Oyster Problems?

[neilpride]

That its a very specific case if they bother to drop a full rig to ultrasound test, in the 89% of the cases ultrasound is out of the ballpark, some chainplates are tested with ultrasound when they are mounted in pesky places , the rest is pure visual inspection, DYE , and common sense,, you cant see or know when a strand is going to pop out from the core if is old , that's the pro,s of 1x19 , there is a warning before...

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by Polux

Any mechanical system needs maintenance, ones more than others and even cars have maintenance schedules to substitute items before they break even if they are normally on the hands of the service centers from that brand of vehicles.

I hear this from the excuse makers quite a lot so let's deal with it. Please look in your car manual and find for me the recommended maintenance for the seat belts, air bags, crumple zone steel, door compression posts, and any other human safety system. Then come back and tell me that a boat keel and rudder is just like a car. We are not taking about oil changes, we are talking about safety of life system.

[poiu]

Originally Posted by neilpride

So the report is in the internet finally... they still don't answer some few questions like the lead ingots in the bow area , or the ridiculous laminate thicknes in hull and keel stub partitions.... so far so good they say yes, its our fault, at least....

Yes, credit to them for not giving us the Beneteau silent treatment and credit for their candour.

I also believe the partition thickness was a major part of the cock up and would like to hear that they are on top of that as well.

Actually it should really have been an independent MAIB report doing this. There may well have been lessons to promulgate throughout the boat building world. This isn't the aviation world. Not so high profile and not so well resourced unfortunately.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

I hear this from the excuse makers quite a lot so let's deal with it. Please look in your car manual and find for me the recommended maintenance for the seat belts, air bags, crumple zone steel, door compression posts, and any other human safety system. Then come back and tell me that a boat keel and rudder is just like a car. We are not taking about oil changes, we are talking about safety of life system.

What I personally find most incongruous is the idea that, unlike with autos & aviation, only the more expensive boats these days seem to offer more strongly built critical systems or, as you put it, "safety of life" systems. I don't think this was always the case.

In today's new cruising boat market, the only more affordable options seem to be boats which offer lightweight, performance, and lower cost, but the trade-off seems to be strength, durability and safety. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, except that many of these boats are being marketed -- with the help of the EU regs -- as perfectly suitable for long-distance ocean cruising. Is this the result of some technological breakthrough, or does the old mantra still apply that strength and lightweight remain incompatible with low cost? As Dockhead has repeatedly pointed out, you can pick any two but can't have all three.

This doesn't seem to be the case in the automotive & aviation industries, where there is probably an even wider spectrum of choices based on cost, but those disparities are more about luxury and in some cases performance. The big difference in those industries it seems, is that you don't often hear about wheels, axles, and wings falling off, regardless of cost. To the contrary, some of the most durable, reliable, and highest build-quality automobiles are the value-oriented ones from mfgs. like Honda & Toyota.

Are there similarly any new, value-oriented cruising boats these days that offer high strength/quality construction that perhaps comes at the expense of luxury, lighter weight, and thus performance? The only one I can think of is still conceptual, namely John Harries' "Adventure 40."

Or maybe, as Polux keeps suggesting, the critical systems failures we're seeing are such an aberration that many of these concerns are overblown. But how many would be tolerated in the automotive and aviation industries? To avoid a similar level of govt. regulation of the recreational marine industry, it will probably be left to consumers to induce improvements from mfgs. with their buying choices. In the meantime, the used market for older generation boats may be the better bet for those with such priorities.

[barnakiel]

I agree with what some say the keel should basically stay attached to the boat thru her life-span.

Then again, the event may be one off, or just the first case they found on a specific run.

It is all up to how they will handle things and this in turn may be up to how much repair they can afford without going bust, should such repairs turn out necessary.

BTW Why was the company taken over: was it so good or so distressed?

b.

[jmaja]

Originally Posted by Exile

In today's new cruising boat market, the only more affordable options seem to be boats which offer lightweight, performance, and lower cost, but the trade-off seems to be strength, durability and safety.

I would not describe the affordable options as lightweight and performance. A 32' boat that weighs more than 5 000 kg (with 1000-1500 kg ballast) and a 36' more than 7 000 kg (~2 000 kg ballast) is far from "lightweight and performance" in my book. Compare those e.g. to X-332 at 4500 kg (1800 ballast) and X-35 at 4300 kg (1700 kg ballast) or even X-99 at 3000 kg. These are built using about the same materials (no carbon etc.).

