Heavy Weather

Theis, ........That was a strange day. I was enjoying the nice air and looking towards the shore not looking at the catepillar cloud marching in on the starbord side. It dropped fast and marched across the water like a train . No time to reef the main or drop sail .we were caught on the end of it where the air knocked us down to the combing and lots of water said "Hello".She came back up as I held the tiller with my foot pointing into it while hanging on to the winch and admiring the nice job we did painting the bottom in the spring . My wife had a few choice words at this point. Sheeting out and dumping cloth was the next task .All you heard on the VHF was mayday from many boats.None from an Ariel. That experience was our motivation to lead halyards back so we could avoid such fun in the future.I try to watch the sky a little more now instead of trying to get the picture first.

Yeah, you do eventually develop eyes in the back of the head - and notice the slight change in the color of the sky that no one else on board seems to notice, or care about.

When Solsken got knocked down (I believe by a tornado), mast in the water, the comment later from the ladies was that their thoughts were about their kids, "orphans at such an early age". But, as you commented, the Ariel pulled through (in my case better than the crew).

Before I learned better (and a few harrowing experiences), when a storm was first seen approaching, I used to figure that would wait until it gets closer, sort of keeping track of how fast it is approaching, figuring I had plenty of time to take the sails down when the clouds were near overhead.

The problems with this approach are twofold:

1: The initial wind front is ahead of the clouds (although the biggest blasts often come later in the storm itself - possibly as much as an hour or more - after the weather has turned calm and the mariner is lured into figuring the storm has passed by and putting up full sail).

2. In mentally calculating the time before the storm arrives, we think linearly where our image is more logarithmic. For example, if it took an hour for the cloud to get in range, conventional wisdom would be that there should be ten or fifteen minutes left before needing to be concerned. But for a cloud to travel 30 miles, it will visually only change a few degrees on the horizon. It is in the last mile or so that the visual angle to the cloud changes most dramatically. As a result, it might, for example, take an hour for the cloud moving at 30 to get into that range where I become concerned (but it has travelled 30 miles), and the fifteen minutes I thought I had, becomes in reality, only a minute or two (the time needed to travel the last mile or two) before the initial blast is doing its thing to me.

But, yes, the Ariel is a very forgiving boat, and handles whatever is thrown at it very well, working out of all the dumb (in retrospect) things I have done. That is not true of all boats!

That was a good reality check of our abilty to recover after a good knockdown .It can happen to any of us at any time .what does matter is keeping your head clear enough not to panic. My Father taught us that. He ran motor launches in the Navy mostly in the North Atlantic. He saw real nasty weather in his time as well as his days of sailing on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie which is where he purchased hull # 88 " Robin" and sailed it there for many years . When he went up to a C&C41 the Ariel sat for 3 years before my wife and I decided to take him up on the offer of moving it to our area in N.Y and restoring her . We are throuhgly happy with our boat and know it will take us through any chop or swell . As you stated they are very forgiving boats .

Nice to keep it in the family, Gerry.

Here is another heavy weather rescue story for my friends.

Details are still quite sketchy. Rumor is that the boat was a Hunter 450 Passage being sailed by a delivery crew. They transferred to a 25 foot sailboat before being picked up by a cruise ship.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar.../ln/ln14a.html

Followup story:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar.../ln/ln24a.html

I went to the Strictly Sail show in Chicago over the weekend. Spent the whole day (It went fast - from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM). Needless to say they had all those big puppies with the this gismo and the latest that whatever. The huge coffee grinders, et al. And the kitchens would make a condo at Vail look like a soup kitchen.

Going home, I kept thinking to myself, those are not sailboats. They are boats that sail. If you get into trouble, you have a potentially serious calamity, and the scare factor is outrageous. The bigger the boat, the bigger the power working against you, the bigger the noise to shake the dandruff out of your vertically oriented hair. You can't really afford to take the chance (This assumes you don't have a half dozen young dudes doing the work while you just pushed the button for the roller reefing, confident in ignorance that it always works - unless the alternator fails).

