Oceanis 485 steering failure

[neilpride]

Ok then, where is the diference between a bad day in Biscay and good day in the southern ocean ?

[Polux]

Originally Posted by monte

I'm not really following how the bene in question wasn't designed/built to withstand calm 1m seas and <20kt winds 10 miles north of Guadeloupe. Too much smoke and mirrors perhaps?

Again and again as it was posted and not only by me you don't know if that rudder post failed due to bad maintenance after a hard grounding, if that rudder post failed due to a building defect.

You assume that rudder post failed due to improper design and scantlings.

It can be the case but you don't know if that was the case or not.

If that was the case that would be happening on a lot of the several hundred of Oceanis 48, specially because as you say that happened in very mild conditions and if that was the case certainly Beneteau would be making a Recall on the boats, as it had made before on similar cases, anticipating not only loss of lives but a scandal. Beneteau have made not a Recall on that boat (it can make yet, if it is really a design problem).

Have you any notice of those multiple failures specifically on the Oceanis 48?

[neilpride]

The German dudes in the youtube Vid don't think the same..... After a Biscay croosing...

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Polux

I just pointed out that several deliver skippers on this forum, that have made Ocean passages on Oceanis, had expressed different opinions, namely that those boats are adequate for doing passage on the right season. That is by far the more common opinion regarding that.

Can we get some links to those "several" quotes? I've certainly never seen such a statement made by a reputable delivery skipper.


And no, Neil did not say all single rudder Oceanis have the same setup. After all, Plexus hasn't even been used for all that long.


I find it entertaining that after many many pages of you arguing for the use of Plexus on another thread, you haven't even mentioned the many failures using it here.

[neilpride]

Or in bad google translation ....


Words from the dutch skipper after the rudder nightmare.


This video shows how the rudder is attached to the steady, a 2007 Beneteau Oceanis 43 from Lelystad. The construction is as strong as its weakest schakel..in this case, the 1 millimeter thin top layer of plywood (plywood) in which the rudder is attached to the rudder shaft. This is glued with polyester on the plywood. In force on the rudder may tear the plywood as my boat is happening. On the Bay of Biscay with depths up to 4,000 meters was found that only the rudder was still attached to a flange in the storage locker. The stirring of the mounting sleeve was torn so that the rudder could fall at any moment as a result of the boat with a trough hole in the boat so that it would sink in a few moments. Fortunately a French port location where the Steady could be towed ashore.


YouTube fans comment:


Gerard wow, this is bales dude !! This obviously gonna resign from the manufacturer?
They should check all these boats.
Luckily you can still reach shore.!



Another one:

+ Sandwich Bag This is the rudder shaft. The rudder shaft is loose, if it breaks down even further then there is no more stirring and there will be a considerable hole in the boat so they will sink.


May I ask you Paolo whats your Theory in this particular case?

[ontherocks83]

Originally Posted by Polux

you don't know if that rudder post failed due to bad maintenance after a hard grounding, if that rudder post failed due to a building defect.

IT DOESN'T MATTER

If you have a full speed grounding of the rudder only (just like I described with my old boat in an earlier post) the rudder should fail and break off NOT the post inside the boat!!!!!!! That means it is designed WRONG, not right but WRONG.

There was no sacrificial failure point to lose the rudder and save the boat (bad design), the part that broke (which should have been the most solid)was the weakest part of the structure (bad design), the failure of the most critical part caused the boat to sink (bad design) Why can't you comprehend that?????? Every other person on here seems to. Oh wait never mind, I figured it out we're all just really dumb and that's why not one person here has agreed with you so far, it's us don't worry:bang head:

[minaret]

Originally Posted by neilpride

Or in bad google translation ....


Words from the dutch skipper after the rudder nightmare.


This video shows how the rudder is attached to the steady, a 2007 Beneteau Oceanis 43 from Lelystad. The construction is as strong as its weakest schakel..in this case, the 1 millimeter thin top layer of plywood (plywood) in which the rudder is attached to the rudder shaft. This is glued with polyester on the plywood. In force on the rudder may tear the plywood as my boat is happening. On the Bay of Biscay with depths up to 4,000 meters was found that only the rudder was still attached to a flange in the storage locker. The stirring of the mounting sleeve was torn so that the rudder could fall at any moment as a result of the boat with a trough hole in the boat so that it would sink in a few moments. Fortunately a French port location where the Steady could be towed ashore.


YouTube fans comment:


Gerard wow, this is bales dude !! This obviously gonna resign from the manufacturer?
They should check all these boats.
Luckily you can still reach shore.!



Another one:

+ Sandwich Bag This is the rudder shaft. The rudder shaft is loose, if it breaks down even further then there is no more stirring and there will be a considerable hole in the boat so they will sink.


May I ask you Paolo whats your Theory in this particular case?

