I started following both these stories last week when they broke, and now I’m pretty curious to see how they play out. First: an apparently exploded 49-foot Jeanneau Sun Odyssey that was spotted on fire (see photo up top) a few miles west of St. Vincent last Wednesday. A local dive-tour operator, Kay Wilson, was first on the scene and found the boat’s British owner, John Edward Garner, 53, floating in the water in a life jacket with serious injuries to his face and legs. A burning liferaft and a waterproof ditch bag with a passport and other documents were also found floating near the burning yacht, which soon sank. Garner was rushed to a hospital ashore, but did not survive.

Authorities on St. Vincent suspect foul play and claim they are searching for Garner’s Norwegian partner, Heidi Hukkelaas, who may or may not be his wife and departed St. Vincent by plane two days before he died. She has been located back in Norway, but according to authorities there no West Indian authorities have sought access to her. According to Kay Wilson and Garner’s daughter, Elizabeth, there seems no reason to think the death was anything other than accidental. Meanwhile, according to a report by Yachting Monthly‘s Dick Durham, there is some evidence that the yacht, named Asante and registered in Gibraltar, may have been involved in some kind of tax avoidance scheme.

Asante at anchor with a Norwegian flag flying from one spreader

John Garner reportedly was a sailing instructor and British special-forces trainer

From the wee bit of info available, I’d say this very probably can’t have been a murder, but I suppose there is some small chance it might have been an Insure-and-Burn scheme gone wrong.

Mystery No. 2 involves the rig of a sunken yacht that an Australian trawler hooked into in 90 meters of water about 170 kilometers west of Darwin. The trawler, operated by Australia Bay Seafoods, spent six hours clearing its gear and found a mast, which may have been manufactured in New Zealand, and a sail that had been built in Sydney. Experts believe the rig had been submerged for 8 to 10 months, and local authorities are now planning to search for the rest of the wreck to see if there are bodies onboard.

Presumed location of the wreck

An Australia Bay Seafoods trawler

There has been some speculation that this might be the missing American yacht Nina, which disappeared west of New Zealand some time ago, but this seems a fairly preposterous notion.

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: I had to turn off the comments I’m afraid, as the site was getting swamped by spam comments. Hopefully I’ll have my web guru updating everything starting later this week so we can regain control and let you have your say again.

Gotta hand it to Randy West. He knows how to bounce right back after getting slapped down hard. You’ll recall his classic 75-foot Peter Spronk catamaran, Ppalu, sank last month in St. Maarten during the Heineken Regatta. (This right after Randy got done with a 7-month refit of the boat.) Now you can watch a properly produced Rick Moore video on how the old girl was salvaged:

You’ll also learn a bit about the history of the boat, starting with when Randy was one of 200 people who helped pick her up and walk her into the water when she was first launched in St. Maarten over 30 years ago.

The salvage operation was pretty dicey, as the boat couldn’t be refloated on her hulls in situ. In the end they had to tow her with nothing but float bags holding her up, through the bridge into Simpson Bay Lagoon, right in the middle of the Heineken Regatta.

If she had slipped off the bags and sunk in the channel, that would have pretty much mashed up the regatta… and the whole Dutch side of the island, too!

The damage turned out to be extensive, as the bottom of much of the starboard hull had been ripped out.

Repairs, as you can see, are well along. For more on that, and to help with finances if so inclined, you can check out Randy’s Project Ppalu Facebook page.

Really, as noted, the most impressive thing about the viddy is Randy’s attitude. He’s cool as a cucumber throughout. My favorite bit is a sanguine little flashback he experiences in the middle of the operation: “Never salvaged a boat before. Oh, no. Sixty-eight in the Bahamas. A freighter that went aground on James Point. We salvaged a Cadillac off the deck. Wasn’t anything like this.”

Goodness gracious. Do I feel sorry for Eric and Charlotte Kaufman! Not only have they lost their home, Rebel Heart, the Hans Christian 36 they’ve been cruising on for two years, which they had to abandon yesterday when they boarded a U.S. Navy warship about 900 miles west of Mexico, and which the Navy subsequently scuttled and sank. Not only have they had to cope with the unthinkable stress of having their 1-year-old daughter, Lyra, come down with some mysterious illness in the middle of a long Pacific passage. But now they have a good chunk of the global population lambasting them online for getting into all this trouble in the first place.

Isn’t modern technology wonderful?

No doubt you’ve heard about this on some level already. I started following the story Friday online and heard it on National Public Radio yesterday, which doesn’t happen very often with bluewater cruising news.

But let’s review what we know:

1) Eric and Charlotte left Mexico on Rebel Heart about three weeks ago with their two young daughters, Cora (3) and Lyra (1), onboard. Eric is an experienced sailor and lured Charlotte into the cruising game. They bought Rebel Heart and started planning a circumnavigation 9 years ago; left San Diego and started actively cruising Mexico 2 years ago. Lyra was born after the cruise started (you can read an exciting account of her birth here). This big passage west to French Polynesia was the family’s first major ocean crossing.

Rebel Heart in slings

Charlotte with Lyra on the inside

The whole family, with Lyra on the outside

2) Judging from the accounts of the passage posted separately on Charlotte’s blog and on Eric’s blog, they were having a challenging trip. Variable winds, too light for a while (they weren’t carrying enough fuel to motor), and also strong enough to move the boat fast, but with lots of motion. Seasickness and some minor repairs needed.

In other words, basically normal ocean-sailing conditions, but with having to mind the kids on top of it. On Charlotte’s blog, in particular, you can get a good sense of how hard this was. She does a lot of arguing back and forth with herself about whether it’s worth it or not and seems to come out on the “yes, it’s worth it” side, but only barely.

3) About a week ago something major went wrong with the boat, though we really have no idea what. Various reports mention the boat taking on water, steering problems, and a loss of communications (presumably also power), but nothing confirmed by the Kaufmans themselves. The last blog post, from Charlotte, was on April 1 and was very terse: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

At about this same time, though we don’t know which happened first, Lyra came down with a big rash and fever that did not respond to medication. She reportedly had suffered from salmonella prior to the family’s leaving Mexico, but had been cleared by a doctor to depart.

4) The Kaufmans somehow contacted the U.S. Coast Guard via satellite on Thursday (several reports refer to a satellite “ping,” but I suspect it had to be more than that) and asked for help, and that same night four California Air National Guard rescue swimmers parachuted on to the scene, boarded the boat, and stabilized the child.

5) All eight persons onboard abandoned the boat yesterday and boarded a Navy frigate, USS Vandegrift, and Rebel Heart was scuttled.

Rebel Heart from the air

USS Vandegrift underway

Evacuating Rebel Heart

On the basis of this relatively slim narrative, many non-sailing laypeople, including Charlotte’s brother, have seen fit to criticize them for recklessly endangering their children. You can peruse the comments on their Facebook page for an idea of how this has been going, or check the comments section to any relevant news story.

The sailing community, I am pleased to say, has countered all this criticism with nearly unanimous support.

Ironically, I must note, when I had my little rescue adventure in January with Hank Schmitt and the owners of Be Good Too, this worked exactly the opposite way: laypeople supported us and the sailing community mostly criticized us.

Moral of that story: if you have to abandon a boat and want other sailors to sympathize with you, take some children along.

I actually had been following the Kaufmans via their website for a while, as Pat Schulte, former SAILfeed blogger of Bumfuzzle fame, had tipped me off to them. He and his family encountered them while they were knocking around Mexico on their boat. (Now they are boatless, cruising on the hard in their antique motorhome.)

So I kind of feel I know these guys, and my heart goes out to them. Having to cope with a major illness or injury has always been one of my biggest fears when sailing offshore. Having it be a sick child only makes it a hundred times scarier. As for the boat, I won’t be too surprised if it turns out it was uninsured, which would be a huge bummer. But I’m very glad Lyra and the rest of the family are OK.

Plus, of course, I’m dying to know what actually went wrong with the boat. Also: why so many rescue swimmers? Hopefully we’ll get answers later this week when the Vandegrift makes port in San Diego.

Other sources: CBC News, NBC 7 San Diego, Old Salt Blog, Washington Post

Speaking of catamarans, this is a new Maine Cat launch coming up this year that I’m looking forward to. I love cats like this–lean and mean and simple, with enough accommodations that you can really go somewhere in them, but not so much that the boat gets fat and slow. This is an open bridgedeck design, similar to the Scape 39 Sport Cruiser I sailed across the South Atlantic a few years ago, but not quite as severe, with some serious hardtop shelter on deck. Basically it looks to be an open-air saloon. Or a huge pilothouse. Take your pick.

The in-hull accommodations, as you can see, are also clean and simple.

I love that they have the cojones to put just one head on the boat. I’ve never appreciated multiple heads on boats under 50 feet long. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Space on a boat is limited, always, and how much time do you really spend in the head?

This will be a very versatile boat, as all the foils (daggerboards and rudders) are retractable, as are the twin 20hp outboards that provide auxiliary power. With everything up, draft is just 19 inches (the outboards are fully enclosed, with fairings that seal the leg apertures when the engines are raised), so you can easily hit the beach if you want.