Cheaper cars used to be quite bad in the crash tests, but then crash tests seemed to be quite important in marketing and now most cars get very good results in the crash tests. It is far more common to die or get badly hurt in a car than while sailing.

[robert sailor]

What is your point?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Exile

What I personally find most incongruous is the idea that, unlike with autos & aviation, only the more expensive boats these days seem to offer more strongly built critical systems or, as you put it, "safety of life" systems. I don't think this was always the case.

In today's new cruising boat market, the only more affordable options seem to be boats which offer lightweight, performance, and lower cost, but the trade-off seems to be strength, durability and safety. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, except that many of these boats are being marketed -- with the help of the EU regs -- as perfectly suitable for long-distance ocean cruising. Is this the result of some technological breakthrough, or does the old mantra still apply that strength and lightweight remain incompatible with low cost? As Dockhead has repeatedly pointed out, you can pick any two but can't have all three.

This doesn't seem to be the case in the automotive & aviation industries, where there is probably an even wider spectrum of choices based on cost, but those disparities are more about luxury and in some cases performance. The big difference in those industries it seems, is that you don't often hear about wheels, axles, and wings falling off, regardless of cost. To the contrary, some of the most durable, reliable, and highest build-quality automobiles are the value-oriented ones from mfgs. like Honda & Toyota.

Are there similarly any new, value-oriented cruising boats these days that offer high strength/quality construction that perhaps comes at the expense of luxury, lighter weight, and thus performance? The only one I can think of is still conceptual, namely John Harries' "Adventure 40."

Or maybe, as Polux keeps suggesting, the critical systems failures we're seeing are such an aberration that many of these concerns are overblown. But how many would be tolerated in the automotive and aviation industries? To avoid a similar level of govt. regulation of the recreational marine industry, it will probably be left to consumers to induce improvements from mfgs. with their buying choices. In the meantime, the used market for older generation boats may be the better bet for those with such priorities.

I don't think these concerns are overblown at all. On the contrary. I don't think you can say "oops" in a case where the primary structure of an ocean-going vessel fails. It should never fail. Even just one failure shows that something serious is wrong with the design values, materials, or construction process, or all three. When did you ever hear of a wing falling off an airplane, or an axle falling off a car, or a high rise building just falling over? It just doesn't happen. The design value is that such fundamental structural elements should be failure-proof -- Sigma 6. To achieve that (as Evans with his GE background can tell us) requires a significant, concentrated effort in the design process, and significant attention paid to the construction process as well.

I think it's perceptive to mention Hondas. Of course Hondas are built in huge volumes and so a very large investment is made into the design and engineering of each model, but I suspect that you don't need to spend millions on engineering to build a boat structure which is Sigma 6, and I suspect that such a structure would not be all that costly, even if it would be somewhat heavier. So I think what we are looking at here, in this fallen off keel, is design value. The designers were told "make me a modern hull, with x, y, and z, light, fast, such and such interior volume, make out of blah, maximum blah draft, etc., etc, etc.", and no one said anything about the level of reliability expected from the structure, totally unlike the way Estarzinger designed his boat (which by God is the right way to design an offshore boat), and the designers didn't think much about it -- they went through the motions of formulating scantlings without really thinking deeply about the structure or the stresses which might be encountered offshore. I guess. But it can hardly have been otherwise.


So I suspect at the root of this is a failure of design values. Both in this case and in the Beneteau case. And the more I think about these cases, the more heinous they seem to me. I think I would personally not touch any Oyster made after about 2009, even if, up to then, they were among the best built cruising boats ever made. The core values in the design process and the approach to the design process will not have been so different from one model to another, produced by the same team.


I don't think it's really forgivable in Beneteau's case, either. I like Beneteaus; the several I have sailed or been on have been fast, well laid out, sweet sailing, pretty, and generally just very nice boats. We can be sympathetic to the pressure on cost from charter fleets and cutthroat competition on price. But they build in enough volumes that they can afford to spend some money on engineering. They will have all kinds of engineering tools at their disposal like FE analysis etc. The stresses such boats are designed to endure might be somewhat less than what an 80-odd foot Oyster should be designed for, but within certain parameters, their structures should be Sigma 6, too. That they are not, I don't think is acceptable at all.

[jmaja]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

When did you ever hear of a wing falling off an airplane, or an axle falling off a car, or a high rise building just falling over? It just doesn't happen.

Doesn't happen? Yes I have heard of several cases of an axle fall off a car, collapsed bridges, collapsed roofs of commercial buildings with lots of people usually inside etc.