The Ariel, I concluded, is ideal if you really are a sailor. It has everything you want, is safe, is an open water boat, has a comfortable living space, and, when your come into harbor, forces you to get out into the real world and chisel drinks on someone elses boat or have a good meal at the pride-of-the village dive and bar. The blows you talked about, Gerry, I concluded they would be more petrifying with a sixty foot spar sticking up into the clouds looking for something electrical than with the 30' foot mast of the Ariel with stays and shrouds that are two sizes too large. As the story of the Vice Commander pointed out, the smallest thing can bring one of those big puppies down. I can't imagine a failed alternator on my outboard being life threatening (We carry two flashlights and I have a pull starter, and a hand held GPS).

It is not that uncommon to be down below in a bad blow walking on the walls of the Ariel. There is always plenty to hold on to. In the big Brand X, the only thing I could see to hold on to was the flower vase as it was careening across the dining area.

One last thing before I get off the soapbox, if all my waking hours are spent tweaking #82, how do you tweak a forty foot boat (assuming you don't have the wherewithall to call the yard and say "Could you have this done by Friday").

As the rigger at Palmer Johnson's in Sturgeon Bay, WI told me last year "I figure you guys in the smaller boats go out at least twice as often as the larger guys."

Amen.

Theis, .......I am envious that you had a chance to go to an all sailboat show this time of year . We don't have those here.Last year they had a new C&C 32 at the Rochester show .We did the walk through and the sales rep told us of the "new construction " so the hull only weighed 660 lbs.yes just as much as a small block chevy,........On a 32' boat . And they said it was strong.I would not even think of trading straight up for it new or not.Bigger is not always better . In spring of 2000 I helped move a friends Pearson 36 shaw design back from Nassau to Charleston.SC.We got caught out in hurricane 70 miles from shore . 30 footers with screaming, hissing wind. 36 hrs later we got in.I showed the video to my Father . He said the Ariel would walk over the wave rather than have to drive through it like a larger boat would .I think I have to agree with him.

That is a particularly interesting comment your dad made. I have noticed and wondered about the bow of the Ariel being quite dry in higher seas (that doesn't mean there isn't spray, but the waves don't often get to drive over the bow). One thing I have also noticed, speaking of those 30 footers (or 10 footers conceptually expanded), they do a great job of blanketing the sail of smaller boats so you are not exposed to the big wind blasts as you might be if the spar poked up 60 feet). Also, with the Ariel, the low-to-the water hull limits the windage of the hull so it takes on less of a sailing life of its own in a blow, regardless of the amount of sail up.

Gerry, you tweaked me and got me to put into writing my thoughts about why bigger does not equate to better. Thank you.

This is what it looks like to get pooped by a wave.

Ouch

What do you think happened to the guy/girl that took the picture?

Gerry Walsh---Where do you live? I am in Buffalo.

I live In Williamson N.Y Richard . 30 miles east of Rochester .We keep our Ariel on sodus bay. Ariel #335 listing Lady is also at our marina.

Some crazy wind rolled through here late last week. Coast Guard rescued the crews of two sailboats.

http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/capecrews15.htm

Here is the account from the skipper of the 32 foot Contessa posted on the Cruising World Bulletin Board

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We abandoned ship last Fri morning...250mi SE of nantucket. Sea's 40 feet and breaking, the helo pilot had winds of 70kts at 80feet hover height.