Construction looks to be impeccable: infused vinylester resin and thermo-formed Core-Cell foam throughout. The standard rig features a Selden aluminum mast, a self-tacking jib, and a protrusion for a screecher. A rotating mast, flat-top main, overlapping jib, and a screecher to fly from the protrusion, are all optional.

The prospective standard equipment list has most everything I’d want on the boat (electronics, including an autopilot, fridge and freezer, 150-watt solar array, and an 510AH house battery bank) and the introductory price, $321K, is extremely reasonable.

Hopefully I’ll be able to sail one in Maine this summer. I’ll also be looking for it in Annapolis in the fall. And here’s another enticing test-sailing option if you’re seriously interested: Maine Cat will have one available next winter for bareboat chartering in the Bahamas.

Man… if I had a boat like this in the Bahamas, I might never come back.

WARNING: I’m going missing for a while, without my computer, so this will be the last post for a week or more. Very nice gig this. I look forward to telling you about it when I get back.

OK, I lied. I’m doing one more post before taking off today. I just watched this press conference with members of the California Air National Guard team who rescued the Kaufman family off Rebel Heart and wanted to make a few points about the rumpus this has inspired.

We still don’t have a lot of answers to questions worth asking, but it is clear from this video that Rebel Heart need not necessarily have been abandoned and scuttled. Apparently nothing was wrong with the steering, she was taking on minimal water, and the rig was at least serviceable. What it came down to, from the skipper/father’s point of view, as one member in the rescue team states pretty explicitly in the video, was whether he was going to stay with the boat or with his sick child and family.

I’ve now been in the bluewater cruising game for over 20 years, both sailing and covering it as a journalist, and I’ve never heard of anyone being put in this position.

I know of and have met many, many people who have gone on major bluewater cruises with very young children (including James Burwick and his young family aboard an Open 50, Anasazi Girl, who were recently rescued off the coast of Chile after being dismasted en route to Cape Horn, all without attracting major media attention). The vast majority of those cruisers, in my experience, have very positive experiences and the children are better off for it. This is the first time I have ever heard of a cruising family having to call in outside support to care for a sick child while on passage.

I also know of and have met several people who have abandoned boats at sea. As some of you know, I recently became one of them. In many cases, I know, too, the reasons for evacuating have been, shall we say, questionable. For example, I once interviewed, at some length, a skipper who evacuated a perfectly functional vessel only because he had received a bad weather forecast.

But I have never heard of anyone having to make the choice that Eric Kaufman had to make. As a father and sailor I know this much: it’s pretty much a worst-case scenario. Which ever way he went he was guaranteed to be criticized, and I am sure he had many more variables to consider than we will ever know about. One of the big ones, of course, was that this bluewater cruise was a dream he had worked many years to fulfill.

Bottom line: I have nothing but respect for the man and the decision he made. I only pray I am never put in the same situation.

I should note, too, that Eric has made a public statement on his blog that is perfectly anodyne and offers no substantive facts about his family’s situation then and now. Both Eric and Charlotte have been very honest in the blogs they have maintained on their website–it is one of the best cruising sites out there, IMHO–and unfortunately now they have only been punished for it. I would not be surprised, and would not blame them, if they now decided to keep their story to themselves.

Also, I need to correct a statement I made in my last post on this subject. The sailing community not been as unanimous as I would have hoped in their support of the Kaufmans. The primary locus of sailorly vitriol against the Kaufmans, not surprisingly, has been the Sailing Anarchy website, not just in the forums there, but in editorial commentary on the front page. All I can say about that is that it is a sad thing that a website with such a negative, bitter spirit is so popular with sailors.

One mainstream media organization has taken the trouble to tabulate a price tag for the Kaufman’s rescue, $663,000. The impression I get from the press conference is that most of this money would have been spent on training anyway. I do still think it is fair to ask whether those calling for unnecessary rescues should have to help cover costs, but I do not think this was an unnecessary rescue. Whether Eric stayed with the boat or not, the child needed help. Many laypeople have questioned whether taking children on such a voyage is unreasonably dangerous, but the fact is Eric’s kids were safer on that boat than they would be strapped into car-seats in a minivan on the freeway.

Finally, I can’t believe that none of the reporters at the press conference thought to ask my question: why so many rescue swimmers? I can see sending two, but why four?

While dawdling about the North Atlantic in my old Alberg 35 yawl Crazy Horse I spent nine months in the Azores in 1995 and ’96. The beautiful nine-island archipelago just sucked me right in. With its dramatic volcanic topography, verdant sub-tropical foliage, sumptuous mid-ocean cloud formations, amazingly friendly people, low food prices, and exquisite architecture it seemed to me a paradise on earth. But if you had told me back then there would one day be a successful bareboat charter operation in the islands, I would have laughed at you.

Not that the sailing is bad. Much of the time it is perfectly splendid, with interestingly variable breezes and occasionally challenging conditions to keep you honest. The big problem was parking. The islands have virtually no natural harbors, anchoring along the steep-sided shore is usually impossible, and the few moorings you were apt to find in those days were grossly unreliable. During my time there I did manage to visit and explore seven of the nine islands, but I had a few skin-of-my-teeth experiences in some of the tiny man-made harbors, and one acquaintance of mine actually lost his boat after he left it in the harbor at Vila do Porto on Santa Maria on a seemingly solid mooring that failed.

But that was then. When I first visited the Azores, as crew aboard Constellation in 1992, there was just one safe haven for yachts, at the marina in Horta on the island of Faial. By the time I returned on Crazy Horse in 1995 there were two more. One was a new marina at Praia da Vitoria on Terceira, where I was the first American ever to visit. (I remember I was very pleased when I learned they weren’t charging for dock space, but I wasn’t so pleased when I found an enormous dead pig floating next to my boat the morning after I checked in.) The other was a new marina at Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel, where Crazy Horse was one of three transient yachts to winter over.

Nowadays there are marinas on all the islands but two (Corvo and Graciosa), there are two marinas on Sao Miguel (at Vila Franca do Campo, as well as Ponta Delgada), and the existing marinas at both Horta and Ponta Delgada have been greatly expanded. This not only makes it possible for transient bluewater cruisers to easily visit multiple islands while sailing through, it also (gasp!) makes bareboat chartering perfectly feasible.

The first such operation, SailAzores, was started just three years ago and runs a small fleet of Dufours, ranging in size from 37 to 45 feet. Their clients are mostly from central Europe, and last week SAIL‘s editor-in-chief Peter Nielsen and I (together with one imported photographer, Graham Snook, from the UK) became the first bareboat charterers ever to visit from the United States. For me it was something like a return to Valhalla. I love these islands and being able to sail there again without having to first make a major ocean passage was a real treat.

The town of Horta on Faial, seen from on high

A classic view from the Horta marina, with the 7,680-foot peak on the island of Pico seen in the distance

The main drag in Horta, as seen from sea level

We started our tour at Horta, which has long been Sailor Central for transatlantic bluewater cruisers, as far back as Joshua Slocum. We had only a week to spend, and as you can see on the map up there, the islands are quite spread out, with 370 miles of open ocean stretching between the easternmost and westernmost islands. So we limited our exploration to three of the islands in the central group, taking a day on each to explore by car.

For anyone else coming to charter here from the States, I’d recommend taking two weeks if at all possible. This will give you time to visit all the central islands, plus shoot over to the east and/or west. There is a fair chance you’ll be weather-bound for a day or two, so having extra time in hand is always a good idea. If you’re lucky with the weather and feeling ambitious, it is possible to visit all nine islands during one two-week cruise.

My man Duncan Sweet (on the right), originally from New Hampshire, has been operating Mid-Atlantic Yacht Services in Horta for over 20 years now. He helped me sort a few problems on Crazy Horse way back when, and now tells me he’s looking to sell his business so he can go sailing again

A typical sidewalk in Horta. You see these basalt mosaics on the streets of most Azorean towns. Even the crosswalks are inlaid!

For decades transient sailors have left paintings on the harbor walls in Horta. A few charter guests do it, too, but personally I think this is uncool. The unwritten rule is that you have to cross an ocean before leaving a painting here

The wall paintings are surprisingly impermanent. You see few that are more than few years old, and the paintings I made for Constellation (1992) and Crazy Horse (1996) were long gone. Dieter on Lady Summerfield, as you can see, didn’t take any chances and solved this problem by making his mark with tiles

A pair of cruising kids wielding brushes

Boss Nielsen makes the scene at Peter’s Cafe Sport, the most famous sailor’s bar in the world

The marina at Horta is one of the best places in the world to ogle bluewater boats. You always see a fascinating array of offbeat vessels. My favorite this visit was this Golden Hind 31, which looked to be about the same vintage as my old Golden Hind Sophie

The highlight of our tour of Faial was a visit to Capelinhos on the island’s northeast corner. From September 1957 through October 1958 this was the site of an ongoing volcanic eruption that destroyed two villages and led over a third of the island’s population (about 2,000 people) to emigrate to the U.S. and Canada.