There are plenty of car recalls due to problems that had already caused several casualties. I have a car which is prone to break its front spring causing a total collapse of the front suspensions and quite often the broken spring punctures the tire or even the brake pipe. Luckily this happens most often while parked and I haven't heard of any casualities.

While planes are very safe, I just watched a documentary about a plane that caught fire due to sparkle from wiring and the insulation cover was not at all inflammable as it was thought to be. 200+ casualities. The inspectors could easily ignite it and it burned very fast.

[Dockhead]

Chainplates designed to never fail:









The finger is for scale. They are constructed of 16mm high tensile (not stainless) steel plate, with 40mm pins and 15mm bolts.

Note that the designers did not consider the 16mm plate to be enough to bear the loads from the 40mm pin; they welded in 25mm thick bushings.


On a highly value-engineered boat like a Beneteau, you have to use some ingenuity and engineering wizardry to achieve necessary design values. But on boats at the price points of Oysters, which do not require the same degree of value engineering -- you just design everything structural like this. It's not actually rocket science -- it's a question of values.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by jmaja

Doesn't happen? Yes I have heard of several cases of an axle fall off a car, collapsed bridges, collapsed roofs of commercial buildings with lots of people usually inside etc.

There are plenty of car recalls due to problems that had already caused several casualties. I have a car which is prone to break its front spring causing a total collapse of the front suspensions and quite often the broken spring punctures the tire or even the brake pipe. Luckily this happens most often while parked and I haven't heard of any casualities.

While planes are very safe, I just watched a documentary about a plane that caught fire due to sparkle from wiring and the insulation cover was not at all inflammable as it was thought to be. 200+ casualities. The inspectors could easily ignite it and it burned very fast.

Collapsed roofs of commercial buildings usually happen because of hurricanes or snow loads. This should also not happen. In Russia, the architects go to jail if something like that happens, which in my opinion is right.

But I didn't say anything about roofs -- I said specifically high rise buildings falling over. They just don't, unless hit by airplanes. They are Sigma 7 I guess. I'm not talking about third world masonry apartment buildings which sometimes fall down in earthquakes, I'm talking about high rise buildings.

Airplane wings never just fall off. Doesn't happen. Never heard of a case on a commercial airliner, at least in the last few decades. We've had some engines fall off, and of course planes do crash, but the whole system of commercial airline transport, and not just the structure of airplanes, is Sigma 6 -- failure of any kind, including human factor, is so rare as a percentage of the number of flights, that statistically you can say that it is entirely safe. Less than one fatality per two billion passenger miles, every year since 1997.

Cars are not Sigma 6, but I reckon the axles are, within a reasonable service life at least. If you have a car whose front suspension collapses (!), it's high time for a new car.


Airliner wings are a big engineering challenge, because you can't just grossly overbuilt them, like the chainplates depicted above. That's because of weight. So the engineers carry out exhaustive calculations to determine the maximum possible wing load in flight, then design a structure which will carry 150% of that load before it breaks. THEN, they perform destructive testing to verify the engineering. Here's how it was done for the Boeing 777:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2HmvAXcU0

And that is why they simply Do Not Fall Off. It's a question of design values, and design process.

[neilpride]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Chainplates designed to never fail:


Attachment 119259

Attachment 119260

Attachment 119261


The finger is for scale. They are constructed of 16mm high tensile (not stainless) steel plate, with 40mm pins and 15mm bolts.

Note that the designers did not consider the 16mm plate to be enough to bear the loads from the 40mm pin; they welded in 25mm thick bushings.


On a highly value-engineered boat like a Beneteau, you have to use some ingenuity and engineering wizardry to achieve necessary design values. But on boats at the price points of Oysters, which do not require the same degree of value engineering -- you just design everything structural like this. It's not actually rocket science -- it's a question of values.

Those chainplates are built like !!!!!!!!!,,,,,

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by neilpride

Those chainplates are built like !!!!!!!!!,,,,,

From a boat 30' shorter than that Oyster. What do you bet that the chainplates on that Oyster are less strong than those?

[robert sailor]

Common now, your just making Moody's look good! Great boats actually and great builders, just lousy marketers.

[neilpride]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

From a boat 30' shorter than that Oyster. What do you bet that the chainplates on that Oyster are less strong than those?

Nahh, those old Oysters are built like tanks, i have the oportunity to replace a Dc Bow truster engine in a 53 last year , the whole structure is masive , beams , stringers , bulkheads.... really nice boats...