Mobile bay regatta

You talking about the Daulphin Island race? I heard it got nasty with a storm...people missing but I don't know anything else.

Based on some Facebook posts it sounds like the cat sailors are all ok.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news... sing-alabama-after-boats-capsize-n348481

Connor Gaston, who was quoted in the article, is a H16 sailor (Along with his dad and uncle). Andy Humphries (f18) and Rundell Curtis (T) were also there. It would Be interesting to hear their stories. Usually, the multihulls are done way before 4:30, at least that is my recollection.

ETA: Rundell was sailing with Andy, not on a T.

All the cat sailors are OK. Fairly certain that the two fatalities came from a Cal 25 that capsized and sank (from the thread going on Sailing Anarchy).

Mike McNeir's Hobie 20 was totaled.

An 18 HT essentially suffered the same fate:

I saw on the ABC morning news this AM a dismasted Hobie 16 being towed in by a keelboat.

The video taken from a boat when the storm hit is pretty scary - not only the weather, but the lack of preparedness the crew showed. No life jackets, no foul weather gear, no harnesses - there was one old guy just sitting in the **** in jeans and a light rain jacket when it's blowing 60+, horizontal rain and lightning all around.

Connor posted on the beachcats

I was out there in the storm on our H16. All the cat sailors are fine. I know an 18HT Javelin and a Hobie 20 were damaged beyond repair. I've seen pictures of the Javelin but not the 20.. Stuff was ridiculous where we were. Honestly it was much more intense than any of the videos I have seen from other boats. The best way I can describe it is based on what I saw on the radar on my phone shortly before we got hit. There was one smallish area on the radar that was in the red. Dauphin island was more in the green radar area. Our boat and my uncle's boat were literally in the red area when we encountered the storm.
Someone from al.com wants to talk to me tomorrow so I'll post up the interview when I find it posted. My uncle Ron also talked with the Mobile press register.. There was a phone interview I did with the local NBC 15 news station that aired yesterday

I too was shocked watching the video, no lifejackets in a crazy storm?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie... TE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-04-26-16-21-21

So your on a beach cat and you see this coming fast, gettong to shore is not an option. What do you do?

Turtle and hang on for dear life???

Everyone's worst nightmare, that's for sure. CNN is saying there are 5 people missing, is that accurate?

I want to say we've discussed this fairly recently, but there's an age-old debate about whether it's smarter to intentionally capsize in a T-storm.

From the other side, this will result in another CG investigation, I'm sure US Sailing has already been contacted. Regatta safety plans will be reviewed, etc.

Does your regatta have a safety plan? Everyone wants to be responsible for their own safety, but when this stuff happens, the CG fully expects the RC/OA to know exactly who is missing, and where they need to be searching.

Mike

I've been running this scenario through in my head since this happened.

Turtling the boat is probably the best option, but the tricky part is going to be to predict that this is what you need to do. Once that wind hits, I doubt you are going to be able to get the boat turtle because the wind will be so strong that the boat will just keep flipping and/or right itself. Even if you did predict it and get it turtled, I'm not convinced that the boat would stay inverted once the sea state gets rolling. You would also risk filling the mast with water if you did manage to keep it submerged for the duration of that weather and then righting it could be an issue if you made it through (but you would still be a little better off on a more visible boat and somewhat out of the water). So, maybe try it but be prepared to quickly abandon the boat if it rights itself. If the wind is already cranking, I would give up on the thought of turtling the boat.

You can't really drop the jib on a lot of our boats and even if you could, the mast and hull windage alone is probably enough to toss the boat. Reducing sail by dropping the main would be an option up to about 40 knots windspeed (jib only), maybe 45 knots if you cut the jib loose and let it flog to pieces... but dropping all the sails wouldn't help you in that kind of severe storm on a small light catamaran. The tricky thing here, again, is predicting how bad that storm front was going to get. Your options are more limited on the catamaran (vs. monohull) to change things when the wind starts to build to the point where it is a problem.

Having the correct gear is going to be essential because I think you would just end up abandoning the boat (intentionally or not). VHF, EPIRB, flotation....finding a quick way to carry some hydration might be a good idea too. Some line so you and your crew can secure yourselves together (which you should already pack in your pfd for various purposes). You could be afloat for a while - focus early on retaining as much body heat as possible. If you got caught in the severe part of that storm, you would probably just need to abandon the boat in a controlled manner so you and your crew can stay together and minimize the risk of injury as the boat becomes less boat and more projectile.

Mobile Bay is so shallow, that I'm not sure turtling is an option. Everywhere I've sailed is 10 ft or less, except in the shipping channel.

David and I have managed to drop the main, and run downwind with the Jib in 40+, but that's not nearly the pressure that 60+ is. That is what I would probably try first, but I'm not sure what the answer is in that situation.

This gives me another thought too. I had intended to pack my flares in a drybag on the rear trampoline storage bag. I could set that drybag up as a bit of a ditch bag and put in a few spare water bottles, rope, etc. Hmmm...I wonder what I would want to have in that little bag.

Dye marker, signal mirror and the inflatable orange sausage divers use. It rolls up slightly larger than a cell phone.

You're carrying water/food in your camelbak, right? So maybe redundancy in the ditch bag.

Some cash in the ditch bag is probably a good idea, too.

I guess the remainder of contents would depend on how far you intend to wander in the boat... Maybe a backup PLB? Flashlight?

My brother and I did that on the N20 at Hogsbreath after flipping several times when that front rolled through. Much less dramatic than that Dauphin storm. Only about 30 with gusts, and we were on the bay side, so the water was probably only about 2 foot chop.