Capelinhos today. The lighthouse was formerly on an exposed headland, but now is inland, and all the land you see there on the right, nearly 3 square kilometers, was created during the eruption

Capelinhos during the eruption. Faial’s main volcanic caldera (or crater) in the center of the island was also involved, as the lake there drained away and fumaroles of boiling clay and mud appeared on the crater floor

A wasted village, post eruption. Fortunately there were no fatalities, but there was a great deal of property damage

We had a marvelous sail from Horta over to the town of Velas on Sao Jorge the following day. It was a beat, but the wind was moderate, 10-12 knots, and we were able to lay Velas after just two tacks. There’s great little marina there now that’s perfectly secure, with an extremely friendly harbormaster, but when I last visited Velas on Crazy Horse back in 1996 the only place to park was right on the seawall.

My second morning there the harbormaster came down and told me I had to leave immediately, as the monthly freighter was coming in ahead of schedule. He and a buddy cast off my lines post haste, before I was ready, and the boat’s caprail on one side was smashed to pieces as I pulled off the wall. Then, as soon as I cleared the harbor, a surprise gale blew in out of the southwest, and I spent the next eight hours running off to the north in a vicious 50-knot breeze. I didn’t make it to Horta until the next afternoon, and then had to spend the next two days after that fixing up my caprail.

So, yes. This time I really did appreciate that marina.

Another sail spied en route to Velas, with the top of Pico just peaking out of the clouds

Boss Nielsen demonstrates his power-lounging technique as we approach Sao Jorge

The town of Velas, seen from on high, with Faial in the background. You can see the wondrous yacht marina in the lower righthand corner of the harbor, directly across from the evil wall. The smaller marina in the upper corner is for fishing boats

And yes, as I said, the current harbormaster is exceedingly friendly. So friendly that after we toured the island by car the following day he arranged for us to use the local pilot boat as a photo chase boat so Graham could snap pix of us sailing by the town.

The one downside to the marina, I should note, is that at night the high cliffs directly above it are inhabited by a vast flock of very noisy shearwaters. They sounded like deranged children and cackled with glee until well after midnight.

Downtown Velas, with dragon emerging from pool

The public garden in Velas. The little stone house you see behind the lamp-post furthest left is filled with dozens of parakeets

One of many weird ducks that lives on the waterfront in Velas. Unlike the shearwaters, they had nothing to say

Sao Jorge is a long, tall spine of an island, girded round on all sides by very high cliffs. Along the coast there are a few flat tongues of land, known as fajas, that are prized for their habitability. This is one of the biggest ones, Faja do Ouvidor, seen from on high

Dolphins and a pair of recreational fishermen enjoy an evening outing in the channel between Sao Jorge and Pico

Journalistic incest. I shoot Graham shooting Nielsen as he prepares a dinner onboard

In the local parlance: Pico wears a hat. Our first morning in Velas we found it had snowed on high across the channel during the night

After one full day on Sao Jorge, we sailed around to south shore of Pico and had good wind most the way. First a steady breeze from behind us as we scooted down the Sao Jorge channel and around the eastern tip of Pico, then lots of erratic blustery gusts as we sailed west with the high land of Pico towering above us. After only a wee bit of motoring, we landed at last in the town of Lajes, which is unusual among Azorean harbors in that it has shoal water. We squeezed into the marina there with no trouble and soon after tying up headed for the local whaling museum.

Whaling used to be a big deal in the Azores. The waters around the islands are thick with marine mammals, and Azoreans first learned about whaling when they signed on as crew aboard American whalers that came to archipelago both to hunt and reprovision. By the middle of the 19th century, Azoreans were hunting on their own in local waters from small open boats. Pico, and Lajes in particular, was the focus of much of this activity until as late as 1984.

The mountain of Pico, shrouded in cloud, as seen from the marina in Lajes. That’s our boat, Insula, on the right, with another SailAzores Dufour 375 right next to it

Inside the whaling museum. Whale watching instead of whale hunting is now a significant source of income in Lajes

A museum model of an Azorean whaleboat, with all relevant gear. These were the boats used right up until 1984, and there are many men on the islands still alive today who once worked in them

South coast of Pico near Lajes

Though Azoreans stopped whaling, they haven’t stopped building and maintaining whaleboats, which they now race under both sail and oars. We found this example in a boathouse in a small village near Lajes. On the wall you can see photos of crew members and a case full of trophies

Azoreans are also still maintaining the old motor launches that were once used to tow whaleboats out to the hunting grounds

Many Azoreans are also still fishing from small wooden skiffs in the traditional style. You’ll note, however, that they do install electronics

Alas, we lost the vaunted Snook, our photographer, on Pico, as he had to catch a ferry back to Faial to hop a flight home to the UK. Nielsen and I spent an extra day on the island, then motored back to Horta in a bit of rain the following afternoon. There we had a chance to dine again at Cafe Sport with our friends from SailAzores and were introduced to Jose Azevedo, the current proprietor and grandson of the famous bar’s original founder.

The next day we flew to Sao Miguel and lay over one night before catching our flight back to Boston. Again, thanks to the extremely gracious tourism board, we had a car at our disposal and were able to tour around a bit before moving on.

Jose Azevedo gave us a personal tour of his family’s famous scrimshaw museum. Among the items on display is a well-known photo he took of a huge storm that hit Faial in February 1986. You can see a human face in the immense sheet of spray above the rock on the left

This is but a small portion of the Cafe Sport scrimshaw collection, which most likely is the largest in the world. This set of sperm whale teeth is adorned with likenesses of various famous sailors and members of the Azevedo family

The north coast of Sao Miguel

Sao Miguel has three major volcanic calderas, two of which are inhabited. This is the village of Sete Cidades, situated on the floor of the western caldera, as seen from the crater rim

This is the village of Furnas, which is inside the eastern caldera

Hot sulphur springs outside Furnas. This suggests to me that this volcano is not entirely inactive

An old friend on the hard in Ponta Delgada. Back when I last visited the Azores very few locals had yachts, as there was no place to keep them. Now, with all the marinas, local yachts are quite common. This was one of the first ones, an old Cheoy Lee ketch that was imported to Ponta Delgada the winter I lived in the marina there. She was berthed right across from Crazy Horse, and of course I was both surprised and pleased to find she is still hanging out there

How Much Has It Changed?

All of you with distant memories of the Azores will be pleased to know the islands have actually changed very little over the last two decades. The harbors everywhere have been greatly improved, and there are a few more tourists than there used to be, but otherwise I was very pleased to find things were much as I remembered them. The one exception was Sao Miguel, which now has divided highways traversing part of the island and a cruise ship dock in Ponta Delgada. Gack! Cruise ships also visit Horta, but they cannot land there and evidently do not spend the night.

Stuff You Need To Know

This ain’t the BVI people. To charter a boat here you need a fair amount of experience, as the sailing can be challenging at times. You don’t need a certificate, but you will be queried closely as to your experience and background and may be turned away if these are found wanting.

No, the tourism board will not give you cars to drive like they did us, but you can easily rent them and can make arrangements through SailAzores to have a car waiting for you wherever you go. Alternatively, you can just hitchhike your way around when exploring each island. This is how I got around when I stayed here before. People are very friendly and often stop to pick up hitchers, but in some places the traffic is very thin.

All marina fees are included in your charter fee, and SailAzores will make sure there is space for you and people to greet you in every marina you visit. On the two islands without marinas they will make sure there are secure moorings for you to stay on.

One downside to cruising in any Portuguese jurisdiction is that you have to book in and out of every port you visit. The Portuguese love their paperwork, but in the Azores at least everyone is very nice about it. You can usually book out of ports the day before you actually leave, which simplifies things, and since officials see the SailAzores charter boats all the time they do seem willing to cut them a little slack.

The charter season runs from April through October. The best time to come is May through September. If you’re interested in doing this, be sure to plan ahead. The summer season this year is already all booked up.

English is widely but not universally spoken.

Many Thanks To

Nicolau Faria, Joao Portela, Anabela Costa, and Emidio Goncalves of SailAzores

The Azores Tourism Board

Who says you need a modern go-fast boat with foils to make sailing really exciting? Check out these video clips of traditional Dutch barges, called skutsjes, which were originally used for hauling cargo in Friesland and are still actively raced today. What blows me away in the first one are the guys to leeward with the sounding poles. Looks like a much dicier job than bowman! Note also the major TV sports coverage. Very impressive that. You can tell the Dutch have their priorities straight. Also… there’s a nice collision at 3:21.

Funny thing about Dutch, I tried translating the YouTube video description in a couple of different online translation programs, and Dutch translated into English looks just like Dutch in the original Dutch. Maybe someone who speaks Dutch can explain that to me.

Meanwhile, this viddy has a fantastic collision. One skutsje literally falls down on top of another one:

No, they don’t carry any ballast, and yes, they evidently do capsize with some frequency. The next clip has a nice demonstration of how it’s done and how you recover (starts at about 3:00). But please, if you don’t have a large tugboat handy, do not try this at home.

Finally, here’s an excerpt from a documentary film about the sport that was made back in the 1960s. Complete with subtitles. It gives a good sense of the tradition behind these boats.

And if you want to find out still more about traditional Dutch yachts, you can flashback into the WaveTrain archive and check this post on Hermann Goering’s famous botter jacht Groote Beer.

