The Yard Guys

[Exile]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

You've got some Moitessier running through your veins.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...me-126853.html

Fun thread.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by SimonV

I must be one of the very few. I can honestly say my single handed crossing of the Pacific was cathartic and I can hardly wait for the next . One thing I did find strange was I became disappointed on seeing the Marquasers my 23 days San Francisco to the islands was just too short.

For sure, there are not many. I mean there are many that like to sail to faraway places to visit them but few that does not find the voyage boring. There are some that take that even more faraway and are not interested in visiting anything, just turning around the globe non stop solo.

Maybe you will find that even more cathartic than to cross the Pacifc Solo. Maybe you shroud try that. There is an old French post man that likes that. He had done that non stop on an old French mass production small boat and now he wants to do the same against the prevailing winds with the same boat!!! I guess he really finds that cathartic. Big respect for the guy but I cannot say that I understood his pleasures.

[neilpride]

Originally Posted by Exile

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...me-126853.html

Fun thread.

HEHEHEH!! I know a poster whit a Moitessiere wiring, heheheh... and a bit from Slocum haha....

[Exile]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

I'm sorry, but I just haven't seen a lot of evidence from the yard guys. Seriously. Yes, a few photos of 3-4 boats (1-2 actually compelling, others second-hand from years ago), but hardly the kind of thing that would prove anything about "poorly-built" production boats suffering structural failures all over the place. So, yes, I DEFINITELY hear this same point "made over and over again". If yard guys are actually seeing this as often as claimed - then show it. It's that simple. This thread was created for that. So far, it's been kinda quiet. Me, I look for evidence of the patterns that people are claiming are obvious. You, you seem to look for quiet.

It's all anecdotal, Smack, and will likely always be. No uniform standards, little regulation, zero reporting requirements. No help from the marine insuance industry because that's also unregulated. To the extent there have been lawsuits, the results are usually undisclosed. So what are we left with? Probably not much more than reputation, opinion, and anecdotal incidents.

Heaven help me, but I actually do agree with you that none of what's presented thus far amounts to absolute "proof" of anything. But the yard guy opinions -- here & elsewhere -- tend to corrorborate the overall positive & negative reputations of different brands, as do the type of failures that have been reported from relatively new boats. Without add'l info, you may not be able to "prove" that a rudder failure on a 30-year old boat was due to poor original construction vs. age & lack of maintenance, but it is certainly more likely to be attributable to cheap build quality if it occurs on a 10-year old boat and you have yard guys pointing out why the build quality contributed to the failure!

It matters because Minaret accused me of "bending the facts to fit some agenda". Knowing whether the skeg was ripped off when Mike backed the boat off under the its own power - or when an "idiotic" towboat captain improperly ripped the boat backward is a very important detail. As an insurance shaman, you should know the importance of such details and want to keep them straight. Well, unless you "have an agenda".


For insurance purposes? Yes, of course it's important. For your curious efforts to continue finding failures with well-regarded older boats? No. Whether the skeg was damaged from a poor repair job, the grounding, the attempt to back out, or a prior(?) tow incident, it all sounds like external events that don't have much if anything to do with initial build quality. You've made the exact same argument with regard to the Bene whose bulkheads came apart in the N. Atlantic recently, i.e. trying to attribute the incident to a prior repair.

Not having an agenda means applying the same analysis to different sets of facts, whether you agree with the outcome or not. I've readily acknowledged my personal bias, but don't think I have an agenda. On the contrary, I've been waiting for something more from you that speaks to the good build quality of the mass-produced boats despite the cheaper construction methods. The fact that some of them complete long passages is helpful but obviously only goes so far.

It matters because many of the BWCC (Blue Water Crowds Coops), push newbs toward these 30 year old "bluewater boats" as being "safer" off-shore. Moodys have long been in that category. It would be good for newbs to know that this oft-spouted advice has some big holes in its "well-built, bluewater" hull.

Well then, I guess you need to investigate whether Moody's suffered an unusually high number of rudder/skeg failures in the mid-1980's, and whether the boat in question was from that era. Still hard to make the case given all the reported intervening events on this particular Moody, whether the tow incident contributed or not. Best of luck with it.

Btw, how would you suggest a "BWCC" advise a newb who wants to go cruising but can only afford a much older boat? Instead of buying a 30-year old boat with a great reputation for seaworthiness and getting a thorough survey done, go ahead and buy a 25-year old Hunter instead?? Hey, just asking.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by neilpride

HEHEHEH!! I know a poster whit a Moitessiere wiring, heheheh... and a bit from Slocum haha....

If you mean me, I'm more of just a legend in my OWN mind!

