A Common Problem with the Latest State of the Art Boats

[Bill Roberts]

Recently we have seen video of new foil boats get into serious trouble.

Why did the Phantom get into trouble while attempting to come ashore in the Fla 300?
Why did the foiling GUN BOAT turn over"
And why did the AC Aquarius 1 boat turn over/pitchpole in San Francisco Bay?

All three of these happenings occurred for the same general reason. What is that reason?
Bill

[havliii]

I dunno........ all three capsizes were in different sets of conditions, one trying to beach in steep waves (the phantom), one power gybing (the AC boat), and one (the gunboat) jammed a mainsheet and took a knockdown. How are these the same?

Broaching in steep waves is a bad thing on any sail boat, ANY! Power gybing when way overpowered can get ugly on any sailboat. And a jammed mainsheet will result in a knockdown on any cat if you get hammered in a gust. I don't know the answer and I am not buying a foiling boat for any reason.

The speed merchants will always explore and sell the next innovation for speed. Isn't that the 'Holy Grail' of nearly all catamaran design? more speed? (the exception being the Bahamian cruising cats, that are built for motoring and cocktails.)

[Bill Roberts]

havliii,
The common basic problem was/is poor planning or no planning for what happened.
The phantom: The team was attempting to turn the boat 180 degrees to be into the wind and waves as it backed to the beach. The crew jumped into the water near the bow to hold onto the bow and turn the boat. The first wave that came along
jerked the boat out of his hands. Therefore no crew helping turn the boat. Tom H. pointed out that the jib was still cleated and full therefore pulling/turning the boat the wrong way. The skipper went to the transom of the windward hull making it easier for the wave to turn the boat over.
The crew knew the water was going to be over his head when he first jumped into the water. If he had a rope to the forestay chainplate he could have continued his influence on turning the boat whether he could have touched bottom or not. The jib should have been uncleated, sailing 101. The skipper should have stayed near the center or forward of center of the boat and
it would have been harder for the wave to turn the boat over.
Not uncleating the jib and no rope to the bow were the big mistakes equal POOR PLANNING.

The AC Oracle 1 boat turnover/pitchpole. The practice was over and done for the day. The boat was headed in, back to the dock, to retire for the day. The boat was sailing in a straight line reach. The wind increased, either true or relative, and the wing thrust increased and the leeward bow started down, more load. More, higher, spray started coming off the leeward bow. (ALARM 1 !) Spray from the leward bow grew higher and boat began to bog/slow down. (ALARM 2 !) At ALARM 2 dump the main/the wing, power down. If you watched the video, the wing never moved. There was never any "trim out", never any effort to turn "power off". If the mainsheet trimmer had been a beach cat sailor, that mainsheet would have been gone, dumped, completely released. Somebody either did not know what to do or they paniced and did nothing.
Again, where was the plan; where was the execution?

On top of this, they tried to right the boat the wrong way, sideways, and destroyed it . If the boat had been righted end over end the platform would have come out of the situation with little or no damage.

The Gunboat: That one is easy. Let the main out! Let the traveller out! Bare off to supress the relative wind speed. These are the same things we do on beach cats, Oh, the mainsheet jammed! I see that as an excuse after the fact; not a reason.
There were other things that could have been done. They were not done. Again poor planning and poor execution.

Some History: Fifty years ago when cruising cats were just getting started, there was a builder in West Palm Beach. On these first boats the mainsheet block was connected to the main traveller with a "snap shackle". There was a long line to the snap shackle so that in a necessary situation the mainsheet system could be disconnected from the boat instantly by the skipper or crew and release the main. Did the Gunboat have a rig like this?

[havliii]

poor planning? ahem.............. excuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me.............. why PICK ON only the foilers? EVERYONE has made a mistake or two or three in their sailing careers. Equipment damage happens, PERIOD...... END OF STORY............... something about a mast and a bridge comes to mind.

[Bill Roberts]

You are catching on havliii. The problem is with the people, not the boats.

[havliii]

Ron White said it best, 'You can't fix stupid.' Being mentally prepared and physically prepared helps, but we take risks, calculated risks and at times we fail. It is far easier to see the flawed calculus after the event unfolds, armchair quarterbacking as it were. Thankfully, in all the events that you cited, the Gunboat, Oracle One and the Flying Phantom, there was no loss of life only property.