What do you do when a dead 81-foot blue whale washes up on your beach? Hold your nose and wait for it pop. So it goes in Trout River, Newfoundland, when the local population of 600 souls has been has been waiting on pins and needles for their whale to burst since it washed up in town last week. There’s even a dedicated website: hasthewhaleexplodedyet.com

The problem is these big dead sea mammals bloat with methane gas as they decompose, and the results can indeed be a bit violent. Check out this viddy of a marine biologist prodding a bloated dead sperm whale in the Faroe Islands last year:

You’ll see that everyone seems to know what’s coming.

Right now, as I’m writing this, it also seems the whale in Newfoundland is deflating on its own. Bummer. When I first found the site this morning things looked promising.

Evidently, one thing you should not do with a bloated whale is try to move it. Witness this ugly scene in Tainan City, Taiwan, when a sperm whale exploded on the street in 2004 while being moved to the town dump:

Icky poo. And, of course, you shouldn’t intentionally blow up your whale, like these idiots did in Oregon:

Be sure to catch the bit at the end where a perfectly good Cadillac is crushed by a piece of flying whale blubber.

Even if the poor folks in Trout River do not get to see their whale explode, they’ll still have the problem of disposing of its rotting corpse. Local and Canadian federal officials are currently fighting over who is responsible for this.

Lunacy got launched and rigged at Maine Yacht Center on Monday. I was up there yesterday and managed to get all the sails on before the rain squalls started up. As you can see from the photo up top, I’ve scored some new canvas, courtesy of Richard Hallett: a replacement purple dodger, a new bright red sail cover, and a new bright blue sunshield on the headsail. At last this is close to the canvas-color configuration I envisioned when I first got the boat, lo these many years ago. (Please note: the canvas multi colors match those of the name graphic, the logic of which I’ve explained before.)

Every spring I’ve launched a cruising sailboat in New England, I always swear I’ll be afloat as early as possible in May. But something always happens–endless varnishing projects (back when I had boats with brightwork), or some awful unforeseen time-consuming repair (most commonly), or simple mission creep (stuff taking much longer than expected)–and usually I’m lucky if the damn boat is in by mid-June. So I’m feeling pretty pleased about this. Apprehensive, too. As predicted in my last post on this subject, the blizzard should be hitting any day now!

We did have one unexpected hiccup just prior to launching, which cost a few days. As part of the rudder-skeg welding project, I asked MYC to install a new bearing where the rudder stock pierces the transom scoop. The old poured-epoxy bearing, of questionable provenance, had to be chipped out prior to the welding anyway, as it was very close to where all the action (i.e., heat) was. MYC proposed inserting a plastic Delrin bearing, which sounded perfect to me.

Here you see the new skeg root with finished fillets, post primer, prior to bottom paint being applied. The new Delrin bearing can be seen inside the tube that penetrates the transom scoop

This is the alternative solution adopted by Jean-Claude Fontaine, who owns one of Lunacy‘s five sister-ships and had a similar problem with the external skeg weld failing. He fabricated a whole new skeg and carried it into the interior of the boat, where it was tied into the internal framing (Thanks to Jean-Claude for sharing the photo!)

After Lunacy‘s rudder was reinstalled, we found it was binding terribly on the bearing and it was very hard to turn the rudder. On closer inspection we realized the bearing tube is a little out of whack and isn’t perfectly parallel to the rudder stock. This, I reckon, was why a poured-epoxy bearing was installed in the first place. Fortunately, it only took a couple of days to remove the plastic bearing and pour a new epoxy one around the stock.

As noted earlier, MYC is a very good place to ogle OPBs (Other People’s Boats). This is American Promise, Dodge Morgan’s old boat, which was launched while I was there yesterday.

That’s a brand new cabinhouse on her. The plywood core of the old one was thoroughly rotten, so MYC removed it over the winter and built a new one.

American Promise with her house off

Promise also needed work done on her rudder. They had to cut a hole in the storage shed floor to drop it

Back to my new dodger. I had Richard modify the design a bit.

I asked that the window be made smaller so that I could fold the dodger down without mashing it all up at the corners. It’s not quite as spiffy looking, but it’s much more practical. I still have a good view of the mainsheet traveler, which is what I mostly look through the window at anyway.

Here you see the dodger with its side-wings on; in the photo up top those are off. I normally only put those on when thrashing to weather in gnarly conditions.

I’ve still got a bunch of work to do on the boat, so I’m hoping to get up there tomorrow. I’ll be wearing my snowshoes just in case.

I really really hope this turns out not to be true. You’ll recall I published a rather long post last spring about Thomas Tangvald, son of the famous traditional-boat cruiser Peter Tangvald. Thomas, who lost his dad and half-sister Carmen on reef off Bonaire when he was just 15, had started publishing a series of articles in All At Sea about a voyage with his own son and pregnant wife from the Caribbean to Brazil aboard a traditional Puerto Rican nativo sloop, Oasis, that he had refit and reconfigured for ocean sailing.

Unfortunately, I recently received word from Jacques Mertens, Thomas’s step-grandfather (it’s a complicated family, read the earlier post to figure it out) that Thomas was reported missing at sea two months ago and now has been officially reported lost at sea by the Brazilian coast guard. Thomas had been sailing singlehanded from French Guyana to Brazil aboard Oasis, having set out in late January. He had been working in Cayenne, French Guyana, designing fishing boats for a local company there.

According to Jacques, the French Garde Cotes have not given up and are still searching for Thomas. “Normally I would consider him lost, but Thomas is a very special person,” Jacques wrote me in an e-mail. “I still have some hope that Thomas is on anchor somewhere drinking cocktails and will reappear to surprise everybody.”

I sure hope so, too, but at this point in the game it seems increasingly unlikely.

I was just thinking of him, too, as I only recently discovered he had started publishing a blog of his own, called Tangvald: Sailing Adventures and Boat Design. It’s a very interesting mix of personal history, background on Oasis and nativo sloops, traditional sailing craft generally, and some quite technical discussions of boat design.

He also posted this video of him and his family sailing aboard Oasis before he refit her. He in fact was (is?) a highly intelligent and very independent young man. Truly one of a kind.

Eric and Charlotte Kaufman, who evacuated their boat Rebel Heart last month with their two young children, at last broke their media silence and have described some of what happened onboard to Ira Glass in a radio interview on This American Life. You can read the transcript or stream the broadcast here. The substantive facts of immediate interest to cruising sailors are a) they were taking on water due to hull-deck joint damage suffered during a broach; and b) their sat phone suddenly stopped working because the manufacturer or service provider shut it down remotely. On purpose.

I’ve seen some online commentary raising questions about the deck joint damage. (As if, what? They’re making it up?) But it makes sense to me. According to the interview, the damage occurred when the boat broached and the boom dragged in the water. Presumably the boom was made off to the rail somehow, we don’t know how exactly, and the huge load on whatever fitting was involved did the damage.

Deck joints are often a major weak spot on fiberglass boats, particularly older ones. I’ve had all sorts of problems with them leaking on different boats, even with no big shock loads in the equation, and this is one reason why I finally gave up on fiberglass and began looking at aluminum boats instead.

The really disturbing part of the Kaufmans’ tale is the sat-phone SNAFU. They used their phone to call a doctor when their daughter Lyra first got sick (per the doctor’s advice they administered antibiotics, which had no effect) and also to call the U.S. Coast Guard, to advise them of the difficulties they were having. And then the phone stopped working and flashed a “SIM Card Error” message at them. They found out later that their sat-phone company (not specified) had decided to change SIM card brands, mailed out new ones, and deactivated the old ones.

As a sat-phone owner, I would love to know a lot more about that! Even if you’re not in an emergency situation, it could create all sorts of trouble if you’re in regular contact with people on shore and suddenly get cut off.

In the Kaufman’s case, they were taking on 60-70 gallons of water a day through their deck joint, believed their HF radio had been disabled by the leak, could no longer talk to their doctor or the Coast Guard by phone, they were weeks from anywhere, and their daughter was getting worse.

Of course, they did have an EPIRB onboard.

The interview was pitched to a lay audience, so of course there are still several questions of interest to sailors that have been left unanswered. Eric Kaufman has made very brief appearances on at least one sailing forum, but has offered no substantive information, though he has mentioned that he and Charlotte may be looking for another boat. At this point, I tend to doubt whether they will ever engage in a big “info share” with sailors online. As was amply demonstrated during my own experience, sharing facts about boat abandonments online does nothing but incite critics.

The Kaufmans back onshore post-rescue

One non-technical question that was not raised during yesterday’s interview was whether there was any discussion prior to the evacuation about Eric staying behind with the boat to save it. I had assumed this was an option, but I may have been wrong.

As the saying goes: what goes around comes around. Last time I posted about French cruisers Pascal Ott and Monique Christmann, they had finally been towed away Oriental, North Carolina, and then quickly disappeared in time to evade a court judgment that had been entered against them for defrauding a local chandlery manager. Since then it seems they made it to the Bahamas, where they somehow ran aground on a reef during the winter and were taken into custody by Bahamian authorities for failing to check in. They’ve been detained for months now, awaiting deportation, and meanwhile Primadonna, their decrepit steel ketch, has recently been plundered by a carefree rookie cruising family on a Leopard 38 catamaran.

