NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/rec/boats/8062

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-23 | 7.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!tarkkone
From: [e-mail] (Lauri Tarkkonen)
Newsgroups: rec.boats
Subject: Re: Coyote spotted, no sign of Mike Plant
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Nov 92 20:11:45 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <lgvg1kINNhgo@cronkite> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 145

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (wayne.m.simpson) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lauri Tarkkonen) writes:

>   (regarding the preponderance of racing boat keels falling off)...

>>Before the actual round the world race Drum, a boat owned by
>>a British pop star Simon Le Bon, dropped its keel, the weldings
>>of a fancy system broke of.

>   The story I got from Skip Novak's book "One Watch at a Time" suggested
>that the keel casting was flawed. When the builder poured the keel, he
>didn't have enough lead on hand, and tried to finish the casting later
>with a second pouring. This is not recommended practice and you can see
>why given the result.
>   The weldings you refer to were, I believe, something to do the the
>space frame within the boat's hull. Although this compromised the keel's
>security, it was a separate incident and was attended to on the stopover
>in South Africa.

The race where drum dropped the keel for the first time was before
the rave, and this was because a aluminium spacer that was welded
from several pieces was broken.

                            b   b
                       hhhhhbhhhbhhhh    h=hull
                          1abaaaba2
                          a b   b a      b=bolt
                          a       a      a=aluminium
                          a       a      l=lead
                          a b   b a
                          3abaaaba4      1,2,3,4 = welding
                          llblllbll
                          llblllbll       1 and 2 failed and the keel
                          llblllbll       felt off.
                          llblllbll

The boat did not sink, because the bolts remained tight and the hull floated
upside down.

This incidence got quite a good exposure in the Swedish media, when some
Sswedish journalist wrote that the failure was caused by poor design and
Ron Holland wrote back and told that the design is sound, only the welding
was poor.

I do not know about Skip Novaks books but this is what the papers and
Ron Holland think about the incident.

If the new keel then parted is another story.

The problem with Martela was caused by poor keel bolts and the ingnorance
of Speedwave (the manufacturer of the keel) to fix them properly. If you
put some threads in lead, they are bound to come off. Here you do not need
an engineer with a slide ruler or a computer.

>   In the BOC, you can't go get a bigger boat. Class I is limited to 60'
>LOA. There are very few rules in this race, but LOA is one of them. I
>think another is that when full, any water ballast carried is limited to
>that which can effect a 15 degree change of trim.

I am sorry. You missed the point. Everybody knows that the size buys speed.
Money buys size. So the rule makers think that let us have a 60 feet boat,
this will be economically tolerable and fast enought to sail through the
course in some expected time.

Then starts the cheating part. Make your boat lighter (pay more) and get
more speed. It is irregardless of the name of the rule. By making this
silly bulb hanging on a straw they get the weight down, more righting
moment (more complicated design, more cash and here maybe someone pays
it with his life.)

>   The whole BOC concept is intended to "push the envelope" of performance
>monohull design. I suppose the framers of the race thought this would
>counter the trends set in IOR development, where rule cheating designers
>created boats that were faster but sacraficed seaworthiness in the bargain.

Maybe the rule should be based on seaworthiness. It is irresponsible to
make these extreme boats to race a singlehanded event. When you are alone
it is much more difficult to follow the deterioration of the boat and if
something happens, you have only one pair of hands. A crew of say five
would be much more able to handle the situation in an emergency. (Maybe
you say that now we are loosing only one life in this incidence.)

>For this reason, scantling rules were deliberately left out of the BOC.

Why to have any rules at all.

>But rules are rules, and the same thing seems to have happened here. I
>suppose you can blame Jeantot, as he was the one who started this trend
>toward the current generation of extreme beam BOC boats.

Of course we could blame the sponsors, let us boycot products that
are involved with this kind of stupidity.

>   I think most occurences of keel loss are the result of bad building
>rather than bad design, the exception being Tony Lush's "Lady Pepperell".
>Lush added several thousand pounds to the ballast of a modified Hunter
>54 without re-engineering the hull to keel joint. Not surprisingly, the
>keel began to work loose in the Southern Ocean, and fellow American
>Francis Stokes came by and evacuated Lush before the keel fell off
>entirely.

I do not recommend the above described design of Ron Holland.

>   In spite of this, I, too regard the current crop of BOC boats as unsafe
>vessels engineered too close to the edge. When I saw Coyote at the Annapolis
>Boat Show, I feared for Plant's safety, as I would for anyone who would
>take such a craft to sea.

I have not seen the boat, but pictures and the facts given in the statistics
would tell me the same. I sail often singlehanded, but I would avoid that
thing even with a competent crew on an ocean crossing.

>   The whole idea of the extreme beam boat is to maximize initial stability
>in order to carry a big rig. That way, you can get by with less ballast,
>and therefore, less overall weight. Trouble is, that wide hull is heavy,
>so you need an even bigger rig to drive it. With a bigger rig, you need
>more ballast to mantain the required stability. Get the picture?

Yes but during ages wide hulls have had a bonus in handicap and wide
hulls have better rightning moment.

>   I think a better concept is the one explored by "Holger Danske", des-
>igned by Dave Gerr. She is just the opposite of boats like Coyote, with
>an extremely narrow beam. How narrow? 9 feet, 7 inches (2.9 meters) for
>a boat 60 feet long overall. Long, narrow hulls are more easily driven
>than wide ones, and are also lighter. So Holger Danske didn't need such
>a big rig to get her moving. How small? Only 987 square feet. With such
>a small rig, she didn't need so much ballast to keep her upright and
>total wieght was thereby kept down. Holger Danske did pretty well in the
>last BOC, and I think her concept is ultimately the one that can provide
>for a boat that is both fast and safe.

Here in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden and Finland we have a long
tradition of long narrow boats, that have moderate sail areas. Actually
the most popular rating rule, considered only the sail area. There were
boat classes, named according to the rated sail area (main and foretriangle)
for 15, 22, 30, 40, 75, 120, 150, 220 square meters. Some of the 150 squaRE
meter boats were later racing as 12mR yachts. The 30 square meter boat is
very popular and they have even made some 'modern' versions in fibre class.

I like this type of boat, I have a forty feet long boat that has ma maximum
beam of litle less than 10 feet and a sail area of about 55 square meter.

- Lauri Tarkkonen