Lagoon 450 (Next Life) damaged in the Exuma, The Bahamas

[ElGatoGordo]

Originally Posted by minaret

Higher is better. I've known many South Pacific cruisers who have a crows nest for conning the boat through coral heads.

That's sorta what I was wondering about. A tuna tower-ish thing on the hard bimini might be a nice little project....hmmmmmm

[downunder]

The height of a Lagoon 440/450 helm is a real positive in coral areas.

[Lagoon4us]

Having spent my boating life around coral, entering into Lagoon's (of the coral surrounded type) I installed a Raymarine camera at the spreader looking forward it is very good.

We have INTERPHASE Forward looking Sonar and it's rubbish, you wouldn't want to depend on it.

Eyeball and available tools mixed with respect for reef will usually see you through.

Never unless the sun is above or the cut is known.

[surfingminniwinni]

Originally Posted by Lagoon4us

Having spent my boating life around coral, entering into Lagoon's (of the coral surrounded type) I installed a Raymarine camera at the spreader looking forward it is very good.

We have INTERPHASE Forward looking Sonar and it's rubbish, you wouldn't want to depend on it.

Eyeball and available tools mixed with respect for reef will usually see you through.

Never unless the sun is above or the cut is known.

+1 on the interphase, we have it too, I don't bother switching it on anymore!

[Lagoon4us]

The boat came with 2, one at the inside helm and one outside, the one outside went foggy apparently the crappy equipment isn't waterproof!!!

Kinda makes you wonder if it's intended for a boat? Learning to read one i reckon would take a year and it's information doubtful.

I'll replace with a good colour sounder methinks!

[roetter]

Originally Posted by Palarran

Rolf,
...

If it isn't too much, can you tell us what happened to your boat after hitting the reef? Did the keels snap off? How about the rudders? How quickly did the boat flood and from where? What about the watertight bulkheads?

Once you hit the reef, to replay it, is there anything that could have been done to either save your boat or minimize the damage?

Hi Palarran
First of all a big thank you again to all then people that have put their life and boats in danger to try to get us off the reef. These great people also gave us much needed emotional support. The first days after it were really hard.

When we hit the reef the waves were still quite small. I tried to get off with both engines, no luck. Issued a Pan Pan. Help was on the way. Opened all taps to empty the full water tanks. Boat was completely intact at this point. She would have had a few scratches to the bottom paint. As I later deducted, the boat had turned about 45 degrees during impact, which I believe trapped at least one of the keels between two coral heads. I tried deploying the spare Fortress we have, by throwing it as far as I could, but it did not catch.

At this point several small boats and dinghies came to help, so I was busy with them. The waves had built quite a bit in these 15 or so minutes. Two guys in a dinghy picked up a tow line from a small sport fishing boat. They had to do several tries timing the waves several times to make it to us safely. I attached my 200' three stranded stern-tie line to it. A few minutes later they started pulling and she actually moved with every wave that lifted her up. Unfortunately, they had still used their own line at the end tied to my line. With a big Bang that line broke got immediately wrapped between the coral heads. It took a while for my to free it using initially a rolling hitch with a line and my winch, later the tow line itself around the winch. By the time we got it back to the fishing boat, the waves had built even more. I was considering passing my Fortress with chain and rope to the guy in the dinghy, but the waves may have meant that some body get injured when passing it down to the dinghy.

All this happened on a rising tide. Still not water in the hulls, but we saw the odd piece of fibre glass and foam breaking off the keels. They tried to tie two tow bots to the line, but that did not work out. Here it became clear to me that chances became very slim now. Only a real big power boat would have had enough pull to rip us out of there, ripping off what remained of the keels.

But nobody gave up. Now the waves were big enough to rock the boat so hard that we would loose balance, send water over the deck, and make the rig shudder as if it would come down.

With darkness approaching, 2-3 hours into it, and the first trickle of water getting into the starboard hull, I decided to abandon ship. I opened all battery switches to avoid a short.

The start board hull had been moved into just a few inches of water. I lowered the dinghy and and moved it to the down-wave side. The free board was enormous. I had to ferry out from our boat to dinghies waiting nearby and pass our golden retriever, cat, and dry bags with passport, computers and the like to them. The dinghy bottomed out on the reef in the troughs. On the third trip my wife came down into the dinghy and we drifted off with the dinghy up to our knees full of water.

The help and emotional support we received from everybody in the next few days was enormous. It helped us a lot dealing with the trauma. The first night we were worried that the fuel tanks with 200+ gallons (900 litres) of diesel would rupture. We could here the wind pick up more and the wave size increasing overnight. Up till then I had hoped that with the falling tide the additional damage would not be too big, and the salvage vessel was already underway. However, by the next morning she had been pounded over the reef into 10 feet of water. In the process the starboard hull had developed a hole the full length of the two bath rooms (4m or 12') and bout 1 m (3') wide. Looking down the stairs gave a pretty view of the sea bottom. The rudders had been ripped off, but the shafts were in place. The port sail drive was pushed in a little bit, so it leaked. The port fwd compartment was bone dry. The water was above the cockpit table and the stern was exposed to the waves coming over the reef, with the water splashing up to the ceiling .

Things to do better after the hit:
Close the bilge valves to the engine rooms when you leave the ship. Even though it would have no helped in our case. The starboard side had the hose leading to the valve ripped off. The port side had the sail drive slightly pushed in with a leak around that seal. Only valves aft of the engine room bulkhead would have helped here.

Same goes for the forward compartments. Only valves away from the bilge area would have kept the starboard fwd compartment dry.

Deploying an anchor and pull with a winch could have helped to get us off with the additional pull of the boats. However, it would have been dangerous in our situation.