As documented on the Oriental community website TownDock, the Bulgarian/Canadian family on the catamaran, called Fata Morgana, bragged about plundering the wreck on their website, The Life Nomadik, and on their Facebook page, but then deleted the relevant posts when they got a boatload of abuse from other cruisers online.

The original Facebook post, seen above, was preserved by TownDock, and they have also salvaged the blog post as a PDF file here.

The family, starring Ivo and Mira, and their teenage son and daughter, Viktor and Maya, actually seems like a lot of fun. They set out cruising last summer with “zero sailing experience” and judging from the blog have been having a blast exploring the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Read the post about their experience on Primadonna and you’ll see they treat it all as a grand adventure. “Wrecking is so much fun!” wrote Mira, who maintains the blog. They actually took a fair amount of stuff–four winches, some hardware and rope, a spinnaker, a liferaft, a surfboard, a windlass, snorkeling gear, a marine radio, a compass, some clothing, and more.

Mira models some stolen clothing aboard the wreck of Primadonna

Ivo grabs a surfboard

The wreck of Primadonna on Booby Cay, off Mayaguana, with flamingos in the foreground

Ivo gauges the headsail luff tension aboard Fata Morgana

It’s also quite apparent from the blog post that Ivo and Mira were not acting maliciously in plundering the wreck, but were simply naive. They fell for that old trope about marine salvage law–that you’re entitled to keep anything you find. (Definitely not true; for more accurate guidance on the subject, check out this post here.)

You can imagine what people online had to say about it. The crew of Fata Morgana, to their credit, confronted the storm head on and jumped into this Cruisers Forum debate here.

Meanwhile, no word on how long Pascal and Monique will be detained by the Bahamians. Apparently, no one wants to pay for their flight back to France.

Back when I published my blog post about abandoning the Alpha 42 Be Good Too in January, I told Gregor Tarjan, president of Aeroyacht, builder of the boat, that I would publish in full any statement he cared to make about the incident. He declined at that time, but he has decided to make a statement in response to the story about the incident (which I also wrote) that has appeared in the current print edition of SAIL.

STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO INCIDENT OF “BEE GOOD TOO”

by Gregor Tarjan, designer of the Aeroyacht ALPHA 42 catamaran BEE GOOD TOO

The following statements are in reaction to SAIL magazine’s article in the May 2014 issue, “Abandoning BEE GOOD TOO”

I was not aboard this delivery so my opinion is purely based on the facts regarding the construction of the boat and the circumstances in which the crew founds themselves. Since the January incident I have answered 100′s of emails and phone calls from readers and customers who were eager to know more. The purpose of this statement is not to accuse or criticize but to share our perspective with those interested and provide information that was omitted from the article. Rumors are often based on theories deriving from incomplete information. This letter might help clarify.

“Casual” is the one word that comes to my mind when thinking of the misfortune of BEE GOOD TOO. It describes the entire preparation, execution and abandonment of our boat. Points below describe my perspective for this view and the circumstances leading to the accident which, otherwise, may have been avoided. Nevertheless, in spite of the odds, the boat’s integrity and structure withstood the worst weather and kept the crew alive!

1) TESTING: Alpha Yachts tested the boat for weeks before handover. On the final test I, personally, sailed the boat under very harsh conditions by sailing it shorthanded, counterclockwise around Long Island in blizzard conditions. Outside temp’s averaged -20 Fahrenheit (-28 Celsius) winds were up to 40 knots and (short) seas about 10′ high. My plan was to test to the breaking point. A constant sheet of inch-thick ice covered the deck and at one point the boat was buried under 30″ of snow. The generator, engines and all the systems ran, non-stop, for 14 days to avoid freezing and becoming inoperable. Every system worked flawlessly.

Was the boat perfect? Of course not, no boat is. There were issues: minor leaks (not dribbles) appeared through the seals of the saloon windows, emergency hatch seals, forward deck hatch seals and forward starboard to crossbeam attachment. Subsequently boats to be delivered this year by the builder, have been altered to eliminate these shortcomings. When I short-stopped in Port Jefferson, NY, all these issues were attended to so that I felt secure to continue the test and hand over the boat to the new owners in New Jersey.

2) SCHEDULE: Each and every crew member had a time based commitment to fulfill shortly after the boat arrived at its destination as they had verbally expressed to me. Anyone who goes to sea in a sailboat certainly well knows that a fixed schedule is a risk factor one does not wish to adhere to, most definitely when sailing a new vessel on a direct route offshore, in the North Atlantic, during one of the most severe winters on the U.S. meteorology record. Many readers on the forums have criticized the fact that when the crew was only 70 miles East of Norfolk, VA a forecast of an impending Low easily allowed a turn to shelter. Instead the opposite was decided—the boat was directed Eastward into the path of the storm. I will refrain from a critic of this decision made by the captain. I was not aboard. They may have felt sufficiently assured to face the worst.

3) PREPARATION: At the owner’s request I, personally, placed and stored the items, he furnished, aboard the boat; giving me first hand knowledge of the inventory of BE GOOD TOO. I noted that there were no spare parts provided, no voltmeter, no tools to speak of except for a small case of home builders’ tools—certainly a questionable manner of equipping oneself for a leaving shore.

No time was allotted for becoming acquainted with the boat. Should one sail aboard a brand new boat without a primary level of familiarization? No member of the crew had, because to do this, time did not permit it, since there were future commitments to be fulfilled.

Casual? Overconfident? In a rush? From my perspective all of the above.

3) JIB LEAD: The self tacking jib lead from SELDEN never worked properly. I had noticed this on my test of the boat. SELDEN promised to send the correct fitting but it would take them another week to get the part to NY. Gunther, the owner, dismissed it, preferring to sail with the bad lead, opting for the replacement part be sent to the Caribbean for pick-up upon his arrival. I could not convince him to wait for it before setting off.

We were five months late, I must admit, with the delivery of his boat and he, obviously, was anxious to reach warm weather. Nevertheless, not a reason to leave a delivery of an item without which may put yourself, crew and boat at risk. I warned Gunther the bad jib lead would not hold up to strong winds for too long, especially on stbd-tack. In fact, and for this very reason, one of the first things to go wrong was the parting of the jib sheet.

Theoretically, because of the jury rig of the jib, the boat could not sail efficiently under the main alone. Had the boat been sailed with a proper jib lead and double reefed main, she could have been sailed with more speed up the wave face. Since she was slow (the skipper estimates 4-6 KNOTS) although I guess much slower, the boat was easily shoved backwards by the large rogue wave that hit them squarely. The disastrous effect was purely a matter of seamanship and a tight schedule.

4) RUDDER CONSTRUCTION: When I first saw the rudders as they were constructed I was concerned about their weight and how overbuilt they appeared. A complete overkill for a 42′ 10T cat, I thought. After the incident I thoroughly investigated the rudders’ construction. Alpha Yachts followed the standard specifications of the Edson Steering system rudder stock to tiller arm attachment and overbuilt the rest. Edson suggested two types: one with two locking bolts which affixed the rudder stock to the tiller arm, the other with a single smaller bolt and a key as is traditionally seen. The builder opted for the twin bolt set-up.

I have seen many rudders in my life: from custom to production catamarans ranging from 30-130′. Alpha Yacht’s was a monster. I tried to pick one up—it was overwhelming! Let’s get the record straight. The Alpha’s rudder consists of a 1.5″ stainless steel rudder post which tapers slightly at the bottom to receive the foam cored rudder blade. The rudder blade, itself, is affixed to the post by 3 horizontal and 2 vertical 3/8″ x 2″ wide thick stainless flat bar struts. They are all seam welded by a certified welder. I personally saw the welds. The rudder post is locked to the tiller arm by the use of two 3/8″ threaded bolts (not set screws, as they were identified in the article) with a 3/4″ bury that act as a lock, but also serve as a safety mechanism in case the boat is pushed backwards, so they could theoretically shear and leave the rudder undamaged. The massive tiller arm was a 3/4″ thick by 4″ wide stainless steel bar. Nonsense stated that the crew could not drop the rudder as it would float, is incredulous to say the least. At close to 130 lbs. of mainly solid stainless steel and a bit of foam, is floating, at all, possible?!

Let’s compare the Alpha 42′s rudder to a contemporary production 41′ cat that has been built more than 200 times by a major manufacturer. This production example has a smaller, 1.25″ diameter solid stock and 2 horizontal blades only, and no vertical blades to hold the rudder which also weighs 1/3 less.

I can say, with conviction, that the rudder of the Alpha 42 was completely overbuilt for the job. It is logical that the crew could not dislodge the rudder because the stock was slightly bent from being pushed violently backwards acting like a giant spring jamming itself in the upper and lower bearings. Only a crowbar, or attaching a line to winch the blade backwards, could possibly dislodge it. To know that a fighter jet will fly at Mach 2 forward but only at 50 mph in reverse, causing the plane’s rudders to flip back and fail, is elementary knowledge. As the captain described in his official insurance report “….no boat rudder could have withstood this”

5) ABANDONMENT: I was not on scene so I will refrain from commenting or criticizing the crews inability to fix the issue and their actions to leave the boat. The ocean is a chaotic environment. Put 4 people on a yacht, under duress, who are overconfident, on a tight schedule, with a minimum of tools on hand to fix problems, nor advanced preparation, establishes a too complex chemistry for outsider commentary. Nevertheless, I will always wonder WHY WASN’T A LOCATING BEACON LEFT ABOARD? The owner had a brand new EPIRB and the skipper a functioning, hand-held SPOT locator device. In fact I tracked their every move in the N. Atlantic with the help of this small device. The question will always remain: why weren’t either of these two locator devices left aboard to enable a salvage crew, the manufacturer or an insurance company to retrieve the boat? What does this tell us? There are far too many theories, most too controversial to mention.

