Loss of KELAERIN Rescue of Crew June 2018

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by Pete7

What was the wind and wave pattern like in the proceeding couple of days?

yes, cross seas suck - they can create all sorts of nasty shapes and hit off axis. Which brings up a point here I meant to mention, size is not so important (but is what most of the rogue statistics focus on), wave shape is the critical factor. The two waves which did the most damage to my vessels were not by any means the largest waves we saw, but had ugly shape AND were exactly at the wrong place at the wrong time.

On the 12th very light winds with a high centered over area

On the 13th a band of 20kt southerlies (stronger to the north a bit with coastal compression zone)

On the 14th light westerlies (12kts)

On the 15th 15kt N westerlies

I honestly don't see any likely source for significant off-axis wave pattern.




Do you have a link for the wind bouy the images came from?

yea, sure - The two easiest historical sources for most people are : https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-acces...ast-system-gfs and https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/. Note: you (can) pull down huge files from both places - need tools which can deal with that quantity of data. The above pictures come from the first link there.

the very good french routing program Adrena has a module for pulling down and analyzing all sorts of historical data - it's a good general purpose tool for this, but is expensive.

There are two other sources for 'near real-time' (archived) wind and waves, but special access and tools are needed to analyze it, and in any case it is mostly embedded in the initialized time 0 gfs files above (first link). There are also a couple of sources for similar data from EU but require paid access.

.............

[gatorman49]

Just read ADRIFT. Interesting story, speaking of the Pacific. Good read, can do it in a day.

[DumnMad]

Quote:
"Eventually we were sailing bare poles at almost 5 knots down steep waves, the largest waves I had ever seen while cruising. I estimated they were 30 feet."

Estarzinger, Snowpetrel and Pinquino, what is your advice for an 18ton ketch in these waves? You wouldn't sail bare-poles would you ?
In our 24t ketch with waves over 20ft and wind gusting over 50knots my skipper had a small jib on the inner fore-stay and the mizzen up, and said he would maintain this even if the wind increased to 65knots.
We were hand stearing and he was not interested in the drogue. At night we did round up a couple of times but got better with the wheel as time went on :-)

If it was rising 70knots he said he would take down the mizzen and replace the jib with a storm jib.

[Snowpetrel]

Very hard to say without being there. I wouldn't have wanted to make too much southing. Forereaching would have kept us in the wind belt for longer. If the main was down I probably wouldn't have wanted to raise it to heave to at 3 am, and setting a drogue seems a bit premature given the fact that this wind should ease soon and wasn't especially strong. I may well have done something similar if I wanted to rest and take it easy, conserve strength and gear. Probably would have had the hatch shut however, Been caught out twice now with an open hatch and a big wave.

Edit to add, I would almost certainly have kept the heavy clew of the RF genoa out and sheeted tightly amidships with a safety lashing on the drum. Though I don't think in this case it would have made any difference to the outcome.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by DumnMad

....

Estarzinger, Snowpetrel and Pinquino, what is your advice for an 18ton ketch in these waves? You wouldn't sail bare-poles would you ?......

Nope... I have only once run under bare poles and that was in flat water.... sub 1 metre sea with +70 knots in the Beagle... was giving us +7 knots...

Offshore I would be doing as you suggest but would be running my smallest storm jib by itself quite early on.... as much storm jib as needed to keep the centre of effort well f'r'd and maintain good steerage way.

Cockpit enclosures together with arches carrying solar, etc etc would wreak havoc with directional stability which in turn would most likely lead to tears...

[El Pinguino]

Estarzinger 'I honestly don't see any likely source for significant off-axis wave pattern.'

Another wave train or swell can come from a very very long way away.

Once in May when about the latitude of Christmas Island bound Singapore - Fremantle and enjoying some nice SE trades we encountered a quite heavy swell from the SSW... which was right on our nose..

It had been produced by a deep low SW of the bottom left corner of Australia... almost 2000 miles away.

[DumnMad]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Estarzinger 'I honestly don't see any likely source for significant off-axis wave pattern.'

Another wave train or swell can come from a very very long way away.

Once in May when about the latitude of Christmas Island bound Singapore - Fremantle and enjoying some nice SE trades we encountered a quite heavy swell from the SSW... which was right on our nose..

It had been produced by a deep low SW of the bottom left corner of Australia... almost 2000 miles away.

If those sort of long period waves were around they could bounce off the shoreline 150 miles away and on their way back upset the wave pattern even further.

[Tillsbury]

Originally Posted by cyan

I respectfully disagree, pacific_voyager.
This thread has provided a VERY important discussion, IMO. I have added a few items to my own checklist as a result. Many of the varied views here represent a huge amount of experience, and I appreciate the polite exchange.

Hear hear. For example, poking around the boat I was organising an under-berth storage area just the other day. It contains a spare 30kg anchor, amongst other things. Following this thread I took the time to tie it down. I wouldn’t have thought to do that before this thread. I hope that it will turn out to be unnecessary, but it’s just possible I’ll be glad I did.

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Another wave train or swell can come from a very very long way away.

Fair enough - here is a picture zoomed way out



there had previously been a blow quite a ways to their west, now centered over the Aleutians.