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by Exile

Well then, I guess you need to investigate whether Moody's suffered an unusually high number of rudder/skeg failures in the mid-1980's, and whether the boat in question was from that era. Still hard to make the case given all the reported intervening events on this particular Moody, whether the tow incident contributed or not. Best of luck with it.

Again, I'm going by the skipper's own words about what happened - the skeg failed when he was backing off the shoal. Everything else is some dudes around here saying "I seem to recall" or "someone said", etc. The former is fact. The latter is not. If there are other facts out there, I'm happy to consider them, but I personally don't need to look any further than the owner's account.

Originally Posted by Exile

Btw, how would you suggest a "BWCC" advise a newb who wants to go cruising but can only afford a much older boat? Instead of buying a 30-year old boat with a great reputation for seaworthiness and getting a thorough survey done, go ahead and buy a 25-year old Hunter instead??[/COLOR] Hey, just asking.

Easy, said BWC could confidently and factually tell the newb the following:

"There has NEVER been a case of a 25-year-old Hunter 40 Legend (a "production boat") sinking in the ICW due to a failed skeg. However, a Moody, a celebrated blue-water boat with a great reputation for seaworthiness, did just that."

That's not so hard.

[smackdaddy]

Okay - this thread has gotten a little boring again. I hope we see some more actual photos from yard guys as to what's really going on with boats - production or otherwise.

Later.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

Okay - this thread has gotten a little boring again. I hope we see some more actual photos from yard guys as to what's really going on with boats - production or otherwise.

Later.

Ok, to be on topic again and not boring:

"Day 3 - Wednesday

Into Day 3 we set the Hydrovane to steer the boat and it all worked very well. We know adopted a 5 person shift pattern that Sarah had worked out so it meant that everyone would get more sleep as we settled into our routine.

This was the first day that we found water in the bilge – 1 litre which we traced back to a leak in the rudder. Only a slight concern at the time since the water leak from the rudder appeared as one small drop every minute or so – we could live with that....

Day 4 -Thursday

We found 4 litres of water in the bilge and the leak was still small but increasing. We took advice from the boat builder via email about the cause and his advice was to head to a safe port and get the rudder bearings checked. We had our first crew conference and decided that we would continue and monitor the amount of water, partly because of a new storm developing over the Canaries would have made going back very difficult, if not impossible.

Sarah suggested that we head for Cap Verde which meant we could continue to monitor the problem with an option (and our only option) to go into Cap Verde 500 miles south if the problem did get worse. We discussed the fact leaks only get worse and never better but we had no option other than to go to Cap Verde in any case because of the weather. We also started to discuss our contingency plans to have ready in case the leak worsened further...

Day 4 - Friday

A check on the bilge showed we had taken on 8 litres of water in the past 24 hours so it was getting worse. We had no doubt that we needed to get to Cap Verde as quickly as possible and we emailed the ARC organisers to inform them of our predicament. The stress levels rose visibly on the boat as we now had to consider contingency plans for pumping out large volumes of water if the leak worsened or we encountered structural damage caused by the waves on the rudder.

We devised two methods of pumping out large volumes of water should the worse happen. One involved connecting the water intake from the generator directly into the engine bilge and the other diverting the manual bilge pump into the engine compartment. Grab Bag was reviewed and finalised, AIS personal monitors were checked,....

Day 5 - Saturday
While the swell was now over 4 metres the waves were much less steep and the leak went down to four litres over the last 24 hours. It meant that the water leak had been worsened by the steep waves and the forecast was for the waves to lessen over the next couple of days. Still we had 300 miles to go but the crew were much more relaxed now...

Day 7 Monday

We motored over night for a few hours so that we would reach Sao Vincente in daylight. The last thing we needed was to come into an unknown marina in the dark when we did not have detailed charts for the area. ...
Arrived at 6pm with much relief. Now we just needed to sort out how we fixed the boat. But first we had a good few beers and found a very nice restaurant where we could relax and have some good food.
All we have to do now is get the boat fixed!"
Adventures of Afar VI: December 2014


Ok, you have guessed. That's the Moody 47 that was making the ARC.

They seem a nice family. All the best for them

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Polux

No, I love offshore passages but not the ones that take 22 days. Too long for my taste. Ideally I like to have an offshore passage that takes between 6 hours to 24 hours, preferably in muscular strong conditions that allows the boat to go fast and then have a rest, going to a nice restaurant and have some drinks on a bar. That means on my boat and on those conditions passages between 45 and 170Nm. Off course, I have made passages that took several days, but that is just what I like more.

I am quite sure that most cruising sailors find boring even 24 hours passages. Most of then cruise about 30nm a day or less if they can.