At the end of the day, we have reached peace with the loss of our initial Alpha 42—a boat in which we invested our ultimate best. She was built like a tank. She withstood a major storm. I already knew that when testing her in the harshest conditions off Long Island. The proof that 4 sailors walked away, unharmed, had a chance to write about the incident, proves the boat protected them to the last minute. And to think that she was abandoned without a thought of retrieval! A 10T, 1000 sqft unlit, unmarked floating platform to be left as a hazard to navigation itself opens channels of wonderment… As noted above, was the boat flawless? Being our very first it had some minor, easily fixable issues; none of which reasoned abandonment. Yet in a perverted kind of way what happened is the best form of praise to the strength of our boat—she withstood 50+ knot winds, 20′ seas and a rogue wave. Much lesser conditions have put boats away forever. It should be noted that the area North of the Bermuda Triangle, especially in winter, has the highest waves on record. Confused warm water eddies and strong winter winds build towering seas. Commercial supertankers have been broken in half by 100′ monster rogue waves. The Alpha 42 was located in exactly that spot.

I am sure this writing will stir a new flurry of, in Charles Doane’s words, “armchair admirals.” 100′s of people who really wished to know the scoop behind the story picked up the phone to call me. I opted to leave it at that, however, after the publication of the May SAIL article I felt the need to publish my official statement.

The official insurance report submitted by the captain clearly blames the incident on a rogue wave. The owners have a new boat, another catamaran, and have been paid by the insurance company.

The crew is, thankfully, alive.

I hope that the incident has offered an element of the positive and that we all have learned something.

Our boat is gone and I hope that a poor fisherman in Spain will find her, salvage her and enjoy her with family and friends.

Gregor Tarjan
president, Aeroyacht Ltd

Gregor Tarjan, left, president of Aeroyacht, and his partner, boatbuilder Marc Anassis

Editor’s Note: This is Gregor’s statement in full as I received it. I’ve had my say, so I will not comment on it, except to note that I am not certain why he spells the boat’s name with two Es in Be. On the boat’s transom it was spelled with one E, so that is how I have always spelled it.

Also, I have more information regarding the insurer. Two days after we abandoned the boat, Falvey Insurance, the policyholder, commissioned a search. Two sorties were flown from Norfolk, Virginia, aboard a Lear 35 jet. The plane each time was only able to spend an hour on station at the vessel’s presumed location, and the search was not successful.

The U.S. Coast Guard are coming under major pressure today after they announced yesterday they were suspending their search for possible survivors from Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau First 40.7 that went missing in the North Atlantic about 1,000 miles east of Cape Cod on Friday. On Saturday a container ship participating in the search, Maersk Kure, found an overturned hull, with no keel (see photo up top), that most likely was Cheeki Rafiki, but they were unable to inspect the hull closely and found no other debris, no liferaft, and no other signs of survivors. Various luminaries, including Robin Knox-Johnston, the crew’s families, and tens of thousands people who have endorsed an online petition are pleading with the Coast Guard to resume the search.

Cheeki, which is managed by a British firm, Stormforce Coaching, had raced at Antigua and was being delivered back to the UK by an experienced crew of four. They contacted Stormforce on Thursday to report they were taking on water and were diverting to the Azores. On Friday two satellite rescue beacons were ignited–evidently these were personal beacons, not the ship’s EPIRB–and there’s been no word since.

Cheeki Rafiki racing at Antigua earlier this month. She finished first in the CSA 5 division

Last known location

A very tough call this. Knox-Johnston and others are claiming it is “very likely” the crew is adrift in a liferaft, but I’m not so sure. Assuming that the overturned hull is the boat in question, it may be she flipped very suddenly when the keel fell off. (An impending keel failure may well be what was causing the leak.) Two crew on deck thrown suddenly into the water as the boat turtled would explain the personal beacons being ignited. A sudden inversion would also explain why the ship’s EPIRB, presumably stored below, wasn’t ignited. If there was no time to light off the EPIRB, there likely wouldn’t have been enough time to launch and board a liferaft.

It’s a shame the container ship crew couldn’t check out that hull in detail. There could be bodies onboard. But conditions at the time were very strong, and a container ship, obviously, isn’t equipped for that sort of work.

My sudden-inversion scenario is purely speculative, but based on the facts we have now, it seems the likeliest explanation. It certainly makes you think about modern keels. I have bloviated before about the vulnerability of keels on high-end race boats, but this was a common production boat. Unfortunately, other such boats have also lost keels in the past. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to take it for granted that my keel will stay put.

The Coast Guard reports they searched 53 hours for survivors, and that the estimated best-case survival time given the conditions was 20 hours. The crew onboard were James Male, Andrew Bridge, Steve Warren, and Paul Goslin, all from great Britain.

After a truly amazing public appeal by a number of British public officials, well-known sailors, and 200,000 random civilians who signed an online petition, the U.S. Coast Guard yesterday resumed its search for Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau First 40.7 that went missing on Friday while returning to the UK after racing at Antigua Sailing Week. Joining the search are elements of the World Cruising Club’s ongoing ARC Europe rally, led by the Outremer 64 catamaran Malisi (see photo up top). Yachting World’s technical editor Matthew Sheahan has also posted a detailed description of the search areas now involved and is urging any yachts transiting the area to join in the effort.

It makes perfect sense, of course, that people on yachts should help find the four missing crew from Cheeki Rafiki. But there is an element of risk involved–the overturned hull found by a container ship on Saturday, which presumably was Cheeki Rafiki, is certainly a hazard to other yachts. I would hate for anyone to find it by running into it.

If anyone does find it again, here’s another question: what exactly do you do with it? Is there any way to flip it over again? If not, how do you inspect the interior? Even for a well-equipped, well-trained diver, I imagine it would be a challenge.

Matt Sheahan in his post argues against the scenario I discussed in my last post, that what likely happened was that the boat suddenly flipped before the crew could deploy and board a liferaft. Sheahan urges the loss of the keel might have been gradual, giving the crew time to react. Others have argued that the fact that there were two personal rescue beacon hits from devices lit off in sequence, one after the other, proves that there must be survivors in a liferaft.

Again, the question in my mind is: under what circumstances do you have time to board a liferaft without bringing along the ship’s EPIRB? Two PLB hits in sequence does, of course, suggest there are two or more people cooperating on getting rescued, but they could just as easily be together in the water as in a raft while doing it.

I have read one report that states the ship’s EPIRB was ignited on Thursday, when the crew first reported they were taking on water, but no source is cited and I find no other reports confirming it. Given what we know, it seems unlikely. The crew reported Thursday they had a leak that was under control and that they were diverting to the Azores; given their experience, you wouldn’t think they’d also light off their EPIRB at this time. If they had, SAR resources would have immediately been focussed on recovering them.

One can only assume that the Coast Guard’s working assumption when they called off the initial search after just 53 hours was that any survivors had to have been in the water. I believe they made the right call resuming the search, given all the interest and unusual circumstances, but realistically I think the odds of finding survivors are slim.

Here’s yet another question I’m asking myself: if this had been a plain-vanilla cruising crew instead of a reasonably high-profile racing crew, would Robin Knox-Johnston, Sir Ben Ainslie, the British government, et al, have gone to such lengths lobbying the Coasties to keep on searching???

The fate of the four crew members aboard Cheeki Rafiki was confirmed on Friday when the U.S. Navy again found the overturned keel-less hull and inspected it closely enough to determine that its liferaft was still onboard. So with much drama and angst and effort we have at least confirmed what the U.S. Coast Guard initially surmised when it first suspended its search for survivors. I don’t think the effort was wasted or useless. Given the enormous interest in the fate of these four men, I think it was well worth it to achieve closure on that point.

I would hope some people who criticized the Coast Guard rather harshly for suspending the search might now express some regret (I noted, for example, that Brian Hancock, a well-known racing sailor, accused the Coasties of abandoning the search “without really trying”), but I’m not holding my breath on that. What’s more important is to focus on what we can take away from this tragedy to make sailing safer.

Time to wake up! This happens all the time

I’ve seen people discussing liferafts and such, but for me this big issue here is keels. The four crew on Cheeki died because the boat’s keel fell off, probably very suddenly, and this is not, as some have suggested, an unusual occurrence. It is frighteningly common. Modern fin keels fall off cutting-edge high-end race boats all the time (e.g., keel loss is a common reason for Vendee Globe withdrawals) and off less exotic race boats (e.g., I have one good friend who lost a keel off a TP52 while racing and know of many other similar incidents) and off common production boats, both while racing and cruising.

