Catamarans Lost South Of Equ. Over Past Years

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by JohnT

Permission from the photographer - he has copyright - they are not my photographs.

That explains it.

[contrail]

Lagoon came to my mind, as well. There are so many! But it's a bit different type of nacelle than you might find on a Prout, for example.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad place to post the question. I doubt that the number of cats lost in the Southern Hemisphere is high, and there are lots of participants here, many of whom follow and have followed sailboat news.

Best of luck.

[belizesailor]

OP: google the cats suggested here and see which style of nacelle matches. Without pics we are all just guessing. And maybe sketch the outline of nacelle and hulls and post.

[Mike Banks]

It could be a Prout. Are there no personal items aboard that could identify the owners? A drifting vessel with nothing aboard seems a bit strange.

We had a Ghost Ship catamaran come ashore south of Cairns some years ago--the hull was partly full of water and somehow it had made its way through the reefs which collect most derelicts. It was covered in goose-necked barnacles and had obviously been afloat a long time.

I always suspect that people have jumped overboard for a dip on a hot windless day, and because multi-hulls are so light, with such shallow draft, the slightest puff of wind can quickly move them faster than one can swim after them. Swimming without a security line around one's waist to the vessel is plain damned stupid--but how many have tried it and gotten away with it and never considered the trap into which they had invited themselves?

The vessel Two Dogs was found floating derelict with its engine at idle. Three crew missing. Mistakes are sometimes made where the outcome is tragic. The saddest thing is that most of them are completely preventable.

[Dymaxion]

Why should anyone on this forum help someone who is refusing disclosure. Is there money involved? Will our professional services in identifying the debris be likewise compensated.....

[MikeFergie]

John what is the construction method of the piece recovered ? The only boats that I can for sure have the v is the lagoons.
I know of 2 cats destroyed in Moz in the past 2 years but up north. The one was a schooning 12,5 if I can remember correct. The other I’m not sure of the make.

There was that French sailor that hit a whale at night near PE holed the hull and it inverted. The 2 guys were picked up by a ship and taken into PE. this pic is the one

[valhalla360]

If it was afloat for 2 years it could have drifted from just about anywhere including the northern hemisphere.

I suggest googling pictures of cats and try to match it to a model...at least until "permission" to post a picture is provided, that's likely your best bet as we will be able to do nothing but make wild guesses based on the very limited information you provided.

[MikeFergie]

DanielMartindm - you obviously know zip about the east coast of Africa so for this we forgive you [emoji53]. There is no such thing as a coast guard in this part of the world. In South Africa they have a voluntary sea rescue organization called NSRI which only uses voluntary crew and the boats and system is corporate funded as sponsorships. It is effective in short range missions covering the major cities in South Africa. Outside of this you are on your own and hopefully there is a commercial shipping vessel nearby if you should run into trouble.

That last catamaran that sank in mozambique [emoji1174] in the north the crew got washed up on the beach in their life raft. Otherwise they would have floated until the MRCC in Cape Town could have asked a passing ship to assist them if one was nearby otherwise nothing ! Yes they did activate their EPIRP that’s how we knew where they were but as far as actual help goes ....

So that’s why the sailing regulations are strict in this part of the world because it’s known that you must be able to take care of yourself and your own crew or passengers.

[atoll]

i have seen the photos and this was my appraisal and reply to johns emali,which i am sure john will not mind me sharing.

hi john

it is definitely not a prout of the snowgoose or snowgoose elite types,nor I would think is it a dean cat.

at the front in image 1 you can see a track for a trampoline aprox 3m50 long,of which non of that variety had.

the bridge deck and bulkheads are a double skin foam core from what I can see and looks like it was built inside a mold which would indicate that it is a production model and not a custom home build.

I would guess it would have had a beam of about 6.5m looking at the bridge deck,making it in the 38-42 ft size range.

other than that hard to tell.

hope this is helpful.

an exact measurement at the top along the deck joint and bottom at the hull join width on the bridge deck or in line with the bulkheads might make identifying it easier.

cheers alex

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by atoll

i have seen the photos and this was my appraisal and reply to johns emali,which i am sure john will not mind me sharing.

SNIP

Without pix it did not happen.


The OP is really asking a lot by not posting pix. I get that he did not take the pix but something does not pass the smell test here.


Unless the OP posts pix I am inclined to ignore him.

[atoll]

Originally Posted by tomfl

Without pix it did not happen.


The OP is really asking a lot by not posting pix. I get that he did not take the pix but something does not pass the smell test here.


Unless the OP posts pix I am inclined to ignore him.

the photos are definitly genuine and as john said untill he has the permission from the photographer he is not at liberty to share them on a public forum.

[zboss]

Just contact the major insurance companies and ask. Probably only a good 2 dozen would get you the majority of your data.

[captlloyd]

Originally Posted by Dymaxion

Why should anyone on this forum help someone who is refusing disclosure. Is there money involved? Will our professional services in identifying the debris be likewise compensated.....

Whaaaaaa???

[Dsanduril]

If John can't post the pictures here, how about a couple to help with descriptions:

Lagoon 450S:



Outremer 45 (not quite a 'V'):



A Prout:



From the sounds of it, and Atoll's reply, it seems the Lagoon is probably closest, but how about a little description based on these photos as a start (or some other publicly available photo you can find).

