Catamaran Rescue off Bundaberg QLD Australia

[Ozbullwinkle]

The 3 men on board have been rescued from their RIB tender by a nearby tourist cruise boat.

The men's 34 foot sailing catamaran had been dismasted, reportedly suffered hull damage & was submerged at the stern when abandoned.

A couple of interesting points to come out of this assuming you can rely on the accuracy of the news article are:-

- The VMR spokesman said “It was an unusual mayday call as it came across on channel 16, normally you would expect it to come from an EPIRB". Seems a strange comment to me as plenty of Mayday calls are made via radio either VHF or on HF.

- There were 3 EPIRB'S on board but the one that the men activated was not transmitting.



More details plus video from the rescue chopper is in tbis link.

https://www.bundabergnow.com/2022/02...tamaran-sinks/

[JPA Cate]

Fortunately for them, it is a well trafficked area, and it seems as if the rescue was "easy". What a sad thing for the skipper, though. Loss of the boat is always hard, even when you thought you didn't over-value it.

Ann

[PegasusPete]

Yeah, just heard this one on the news.
I'm curious has to how a dismasting would put a hole in your hull below the water line.
I got lazy on my cat and didn't stow my main halyard, wind picked up during the day, got a bit of water over the foredeck, had trouble turning the rudders, thankfully noticed the halyard and found the tail end had got between rudder and hull. Thanked Neptune he let me find it before I started the engines. My guess is a halyard wrapped around your prop and sail drive could cause a bit of hull damage.
Lesson learnt - DON'T GET LAZY - especially when your a solo sailor.
Any of you Bundy folk have more details?
Love your Polar Bear juice
Oh I thought the EPIRB comment was a bit strange, I'd go for the VHF first (even if mast was down) EPIRB last resort.

[RaymondR]

A post of the VMR report on Facebook stated that the channel 16 call was made from the dingy they were using as a lifeboat with a hand held VHF.

[boatman61]

Getting holed by your mast below the waterline depends a lot on which way it falls.. in my case it fell forwards and took out the beam and a large section of the stbd bow.. wind was just aft the beam and I only had 1/3rd jib up.. speed at getting it cut loose is vital before the sea rides your port bow over it causing potentially more damage than where the beam was smashed out of the top.
If the forestay failed then its very easy to see the boats stern riding onto the mast and spreaders causing serious damage to the hull.
But.. lets see if more info is forthcoming to understand things better.

[catsketcher]

The mast looked as though it was still attached to the boat. So it would have made a good battering ram in the water in the steep chop shown. Sadly an effective way of holing the hull.

The cat looks like a Production Simpson Cloud 9 (or maybe Cloud 10). Along with the sinking of the Seawind 1000 off Batemans a few months ago it seems as though we have been shown that many cats can have their watertight integrity easily breached.

I remember when I asked for watertight voids in my cat design the designer was amazed. He said most people open then up for extra berths, allowing full access fore and aft. I would urge all cat owners to check the watertight integrity of, or consider the installation of large watertight voids fore and aft. With no lead in our boats, it is disappointing to see them sink.

cheers

Phil

[Factor]

Originally Posted by catsketcher

The cat looks like a Production Simpson Cloud 9 (or maybe Cloud 10). Along with the sinking of the Seawind 1000 off Batemans a few months ago it seems as though we have been shown that many cats can have their watertight integrity easily breached. l

The Seawind didn't sink, didn't float well but didn't sink, its back sailing again

[catsketcher]

Reasonable point - decks awash, or half sunk. Still not good for getting them home under their own steam. My point about watertight bulkheads is that we don't talk about them much. Cats usually have a crash box at the bow under a bunk and maybe a watertight compartment at the stern. But as for having enough void flotation within hull compartments to float the hull with a large hole amidships, few do.

