe. The Dutch invented the yacht. The Dutch have a reputation of fair and thorough investigations (Komsomolets, Kursk, the Malaysian Airlines plane etc)

5 I have the drawings, and have seen my hulls construction. I am positive that there is no way in hell this keel is going to fall off. The thickeners, the framing and plate-framing, in fact you could torch cut a slot through the hull plating all around the keel and fill it with bondo, and I would still cross oceans with it. The keel is not attached to the hull plating for any other reason than watertight integrity. Its the structure within that supports it. Lloyds came to look at Gilana every 2 weeks during construction. All the welds were x-rayed. Welders were Nuclear power station employees. We have run aground with our 8'6" draft in the Bahamas, and sat there for 11 hours waiting for tide. The steel of the keel shoe is 1" thick, 25.4mm.

6 You cannot compare this Van de Stad's construction to the mission critical racing boat design, once described to me by a naval architect friend as, a keel supporting a sailplan with adequate flotation to support them both. John Martin's "Allied Bank" lost its keel in a round the world race. It was a bulb, some 12 ' down a machined High tensile blade, and the bulb was filled with depleted Uranium. (the IAEA was really upset at the loss off Chile)

My sympathies to all involved.

I will take photos, or at least report back once I have seen the hull myself.