# Another Free Air-Launch Service Ride Home



## smurphny

5 boaters rescued from sailboat after its mast broke 200 miles off North Carolina coast | Fox News


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## Zanshin

I think you chose an inappropriate title for this thread, unless you really believe that they intentionally dismasted their boat in miserable weather in order to be able to get a free ride home by helicopter.


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## smurphny

There has been much discussion in similar events as to when and under what conditions a rescue is warranted. IF the boat was in danger of sinking and lives were in danger, of course it had to be abandoned and rescue was in order. Maybe the hull was irreparably holed by a spar. But if it was a case of people being uncomfortable and activating an EPIRB to be relieved of their discomfort, then it was not. There aren't too many shades of gray here. I'm sure we'll hear about the reasons for abandoning ship. I can only think of one reason for abandoning ship:imminent danger of sinking.


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## Zanshin

I agree that there has been much discussion in the past, and there will be more in the future. But the facts in this case are still sparse and I think that the title is inappropriate, at least until it is shown that there was no cause for evacuation. Until such time I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, while this thread's title implicitly removes any such doubt.


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## capta

This is a fairly new 2.5 million dollar boat, dismasted by a 70 knot squall in 25 to 35 knot winds. They were well reefed down and not amateur sailors. Shouldn't have happened. Somebody dropped the ball, either in preparing the boat for the sail or at sea.
My question is, if these guys were all experienced sailors, what were they doing out there this week? I do believe all the bad weather that the East Coast has been having was well forecast, was it not?
Hey, even the rich are now taking advantage of the "get out of trouble free" card the USCG offers. How nice they are an equal opportunity rescue operation.


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## Minnewaska

There is another thread on this topic running right now. What is known so far is..... They head out in a northerly gale, into the Gulf Stream with a swell from the south. That alone would be enough to keep me ashore, but maybe I'm just a Monday morning QB. Still, it's a classic no, no. We also know they wrapped line around their prop, so we unable to motor back to shore. 

Quite I mess. I speculate that they were launching that cat at 20+ kt speeds and crashing hard into oncoming swell that was standing up straight from the northerlies. The rig couldn't take the constant strain. I have no way to know, it's just a guess.


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## newhaul

More will be known when and if they salvage the vessel


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## hellosailor

"But if it was a case of people being uncomfortable and activating an EPIRB to be relieved of their discomfort, then it was not."

Smurph, you cynic. "Discomfort" is a relative thing. If the boat is perfectly seaworthy, but the crew are seasick, do you realize that after 24 hours of heavy puking you can tear a hole, literally, in the esophagus? And now you've got a good chance of bleeding to death?

Supposedly modern cats are more stable without a mast than with one. And they'll never ever capsize, they're protected by magic and faeries. But without sail power (for whatever reason) and having to rely on the engine(s?) when diesel engines are notorious for fuel system problems in mixmaster weather...

Hey, there's a boat show coming up and as they say on Broadway "just spell my name right!" look at all the PR Gunboat is getting. Now, *that*s cynical.(G)


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## killarney_sailor

Let me ask a question that comes from my ignorance about how big, high performance cats operate when it all hits the fan. I doubt you would heave-to (not sure why I am saying that). Do you run-off under minimal sails? Drag a series drogue? It occurred to me that I have seen lots of discussions about heavy weather tactics, storm jibs, trysails, et al for monos but have never seen a similar discussion for cats, whether gunboats or mom and dad boats. We only saw a couple of cats in South Africa (50 foot range) that had come across from Australia. Certainly the conditions this boat had would not be uncommon between Mauritius and SA, where 25 to 35 knots seems the norm in the summer, with gusts up from there. The cruising guide mentions waves to 20 m. The only advantage there is that the water that would be hitting you there would be much warmer.


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## smurphny

hellosailor said:


> "But if it was a case of people being uncomfortable and activating an EPIRB to be relieved of their discomfort, then it was not."
> 
> Smurph, you cynic. "Discomfort" is a relative thing. If the boat is perfectly seaworthy, but the crew are seasick, do you realize that after 24 hours of heavy puking you can tear a hole, literally, in the esophagus? And now you've got a good chance of bleeding to death?
> 
> Supposedly modern cats are more stable without a mast than with one. And they'll never ever capsize, they're protected by magic and faeries. But without sail power (for whatever reason) and having to rely on the engine(s?) when diesel engines are notorious for fuel system problems in mixmaster weather...
> 
> Hey, there's a boat show coming up and as they say on Broadway "just spell my name right!" look at all the PR Gunboat is getting. Now, *that*s cynical.(G)


Could be that one was deathly sick and then, since a chopper was coming anyway, it was a matter of choice whether the rest just abandoned the boat. Heck, they seem to be able to afford letting it go adrift. I wonder whether the boat was equipped with drogue/sea anchor, etc. Bet it WAS equipped with granite counter tops and maybe even a sauna.