What can I learn from these events? That is the proposition that I am interested in. If the common problem is, 'the people' then I guess we have a problem for which there is no solution.

[Bill Roberts]

havliii, the problem is not "a people problem". It is an "experienced people sailing the boat problem".
If the phantom team had practiced the deep water turn around situation with boards and rudders up
in a similiar situation, conditions, as the race, they would have been successful and had no problem
in the race.
If the mainsheet tender on Oracle 1 had pitch poled a beach cat before, like a Tornado or SC20 or 22, several times,
they would have known to depower the wing before the boat was totally committed to pitchpole.
The Gunboat: If the mainsheet jammed, somebody did not do their housekeeping. You know that if you are in a situation where the mainsheet or Gennaker sheet or spinnaker halyard may need to run out to the max at 90 miles per hour, the sheet/halyard must be free and clear to run out all the way quickly if necessary. Beach cat sailors have been there; they know this, monohull sailors have not had some fo these experiences.
I have never heard of a US beach cat sailor being asked for advice on larger cat sailing or asked to go along on some of the first sailing experiences of new boat designs.

[havliii]

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[T Peterson]

I started with Hobie Cats in 1978 and then graduated to SuperCats in the mid 80s. So that is 25+ years of experience in just about everything, smart and dumb, you can do on a catamaran. It is amazing how much we all have learned and don't even know that we know it - good habits and tactics just become instinctive. It's fun to let other sailors skipper my 17 on a windy day and then see what I have to "teach" them - like always keeping a cleated mainsheet in your hand just in case it gusts...or not having your fingers 3" from the jib cleat when you uncleat it. And with the larger crews on these boats, it's not just you and a friend getting tossed into the lake if you make a mistake, the skipper is responsible for the safety of a bunch of folks. There is no substitute for experience and practice. How does that saying go about pilots? "There are old pilots and bold pilots, but not too many old, bold pilots."

[havliii]

Bill, Experience is no guarantee. Experienced people also crash boats. Oracle One had over 200 years of combined sailing experience, the sailors onboard held 10-15 WORLD TITLES between them. How can you say the main wing trimmer had no experience on a beach-cat? Who could know? All of the sailors onboard Oracle One had practice time on the AC 45 boats.

I grant you post crash analysis is fun and entertaining, we can all sit in the safety and comfort of our armchairs and hypothesize about what we would have done differently to change the outcome. Post crash analysis is basically what TV analysts do all day long to entertain us. Me? personally? I was fascinated by how little damage the Gunboat sustained and how they righted her. (the vimeo onboard video is absolutely stunning footage)

Maybe you could relate a personal experience of a crash and burn, and the post crash analysis. That would be a far better teaching aid and carry more credence than second guessing what happened on-board a crash that we have no real knowledge of.

[Bill Roberts]

Havliii,
One can only judge people/situations by their actions. The wing on Oracle 1 was not trimmed out immediately prior to the crash. It is my position that if the wing trimmer had some or much beach cat experience, it would have been a normal reaction to let the wing out. The wing was not outtrimmed immediately before or during the crash. Why? I do not know.
All those world championships didn't help one bit.
That brings up another AC subject. Why did the Oracle Team only have one US sailor on it? Are US sailors not good enough
sailors to be on an AC Team??? The Oracle boat was the only US owned boat. Why only one US sailor on the team?
Again, I guess the situation, the facts, tell the tale.
Oracle management must think the best sailors in the world come from Australia and New Zealand.

[havliii]

That's the point, world titles, championships, years of experience, doesn't matter who you are CRASHES STILL HAPPEN. We learn from errors and failures, we learn what doesn't work, we get better and we move towards success. Failure is not a bad thing. Failures leading to loss of life are regrettable but they too occur, think Challenger disaster. (and a sailor killed in the last AC Cup) Still we move on and we will fail, but we will also succeed.

The Oracle pitchpole was 99% due to a radically unstable boat and 1% due to the wing trim, they fixed the boat, perfected foiling gybes and........ last I checked Oracle won the America's Cup. The failure made them better. I don't give a whoop where the sailors were from.

