Loss of KELAERIN Rescue of Crew June 2018

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by mitiempo

My Lewmar hatch has 2 metal hinges and one plastic stay which can be adjusted when needed to keep it open in any position. It is a medium profile hatch.

The one on Kelearin was a Lewmar Ocean hatch model, similar to hatches on many cruising boats.
The hinges and dogs look like this

[cyan]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

Geez, how many fort Bragg's do you mericans have , California and north carolina, where next. Or perhaps wikipedia is as confused as I.

Says the guy from the country with ELEVEN "Springfields".
Hey, at least they didn't tow the boat to Paris. The US has maybe 23 of those. Obviously these newer (US, OZ) countries lacked a little originality when places were named.

[mitiempo]

Originally Posted by Paul L

The one on Kelearin was a Lewmar Ocean hatch model, similar to hatches on many cruising boats.
The hinges and dogs look like this

The picture on the left is not a hinge, but the stay to keep the hatch open.

In the pic below the hinges are the 2 aluminum ones either side of the stay.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by mitiempo

The picture on the left is not a hinge, but the stay to keep the hatch open.

In the pic below the hinges are the 2 aluminum ones either side of the stay.

Yep...

[Dauntlessny]

Originally Posted by Suijin

I just de=installed this arrangement from my boat. It was original equipment out of the factory and it gave me the willies. I know of two cases, people I actually know, where where needed to use the intake as a bilge pump...and then the engine started overheating because of the crap it sucked out of the bilge. I personally think it's dangerous and does not make any sense when you can power several high capacity pumps from the engine, IF it's running.

Mine is set up not on a 3-way valve, but as a separate intake to a T before the strainer.
This way, I can control how much of the normal water intake I want to cut off.
IOW, in case of flooding, I can open the bilge intake all the way, but not totally turn off the sea water intake. My engine pumps about 10 gallons a minute.

[mitiempo]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Yep...

But no argument they are certainly not the strongest hatches. Atkins and Hoyle and upper end Bomar are better I think, and Goiot makes good hatches. I recall Hood used to make some good hatches as well.

[cyan]

Originally Posted by mitiempo

But no argument they are certainly not the strongest hatches. Atkins and Hoyle and upper end Bomar are better I think, and Goiot makes good hatches. I recall Hood used to make some good hatches as well.

Lewmar Ocean Series has a class A rating, designed for offshore work.
However a little hydrodynamic math indicates the gap in the profile could accept tremendous water pressure, resulting in an upward force on the dogs if you're unlucky enough to get hit with such flow on the latch side.
Ignoring impact force, the pressure underneath the lip of a size 70 with a lateral wave strike of 20 Kn might produce an upward force in the neighborhood of 360 lb. (164 Kg) and 30 Kn might be close to 805 lb (386 Kg). I wouldn't trust 2 plastic nubs on the latch to hold that kind of force.

Perhaps an aluminum and magnesium alloy latch such as on Atkins and Hoyle products would be better? It's a money choice, though. You can buy a Lewmar 70 for $750 or an Atkins and Hoyle XR 300 for $1650. Refit your whole boat with A & H or spend the money on a new sail wardrobe and take your chances? If staying in lower latitudes, dodging cyclone season, I might just pick the new sails. Dunno.

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by cyan

Says the guy from the country with ELEVEN "Springfields".
Hey, at least they didn't tow the boat to Paris. The US has maybe 23 of those. Obviously these newer (US, OZ) countries lacked a little originality when places were named.

Hey, you learn something every day. Eleven Springfields you say, I believe, I believe But none of them have a nuclear powerplant, however the entire country appears to be "managed " by Homer and friends.

[danielamartindm]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

just back from bike ride . . . a thought about perhaps one way to think about this incident . . . . there are always a whole lot of trade-offs made on a cruising boat . . . . we have discussed some on this particular boat (deck clutter, crew size, paperback book storage, pump availability etc) and each of the individual trade-offs was 'understandable' . . . . but in the end, bigger picture, they all were (seem to have been) made erroring toward the side of convenience and comfort rather than as a balance between convenience/comfort/seamanship/safety. That meant they all piled up in the incident as a cascade, rather than a few of the trade-offs acting as 'safety stops' to the cascade.

idk - I have not thought that completely thru. I do know that we were unusual in that we made essentially all our trade-offs the other way, for offshore seamanship, rather than for convenience anchor life.

And on a different 'philosophy' point. I have always felt that 'a learning mindset was the most important factor for offshore cruising success'. To continuously and very honestly evaluate what goes well and what could be improved and to then actually make changes. None of us will ever be perfect. We will make mistakes, and the ocean will occasionally be very harsh. The best one can do is to learn and improve, but never ever expect to be perfect. I think even on our very best most successful passages I have identified a dozen things I could have done better, and then made changes to actually try to do them better. I made a lot of mistakes over the years, but I tried not to repeat anyone of them.