The water was very warm, which I think led to a local intensification of the weather. The barometer had just kicked up from 995 in the late afternoon after running off before a normal gale since early morning. We had spent the previous night hove-to, and did fine. This was our third night of heavy weather in five, leaving Casco Bay headed for the Caribbean on a classic New England Northwester weather window. I decided to go outside of Cape Cod to get plenty of searoom from the depressions coming up the coast. Anyway..as darkness fell, conditions rapidly built to hellish...mountainous waves and screaming wind...the autopilot was overwhelmed, we were knocked down on our beam ends a couple of times and I hand steered, surfing down the waves for a while. Didn't have the capacity to keep it up all night..I deployed a series drogue, and the boat stabilized but the cockpit became impossible....continuously awash in foaming water. Physically exhausted and seasick I pretty much ceased to function. Maybe if I had been able to tend the chafing gear and keep the cockpit drains open we would have made it. I think we lost the drogue because at around 2am we were hurled,and I mean hurled, upside down, dismasted and wiped clean at deck level. The electrics started shorting out and smoking, so I disconnected the batteries to prevent a fire. The inside manual pump enabled me to clear the flooding. We were not hurt in the rollover, just bruised and battered enough to hint at what might happen in the next one. particularly I feared head injury. My crew looked at me and said "what are you going to do?" At this point it took me half an hour to put on a pair of pants due to exhaustion and the violent motion. I briefly weighed the options, the risks to my friend, and hit the button on the EPIRB.

The beacon primary contact was the first key person in helping us. She knew the boat, us, the fact that the beacon was mounted such that it was very unlikely to be set off accidentally, and that I was unlikely to panic and set it off if I didn't feel like I had no other option. Her responses to the CG when they called persuaded them that it was not a false alarm, and they launched a search.

lessons: A handheld VHF has limited range from the bottom of a forty foot trough. We could hear the search aircraft calling long before we were able to contact them.

The primary GPS was out and the backup enabled us to get a postion to the search aircraft.

We had enough spare batteries for the VHF that we were able to provide several long counts for the seach aircraft to home on. I don't know what the situation with the beacon gps position or the homing signal was.

Manual inside pumps and flashlights were critical. Make sure that the hose clamp screws on the pump diaphragms are positioned for easy access, facing towards where you'll be working on them.

In the future, if I get out there again, I would deploy the drogue long before I did. Then I would have had time to double up on chafe gear, etc while it was still possible to work outside.

In a sixty knot wind, small skyblazer type flares just get blown into the next wave. 25mm flares do ok.

A more experienced and stronger crew (this was my first attempt at a long trip, and took along a non-sailing friend as watchkeeper) might not have lost the boat.

Don't bother changing into dry clothes before abandoning ship. We had to jump into the water to get picked up. (Actually this was the scariest part of the whole thing..it's hard to breath floating in a lifejacket in those conditions due to the blowing spray..we were each only in the water less than a couple of minutes before the rescue swimmer had the strop around us and was lifting us, one at a time, to the aircraft. I chose to use traditional type I jackets rather than inflatables, so as to be absolutely sure we had flotation on. Still, since the clothes I came ashore with are now my only posessions, I'm glad I got the good fleece :)

The CG SAR helo crews are amazingly skilled and unbelievably kind to stupid sailors. We got a sandwich, thermal bags, water and medical evaluation on the two hour flight back to Cape Cod.

Maybe I would put less money into anchors and a new dodger, and buy insurance next time (just kidding). The dodger was a prize for as long as it lasted, and I believe that the spade storm anchor would have been a treasured posession as well, if we'd actually gotten to a stormy anchorage.

Finally, a heartfelt appreciation for the friends that came to help during the last few days. Time to make some money and see if I want another boat! This board has been a great friend during the getting ready phase..I feel compelled to keep checking in even now.

Cheers, Francis

A friend of mine keeps reminding me "Sailing is supposed to be fun" Going out in conditions like that violate the rule.

Having said that from the podium, the weather forecasts on this pond out here (Lake Michigan) last Wednesday night, , were the most severe I have almost ever heard - with 60 knot winds forecast and 20 - 25 foot waves up north. What the writer experienced was a classic Great Lakes storm - cold air over warm water - we call it a November storm. The cold air drops in the trough and lifts the waves vertically - but in the GL the waves are steeper.

As for the drogue - that is not enough. You need a full sized sea anchor. There is a big difference - and yes, the chafing gear is critical.

