Death of a 4 Week-Old Boat

[FloridaWriter]

Originally Posted by Not Sure

A similar thing happened to another j boat (J/120) around Halloween (Oct 27) when it hit a whale on a leg of the Baja Ha Ha, tearing off the rudder attachment and sinking the boat in approx. 40 minutes or so. You've indeed got to wonder if its an inherent weakness in the design. Hitting rocks or a coral reef is one thing, Hitting sand and the blubber of a whale is another thing entirely.

Actually you apparently don't need to hit anything at all, as in the keel falling off the J80 "Heat Wave" racing in the Doublehanded Farallones Race last spring. They were racing in possibly 40k winds and 14' seas when there was a loud snapping sound like a tree breaking, and suddenly--no keel--and over she goes. I just hate it when the keel falls off...

[Stillraining]

I think we need to redefine this discussion to be "blade and bulb' which this boat was as separate from fin keels in the sense we traditionally in vision say IOR fin keeled boats...there is a world of difference...The later being totally cruiser worthy.

[Randyonr3]

In my earlier days of racing, win or not, if you didnt break something, you wernt trying hard enough or the gear you had was to heavy for racing..
A racer will do almost anything to win a race, including, modifying gear to be faster..
Its hard to understand if your not a racer..
But Winning a Race, is a lot like Sex..
If you've never been there, It really dosent matter much..

[FloridaWriter]

If the rule is break something or you are not pushing hard enough, J/Boat and TPI have certainly been accommodating LOL!

[Hiracer]

Originally Posted by Ex-Calif

Not to armchair quarterback too much but let's look at the photo...

If the keel tore off during the actual strike with the sandbar I would expect the hull to be displaced inward at the rear a possible chunk removed at the leading edge with tearing extending from the aft edge. Clearly this keel is strongest along the longitudinal axis and is very weak laterally.

What I see is a pretty clean break except tearing extending to port (downward in the photo)

Based on this my call is that the keel failed laterally from side loading not longitudinally. This would be consistent with the keel buried in the sand and the boat receiving lateral forces from the waves. There is no way a fin keel will hold up to that for very long.

I saw that before I posted and kind of agree with you, but tend to think even in the case of a lateral force breaking off the keel there still would have been some asymmetry in the damage to the hull, i.e., more damage on starboard or port side of the attachment area.

The fact that the damage is so symmetrical suggests, to me, that the keel just clean snapped off and the force could have come from any direction. Playing the odds, I would guess that the greatest force to create that kind of snap-off clean break came from the initial head-on crash into the sand bank.

But I agree I'm just theorizing.

[Hiracer]

Originally Posted by Stillraining

I think we need to redefine this discussion to be "blade and bulb' which this boat was as separate from fin keels in the sense we traditionally in vision say IOR fin keeled boats...there is a world of difference...The later being totally cruiser worthy.

Yes, clearly there is a full spectrum of keels and their physical strengths. Labels are imprecise by nature.


And then there is build quality. One could take an inherently weak design and make it significantly stronger with great attention to materials strength and beefed up specs. Kind of like talking about spade rudders. Those can be built quite strong; it just takes knowledge, skill, and money. Which pretty much guarrantees many are not.

[David M]

Maybe it might help some if we looked at racing boats as Formula Ones and cruising boats more as off road vehicles. A cruising boat can handle the speed bumps much better but it won't get you around a track faster.

Its all a compromise based on how you plan on using the boat.

[Ocean Girl]

Has anyone seen a bolted on keel attachment design that you'd consider cruiser/seaworthy? (as strong as a glassed in keel) I haven't rebeded keel bolts on the newer production boats, has it changed or is it still basically attached the same way?
Erika

[freetime]

YouTube - TR2009

From Tjörn Runt in sweden... Not exacly the same results, but to sail in a small passage TO fast...

[paradix]

Originally Posted by David M

Maybe it might help some if we looked at racing boats as Formula Ones and cruising boats more as off road vehicles. A cruising boat can handle the speed bumps much better but it won't get you around a track faster.

Its all a compromise based on how you plan on using the boat.

That's true - but owners of Formula One cars put them on a trailer and carry them from race to race: they don't try to drive them out onto the freeway at night along a narrow winding road with speed bumps...