I am surprised how long the L450 stayed dry. It took serious and prolonged pounding before flooding started. She held up really well.

I hope this helps someone in the future.

[scimitar]

Originally Posted by ElGatoGordo

A tuna tower-ish thing on the hard bimini might be a nice little project....hmmmmmm

no, I think that best idea is to send someone to swim with goggles in front of you.

[Bill4]

Thanks for posting the explanation Rolf. I hope you can move forward from this.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by David_Old_Jersey

Having said that, I can see how having used them successfully for thousands of miles would lead you to trust them (more than me - who is unfamiliar).............but nonetheless I think that Navionics having that course marked as standard with "a Centreline of recommended route" (and not simply generated from own efforts) is bordering on the criminal - even if the package is also marked "not for navigation use". (am not a lawyer , but I think an argument that where a company knows that the only reason it's product is being bought is for the reason in a disclaimer! that they lose it's value / protection....I would favour a disclaimer saying "not for use as the sole Navigational Tool".

Certainly will be interesting to see if the insurers feel that Navionics are worth having a pop at......

Many paper charts have recommended courses marked on them, for channels, passes etc. And generally electronic charts are copied from the paper charts.

IIRC the electronic chats I've used have said "not to be used as your PRIMARY source of navigation information" or similar wording.

[Kettlewell]

Thank you very much for posting your explanation of what happened. It is always so much better to get the story first hand. It must be difficult to tell, but it could help any of us in the future.

Anyone interested in this area should take a look at the Bing maps bird's eye view. I think it shows the area much better than the Google version.

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by roetter

I am surprised how long the L450 stayed dry. It took serious and prolonged pounding before flooding started. She held up really well.

.

Thanks for the post

Boats are made pretty well these days!

Good luck with the new one I'm glad you are not one of those that have one problem and chuck the towel in.


Mark

[Cotemar]

roetter,

We appreciate you telling the full story and helping others prevent this in the future
A lot of groundings like this go untold and then the lessons learned are not passed on.
Best of luck to you and yours on your next boat and many journeys a head of you.

Thank You

[Kettlewell]

Higher is better. I've known many South Pacific cruisers who have a crows nest for conning the boat through coral heads.

We've got mast steps and someone can be up at the spreaders in seconds if we need it. My daughter often rides up there calling out the route when we're navigating through coral. By the way, even on known, charted, familiar, and marked-on-the-charts routes in open water I have encountered heads close to the surface, so it pays to keep your eyes on the water up ahead.

[Giuseppe Carnev]

My name is Giuseppe Carnevali and I am the founder/president of Navionics. I would like to first of all thank Captain Rolf forpubliclysharing his unfortunate experience in order to help us all improve safety at sea.This cannot have been easy for him. Buthe is in good company becauseI would argue that fewboatershave notyethadsome grounding experience.

As already pointed outby many contributorsin this forum,nautical charts – whether digital or paper, government or private – areNOT designed for blind navigation,particularly in restricted waters.
As a person with over 60 years of sailing and 20 years ofpiloting airplanes under my belt,let me elaborate on the difference between visual and instrumental navigation.

Blindnavigation is doneon airplanesbyfollowingprocedures, controlled byground and airborneradars, transponders, GPS and other equipment, that ensure a very wide separation amongst aircraft and between aircraft andthe ground.Whendescending near ground, navigationswitches toa host ofother instruments, each with triple redundancy, likeradio altimeters, ILS etc;GPS is NOTallowed forblindnavigation nearhazards, much less for landing!Airplanes that have only GPS must constantly fly visual, which means use GPS for orientation, butbe able to always“see and avoid”obstacles and other aircraft.

At sea thereis no instrumental navigation infrastructure comparable to aviation, and therefore no instrumental navigationcharts, and noblind navigation.The GPS available on boats is equivalent to the GPS available oncarsandlight aircraft: meantto be used for orientation while drivingvisually, possibly with theaid of other instruments like sonar and radar, and cross checking every possible source ofinformation. The nautical chart, whether paper or electronic, is not designed and built for instrumental navigation, but for orientating visual navigation.

A second point to be kept well in mind is thatall nauticalcharts– paper, electronic, government, private -have errors.No exception.The recent grounding of the USS Guardian (on areef that was reported on the US Government chart to be about 8 miles from its real position), is only oneexample out of many.
We in the cartography industry strive for perfection, employing multiple sources, modern survey methods and user feedback. But we know that, due to constant natural and manmade changes in the environment, the limitations of our technology and human error, no one will ever produce a perfect chart. With over a billion features in our cartographydatabase, even an accuracy rate of 99.999% (!) wouldstillleave room for some 10,000 potential inaccuracies.

Sowhat can we do to improvesafety and make boating more enjoyable?
No one knows the seas better than the locals and no organization can deploy as many eyes as the boating community. It is for this reason that Navionics has empowered boaters to edit their charts, and share in real time the corrections with the entire community. Asophisticatedregistration and transparency system identifies user edits and their authors to prevent abuse, which in any event can be reported in real time.
This is augmented by theFreshest Data service, which allows you to downloadupdated charts every day, as many times as you want, for free for a year andat a reduced price thereafter.
Last but not least, Navionics has recently introduced theaward winningSonarCharts:instead of throwing away your sonar data, if you save them and upload them to our website,we refine the accuracy of the charts with them, and share the results with the community.This service is now active in select areas, but will be global before the end of this year.

Thanks to everyone for this thoughtful discussion

Giuseppe

[Cotemar]

Giuseppe Carnev,

I would like to welcome you aboard the Cruiser Forum (CF) and thank you for making a contribution to this thread.

Hope to hear more from you in the future.