Rolled the jib and dropped the main. Still clipped downwind on bare poles at 6+ kts. Once we got the main down and lashed to the tramp, the lightning was my biggest concern.

I guess if it was blowing 60+ I'd be concerned that the wind would get under the tramp and flip it (even with the sails down)....especially if there were large seas which would likely catch the trampoline at the crest?

And all you Worrell/Tybee veterans... Surely you faced rather ugly conditions out in the ocean... How did you handle white-out squalls?

I know one of you got dismasted and jury-rigged a sail to get back to land...

Most of those sausages are designed to be filled with air from the scuba tanks, I believe...and I'm not sure how much they would add to your visibility from the air (I presume this would be the primary means you get spotted?)...dye marker and signal mirror are definitely good things.

There's a roll-out orange thing too. I forget what it's called, but it essentially acts like a dye marker.

Mike

The

safety sausage

is known as a Surface Marker Buoy. They can be inflated by either free flowing the regulator into the base or it also has a manual blow up stem.

Surface Marker Buoy on Amazon.com

I would think riding it out with the boat on it's side would be the best. The likelihood of keeping it upright is slim to none, but I've only ridden out wind like that for ten minutes on a smaller lake. So no big waves. The wind was reported to be 60mph, but I don't believe it was actually that high where I was either.

I do think that no matter how many times you run a scenario through your head, the reality will always be different. Location, severity of the weather, and who you are with, then throw whatever level of exhaustion you've got going on top of all that. Any level of preparedness certainly won't hurt though. What I'm getting at, is there isn't a set answer, just the hindsight of what should've been done differently.

While I have no direct evidence, I would be a little concerned that the boat might self-right if you leave it on it's side. Frankly, I was pretty concerned about it when we flipped in what was gusting to 36knots during a steeplechase several years ago. It only required a slight flinch to right it. Maybe if you can sit on the mast and hold it down? (that is, if you don't lose the boat in the process as it will be flying through the water even on its side)

Self righting could definitely be an issue. I had a H16 do it, but not anything else. Yet. I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility, but if it goes turtle, it likely won't stay that way too when it's that windy and rough. If it can't go turtle, and upright isn't an option, you're left with either being on it's side, or abandoning. Abandoning is less than ideal. <img src="<>/laugh.gif" alt="laugh" title="laugh" height="15" width="15" />

I don't ever want to be in that situation. Those kinds of winds, for that long would be some scary sh!t, and I'd consider myself lucky to survive it on a beachcat.

I agree. I think the boat is literally going to roll across the top of the water like a tumbleweed in that kind of wind until it starts to break apart...so while abandoning it is less than ideal, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when it's in that action.

I can't think of any situation where intentionally abandoning would be better than staying with the boat (except maybe when it's headed for a seawall or large rocks). Your survival odds are exponentially better with the boat than floating in the water.

The boat will give you a place to stay dry(er), and will help rescuers find you.

If the water isn't deep enough to turtle, let it snap the mast, then turtle. If the boat is inverted, and you sit on the windward side, it should stay inverted. Don't sit on the leeward side, or it will come up.

Shouldn't be a tumbleweed unless it's on its side, then all bets are off.

Mike

True. That's a recipe for getting tangled in something, getting the snot kicked out of you, then drowning.

So, bring some big butt wire cutters, and at the first sign of a storm, cut the rig lose and just float along on the platform? Tough to tell when that point has arrived too. Hindsight again.

btw Jake, If I sound snarky, I'm not trying to.

I've had an N20 self-right in about 20knots, maybe 25knots of wind. (Where it proceeded to run right into the back of the tow vessel - yeah not my proudest moment)

Andy got to shore on his C2. Jib is

toast

and has a hole in the window of the main. They could not get the sails down in the wind. Somehow they kept the boat in place.

F18ht from Mississippi, I think:

Two questions for possible solutions

1-pull the pin on a shroud and drop the mast

2-flip the boat on the side and the skipper stays with the hulls and crew ties off to the top of the mast preventing it from righting

Would either work?

Thanks

Pulling a shroud pin to drop the mast is probably the best/quickest/safest way to drop the stick but I would still want to flip the boat over, just to keep the tramp down low, as in under water, and then just sit between the hulls on the underside of the tramp, using the mast/sails underwater as a sea anchor.

I think the biggest 'problem' in this event was recognition. Nobody knew the winds would turn out to be 80mph. I've been out when 'a storm was coming' and you can usually see them coming from a ways off, you'll certainly hear it if there's lightning in it... but I'm usually thinking, is it going to be 20mph...or 30...or maybe 40? But 80?? I never would have thought it would have been blowing THAT hard!

I think that's probably why so many guys were caught up short of taking the sails down, etc, hindsight is always 20-20.

Indeed - a lot of racers might be inclined to approach that storm with a little more

yee-haw!

. I remember a Tybee500 start with a fairly significant storm cell just offshore and to the North. It was cranking on the beach for the start. Mischa and others headed right for the storm cell offshore. I thought they were crazy. I finished about 4 hours behind them that day and re-evaluated my desire to stay away from those storms.

And, BTW, I would never recommend tying yourself to the boat.

So you're going to intentionally destroy your boat so the storm doesn't? Great idea. Apparently those proposing this have never been on a dismasted boat. The rig and sails will destroy a lot besides themselves in conditions way more benign than what they had last weekend. Like was said earlier by Karl the 2nd, you deal with it as it comes with the parameters at that time. The armchair quarterbacking here is almost as bad as SA.