Hmmm... you "like offshore passages that last 6 hours"? How can you call a 6 hour passage "offshore"? It takes longer than that to get to where most folks think "offshore" begins, let alone complete a passage. What you describe is more what I call daysailing, not passage making.

And your assertion that "most cruising sailors ...", well, all I can say is that I know a LOT of cruising sailors, and what you say is nonsense. I suspect that you don't know cruising sailors at all. You know daysailors and vacation sailors and think that they are cruisers. PErhaps this definition disconnect between you and a lot of us others is why your opinions seem so strange to us, and why our thoughts about cruising vessels are different.

Going for a blast sail at high speeds in a sparsely outfitted boat, and then eating in a fancy restaurant and drinking in a bar can be enjoyable... but it isn't what most of us call cruising. I think that this post of yours explains a lot!

Jim

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Hmmm... you "like offshore passages that last 6 hours"? How the hell can you call a 6 hour passage "offshore"? It takes longer than that to get to where most folks think "offshore" begins, let alone complete a passage. What you describe is more what I call daysailing, not passage making.

And your assertion that "most cruising sailors ...", well, all I can say is that I know a LOT of cruising sailors, and what you say is nonsense. I suspect that you don't know cruising sailors at all. You know daysailors and vacation sailors and think that they are cruisers. PErhaps this definition disconnect between you and a lot of us others is why your opinions seem so strange to us, and why our thoughts about cruising vessels are different.

Going for a blast sail at high speeds in a sparsely outfitted boat, and then eating in a fancy restaurant and drinking in a bar can be enjoyable... but it isn't what most of us call cruising. I think that this post of yours explains a lot!

Jim

It certainly does, at least for me.

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by Polux

Ok, to be on topic again and not boring:

"Day 3 - Wednesday

Into Day 3 we set the Hydrovane to steer the boat and it all worked very well. We know adopted a 5 person shift pattern that Sarah had worked out so it meant that everyone would get more sleep as we settled into our routine.

This was the first day that we found water in the bilge – 1 litre which we traced back to a leak in the rudder. Only a slight concern at the time since the water leak from the rudder appeared as one small drop every minute or so – we could live with that....

Day 4 -Thursday

We found 4 litres of water in the bilge and the leak was still small but increasing. We took advice from the boat builder via email about the cause and his advice was to head to a safe port and get the rudder bearings checked. We had our first crew conference and decided that we would continue and monitor the amount of water, partly because of a new storm developing over the Canaries would have made going back very difficult, if not impossible.

Sarah suggested that we head for Cap Verde which meant we could continue to monitor the problem with an option (and our only option) to go into Cap Verde 500 miles south if the problem did get worse. We discussed the fact leaks only get worse and never better but we had no option other than to go to Cap Verde in any case because of the weather. We also started to discuss our contingency plans to have ready in case the leak worsened further...

Day 4 - Friday

A check on the bilge showed we had taken on 8 litres of water in the past 24 hours so it was getting worse. We had no doubt that we needed to get to Cap Verde as quickly as possible and we emailed the ARC organisers to inform them of our predicament. The stress levels rose visibly on the boat as we now had to consider contingency plans for pumping out large volumes of water if the leak worsened or we encountered structural damage caused by the waves on the rudder.

We devised two methods of pumping out large volumes of water should the worse happen. One involved connecting the water intake from the generator directly into the engine bilge and the other diverting the manual bilge pump into the engine compartment. Grab Bag was reviewed and finalised, AIS personal monitors were checked,....

Day 5 - Saturday
While the swell was now over 4 metres the waves were much less steep and the leak went down to four litres over the last 24 hours. It meant that the water leak had been worsened by the steep waves and the forecast was for the waves to lessen over the next couple of days. Still we had 300 miles to go but the crew were much more relaxed now...

Day 7 Monday

We motored over night for a few hours so that we would reach Sao Vincente in daylight. The last thing we needed was to come into an unknown marina in the dark when we did not have detailed charts for the area. ...
Arrived at 6pm with much relief. Now we just needed to sort out how we fixed the boat. But first we had a good few beers and found a very nice restaurant where we could relax and have some good food.
All we have to do now is get the boat fixed!"
Adventures of Afar VI: December 2014


Ok, you have guessed. That's the Moody 47 that was making the ARC.