The Gunboat took a knockdown, so what........ you telling me you've never taken a knockdown? I certainly have, in a monohull, in a dinghy and in a catamaran. (I am a slow learner) Gunboat is not shying away from the issue, there's plenty of video on the web. I will wager that they sell MORE foilers not fewer because of this knockdown. Remember the axiom, 'there is no such thing as bad publicity.' Could the knock down have been prevented? Sure, without a doubt. Does that make them less experienced sailors? NO. Even elite athletes have a bad day on occasion.

I would love to hear more of your own personal successes and failures! I am sure that there is a entire book to be written.

[Bill Roberts]

havliii,
You are too eager to make excuses for other sailors. Oracle 1 did not have foils at the time it pitchpoled. It was sailing as a displacement boat in the displacement mode. It was a simple slow motion pitchpole and no one did anything to avoid it. Maybe the wing trim line was on a winch and then to a clutch and then to a jam cleat and through fairleads and on and on and it just took too much time to undo it all. But, it appeared as though no one made an effort to trim the wing out.
MY record: I have won ten US National Championship Regattas and one World Championship Race and set a low ET record for the course. I have never sailed in or won a multihull National Championship Regatta.

Some local new boat design observations: In the 1960s there was a boat builder in West Palm Beach who started building catamarans, 46ft cruising cats, Rudy Choi designs. They began selling fast to the Palm Beach sailors. They liked the room
and the fact that the boat stayed flat. That was the way they sailed them. Then one day a US Navy aircraft carrier Anchored off Palm Beach and the sailors came to town. The Palm Beach cat went out to meet the aircraft carrier. The cat sailed by the leeward side of the aircraft carrier and obnisiously had no wind. The sailors on both boats waved and whistled at each other.
All was very well and enjoyed by all. Then the cat sailed out from behind the aircraft carrier and the wind filled the sails and
the cat with the Palm beach crowd slowly turned over. No one would go to leeward to uncleat the mainsheet. No lives were lost
but during the next week all orders for catamarans from this local cruising catamaran builder were cancelled and he had to close his shop. To this day there are no cruising catamarans in the Palm Beach yacht Club and the story about the aircraft carrier and the catamaran turning over is still told. "Catamarans are dangerous" at the Palm Beach Yacht Club and some of the old timers still tell the story.

[havliii]

Gunboat will see an uptick in orders, before the knockdown the boat was 'haulin the mail.' It was righted with relative ease and the damage was superficial. The capsize isn't going to scare folks away. My 2 cents.

We can discuss the Oracle thing for the rest of our days, I offered no excuses, just noted that I take exception with your analysis. I think you are too eager to lay blame where there is none. We can amiably agree to disagree.

Thanks for the great story. You really should publish more stories of sailing, don't omit your failures, they teach more than all the wins on the books.

[Bill Roberts]

havliii,
My greatest failure was to design and build better, faster, safer beach cats that did not sell. I/we took boats to the Miami Boat Show several years and never sold a boat. We won all the local beach cat races and never sold a boat. We won Yachting Magazine's the One Of A Kind Regatta beating all the California beach cats handily sailed by their rock star class champs and never sold a boat.
Today the factory builds a new boat every once in a while. The SC and ARC boats are the best built, best rigged and fastest boats in their sizes. ARC leads the way in new inovations like spin launchers, self tacking jib systems and square top sails.
The other beach cat builders copy the ARC boats. Sailors buy the other boats, not the ARC boat. WHY?
The RC27 and 30 have the same racing handicapp as the Formula 40 Catamarans. That is a hundred thousand dollar boat vs a one million dollar boat. The 27 and 30 are good/fun racers and you can also take the wife and kids out for a ride/picnic. The boats are simple design and simple rigged. There are no winches and no ropes/sheets going in all directions. Just because the boat will go 30 mph, you don't have to drive it that way all the time. These boats will sail very nicely at 5 to 10 mph.
Boats, monohulls that cost one to two hundred thousand dollars and more are commonplace at Yacht Clubs. These are all out racing boats used for racing only. The RC boats are much faster, much more fun to sail and race, building relative wind speed just like America's Cup Boats is primary in racing the ARC boats. You can still take the wife and kids out on the boat and go for a sail or picnic or go fishing or to a special beach down the bay 10 miles or what ever you might want to use the boat for.
The ARC boats do it the best.
Why don't they sell?