Thanks for sharing Steadman:
Wow. Glad to read that they were saved and without major injuries. Kind of a sad ending to an otherwise wonderful adventure for the couple and so close to being home.
There being things to learn from other's experience, and from your own.
Sounds like they got hit by a very harsh, breaking wave, while running bare pole, were swept and rolled upside down or nearly so since she said she hit the ceiling. Above
deck, the life raft and dingy were torn loose from their mounts and swept away and the
mainsail pulled out of its stack pack; not sure how the sail spilled, apparently it was not lashed tightly to the boom. Fortunately he was able to hold on to the
pedestal, [which broke] and she was not hit by anything heavy or sharp, or tossed across the boat, seems like she was contained inside her bunk space and just tumbled between the mattress and the bunk ceiling.
That means everything was tossed and things that are ordinarily held in place by gravity were caused to become freed. I suspect this is what might have happened to the companion way ladder, many of those are movable by just lifting, they should not be. Everything has to be able to be made fixed.
NOW is the time to take time to look at your boat and imagine is laid over 90 degrees or made rolled upside down. Everything that will be displaced by such rearrangement of angle needs to be able to be permanently secured, or readily made secured before severe conditions arise. Items has to be able to be held upside down, and carry there full weight and the add force of inertia.
Yes, kind of stating the obvious here.
Before the storm - Secure for severe weather. Secure for weather more severe then expected. Kind of like reefing before the
wind arrives.
Close and secure a sturdy
companionway. Open temporarily only for ingress and egress.
Dog all the
latches to the all the hatches AND dog all cabinets [including the medicine cabinet] and the
appliances [especially the
refrigerator and freezer] but also lock or strap the door of the
oven and microwave
oven [yes the roundtable will fall out of the microwave and the racks will fall from the oven]. By this I mean not just the every day and convenient use magnetic or spring
latches but instead sturdy manual wedge latches or other far sturdier locking mechanical latches or ties, not just hooks as hooks are held by gravity and they will fall out of the latch when the boat is laid over. Their
scuba tanks came loose of the snap holders, most snap holders are not truly secure devices, by this I include the usual snap holders used for mounting fire extinguishers and for
propane tanks.
DOG all the DRAWERS, its crazy scary to see the cutlery and knife drawer open and spill.
Secure the
bilge cover floor plates, they need to be able to be held in place when upside down and with the added load of heavy
water pressing from under them and the weight of all items loosely stored under the plates, "under" being for the moment of hazard thence the on top side. Ditto for ALL the locker cover plates as they need to be able to hold the combined weight and impact of everything that is in the locker, e.g., a spare
anchor bashing about. Pull rings with spring latches are mostly just conveniences for pulling they often don't handle being pushed against with a load. As to the ubiquitous pull rings without latches, those are definitely not securing devices.
Secure ALL of your sundries, including your library. Yes, all of the clutter which there is an amazing lot of. Use large water tight
boating bags to put
everything away that is not placed inside a secured cabinet or locker, and then secure the bulky and now heavy bags, lashing them to secure holds. You don't want anything to be tossed and become flotsam that will bash about, or clog pumps or get into mechanical devices such as steering mechanisms. That includes all
clothing, shoes, hats, etc.
Especially extra secure all heavy items, including tanks.
Provide for redundant critical
electronics and secure the redundant devices in water tight containers or bags and secure those containers and bags in readily accessible location [not far forward under a bunk].
Pay attention to items that are not bolted in place, e.g., furniture, chairs,
cushions and mattresses,
sheets, blankets, towels, paper towels, bottles of cleaners, pillows, pictures, lamps,
computers, tables, table tops, toasters, blenders / mixers, coffee makers, teapots,
laundry, television / monitors, etc., etc., etc. and secure those as well. Those tables that are mounted on posts which post slips into a hole on the floor will become loose in an instant once gravity reverses.
In essence, you don't want anything like this happening.
It is not adequate to tie or lash things DOWN, they need to be tied to a secure holding device so they can't shift: her comments: "Things that had been in the aft
cabin, including our spare
Aries windvane which was tied down beneath the aft
cabin berth, had been propelled incredibly through the walkthrough and into the main cabin . . . "
Secure bodies, including your own and don't forget that
pets also tend to be tossed about. Secure with lee cloths and strap in. It is a long fall across the
salon.
Add a good measure of sloshing water to the equation and it is amazing how much loose crap starts shifting and
washing about.
Be certain that any and all flotsam will clog
bilge pumps. There should not be any possibility of flotsam in the bilge or entrained into the bilge, or that could clog drainage openings in the floors of lockers or the
salon / berth to the bilge. If their bilge pumps had not failed they more likely could have stabilized the situation during the hours that passed before the CG arrived.
Basically you want the boat to be able to survive being a tumbler and everything in it to also not be damaged or displaced and so you can locate things after a tumbling. A lot of stuff will become damaged and displaced in cabinets, so as they say on the airplanes, "shift happens", open cabinets with extreme caution and suggest you wait until after the storm and the seas have calmed.
She makes the comment: "The
engine itself may have worked but the starter
motor was surely dead as it was now underwater. The engine wouldn’t have helped anyway, not unless we could get closer to shore and now we were getting farther away every minute."
I have never tried using a starter that was flooded with
salt water, but electricity will take the path of least resistance in forming a circuit and I perceive that the copper contacts of the relays and the solenoid and
motor wiring would yield the lowest resistance pathway and thus carry the bulk of the low voltage
current. Sure some electricity might flow through the
salt water conduction but the leads to the relay / solenoid and motor if they were underwater would have been shorting as stray
current through the
salt water so completing the circuit by turning on the starter switch would reduce such stray conduction, higher resistance pathway. I suspect that the motor could have been started which would have aided in
navigation instead of just running bare pole and perhaps provided another means to drain the bilge by pulling water from the bilge as
cooling water, if the bilge and engine had been prepared for using the motor as a secondary
bilge pump. Anyone have experience in starting a motor where the starter is under
salt water and / or having used the
cooling water pump as a secondary
bilge pump? It would require the proper
plumbing to allow for the bilge to be drained into the cooling water
passage. An engine can draw a lot of cooling water, but again that water
passage would need to be kept clean and not plugged by flotsam that is awash in the bilge.
Safe sailing.
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