The underside of Cheeki Rafiki, showing the area where the keel ripped off. Note the large swath of damaged laminate below the keel’s footprint

On production boats like Cheeki, a Beneteau First 40.7, it is probably true that most keel failures are the result of damage sustained in groundings. This is a tricky business, as grounding damage can be very hard to assess accurately, and damage can be cumulative over several groundings. Even worse, with charter boats like Cheeki, there may be one or more groundings that take place and are never reported to the boat’s owner or those responsible for maintaining it.

For an excellent discussion of the damage sustained on Cheeki, I recommend you dive into this Sailing Anarchy thread here, from whence I pilfered these photos:

Enhanced out-take of the keel’s footprint from the image above. Questions raised: 1) are those bolt-heads and washers we see on the two forward keel bolts? Or are they broken off? 2) the aft bolt clearly seems to have been corroded, so is this where the trouble started? 3) the central bolts seem to have been the last to let go and took with them a big chunk of laminate, but was the laminate under the keel cored?

Another First 40.7, Barracuda, that lost its keel. Note the similarity in the damage to the underbody

Keel-bolt pattern on a stock First 40.7, as seen from inside. Note that the keel’s attachment points are not tied directly into the structural bilge grid. Also, this is an exceptionally shallow bilge!

Interestingly, on page 7 of the SA thread you’ll find one participant, ClubRacer.be, who claims to have been on two different supposedly undamaged never-grounded First 40.7s where the aft keel bolts started weeping when you honked down hard on the backstay. Another commenter, axobotl, claims to have been on a First 40.7 that grounded at hull speed without sustaining any detectable damage.

Thinking of that rusty aft bolt on Cheeki, I have to wonder if this is a weak spot on all First 40.7s that have been raced hard. (And there are a lot of them. They have an active one-design thing going on.) If you trap moisture against that bolt every time you crank down hard on the hydraulic backstay adjuster, corrosion seems inevitable.

In perusing the online commentary, I’ve seen that some people don’t believe it is possible to engineer a bolted-on fin keel that is not vulnerable. That this is a risk you have to take when sailing on boats like this.

Personally, I don’t accept this. I’m not an engineer, but I have to believe it is possible to design a keel attachment that spreads loads over a much wider area of the hull. After all, we never (or at least almost never) hear of wings shearing off of airplanes. Yes, I am sure “over-engineered” keel attachments would be heavier (and thus would decrease performance) and more expensive (thus less economically attractive), but they must be feasible. On page 6 of the SA thread, for example, you’ll find links to a patented Swedish system for attaching a fairly aggressive fin keel that looks incredibly strong.

As a starting point, I would say a “properly” engineered fin-keel attachment should spread loads over such a large area that you should need to effectively destroy the hull to remove the keel (like on a full-keel boat). Also, there should be some mechanism or “fuse” that lets you know when the assembly has been critically damaged.

I can only hope that all the energy that went into browbeating the Coast Guard to continue looking for Cheeki might now be channeled into this purpose. Then the crew of Cheeki would not have died in vain.

How do we create this new standard of construction in what is effectively an unregulated industry? It would help a lot, I think, if race organizers and rule mavens started the ball rolling. If the high-end race boats whose keels fail most often were forced to be safer in this regard, a lot would follow from that.

Those of you who don’t follow the British sailing comics may have missed the Crash Test Boat series of articles that ran in Yachting Monthly a few years back. It was a brilliant premise, cooked up by then-editor Paul Gelder: lay hands on an average plain-vanilla cruising boat and test it to death, carefully documenting everything that does and does not work when coping with various simulated emergencies. Over a period of eight months, YM systematically “tested to destruction” a 1982 Jeanneau Sun Fizz ketch and created an extremely useful series of articles and videos. All that material is now available in one book, appropriately titled The Crash Test Boat, published by Adlard Coles.

In all the book covers eight carefully crafted simulations: running aground, capsizing, a dismasting, creating a jury rig, sinking (hull breach), major leaks (failed seacock or through-hull fitting), fire onboard, and a propane explosion. The last, inevitably, wasn’t really a simulation. They actually did blow up the boat (see photo up top), sort of like blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, as a magnificent denouement to Paul’s career as a yachting journalist and editor.

It’s impossible to summarize all the useful information in this book, so you really do have to buy it. The lay-out is very succinct and user-friendly, with lots of useful photos and well thought out conclusions and recommendations on how to prepare for and cope with each emergency situation. There are even QR codes prominently displayed for each chapter, so you can quickly access the relevant videos online.

My advice would be to read the book closely, study the videos, make your own conclusions about what information is useful to you, equip your boat accordingly, then keep your copy of the book onboard your boat.

The dismasting. The book includes detailed tests and recommendations on what tools work best to clear the rig

Fire onboard! Find out what extinguishers work best for what sort of fires

High and dry. Tips on how to get off again and how to survive the ordeal if you don’t

Rolled in a capsize. There are very simple things you can do to minimize the damage

Paul Gelder admires the aftermath of the propane explosion

The section on major leaks give a good sense of how creative the YM team was in testing different solutions to different problems. In addition to trying to stem the leaks they created with various commercial products–the proverbial soft wood plugs we all wire to our through-hulls, Forespar’s Truplug synthetic bung, etc.–they also tried potatoes and carrots, which worked pretty darned well.

Each section also contains “real-life story” anecdotal accounts of actual emergencies and how they were resolved, so you can compare simulated experience to the real thing.

The Crash Test Boat (2013, Adlard Coles Nautical); Forward by Mike Golding; Edited by Paul Gelder; 176 pp.

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: Loyal WaveTrain riders hopefully noticed that the site was down for a while a couple of days ago. This was because we’re in the middle of redesigning it. Hopefully the new version will get launched this week!

While dropping in occasionally at Maine Yacht Center over the winter to keep tabs on my own boat, I always had half an eyeball on Rich Wilson’s new IMOCA Open 60, Great American IV (ex-Mirabaud), which was undergoing a refit for Wilson’s 2016 Vendee Globe bid. Recently, MYC general manager Brian Harris (see photo up top) gave me a nickel tour and told me about all the work they’d done.

I gather, as big race-boat refits go, this was a relatively modest one. Here’s the run-down:

Complete electrical refit, including all power storage and generating systems and all new wiring throughout the boat. Two new 200AH Genasun lithium-ion batteries were installed. These are nourished by two newly refurbished Watt & Sea hydro-generators with brand new controllers, by four new 50-watt Solbian flexible solar panels, and by a new 300-amp water-cooled direct-drive (no belt or bracket) Nanni engine alternator with a new water-cooled regulator. Wiring for a wind-generator to be mounted later was also installed.

All new spaghetti everywhere. This is the back of the nav station, showing only some of the new wiring that was installed

The heart of the new electrical system. These two lithium-ion batteries weigh almost nothing, take up little space, and together form a 400AH house bank

That blue thing stuck between the saildrive transmission and the main body of the engine is the direct-drive alternator. This was a new one on me. You can see the plumbing for the water-cooling, which helps keep this puppy super-efficient, as alternators really hate heat. Rated at 300 amps, it actually puts out almost that much in real life, so Brian tells me, which means you can crank up the batteries from almost nothing in a little over an hour!

The alternator’s brain, a new Iskra regulator, is also water-cooled

New navigation station and galley module. To make the boat more comfortable and habitable for Wilson, an older sailor who will often be communicating with shore and creating educational content to send to his Sites Alive Foundation, a new larger nav desk was designed and built from Corecell foam, E-glass, and epoxy resin. A more substantial galley with a fixed sink, a dedicated stove mount, and dedicated storage areas was also built and installed, and the cabin layout was altered to create an area with standing headroom by the companionway.

The new nav station with a gimballed combination bench-seat/berth. The molded seat back is removable

The new galley module. It may not look like much, but on an Open 60 this is considered super deluxe

All major sailing foils serviced. The moveable canting keel and daggerboards were all removed so the keel bearing and daggerboard cassette bearings could be serviced. The bearings on the twin rudders were also serviced.

The canting keel, minus the hull

Running rigging modifications. One set of mast deflectors was removed from the existing running backstays and an additional set of backstays was installed to make the backstays overall easier to handle and more secure. Sheet leads were relocated and a symmetrical continuous-line in-hauler was installed on the jib trim rings (allowing adjustments to lead angles to be made on both sides of the boat simultaneously). Various rope clutches were also relocated.

On most Open 60s there’s just one running back on each side, with “deflectors” that pull it in against the mast at different locations so that it can back up different headsails on different forward stays. Rich wanted an extra backstay on each side, with fewer deflectors. This is heavier and creates more windage, but is more secure and easier to handle

The new continuous-line in-hauler (left of the trim ring in this photo) resets lead angles on both sides of the boat, so you don’t have to worry about what happens after you tack

Deck modifications. To improve security on deck the lifeline height was increased and the number of lifelines was increased from two to three. This necessitated the installation of all new stanchion posts and the fabrication and installation of new bow and aft pulpits. New cabintop handrails were also installed. The boat’s tiller was modified from a cumbersome yoke configuration to a simpler single inline tiller. All Harken winches and the winch pedestal were also serviced.

Higher lifelines and more of them. Again, its heavier this way, but safer

New handrails along the house make it much easier to move safely between the cockpit and deck

A one-stick tiller. It’s simpler and takes up less space

Electronics upgrades. New navigation electronics, new computers, and a new data network were installed. A new remote video system was designed and installed, with two exterior and one interior remote cameras. New processors were installed for the B&G autopilots, and a new Iridium satellite phone system was also installed.