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## JonEisberg

smurphny said:


> Could be that one was deathly sick and then, since a chopper was coming anyway, it was a matter of choice whether the rest just abandoned the boat. Heck, they seem to be able to afford letting it go adrift. I wonder whether the boat was equipped with drogue/sea anchor, etc. *Bet it WAS equipped with granite counter tops and maybe even a sauna.*


_GRANITE???_ On a freakin' _GUNBOAT???_ Uhhh, you would be wrong about that...

Thanks, just what us sailing forum crackheads need, is yet _ANOTHER_ separate Gunboat 55 dismasting thread...

;-))


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## smurphny

JonEisberg said:


> _GRANITE???_ On a freakin' _GUNBOAT???_ Uhhh, you would be wrong about that...
> 
> Thanks, just what us sailing forum crackheads need, is yet _ANOTHER_ separate Gunboat 55 dismasting thread...
> 
> ;-))


The interior pix of the counters look like they are probably Corian or Swanstone, maybe actual stone of some sort.

Do these have a history of losing their graphite parts?


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## capta

Gentlemen, gentlemen please. This is supposed to be a G-rated family site. Can we please refrain from discussing "their graphite parts". Really!


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## aeventyr60

I guess the new generation of graphite ain't what it used to be.


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## MarkofSeaLife

killarney_sailor said:


> Let me ask a question that comes from my ignorance about how big, high performance cats operate when it all hits the fan. I doubt you would heave-to (not sure why I am saying that). Do you run-off under minimal sails? Drag a series drogue? It occurred to me that I have seen lots of discussions about heavy weather tactics, storm jibs, trysails, et al for monos but have never seen a similar discussion for cats, whether gunboats or mom and dad boats.


Dave on Exit Stategy in another forum used to write excellently after his cat circumnavigation. He talked about removing the energy from the boat. For example, a boat withput energy cant be pitchpoled down a wave... It needs to be exceeding hull speed (whatever) by a lot.

The recurring error I hear very, very often is cat people saying how they hit 20 knots, or 18, or some huge amount. Often hear mono guys saying they were doing 14 when their hull speed is 8.
Either way complacency, hubris, bravado has won. Consider a 55 foot cat where the crew remains INSIDE doing 20 knots with 40 knots up the bum. It would feel like a gentle 20 kt breaze, but the energy in a 10 ton object at 20 knots is one HELL of a lot of TNT.... In fact its the equivilent of 14.7 kg of TNT or 147 kgs, the calclator is too difficult for me! ENERGY CALCULATOR
Now consider the wave coming the other way at 10 knots as you hit the vertical face of solid water.

My point is sailors don't realise they are loading up their boat with TNT. They just have that invincible feeling of going downwind fast.

In fact, when is the only time you know how much its blowing when you are going downwind? When you finally decide to reef and you turn the boat upwind and all of a sudden its blowing a storm.

Cats are the enigma: everyone here slags a Beneteau without drogues, JSD and parchute anchors, but no one wallops a cat without, or not used.

These guys were going too fast. They hit a solid wave. Their 14.7 kgs of TNT exploded. End of story!

Maybe Cat people need to discuss storm management more.

BTW, here is what 5 kg of TNT will do: (gotta love Google!)


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## davidpm

smurphny said:


> I can only think of one reason for abandoning ship:imminent danger of sinking.


I can think of a few more.

1. Medical emergency

2. Loss of steering (sometimes jerry riggs are possible sometimes not depending circumstances)

3. Multiple systems failures combined with extreme exhaustion. I'm thinking of the long distance voyager who built his own boat but called for rescue after a week in storm where he judged that if the auto steering failed the boat would have rolled. He seemed like a very experience tough guy but the storm was so long a fierce it beat him.

4. Loss of control of boat and boat is on a course for a lee shore.

5. Fire

6. Becalmed and out of water.

7. Down to last six pack of beer.

8. You wife says you either call for a helicopter or if I survive I want a divorce. Now you have to decide if your 200k boat that is insured is worth 50% of everything you own. Plus you will then have to learn how to operate a smart phone and setup a match.com profile which you don't know how to do because you still have a flip phone which is plenty good enough if you are married.