Exactly. I said it before in the other thread, I said it here already, and I'll say it again. Tying into the face veneer only on a structural laminate, let alone a Plexus fillet, on a piece of ply for a structural joint with dynamic loading is moronic. It breaks rules I learned in my first year of boat building school. It's just not done-by anyone who has any idea what they are doing.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by neilpride

The German dudes in the youtube Vid don't think the same..... After a Biscay croosing...

You are mixing things things up. I said:

"If that was the case that would be happening on a lot of the several hundred of Oceanis 48, specially because as you say that happened in very mild conditions and if that was the case certainly Beneteau would be making a Recall on the boats, as it had made before on similar cases, anticipating not only loss of lives but a scandal. Beneteau have made not a Recall on that boat (it can make yet, if it is really a design problem)."

and then you refer to an older Oceanis 43, a boat that was in fact subjected to a recall by Beneteau, due to rudder problems. These are the videos posted by you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7GYGlN_t2g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKBzu0geNvM

The structure on that Oceanis 48 seems better to me than the one on the Oceanis 43, particularly in what regards the bond of the rudder to the plywood.

[Muckle Flugga]

Earlier I posted a cut and paste from Beneteau's own site on their Oceanis page, with a link to that page. The post was apologetically removed by a Mod on the grounds that Bene has an aggressive legal prohibition not only on quoting from its site on other sites, but also on even adding hyperlinks to pages on its site!

I can only imagine that one of the reasons for this is to avoid precisely the same criticism I was going to mount, which in fact was merely to quote what they say about the Oceanis line, on their own website.

Since I cannot do so I will have to paraphrase, and you will have to visit the site yourselves to confirm. Suffice to say that Beneteau specifically states that these vessels are suitable for offshore passages, on every sea in the world, and would satisfy in that capacity even a sailor asking for the most a boat can give. Without any doub that is what they say. BENETEAU OCEANIS ARE DESIGNED TO TAKE ON EVERY SEA IN THE WORLD.

Check it out for yourselves… and Paolo, isn't that what you mean by a "voyage boat"? You are right. These are not "voyage" boats. But it appears that Beneteau, who you are so keen to represent on these pages (why?) wishes to portray them as such… I suppose not surprising since the range is named "OCEANis", after all!

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Polux

I think that it is part of the problem here. You and others that live permanently on a boat and that roam the planet doing thousands of hundreds of miles and going to badly charted remote places keep talking about main market mass production boats limitations to do what you do assuming the type of boat that will be needed for that is the type of boat that it will be needed for 99% of the sailors.

It is not, the boats designed to do that are voyage boats, stronger and much more expensive sailboats.

99% of the cruisers do not sail in remote places or badly charted waters and even the vast majority of the ones that live on the boat does not sail on those forsaken places but just in what they would call a "tropical paradise" or on the med.

The vast majority that use for considerable time a year a sailboat just keep it tight on a marina for the winter (or go home) and sail only the boat on the "sailing season" when the weather is nice and the sun is hot and the rain and cold are out of the equation.

Those are the ones that sail the boats more time, the ones that are retired, most use the boat only on weekends and during a month in the summer.

That is for what boats like the Oceanis or other mass production main market cruising boats are designed for, not excluding an Ocean passage on the right season, but not an intensive use as a voyage boat and certainly not designed to sail on high latitudes, forsaken places and uncharted waters. That does not mean that not having being designed for that, many of these boats, including Oceanis, have been used successful for much harder uses, namely circumnavigations. That is a fact, not an opinion.

In fact my experience of about 40000nm sailing on the conditions they were designed to perform seems a lot more relevant towards their adequacy to the use they were designed to perform than your experience of living aboard and use a boat as a voyage boat.

Regarding your opinion on the use of this type of boats for Ocean passages (a useless toy) I only have mentioned that you seem to think that your opinion is the only valid one. I just pointed out that several deliver skippers on this forum, that have made Ocean passages on Oceanis, had expressed different opinions, namely that those boats are adequate for doing passage on the right season. That is by far the more common opinion regarding that. And that is a fact that many Oceanis do so with very few problems, if any problem at all.

And again you are contradicting yourself: First you say that there are good Oceanis around and then when me and Neil point out that they all had basically the same rudder structure you say: "this structure is inadequate to the point of being a useless toy, or small lake boat at best"

The Beneteau is building boats for many decades, several tens of thousands sail around with this rudder structure, some have circumnavigated and if that structure was not minimally adequated to the use of the boat, most boats would give problems and they would have it modified long ago.

I don't like that rudder structure but that is a long way to saying that the boat is a toy and only proper for lake use. That statmeny seems quite ridiculous and paradigmatic regarding your vastly exaggerated views regarding this type of boats.

Please don't misquote me. I never actually said there were "good Oceanis around". I stated that there are some good BENETEAUS and that I like some models for some purposes. It is you who are being thoroughly inconsistent, equivocating constantly between the fact that these boats ARE INDEED DESIGNED FOR SUMMER COASTAL CRUISING IN MEDITERRANEAN LIKE CONDITIONS AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE, and then repeatedly saying that they are fine for circumnavigations and more! Please don't pretend you have not said this. You have.