[JohnT]

Thanks for the replies received so far to my request. I must admit I have been scratching my head a bit in reaction to some of the replies. Let me explain.

Firstly, this is a cruising forum and although a large portion of the subscribers are not "cruisers" in the true form of the expression, a cruiser is a friendly person or group of folk out sailing in various areas around the world and mostly meet up with other cruisers and share information and pass on their experiences. They talk to each other and help each other. They do not charge or "make money" from sharing their knowledge to fellow cruisers. There is also a thing called "the cruisers grapevine" where incident information is sheared, such as "did you ever meet up with Sue and Fred and their daughter on boat XYZ?" - "well they hit a reef of Riatea and lost their boat last May. We all clubbed together and gathered funds to help them get home." **** happens, but other cruisers normally always learn about it and offer assistance where they can - mostly verbal using "knowledge" they have gained along the way. And that "grapevine" is what my original post was trying to utilise to help identify a part of a wrecked catamaran that washed up on the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean - and help a friend try and identify where the wreckage came from - somewhere somebody knows of a missing catamaran or one that was abandoned!

Secondly, the likelihood of a responsive "Coast Guard" anywhere in the world other than North America and parts of the Mediterranean is slim to non-existent. South Africa (the country) has no "Coast Guard". They have a navy with various warships that are supposed to patrol their coast and assist in the rescue of ships and mariners in distress. Well, that solves that problem, you think. However, in reality, the country cannot afford the fuel to keep the vessels out at sea and does not have the funds to maintain good and proper crew. So, when a maritime incident occurs, the authorities rather request other ships to assist in rescues or, if close to shore, request voluntary National Sea Rescue Institute vessels to assist. And anywhere else in the seas off the continent there is no "Coast Guard" or rescue service. Cruisers know this and know that if something goes wrong at sea, the only help comes, if you are lucky, from fellow mariners and not from non-existent "Coast Guards".

Now, the third point - I am assisting a friend on a remote island (St. Helena Island) that has no coast guard or true rescue services. If something happens to one of the local fishing boats out at sea, they rely on other fishing boats or visiting cruising boats to assist with a rescue. I have previously, whilst been on the island and whilst being the only serviceable vessel there, assisted in rescuing a small fishing boat with its two crew on the other side of the island. The reward is a "thank you" and a few unexpected free beers in the local pub. No money is ever thought about and never expected.

Now let's concentrate on why I asked for incidents south of the equator. Each ocean has its currents that are greatly influenced by the trade winds. Drift patterns are influenced by both winds and currents and mostly (not always) flotsam tends to remain in the hemisphere where it originated. In other words, a buoyant wreck of a vessel tends to stay in the same hemisphere, but not necessarily the same ocean. An example of this is the first Hugo Boss (60ft) that was abandoned in the Southern Ocean, about 1000 miles from Cape Town. The wreckage was discovered on the southern coast of Patagonia about 10 years later - it had drifted through the South Indian Ocean, around the south of Australia and then across the entire South Pacific Ocean before being swept onto the Patagonian shore - a journey of around 13,000 miles. Google it - it is a surprising story.

Then we had the Moorings A5130 that was lost in January 2015 in the southern Indian Ocean, about two thirds of the distance between Africa and Australia, from the African side. Current and winds brought it back towards South Africa and the wreck drifted all the way to just off the most southern point of Africa before it was taken in tow and a failed attempt was made to tow the wreck back to Cape Town before the wreck was lost and presumed sank near Cape Point, just south of Cape Town. The "journey" of the wreck took exactly a year.

The two examples of drift mentioned above are only examples of numerous other such drift patterns that are known and documented.

So, let me get back to the current query. Sometime in the past few years somebody lost a catamaran! Where it was lost is unknown, but most likely in a Southern Hemisphere ocean. What make of catamaran is unknown, but somebody may be able to identify the make from the construction shown in the photographs below. The photographs are copyright Ed Thorpe - Saint Helena Island, who has now given me permission to publish them.

I do not have much to say regarding the second photograph but the first one has some clues for those of you who know catamarans. Firstly, just visible under the bridge-deck it has a nacelle or "V" section - you may have to lighten the photograph a bit to see it properly.

As Atoll stated, he has seen the photographs and agrees with me that the bridge deck is from a relatively small catamaran - his estimates of one between 38 to 42 foot LOA.

The first photograph shows the tracks where the trampoline was attached. There is also a square plate between the two tracks where the compression beam would have been attached. On each side and slightly under the track ends are either two pad-eyes or electrical glands - they are most probably pad-eyes, which, personally, I have never seen located where they are on a catamaran. Are there any cats out there which have their bridal attached to the forward edge of bridge-deck and not the bows or edges of the cross-beam?

Atoll also pointed out that the bulkheads appear to be foam laminated. I have only heard of one production catamaran that did that, which resulted in the liquidation of that company about five years ago.

Any information of catamarans lost or abandoned in any of the southern oceans over the past few years, that were not recovered, could be helpful in trying to trace this wreckage. And for those who think there is any money being gained from trying to help solve a puzzle, you are so far off base that you have no idea what life is about.





I hope the above photographs show up!