On that line, I am bothered by the notion(s) that these particular folks 'did everything perfectly and could not have done anything better except perhaps put their pictures in ziplock bags', and that 'experienced seamen should not be questioned or critiqued'. That don't seem to me to reflect a learning attitude, and thus don't seem to me to reflect excellent seamanship. Now that said - I know (I do know personally) how harsh it feels to be criticized after an incident, and the reflective instinct to defend oneself, and how this incident must be terribly difficult especially with their apparent self-image as perfect seamen. So, I mean no direct or personal criticism with this comment, but I would like to make the greater point that really blunt honest self-assessment and learning and taking concrete action from that learning are (IMHO) essential seamanship attitudes - perhaps the single very most important thing for safety.

It was useful for us to hang with folks like the high latitude crowd and the Bermuda race crowd, and the last of the 1960's (pre-gps, pre-furling, pre-epirb) cruisers, because those groups accumulated more harsh experiences and more mistakes than typical, providing more opportunities to learn (than just for example from the coastal and tropical cruising groups). Their environment and objectives were different than ours, but if one looked, there was still vast learning which could be applied.

There is always the temptation to yield to fatalism because nature is great and we are small. We know in our hearts that random events on the scale of nature can undermine ANY voyage, and in spades. In learning to live with the oceans, we're striving for an ideal that we know can't be achieved in every instance; but we're drawn to it, for our intellects and our very lives. Every loss is a learning experience, and I want to thank the owners of Kelaerin for their honesty and openness in sharing this very personal window of their lives.

[Snowpetrel]

Originally Posted by danielamartindm

There is always the temptation to yield to fatalism because nature is great and we are small. We know in our hearts that random events on the scale of nature can undermine ANY voyage, and in spades. In learning to live with the oceans, we're striving for an ideal that we know can't be achieved in every instance; but we're drawn to it, for our intellects and our very lives. I want to thank the owners of Kelaerin for their honesty and openness.

Indeed, Many thanks to Joy and Jim for sharing their story, lots of valuable information without needing to harshly judge based on very incomplete information.

Here is a decent article, it fills in some of the blanks.
https://www.cruisingworld.com/rogue-...eunited#page-8

Hopefully after this event people will look far more closely at their liferaft security and and the strength of some of the popular pleasure boat hatches. Having something like a YB or satcoms in a waterproof container might have kept them on the boat rather than using the all nothing Epirb.

Someone before mentioned closing all dorades. From experience I can say this is a bad idea in all but the worst storms. One delivery was on a boat with no dorades, just a small mushroom vent near the bow which we sealed up while offshore. We had to keep the main hatch closed for a few bad days on the crossing and the boat ended up like a sauna below. Nearly all our clothes ended up damp from condensation and the drips off the deckhead made our sleeping bags and matresses soggy. Opening the hatch and going outside was a pleasure, and their was a strong and dangerous temptation to leave it partly open.

Better to close the most vulnerable outboard dorade vents and maybe partly plug the others, but some airflow is vital.

[hpeer]

OK , an odd ball thought BUT ...... in this particular case it seems the life raft may have been a liability, not asset. Without the raft there would have been less damage, maybe sufficiently so that the watch keeper would not have been hurt, the pedestal not dislodged.

Just thinking.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by hpeer

OK , an odd ball thought BUT ...... in this particular case it seems the life raft may have been a liability, not asset. Without the raft there would have been less damage, maybe sufficiently so that the watch keeper would not have been hurt, the pedestal not dislodged.

Just thinking.

I'm not seeing the connection between the life raft being fairly cleanly swept off the boat and any other damage?

[hpeer]

Maybe, maybe not. Don’t know. It sounds like the hatch was compromised. Did the life raft being ripped off have anything to do with the hatch damage? IF there was any?

Now to go waaaaaay out on a limb, the damage strikes me as very localized. Perhaps it was not a wave but a whale? I’ve seen hunpbacks jump in 5ish foot seas, I’ve seen them displaying at night. If you are in a full enclosure at night and this black thing wooshes up out of the deep and flops on ya? I don’t know, pretty far out idea for sure.

[a64pilot]

Pics of the boat will answer a lot of question, like how this hatch failed for one.
I’m not seeing it as a likely occurrence myself, just way the thing is designed, other than maybe a line getting caught under the lip, I’m not understanding a hatch being blown OUT.
If your inverted something falling on it, but that didn’t happen I’m relatively certain.
Pics are worth a 1000 words.
For once, the boat exists, somebody will surely take some pics.
Anyone near Ft Bragg, California, not the NC one ?

[transmitterdan]

The dogs on that hatch only engage about 1/8” to 1/4”. So it doesn’t take much flex of the opening to release the catches.

But it’s all just speculation at this point.