Quote:
Originally Posted by sabray
I am trying to take something away from this but can't figure out **** from fact.
1) Boat had a liferaft but it may not have been up to date on inspection - No hard info one way or another, but not read any reason to suppose it was not in date.
2) A cruise ship at some point in time on some body of water went past a life raft but did not investigate - different ocean.
3) They had a epirb but it was not hydrostatic - No hard info one way or another, presumed not as would be unusual.
3a) (EPIRB) May not have been up to date - not sure what that means?
4) They had sat comms but not ssb - believed correct.
5) they did not have ais which is line of site and probably would have done jack at the distance offshore - no AIS.
6) the boat had an engine with sketchy fuel and water intakes - recent engine install, engine running but not to full potential - updates to fuel system to be made in Oz
7) the sails were not in good shape. - no hard info, storm sail "blown out" could have been for any reason, that alone no indication of condition of other sails.
8) though no picture I can find shows the boat was hogged it is reported that there was hogging by bad source perhaps - no hard evidence to support the hogging theory.
9) the boat had been glassed over. Should not see cracking at seems if it was really glassed. Think also that if glassing a old traditional hull was an option something went wrong that made this option look better then chucking in towel on her - yes, hull glassed over. No info on when or how done.
My re-numbering 
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Just re-checked that I am in the right Nina thread for this discussion.........
......my main concern would be about the hull condition and when and how the fibreglass was done.
If done badly (which is the most common approach with old wooden boats) it is a temporary fix (wahoo! no leaks!) but actually accelerates the demise of the vessel by allowing the boat to
rot away under the new skin...
..their was a boat over here a few years back which sailed in for some hull
repairs (to replace some delaminated fibreglass skin) - once the boat yard hard started they realised the whole of the hull was rubbish and needed replacement......boat was scrapped

I have also seen plenty of derelicts around here (tidal so boats dry out on legs) over the years where this
cheap fix has been used and the boat(s) later abandoned to decay......learn a bit from poking around, and often from simply looking at changes over years.
The reason why that is the focus of my concern is that (apart from
collision - where AIS or
Radar would have been useful - if switched on and someone monitoring) should the hull fail in a storm the boat would have sunk quickly. very quickly - and leaving no debris field. A Boat coming off a wave puts an
enormous amount of strain on the hull and it is not simply the planks that can fail it is also the ribs - and once one fails it increases the pressure on others, and can have zipper effect very quickly

. Would also be of interested to know how she was planked, especially what nails were used and when last replaced - they either rust away (if iron, including galvanised) and get eaten chemically (if
bronze or copper) by the
wood, the sea and
electrical charge, after 80 years she would have been re-nailed a couple of times - no matter how well constructed originally. and when the nails degrade it allows the planks and ribs / frames to
work (move) which accelerates the problem of decay.......all that without the spectre of
rot, which likes to hide in out of the way places.
Of course she could have come out of a top to bottom
refit the week before departure - but as regular readers of CF will know, folks have varying ideas on what doing a job well actually consists of.......and that's only on plastic boats!, simply owning a wooden boat does not give the owner the wisdom of a time served shipwright. None of that is to decry the owner /
Skipper of the Nina, but certainly thoughts to be mulled over if folks get to the stage of trying to guesstimate what happened (if they are not found then will never know for sure

).
I have now qualified for the MarkJ
award for doom and gloom

.
LATE EDIT: I did suggest in the "nice" Nina thread a while back that one of the friends /
family (i.e. folks with first hand real world access to info) set up a website to separate fact from fiction from allegation from supposition as an easy point of reference for those concerned - plus details of what has been done to search and what is planned. Am not aware of anything having been set up.