So my mind is made up, I am going to write the story this winter. In 1964 I was racing in the only Lake Michigan port to port race (in a Triton) in which no one finished. 60 knot winds, and 35 foot seas (the largest theoretically possible in Lake Michigan, according to the Perfect Storm). Stay tuned and I'll pass it on to Bill for the newsletter - after I take all the BS out of it (knowing that if I don't do it, he will).

Just incredible! Read once that global warming would produce more and more violent storms. Don't know that I buy into that paranoia but being prepared is something to seriously think about.

I put quarter posts in and Windline chocks on the taffrail on the wood boat I had. Never got to try it out - and I was often looking for a better alternative to the closed chocks, The hard angled rollers at any line angle down look to me like they would chaff the line. Or chaff the chaffing on the line.

Have never understood the design of traditional cast rope leads. If the line is pulled in any other direction than straight-on the hard corners on the chocks are made to cut any mooring line.. Even Herreschoff designed chocks wrong, both fore and aft. The corners of what ever you put the line in should have a big radius, at least 1 1/2". IMCO. Weren't any perfect storms in the old days.

But the line as well should be led over a smooth saddle that cradles the line. Nothing available remotely resembles something like this that I know about.

Don't know that there is room for bolted-on bollards on the quarter deck of the Ariel, or that you could trust them in the ultimate storm requiring a sea-anchor. So you could tie off the drouge if you you were streaming it aft, but over what kind of Fairlead would you have it going overboard/ Bow on would be better in a blow, but what rig would you use over the bows??? Has anybody thought about this? What is the ultimate chaffing gear....fire hose? An armchair? Real heavy line would be a plus. And some sort of shock absorber set up. How do we prepare an A/C for the big one?

Think you'ld still have your rig if you pitchpoled and did a 360??? How much can an A/C take. HOw much do you prepare for?

Remember, we are MORC!


I have a problem with the concept of abandoning a boat that is still afloat and can be prevented from sinking. Fear is damned uncomfortable! Whatever happened to lying ahull? There are plenty of stories of people who managed to continue on their adventure after dismasting. Attention has to be paid to keeping warm and dry and fed. Yeah, wudoino?

My understanding of lines parting because of "chafing" is not always because of abrasion (the right angle bit mentioned above). Remember, with a drogue or sea anchor, the line will be pulled, in all liklihood, in the direction of the line. The only reasons for a line not being in-line with the chock are a) the boat is sailing ahull, which is one of the reasons not to use a drogue, but to use a sea anchor (the drogue does not have the holding power of a sea anchor so the bow can fall off and the boat sail on the hull windage) and b) the tether on the sea anchor line is too tight. The tether is a line, on one end of which is a snatch block through which the sea anchor line passes, and the other end is connected to the winch or some place astern. The tether controls the angle the craft holds to the wind/seas. If at the correct angle, the sea anchor line breaks the waves, and the angle stays constant. That is the idea. With the tether, the angle of the sea anchor line is fixed, based the force applied to the tether.

The problem is that nylon line has a lot of stretch (one and a half times it's length) - and it will stretch even when stressed a small portion of its ultimate strength. The stretch around the chock creats tremendous heat. I have heard tha the center of the nylon line will heat up, melt and fuse/burn through - a problem not visible from the outside. Ultimately it shatters catastrophically. The only remedy, to the best of my knowledge, is anti-chafing guards where the lines go through the chocks (not the rubber stretch thing placed on the line ahead of the chocks). This a) keeps the line from streching as it goes through the chocks (and prevents a point of heat buildup) and b) prevents the line itself at the chock from abraiding. When the stretching occurs over the entire 200 feet of line, without any point of concentration, there is little heat build up. It is at the "stress point" that the heat buildup becomes potentially dangerous.

Now, as for nylon becoming frayed, that should be evident from occasional inspections. Tuff balls form around the fraying area - they appear to be inconsequential, = normal wear and tear - but in fact can obscure a potential line failure.