They seem a nice family. All the best for them

It will be interesting to see exactly what the problem on this one was. Here's the report of another rudder/taking-on-water issue on a M33:

Mody33 mk1 taking in water [Archive] - Yachting and Boating World Forums

And more here:

http://www.ybw.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-7665.html

And another example from our very own BobbyS:

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Taking the position that out of thousands of boats built only a few dozen have rudder failures due to under building or poor quality control is not acceptable to many people. Some of these boats had prior damage and those boats can't be criticized but many had no prior damage and just failed. Its just getting more and more common.
If you were building aircraft and told a customer that only 2-3% of the aircraft you were building would have a rudder failure absolutely no one would buy from you. If the airline told customers that 99 out a hundred flights would arrive safely no one would buy a ticket from them.
Moody built a boat in the late 70's early eighties that lost a rudder/skeg during an offshore trip and the resulting lawsuit did a great deal of damage to their otherwise good reputation built over many years. These days it seems that its acceptable to lose a certain percentage of rudders on boats, after all they weren't expensive cruisers so what would you expect? I think people do more due diligence when buying a flat screen TV than purchasing a sailboat.

[avb3]

Originally Posted by Polux

No, I love offshore passages but not the ones that take 22 days. Too long for my taste. Ideally I like to have an offshore passage that takes between 6 hours to 24 hours, preferably in muscular strong conditions that allows the boat to go fast and then have a rest, going to a nice restaurant and have some drinks on a bar. That means on my boat and on those conditions passages between 45 and 170Nm. Off course, I have made passages that took several days, but that is just what I like more.

I am quite sure that most cruising sailors find boring even 24 hours passages. Most of then cruise about 30nm a day or less if they can.

That's not a passage, that is a day's sail.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

Again, I'm going by the skipper's own words about what happened - the skeg failed when he was backing off the shoal. Everything else is some dudes around here saying "I seem to recall" or "someone said", etc. The former is fact. The latter is not. If there are other facts out there, I'm happy to consider them, but I personally don't need to look any further than the owner's account.

Okey, Dokey. Knock yourself out.

Easy, said BWC could confidently and factually tell the newb the following:

"There has NEVER been a case of a 25-year-old Hunter 40 Legend (a "production boat") sinking in the ICW due to a failed skeg. However, a Moody, a celebrated blue-water boat with a great reputation for seaworthiness, did just that."

That's not so hard.

I think telling him this would be more helpful:

"A guy on the forums who owns a 25 year-old Hunter 40 Legend nevertheless said that Moody's are 'a celebrated blue-water boat with a great reputation for seaworthiness.' But you should be aware that some of them have suffered from skeg & rudder problems, so even after you get it surveyed and have the integrity of the skeg thoroughly checked, you should incur the additional minimal expense of dropping the rudder and inspecting if not replacing the rudder bearings."

Things like this are only easy if you don't make them complicated.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Hmmm... you "like offshore passages that last 6 hours"? How the hell can you call a 6 hour passage "offshore"? It takes longer than that to get to where most folks think "offshore" begins, let alone complete a passage. What you describe is more what I call daysailing, not passage making.

And your assertion that "most cruising sailors ...", well, all I can say is that I know a LOT of cruising sailors, and what you say is nonsense. I suspect that you don't know cruising sailors at all. You know daysailors and vacation sailors and think that they are cruisers. PErhaps this definition disconnect between you and a lot of us others is why your opinions seem so strange to us, and why our thoughts about cruising vessels are different.

Going for a blast sail at high speeds in a sparsely outfitted boat, and then eating in a fancy restaurant and drinking in a bar can be enjoyable... but it isn't what most of us call cruising. I think that this post of yours explains a lot!

Jim

Cruising is what one does on a cruising boat going from a place to another. You have a a elitist idea of what is cruising and a lonely and inadequate one because there are very few cruisers that correspond to yours rather narrow idea of what is cruising and there are a huge number of cruisers that stay out of what you call a cruiser

In what regards what you call cruising your narrowness is similar to the ones that have a certain type of cruising boat, that fits him well, but are incapable of understanding that will not fit others and that is ideal boat is completely unfit to others.

I cruise 4 or 5 months a year and do about 2500nm a year. I do not cruise more because I don't like to cruise on the cold months of the year. That does not make me a cruiser? Wake up!!!! cruisers are all that use cruising boats to cruise while they are cruising. Even on a week end a using a cruising boat to go around a sailor is cruising.

Maybe you should get a dictionary to see what is cruising and what is offshore since it seems you have some strange notions about it, notions that does not correspond to the meaning of the words.

Offshore means just that, away from the shore. In what regards boat licences offshore means at 25nm of the coast even if for most offshore is out of the 12nm of territorial waters.

I sail many days offshore during my sail season that on the last years have been on the western and Eastern med between Italy and Turkey.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by avb3

That's not a passage, that is a day's sail.

Well, it depends: on your's it will be several.

When you go from an Island to another or from a continent to an Island that is 60 or 70NM away you are making a passage and are sailing offshore. Not a big passage but a passage anyway.

But I really don't understand, we should not be discussing the rudder problems on that Moody 47?

after all this is a thread about rudder problems.