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## JonEisberg

MarkofSeaLife said:


> These guys were going too fast. They hit a solid wave. Their 14.7 kgs of TNT exploded. End of story!


Not sure how you know that with any certainly, and your scenario doesn't square with Peter Johnstone's account that "the mast came down with the wall of wind"...

In any event, making it only 200 NM down range of Hatteras in 36 hours doesn't sound all that "fast" for a Gunboat 55, to me...


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## capta

killarney_sailor said:


> Let me ask a question that comes from my ignorance about how big, high performance cats operate when it all hits the fan. I doubt you would heave-to (not sure why I am saying that). Do you run-off under minimal sails? Drag a series drogue? It occurred to me that I have seen lots of discussions about heavy weather tactics, storm jibs, trysails, et al for monos but have never seen a similar discussion for cats, whether gunboats or mom and dad boats. We only saw a couple of cats in South Africa (50 foot range) that had come across from Australia. Certainly the conditions this boat had would not be uncommon between Mauritius and SA, where 25 to 35 knots seems the norm in the summer, with gusts up from there. The cruising guide mentions waves to 20 m. The only advantage there is that the water that would be hitting you there would be much warmer.


I was in the same Atlantic storm in which Alain Colas and at least 11 other people died, in 1978. I was sailing a Jim Brown Searunner 37' trimaran, hull number one.
I used exactly the same technique that Montessier describes; basically surfing the boat across the face of the wave, as one would a surf board, then turning my stern to the wave at the bottom and allowing the wave to pass me by as a maelstrom of white water. We were under bare poles and the vessel was free to move out from under the solid breaking water (no drogues to slow her). I steered for 22 hours in conjunction with the vane gear, overpowering it when necessary, but never leaving the helm. Fortunately I had some hours of daylight to get used to this system before the long, dark night came. I imagine I would sail a cat in much the same way in those conditions. It might not be prudent to slow any lightly built multihull too much down wind in heavy weather, as I am not sure it would be strong enough to survive the weight of a 30'+ wave breaking directly aboard, which would surely happen if one was streaming a drogue.
As for heavy weather beating, a well designed multihull should sail on the water, not through it, so keeping the boat moving is important. Once again, I would not want to be slamming a lightly built multihull into waves because one is going too slow. On the Brown, I could almost skip from wave top to wave top, beating in 40 knots at sea. It wasn't even that uncomfortable. I have not done it in a cat, but my guess is that the principle is much the same. I'd reef her down until I was doing a comfortable 8 to 10 knots and see if she'd stay on top of the water. Even if she would do 20 comfortably I would be hesitant to do so, as there is going to be one wave, sooner or later, she just won't rise for.


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## smurphny

davidpm said:


> I can think of a few more.
> 
> 1. Medical emergency
> 
> 2. Loss of steering (sometimes jerry riggs are possible sometimes not depending circumstances)
> 
> 3. Multiple systems failures combined with extreme exhaustion. I'm thinking of the long distance voyager who built his own boat but called for rescue after a week in storm where he judged that if the auto steering failed the boat would have rolled. He seemed like a very experience tough guy but the storm was so long a fierce it beat him.
> 
> 4. Loss of control of boat and boat is on a course for a lee shore.
> 
> 5. Fire
> 
> 6. Becalmed and out of water.
> 
> 7. Down to last six pack of beer.
> 
> 8. You wife says you either call for a helicopter or if I survive I want a divorce. Now you have to decide if your 200k boat that is insured is worth 50% of everything you own. Plus you will then have to learn how to operate a smart phone and setup a match.com profile which you don't know how to do because you still have a flip phone which is plenty good enough if you are married.


True. I guess the only reason, covered by all situations is imminent and unavoidable threat to life. For #6 and #7, maybe in the future, the CG will be tasked with shuttling water and beer.

As more and more folks utilize their EPIRB to get a ride home instead of being prepared and toughing it out, sooner or later a CG rescuer will be lost. Besides the inherent tragedy of losing one of our best, when the press and politicians get a hold of this, it will dramatically modify this GREAT service for all of us.


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## hellosailor

No, they will probably realize the logic of New Hampshire's system.

Anyone can go into the state forests in NH. About five++ years they started a program where they posted signs at a number of them, telling hikers that there would be a charge to rescuing the unprepared ones who shouldn't be going out, like in shorts with no jackets in the middle of February. And they've been billing those folks for their rescue costs, while other folks who just got caught by bad luck, don't get billed.

I didn't get the details but heard that this winter they added some kind of buy-in program in some areas, they're still polishing up the details.