New watermakers. A new reverse-osmosis watermaking system was installed.

Next I’m hoping to get to actually go for a sail on this thing. Brian keeps mentioning it; I just hope it happens for real!

Lunacy got launched and rigged at Maine Yacht Center on Monday. I was up there yesterday and managed to get all the sails on before the rain squalls started up. As you can see from the photo up top, I’ve scored some new canvas, courtesy of Richard Hallett: a replacement purple dodger, a new bright red sail cover, and a new bright blue sunshield on the headsail. At last this is close to the canvas-color configuration I envisioned when I first got the boat, lo these many years ago. (Please note: the canvas multi colors match those of the name graphic, the logic of which I’ve explained before.)

Every spring I’ve launched a cruising sailboat in New England, I always swear I’ll be afloat as early as possible in May. But something always happens–endless varnishing projects (back when I had boats with brightwork), or some awful unforeseen time-consuming repair (most commonly), or simple mission creep (stuff taking much longer than expected)–and usually I’m lucky if the damn boat is in by mid-June. So I’m feeling pretty pleased about this. Apprehensive, too. As predicted in my last post on this subject, the blizzard should be hitting any day now!

We did have one unexpected hiccup just prior to launching, which cost a few days. As part of the rudder-skeg welding project, I asked MYC to install a new bearing where the rudder stock pierces the transom scoop. The old poured-epoxy bearing, of questionable provenance, had to be chipped out prior to the welding anyway, as it was very close to where all the action (i.e., heat) was. MYC proposed inserting a plastic Delrin bearing, which sounded perfect to me.

Here you see the new skeg root with finished fillets, post primer, prior to bottom paint being applied. The new Delrin bearing can be seen inside the tube that penetrates the transom scoop

This is the alternative solution adopted by Jean-Claude Fontaine, who owns one of Lunacy‘s five sister-ships and had a similar problem with the external skeg weld failing. He fabricated a whole new skeg and carried it into the interior of the boat, where it was tied into the internal framing (Thanks to Jean-Claude for sharing the photo!)

After Lunacy‘s rudder was reinstalled, we found it was binding terribly on the bearing and it was very hard to turn the rudder. On closer inspection we realized the bearing tube is a little out of whack and isn’t perfectly parallel to the rudder stock. This, I reckon, was why a poured-epoxy bearing was installed in the first place. Fortunately, it only took a couple of days to remove the plastic bearing and pour a new epoxy one around the stock.

As noted earlier, MYC is a very good place to ogle OPBs (Other People’s Boats). This is American Promise, Dodge Morgan’s old boat, which was launched while I was there yesterday.

That’s a brand new cabinhouse on her. The plywood core of the old one was thoroughly rotten, so MYC removed it over the winter and built a new one.

American Promise with her house off

Promise also needed work done on her rudder. They had to cut a hole in the storage shed floor to drop it

Back to my new dodger. I had Richard modify the design a bit.

I asked that the window be made smaller so that I could fold the dodger down without mashing it all up at the corners. It’s not quite as spiffy looking, but it’s much more practical. I still have a good view of the mainsheet traveler, which is what I mostly look through the window at anyway.

Here you see the dodger with its side-wings on; in the photo up top those are off. I normally only put those on when thrashing to weather in gnarly conditions.

I’ve still got a bunch of work to do on the boat, so I’m hoping to get up there tomorrow. I’ll be wearing my snowshoes just in case.

Sailors of a certain age will remember seeing this B-movie title in TV listings for certain low-budget UHF stations back in the day: I Sailed To Tahiti With an All-Girl Crew. I certainly remember it, and I’ve used the title as a throw-away line most of my life, but I don’t think I ever actually sat through the whole movie. Quite recently I learned there was a real person and a real story that inspired the making of that film, and (as is so often the case) the real story is actually much more interesting than the one Hollywood told. This concerns a professional steeplejack, Lee Quinn (see photo up top), who had a strong adventurous streak and sort of inevitably fell into the sport of ocean sailing starting in the 1950s.

Google around a bit and you’ll see there’s not much available online about Quinn–just a few old news clippings and some stray archive pix. The only full-length coherent narrative of his life is found in the pages of a self-published autobiography, Above and Beyond: The Simple Life, written by his ex-wife, Mary Ann Quinn. She, too, was a steeplejack, probably the first woman ever to take it up professionally, and shared many of Lee’s adventures.

If you google the movie title, you’ll get many more hits, but not much substantive information.

The film was released in 1968 and evidently was popular in drive-in theaters, presumably because what people did mostly in drive-ins was make out. The story line was pretty thin–two yachtsmen get into argument about who’s a better sailor, and one of them bets the other $20,000 (which was quite a lot of money in those days) that he can beat him in a race to Tahiti, even with the handicap of taking on an all-girl crew. There are a few plot twists, of course, one of which involves one of the female crew being wanted for murder, as referenced in this YouTube clip.

If you want to actually watch the whole film, you can buy what I’m guessing is a bootleg DVD cheap on eBay, though I think your money would be much better invested in a copy of Mary Ann’s book.

Lee and Mary Ann working a job in Honolulu in 1958

Lee and Mary Ann got married in 1946, soon fell into the steeplejack business as a team, and in their spare time had wild adventures together. They bicycled and motorcycled around Europe together, hitchhiked across North Africa, hopped a freighter across the Med (on which Mary Ann almost got raped), took up flying, and crashed a plane into the palace of dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Seriously, the list goes on and on. These two were big-time adrenalin junkies.

In 1952, Lee got it into his head that they should take up sailing. He talked Mary Ann into buying a 30-foot sloop, Flamingo, that almost immediately was destroyed by a tsunami raised by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake. Lee was still determined to go sailing, however, so he at once built himself a 16-foot catamaran out of plywood and set out to sail it solo down the coast of Baja California.

Lee test-sails his homemade cat at Long Beach

He got caught in some very fierce weather, almost lost the cat, but was saved by a fishing boat that simply hoisted him and the boat right on to their deck.

Lee got distracted by flying for a while, but soon enough came back to sailing and in 1961 bought a 45-foot ketch in Sausalito that he appropriately named Neophyte, as testament to his status as a sailor. On an early shakedown sail with Mary Ann, they nearly lost the boat when they were almost run down by a freighter near Point Conception.

Neophyte under sail

Mary Ann at the helm

Lee was not daunted by this and immediately started making plans to sail Neophyte around the world. Mary Ann wasn’t interested in that little adventure, as she was starting to get into competitive surfing, so Lee determined he’d simply go alone. Mary Ann objected to this, insisting he had to have a crew, and Lee essentially retaliated by recruiting an all-girl crew. After signing on one young German woman he met at random, Giselle, who according to Lee had “the physical attributes of a voluptuous Italian movie queen,” he advertised in the paper for more women crew and was besieged with applicants.

And this was beginning of his great schtick. From 1962 to 1970 Lee Quinn roamed the world in two different boats named Neophyte and always sailed with all-girl crews. In all a total of 105 women from 18 different countries joined him and together they attracted major publicity wherever they went. There was a constant string of newspaper articles, Lee gave many profitable lectures, and eventually the “all-girl” sailing schtick made it into the movies.

Lee Quinn’s crew receives a package of ice cream from a U.S. Navy warship while underway in 1963

As for Quinn & Co., yes, they did make it to Tahiti, among many other places, including Antarctica. Mary Ann was a very good sport about it all (to hear her tell it, anyway) and joined the boat and crew at certain points. Eventually, though, she and Lee divorced amicably, in 1964, and Lee married one of his crewmembers, Bea Berkson. Just two years later, however, they divorced and Lee started courting Mary Ann again. She appreciated this, for they did have a special bond, but she cherished her independence and was too busy with her own life–running the steeplejack business, traveling on her own, plus competing as both a surfer and skier–to reunite with her wayward ex-husband.

Unfortunately, Lee’s life ended in tragedy, as his predilection for nautical mishaps was never sated. The first Neophyte eventually succeeded in getting run down by a freighter, just off Sydney Heads in Australia in 1965. Lee at this point toyed with the notion of abandoning his voyage, but Mary Ann, ironically, urged him to continue, and he soon purchased another boat, a 48-foot cutter, which he christened Neophyte Too.

Neophyte Too under sail

Soon enough Lee was having more misadventures. He put his new boat up on the Great Barrier Reef for a while, then she was dismasted a year later, off Baja California, not long before Lee finally closed the loop on his circumnavigation in 1967.

He soon set out on yet another peripatetic voyage, again with all women as crew. This time he decided to start with a loop of the North Pacific and sailed to Japan via Honolulu and southeast Asia. On October 11, 1970, Lee and and four women, two of them Japanese, departed Aburatsubo, Japan, on Neophyte Too headed back for San Francisco.

They were never seen or heard from again.

It’s very appropriate that Mary Ann is the one left to tell Lee’s story. He was an overwhelming force in her life, and it’s a great testament to her own ambition and willpower that she succeeded in carving out an independent life of her own… and that she succeeded in surviving him.