“New” requirement for NZ Cat 1 certification

[George DuBose]

The European Community’s Recreational Craft Directive (RCD) of 1988 introduced an ISO standard for through-hull fittings stating they should be corrosion-resistant for a service life of just five years.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by George DuBose

The European Community’s Recreational Craft Directive (RCD) of 1988 introduced an ISO standard for through-hull fittings stating they should be corrosion-resistant for a service life of just five years.

It does not say that

The iso standards says that through hull fittings must show no deterioration for a Minimum period of 5 years .

It does not require seacocks just to last 5 years or to be replaced after 5 years

Clearly a seacock showing no deterioration after 5 years does not need to be replaced at 5 years

Sadly the fact that iso standards are relatively expensive means few people outside boat builders and suppliers actually read them, most people are relying on hearsay

The standard iso 9093 has been updated several times since its original release

[Murdina]

The best sailing stories are UK single handed leaving on a 30ft old whatever to sail round the world. Their trials and tribulations and the fact that they reached the pacific Islands and onwards with a lifetime of stories. That's not happening out of NZ ever. I have a 2008 FP cruising cat, built essentially for ocean passages. But through government legislation I estimate well over $100000 before she would meet CAT1 standards which last for one month after issue. Daylight robbery. There should be a single course and reasonable requirements for the vessel to make ocean passages out of NZ not just something for the rich folks.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Murdina.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Murdina

The best sailing stories are UK single handed leaving on a 30ft old whatever to sail round the world. Their trials and tribulations and the fact that they reached the pacific Islands and onwards with a lifetime of stories. That's not happening out of NZ ever. I have a 2008 FP cruising cat, built essentially for ocean passages. But through government legislation I estimate well over $100000 before she would meet CAT1 standards which last for one month after issue. Daylight robbery. There should be a single course and reasonable requirements for the vessel to make ocean passages out of NZ not just something for the rich folks.

What are some of the big cost items you'd have to do? My understanding is that the surveyor who evaluates your boat for Cat 1 has a fair amount of latitude when it comes to things like the heights of toerails, etc.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by fxykty

The biggest takeaway from the course was to do everything possible to avoid the need to have to use a life raft (we called it a death raft). Second was that the inflated bladder really makes it more difficult to enter the life raft.

Yea ^^ This.

I have done a number of the sea safety/survival courses. The instructors were (by and large) trying pretty hard to provide value. But say a year after the courses pretty much the only thing you remember is that the raft was damn hard to get into.

I was also involved in a project to 'justify' Cat 1 (to show yachts which passed cat 1 were statistically safer than those which did not). That failed. We could find no statistical difference between cat 1 yachts and not cat 1 yachts engaging on apples to apples ocean crossings (for example we looked at groups doing the crossing between Canaries to Caribbean). My personal take looking at all the numbers was there was a huge amount of noise and 'luck', but that 'being calm under pressure', and 'being meticulous' were the two most useful factors and relatively little of cat 1 focuses on those two factors.

A 'problem' is that (fortunately) this is actually a decently safe activity and the 'serious accident rate' is quite low - so the 'payoff' from marginal safety training/improvements is quite low.

And none of these train for 'good reaction in a high-stress emergency' and in the relatively rare situations the **** hits the fan, people (who are probably already fatigued) panic and start making bad decisions.

[Murdina]

Hi, I downloaded and went through the check list and assigned reasonable cost to everything based on everything from electronics to required sail locker to crew training etc. The inspector may in fact have a degree of latitude which I can't put a value on but I have my doubts. It may work out cheaper than my estimate as I have older Raymarine electronics which I costed in to upgrade and add ons. That said I believe that many of the cruising off shore boats would be no better or worse than mine in it's present condition.

[chrisr]

is it feasible to re-flag off-shore ?

eg australia has none of these requirements for cruising

cheers,

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Murdina

Hi, I downloaded and went through the check list and assigned reasonable cost to everything based on everything from electronics to required sail locker to crew training etc. The inspector may in fact have a degree of latitude which I can't put a value on but I have my doubts. It may work out cheaper than my estimate as I have older Raymarine electronics which I costed in to upgrade and add ons. That said I believe that many of the cruising off shore boats would be no better or worse than mine in it's present condition.