[delmarrey]

Originally Posted by Ocean Girl

Has anyone seen a bolted on keel attachment design that you'd consider cruiser/seaworthy? (as strong as a glassed in keel) I haven't rebeded keel bolts on the newer production boats, has it changed or is it still basically attached the same way?
Erika

A bolted on keel is just as good as encapsulated providing it is engineered and installed properly. MarsKeel in Canada makes thousands of bolted on keels, some actually bigger then my whole boat.
My keel has been crashed so many times it makes me wonder why it's still afloat. But with a cored hull it's able to take a lot of flex w/o injury. It has at least 7 (that I can see) 1-1/4" monel studs.

[SabreKai]

I would agree that a bolted keel can be as good as any. But the design has to have a very wide bolting area to it in order for it to work. Looking at that J-boat there isn't much width to the area, its very long and thin. My second Grampian had a chunk taken out of its cast iron keel from a tangle with a sunker in Georgian bay. Big granite rock, same land scape at that vid a couple of posts back. But the keel never weeped and it was still on there quite securely many years later. The chunk taken out measured about 1.5 inches thick and about 3 inches long, chipped off the leading edge.

Sabre

[Randyonr3]

Originally Posted by paradix

That's true - but owners of Formula One cars put them on a trailer and carry them from race to race: they don't try to drive them out onto the freeway at night along a narrow winding road with speed bumps...

To some extent true.. but for a number of years we raced boats that were kept on trailers at the Yacht Club..
And one of the most looked twoard races we did each year was the "south tower" race out of stockton California.. The South Tower race is a 24 hour race down the channel to San Francisco to the South Tower of the Golden Gate bridge and back to stockton.. and most of it is done in the dark of night, through sholes, rocky banks, and narrow channels..
Any extreme race is set up with extreme chalanges to overcome..
Going down is a tacking nightmare, but comming back up is just as bad as your flying a kite at twice the speed..
Another race is the ditch run which most always ends after dark..
There are a number of races that run throughout the night..

[Ocean Girl]

Actually a good seaworthy design is just as strong 5, ten years later as new. Bolted on keels becomes a question mark after I'd say maybe 5 years. Even if I rebed it, I doubt the bolts, even if I replace the bolts, I'd doubt it all over again 5 years later.
Glassed in has never caused me to doubt the keel...
What I was wondering and I am sorry for laboring this point, has attachment design changed as more and more modern underbody bolt on keel designs hit the highseas? There are two designs I am aware of to attach a keel. 1) bolt a keel to a flat base or at least more flat than the hull. compound the seam (like the jboat). 2) bolt a keel into a female style "keel box" where the keel set up into a recessed part of the hull. compound the seams.
It seems to me the box style is stronger and has more potential for an improvement design that can take the load from the bolts to the hull more efficiently. Lord I am talking design first thing in the morning after working late! Sorry if I am slaughtering the terminology and way off base.
Cheers,
Erika

[Seahunter]

Over the years I've sailed and repaired a number of boats; some with bolted on keels, some with structural keels. Structural keels have been known to fail, but it's a very rare occurrence especially when the hull and keel have been laid at the same time.
Bolt on keels especially fin and bulb keels are a different animal, akin to floats on a seaplane that are designed to add aerodynamic lift to overcome their added weight, bolted on keels add aerodynamic properties to sailboats, allowing them to go faster without adding structural weight. This is not to say they're unsafe, but merely not as safe as a structural keel.
It's not hard to find stories of fin keel loses with a quick Google search and they tend to be read more as they are usually catastrophic and sometimes fatal.
Bolted on keels fail mainly for one reason. Hidden structural integrity, caused by either grounding or structural fatigue on the hull itself. Keel bolts rarely fail, however water intrusion into the fiberglass can cause delamination over time and structural loss at the point where the keel is bolted. Proper inspections of this area should prevent keel loses, but can be expensive when done properly (IE ultra-sounding or coring the hull to inspect for delamination).
This is not only an issue for fin keels, but for all bolted on keels. Here are a few links that I found interesting. The last is a great story of lesson to learn when out in any boat.
Bounder loses keel
ISAF : Golding Loses Keel - Determined to Finish
Another Keel Failure !! - Page 2 - SailboatOwners.com
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