When I built my cat I kept the full height and totally secure watertight bulkheads 3.5m from the bow and 2 metres from the stern. I like them because they give me great places to put wet things like fenders, snorkel gear and assorted sails. It also gives the boat the potential to sail home with a big hole in the middle. Accidents like these should give pause to us cat sailors as it shows our boats can put us in awkward situations if we rely on their advertised no sinking ability when they do not give us shelter when holed. My advice would be to get rid of the bow bunks, install a full forward bulkhead and seal up the rear bulkhead properly. Then your cat should give you somewhere to work and live whilst you try to get her home.

Both the Seawind and the Cloud 9 occurred near land and rescue. But it does underline that we could be at risk in similar styled cats offshore and far from quick rescue.

[chrisr]

i think the important point here is that both boats did not actually sink, and imho sitting on a floating half awash cat is better than sitting in a disintegrating life(death)raft

as regards bouyancy, i have often mused about the possibility of inflatable bouyancy bags inside the hulls. no need to have a void space...just pull the string

of course design & material would have to be right, but maybe better than a void space that somebody has put holes in !

btw the underside of our bridge deck is painted high vis orange, and is non-skid with 2 hard points for safety harness...just in case

cheers,

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by chrisr

i think the important point here is that both boats did not actually sink, and imho sitting on a floating half awash cat is better than sitting in a disintegrating life(death)raft

as regards bouyancy, i have often mused about the possibility of inflatable bouyancy bags inside the hulls. no need to have a void space...just pull the string

of course design & material would have to be right, but maybe better than a void space that somebody has put holes in !

btw the underside of our bridge deck is painted high vis orange, and is non-skid with 2 hard points for safety harness...just in case

cheers,

They were available locally made in Australia three or four decades ago, haven't seen them advertised since then.

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by chrisr

i think the important point here is that both boats did not actually sink, and imho sitting on a floating half awash cat is better than sitting in a disintegrating life(death)raft

,

I think the important point here is that they chose to get in their dinghy rather than sitting on their half awash cat. Good choice. The weather was 15-20 knots from the SE.

[Alistair242]

In the case of the Seawind didn’t the crew breach the water tight bulkhead in an attempt to repair the steering? There is an air tight bulkhead on the Seawinds both fore and aft in each hull.
On ours there is access to these compartments but they are not easy to get to and are not used for storage. With the foam core construction and these compartments the boats are close to unsinkable except in case of fire I would imagine.

[catsketcher]

My 38ft cat is pretty light for a cruiser, coming in at 4500-5000kg loaded. This means each hull has to take up to 2500kg weight. This means each hull needs 2500 litres immersed volume.

Being very generous, my hull has about 40m^2 of surface area to the gunwales. So if my hull sides weight nothing and are 10mm thick foam, I would get 40 x 0.01 = 0.4 cubic metres or about 400 litres of immersed volume.

This is nowhere near enough volume to support the weight of my lightweight composite cat, even when flooded to the gunwales. Most boats are heavier and real world layup will make the boat float lower.

Interiors are often finished on production boats with thin laminates. So even if we double the immersed volume to cater for the immersed interior - we get 800 litres - not even 1/3 of the flotation required, even with the most optimistic calculations. That is why we have seen production cats half sink after issues.

To be safe - you hulls need inviolable voids of a volume sufficient to carry half the boat's weight at a reasonable freeboard - or you will need a life raft/emergency capable dinghy. Putting close to 2500 litres of void volume low down in my cat required the boat to be built with this in mind.

The idea of not needing a liferaft probably came from the early days of multis - when people were really worried about capsizing. Also most cruising multis were trimarans until the late 80s, which because of their configuration have massive reserve bouyancy (I twice tried to sink my trimarans, with centreboard and toilet issues and nothing much happened. Tris are great for living on after massive holing or capsizing) But we shouldn't use the lessons learnt in tris on heavy production cats - and I recommend we remember simple hydrodynamics before we head offshore, and seriously consider a liferaft.

cheers

Phil

[donradcliffe]

A picture is worth a 1000 words. It appears that the stern of both hulls flooded by the time the chopper arrived, even though only one of them was likely punctured. Most of what is holding the boat up is trapped air in the bows.

It would be nice to get some more details on the sequence of events from one of the crew.