Why would you need to upgrade your electronics?

My understanding is that the biggest cost for most people is the inspection itself and the required courses, if the boat has been cat 1 previously.

Most of the cat 1 elements are either intrinsic to the boat (lifeline height, etc) and the one-off costs to get all the buckets or to create a safety diagram. The occasional costs of a life raft and its recertification, or to get up to date flares, is just a cost of doing cruising.

As someone else suggested, re-register the boat offshore, unless you care deeply about the ensign you fly.

[Boatguy30]

How many buckets do you need?
I wouldn’t think the inspection itself would cost very much. An hours of some olde boys time?

[fxykty]

I believe for our boat it is five, all with 2m lanyards and stout construction. We currently have 2 such buckets and one other without a lanyard.

The point isn’t about buckets per se, but all the other items in the Cat 1 regulations that are needed to comply. Have a read of the regs https://www.yachtingnz.org.nz/sites/...20ONLINE_0.pdf and figure out what you’d need to do to become compliant.

Once compliant, it’s not that hard to maintain compliance, but it does cost money for replacing equipment and redoing courses to keep those current.

It’s a giant pain and as pointed out earlier, doubtful whether it makes anything safer and rescue less likely.

That said, we’ve studied the Cat 1 regs and updated the things we think make sense. But still no extra buckets, a bunch of out of date flares, no life raft, and only one of the required courses.

[wholybee]

The rules themselves are not unreasonable, or even very different from those from major racing organizations. Many of the rules are almost word for word from the US Sailing SER. What is unique is that they are issued and enforced by the government and apply to all offshore boats, not by a race organization only for boats that are in a particular race. But certainly, every ocean cruiser should seriously consider compliance whether required or not.

When I was in NZ a number of people were griping about the rules. When I saw their boats, I understood why, but also would not be willing to crew for them.

Addressing the question that opened this thread, US Sailing requires 30% of the crew to take a Safety at Sea course, which is to include a hands on classroom part, where you get to jump in the water and climb into a raft, set off flares, and (attempt) to cut rigging with various tools. The certification is good for 5 years.

The US Sailing SER also has requirements for life rafts, first aid kits, details about the construction of lifelines, emergency rudders, and how quickly the cockpit will drain when filled. It is a pretty tough standard to meet if you are not prepared. But every rule in it is meant to save your life if things go bad.

[Boatguy30]

I think we left Florida with around 5 buckets, but are down a few. Don’t have any bilge pumps, but do have a life raft. Still no AIS tranceiver but seems like that freedom will have now disappeared permanently.

[GRIT]

I am required to carry 2 "fire buckets". They have to be made of metal, and have "ROUNDED" bottoms, and cost about $30 each.

You can't set them down, for they won't stay upright. I hope I don't need to use both hands for anything while carrying that bucket!

It's a little known fact that fires won't extinguish, with water thrown from a flat bottomed bucket.

Stupidity abounds in every government.

Cheers.
Paul.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by wholybee

The rules themselves are not unreasonable

Experienced racers with the best of intentions have put their best efforts into creating a this set of rules. And they represent a reasonable list of things to consider/reference for anyone thinking about going offshore.

But I would question whether they are a reasonable list of things to legally require of cruising boats.

Mandatory government regulations should pass an empirical cost/benefit test and so far no one has been able to establish that a boat in full cat 1 is 'safer' or less likely to need rescue than the typical cruiser engaged in transoceanic passage making.

And there are some aspects of Cat 1 which are 'racer oriented' and are not reflective of cruising usage (just for example - vanishingly few cruisers will be hiking against their lifelines).

And the cruising fleet just tends to be more diverse in 'style' than the racing fleet. That does not directly imply 'less safe' - just take Lin and Larry Pardey for example. Their boat in no way met cat 1, by intent, but they did a ton of difficult sailing with no significant incidents.

On Hawk, we were extremely 'safety and seaworthy' conscious, and I was personally directly involved in the USSailing safety at sea efforts so perfectly aware of the Cat 1 thinking . . . and . . . . while Hawk would have exceeded some cat 1 regulations ( we had watertight bulkheads modeled after SOLAS requirements for instance), but we intentionally made some other choices which would not have met the full Cat 1 list.