This could possibly (in theory) have had an effect in either of our scenarios - cross swell making them go a little sideways and getting knocked down, or creating a bad shaped green water hit. For Occam's razor I personally still go with the first - because there just was not that much energy around. Looking at the actual video, I see a bit of a sloppy sea (don't know how much of that is helo effect), but do not see an obvious large high energy secondary wave pattern - do you?

BTW, if you don't think they are wallowing, I think you should take a second look (at the video). In the video, imho, the boat is very slow, probably with low rudder response, they accelerate a bit on waves faces and when getting popped from behind but then slow and wallow again (the boat design does seem to track well). I would have suggested they would be much better off (more stable, more controlled) with some sail up (putting aside the helo events

[Pete7]

One thing I am not quite sure about is the "180 miles" offshore, were did this come from? Is it a distance from the high tide mark on the nearest beach or perhaps the distance the helo had to fly from their station? if so that could put the yacht much closer to the shore.

Google Earth (GE) shows a big change in depths closer in with some huge underwater canyons. We know from yachts who transverse the Bay of Biscay off W France with similar geography and a Southerly current, that huge sees can develop in strong winds in this area which otherwise would be hard to otherwise explain.

Finally, the Columbia river basin appears to have a deep long scar way out to sea. You might have thought that cold snow melt freshwater would float on top of the warmer sea, but that may not be the case give the way it has cut that scar in the seabed visible on GE. Thermoclines and fresh / saltwater boundaries produce some interesting effects for divers.

Is the Columbia in full flood at this time of year?

I don't buy into the huge breaking wave and it's incredibly difficult to estimate wave height especially at night from a yacht without other reference points particularly at night. I do think that a brief odd or rogue wave pattern combined with a 33kn sustained gust just at the wrong time caught them and put them on their side possibly with a huge broach. Note they had a full cockpit enclosure up plus dodgers which were lost, so lots of windage aft.

[GTom]

Originally Posted by pacific_voyager

...

The fact is that there is no tactic or equipment that could have prevented this accident.

I beg to differ a bit: true, the knockdown/"accident" might have very well been "unavoidable". However, they continued to sail afterwards and the boat didn't take any more water. It was only the crew's fatigue and hypothermia why they had to call for assistance. This case maybe even a warm drysuit might have saved the situation and the boat.

@Pete: very good point, it would be interesting to know the exact topography nearby.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by GTom

I beg to differ a bit: true, the knockdown/"accident" might have very well been "unavoidable". However, they continued to sail afterwards and the boat didn't take any more water. It was only the crew's fatigue and hypothermia why they had to call for assistance. This case maybe even a warm drysuit might have saved the situation and the boat.

Indeed, they continued to steer her for two hours before pressing the EPIRB button. The waves did again threaten to broach but hand steering kept them going on a down wind Southerly course.

This thread does highlight lots of different options available from sail plans to slowing the boat with drogues and sea anchors.

Pete

[malbert73]

I’ve not been offshore in this kind of weather yet despite 35 years and 10s of thousands of miles of coastal and near coast offshore sailing. But I buy into the Dashew school of thought of forereaching then heaving to. I’m not a bare poles fan. Because in this situation losing steerage or rudder bite with one steeper wave, even in usual axis, could easily throw boat on it’s side in a broach. The winds in this case were not too strong for reefed sails and forereaching would allow you to momentarily poke the bow into a breaker. But obviously exhausting stuff.

Evans- your thoughts?

[Eight Sails]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

BTW, if you don't think they are wallowing, I think you should take a second look (at the video). In the video, imho, the boat is very slow, probably with low rudder response, they accelerate a bit on waves faces and when getting popped from behind but then slow and wallow again (the boat design does seem to track well). I would have suggested they would be much better off (more stable, more controlled) with some sail up (putting aside the helo events

In the video, they are partially flooded, with shifting water ankle-deep above the cabin sole, in a 3/4 full-keel boat that looks to have a fairly deep bilge. I'm not sure that implies they were wallowing before they flooded.

On the other hand, 4-5 knots isn't alarming; Joy's account doesn't suggest they felt in danger of surfing out of control; the winds weren't too bad; and they had a lot of windage aft. I wouldn't like to run off with that much cockpit canvas up. Carrying a small steadying sail forward could have helped keep them straight, with enough way on to carry them through the troughs, especially if it's true they were wallowing.

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

........Cockpit enclosures together with arches carrying solar, etc etc would wreak havoc with directional stability which in turn would most likely lead to tears...

That’s, in part, is why this is almost impossible to discuss except in broad theory.

Sloop/cutter/ketch.

Davits/arches/solar/wind gen/ Bimini/dodger/side panels.

Full/cut away/fun

Barn door/Skeg/spade/two

All of this effects the handling of the boat to some degree.

I think our heavy steel cutter with a full keel and barn door rudder will be slow to broach. BUT I’ve got all this crap hanging on the stern: 600 watts of solar and wind gen on an arch. That won’t help.

The one time I thought about a drogue was 2 am on a cold sea. The boat was healing making the work surface difficult. I eventually calmed down and realized the boat was doing a LOT better than me, the waves we not that big, she was heeling but sailing fine. At that point it was better for me to trust the boat than my dodgy skill set, leave well enough alone.

Not proud of my performance but I’m here to talk about it. I did not fall over.