But moreover, Beneteau themselves are CLEARLY encouraging people to believe that these boats can (and should) be sailed anywhere, by sailors who demand the most from a boat which is designed to do so.


This is strikingly clear from the marketing guff on their own website, which unfortunately Beneteau will not allow me to repeat or link to on these pages. I encourage all readers to visit the Oceanis site for this purpose. I have taken a screenshot of the statements, just in case they change them perhaps in response to this sequence (as they very well ought to do!).

Given your (at last) repeated denial (and new position, completely different from earlier ones) that such boats are definitely NOT designed for such service, how would you reconcile this? Do you agree that they should NOT be marketed in this fashion?

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Polux

Well, if It is the problem, I will state formally that I have no connections with any brand whatsoever, except with Comar as a client, and that I am not paid by anybody in the industry regarding my opinions that seem to me and to the vast majority of sailors, to be just plain good sense.

You never heard me saying that I like Oceanis or that I like the design that they use on the rudder of their boats (quite the contrary) but I strongly object to the opinion that Oceanis are CRAP boats and that they are made to sail only in lakes as it has been stated by some here.

A boat without a rudder is both useless, and obviously dangerous. If the rudder is CRAP, the boat is CRAP.

There can be no argument about this.

As to your suggestion that these opinions are shared by the "vast majority of sailors" that is a totally unsubstantiated, hand waving claim, that you cannot back up, and should not have made, and indeed going by threads such as these, doesn't in fact appear to be the case, now, does it?

[neilpride]

Polux I don't understand, are you saying that the old B43 is subject to a recalL by beneteau? and the 2 videos are from the same boat, B43, NOT B48.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

A boat without a rudder is both useless, and obviously dangerous. If the rudder is CRAP, the boat is CRAP.

There can be no argument about this.

Couldn't agree more-as all who have seen how I beefed up my rudder and skeg can attest.

[neilpride]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

Earlier I posted a cut and paste from Beneteau's own site on their Oceanis page, with a link to that page. The post was apologetically removed by a Mod on the grounds that Bene has an aggressive legal prohibition not only on quoting from its site on other sites, but also on even adding hyperlinks to pages on its site!

I can only imagine that one of the reasons for this is to avoid precisely the same criticism I was going to mount, which in fact was merely to quote what they say about the Oceanis line, on their own website.

Since I cannot do so I will have to paraphrase, and you will have to visit the site yourselves to confirm. Suffice to say that Beneteau specifically states that these vessels are suitable for offshore passages, on every sea in the world, and would satisfy in that capacity even a sailor asking for the most a boat can give. Without any doub that is what they say. BENETEAU OCEANIS ARE DESIGNED TO TAKE ON EVERY SEA IN THE WORLD.

Check it out for yourselves… and Paolo, isn't that what you mean by a "voyage boat"? You are right. These are not "voyage" boats. But it appears that Beneteau, who you are so keen to represent on these pages (why?) wishes to portray them as such… I suppose not surprising since the range is named "OCEANis", after all!

Haaaa you mean this???

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

...
Since I cannot do so I will have to paraphrase, and you will have to visit the site yourselves to confirm. Suffice to say that Beneteau specifically states that these vessels are suitable for offshore passages, on every sea in the world, and would satisfy in that capacity even a sailor asking for the most a boat can give. Without any doub that is what they say. BENETEAU OCEANIS ARE DESIGNED TO TAKE ON EVERY SEA IN THE WORLD.

Check it out for yourselves… and Paolo, isn't that what you mean by a "voyage boat"? You are right. These are not "voyage" boats. But it appears that Beneteau, who you are so keen to represent on these pages (why?) wishes to portray them as such… I suppose not surprising since the range is named "OCEANis", after all!

I don't contend that most brands made publicity advertising that is way to "flattering" to say the least, or even misleading regarding their products. It happens not only with Beneteau but with many other brands, like Dufour that call their cheaper mass production main series "Grand Large" identifying them with boats specially designed for voyaging when to the more strongly built and much more expensive boats they built, they call performance series.

Here on this forum you have the same phenomena regarding making vastly exaggerated statements with some talking about small yachts that are suitable for "Oceanic unrestricted use".

I did not object to the misleading publicity but to you stating that the Oceanis series are only suitable for sailing on a lake, contrary to the vastly agreed view that they are suitable to coastal sail and to make oceanic passages on the right time of the year when conditions are mild. In fact it is for that they are designed to and is for that they are used with success.

That is also the use 95% of the sailors give to their sailboats.

I objected also to the ones that say that Oceanis are CRAP boats, as if they were not used successfully by almost all of their owners that remain faithful to the brand. In fact if you go on this forum to any of the threads regarding new owners of Oceanis, or to Oceanis owner's forums, you will find mostly satisfied costumers.