It would be easy enough to do the same thing with boats, same way that volunteer fire companies worked in the 1600's and 1700's. Don't buy a membership? OK, expect to bargain with the multiple companies that DO show up when you place an emergency call. And they won't be making deals cheap.

It has worked, it does work, it can work. Just a matter of societal priorities.


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## smurphny

hellosailor said:


> No, they will probably realize the logic of New Hampshire's system.
> 
> Anyone can go into the state forests in NH. About five++ years they started a program where they posted signs at a number of them, telling hikers that there would be a charge to rescuing the unprepared ones who shouldn't be going out, like in shorts with no jackets in the middle of February. And they've been billing those folks for their rescue costs, while other folks who just got caught by bad luck, don't get billed.
> 
> I didn't get the details but heard that this winter they added some kind of buy-in program in some areas, they're still polishing up the details.
> 
> It would be easy enough to do the same thing with boats, same way that volunteer fire companies worked in the 1600's and 1700's. Don't buy a membership? OK, expect to bargain with the multiple companies that DO show up when you place an emergency call. And they won't be making deals cheap.
> 
> It has worked, it does work, it can work. Just a matter of societal priorities.


That must be a very recent system in NH. I lived there and did a lot of hiking up until '06 and heard nothing about it. NH has a problem with people going into the Tuckerman's Ravine area and up to Mt. Washington. It is a fairly unforgiving alpine environment, complete with often extreme avalanche danger, crevasses that are sometimes 80' deep, frequent whiteout conditions, and generally nasty conditions. Unfortunately, all of the White Mtns. are close to Boston and get tons of completely inexperienced hikers who often get into trouble. The Whites are GREAT hiking because a lot of it is above tree line but it is also hiking that is a grade above other local hiking like in the Greens of VT or Adirondacks, where I live now.

One of the last times I hiked up to Tucks, on the way down I came upon a woman who had taken a good fall and her friends. Having been a ski patroller for many years, I took a look at her and suggested she call for assistance. She had a nasty head wound and was showing signs of a head injury. I had my cell phone and offered/suggested she call in help but she declined. I continued on down but soon realized they must have called because I heard the chopper coming to get her. I think they were flying all the way from Dartmouth at the time. Not a cheap day hiking.


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## hellosailor

smurph-
Your thoughts on timing are about right. 2006+5 years would be 2011...so maybe it started in 2007 or 9.
They DO NOT charge you for rescue if you broke an ankle, regardless. Their point is that is you aren't carrying winter clothes, haven't listened to the wxcast, and now you call in to say "There's a freezing rain and we're in trouble.." well yeah you sure are. 
NH is working on a program that essentially says "You can't fix stupid, but you don't have to fund it."

And from everything I've heard, they're being very generous about where they draw the line, and how they impose it. They've gotten a lot of praise for how they've managed the whole thing. Including, IIRC, turning over collections to their AG or a similar judicial arm, so there's no question of someone not having due process, either.


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## smurphny

One spring, probably 2002 or so?, a foreign couple hiked up over the wall of Tuckerman's, got lost, and tried to walk down the wall late in the day. They fell/slid into a deep crevasse but, believe it or not, were able to get a cell signal down there and call the patrol. It took overnight and many volunteers to locate and extricate them. Talk about lucky. Usually when people go down a crevasse they are found in the summer when the snow melts. That can take until July many years.


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## newhaul

davidpm said:


> I can think of a few more.
> 
> 1. Medical emergency
> 
> 2. Loss of steering (sometimes jerry riggs are possible sometimes not depending circumstances)
> 
> 3. Multiple systems failures combined with extreme exhaustion. I'm thinking of the long distance voyager who built his own boat but called for rescue after a week in storm where he judged that if the auto steering failed the boat would have rolled. He seemed like a very experience tough guy but the storm was so long a fierce it beat him.
> 
> 4. Loss of control of boat and boat is on a course for a lee shore.
> 
> 5. Fire
> 
> 6. Becalmed and out of water.
> 
> 7. Down to last six pack of beer.
> 
> 8. You wife says you either call for a helicopter or if I survive I want a divorce. Now you have to decide if your 200k boat that is insured is worth 50% of everything you own. Plus you will then have to learn how to operate a smart phone and setup a match.com profile which you don't know how to do because you still have a flip phone which is plenty good enough if you are married.


OK the first five I can agree with however
Number 6 water makers are almost standard equipment now days
Number 7 you can brew your own beer on the boat while on a passage
Number 8 if wife wants a divorce you married the wrong one she should be pushing you to keep going
:laugher :laugher :laugher


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