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4 lost as 40.7 sinks off Azores 15/May/14

22K views 83 replies 33 participants last post by  MarkofSeaLife 
#1 · (Edited)
This is no slouch cruisers boat but has completed the Round Britain and Ireland race and is one of those for charter race boats. It was heading from Antigua to the UK.

Stormforce director Doug Innes said: ''The yacht Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau First 40.7, was on passage from the Caribbean to the UK with a crew of four yachtsmen. On Thursday she started taking on water.
''We were in contact with the skipper and at the time the yacht and crew were keeping the situation stable.
''They had not been able to ascertain where the water ingress was from and were diverting to the Azores.
''Unfortunately we lost contact during the early hours of Friday morning and we believe it is possible the crew abandoned to the life raft.
''Search and Rescue authorities were mobilised and a mixture of Canadian and US aircraft along with merchant vessels searched throughout Friday and Saturday.
''Although the search efforts co-ordinated by Boston were exceptional we are devastated that the search has now been called off so soon.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...ter-yacht-capsized-in-middle-of-Atlantic.html

Heres the kind of thing Stormforce do
http://www.stormforce.biz/Products/160/Antigua-race-week.html#.U3jDI9q9KSM
 
#6 ·
Mark--

From the BBC:

On Saturday, a cargo vessel which was helping with the search spotted and photographed an overturned hull which matched the description of the Cheeki Rafiki but reported no signs of people on board or a life raft.

The US Coastguard said the search area had involved approximately 4,146 square miles and it was "extremely disappointed" not to have found the sailors.

Winds at the start of the search were said to have been blowing at more than 50mph, the sea reached heights of up to 20ft and visibility was reduced to under a mile.​

The foregoing statement "overturned hull" would imply that the hull was absent a ballast keel as, if the keel were still in place, there is no way that a 40.7 would remain inverted, particularly in such a seaway. Considering how the boats are built, I have a hard time imagining how the keel could be entirely lost. Can you?

The crew might still be alive and floating around in a raft but, if there was a catastrophic inversion in such conditions, they very likely may not have been able to retrieve the raft and/or Abandon Ship kit bag, No?
 
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#12 ·
Re: Restart the search for missing sailors petition

Maybe I am wrong, but does the U.S. Coast Guard have an obligation to search and rescue 4 Britons missing nowhere near the United States?
Yes, if they can. There's a moral imperative, too.

The Coast Guard has issued a statement on why they called off the search after 53 hours of looking, and has spoken with the families. There just wasn't a good outcome this time.
 
#16 ·
Re: Restart the search for missing sailors petition

Isn't this deja vu all over again? Same general area, same boat manufacturer? Are these boats falling to pieces? I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about the seaworthiness of this type construction.
 
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#18 ·
Re: Restart the search for missing sailors petition

I understand the angst. But I'm not signing a petition like that. I trust the USCG to assess and understand the situation better than a petitioner.

God be with the families.
Sadly, I have to agree. The pro's know what they are doing. They would keep searching if there was a chance.
 
#19 ·
I have been on races on the Long Island Sound with good size seas in which we were going fast enough to more or less catch air and land painfully HARD

It was hard on the crews body and harder on the mind as it is one of the few times i was really expecting something to break in a big way
 
#22 ·
The USCG had commented on this and the BBC has been carrying the story. USCG logic was that in wind, wave, cold conditions, 48 hours was more than the survival window. What was unsaid is that this is also in the middle of nowhere--a very expensive SAR operation.

When they were informed the boat had a 12-man offshore raft, they reconsidered. And apparently reconsidered again, thinking that if the raft was launched, it should have also deployed an EPIRB. Since there have been no signals, the prognosis was that it is unlikely anyone made it into a raft, and again, cold wx makes for a very short survival time, and a [unstated] very expensive SAR mission.

So signals, no signs of life, poor survival window...but I think the unstated cost of operating air assets mid-ocean is the clincher.
 
#23 ·
It seems like if they have a fix on the position of the hull, it should be possible to really narrow down the projected position of a liferaft, shrinking the search area and the cost. It should also narrow the area for any satellite image searches that are possible. It does not seem likely that these physically fit guys did not at least get a chance to inflate the liferaft. The boat did not just break up and go straight to the bottom. Something doesn't add up.
 
#25 ·
Hmm, "off Massachusetts", or rather a thousand miles off the coast. Is it just me that thinks NBC needs to buy a vowel?

smurph, it is very possible that all four guys were on deck at night and one rogue wave (and they do come 100' tall in the Atlantic) rolled the boat, snapped the keel, and washed them all into frigid water, all in the flash of a moment.

Apparently someone got motivated enough to send assets to the hull, and whether anyone is inside (deceased) or simply swept away...A full week in that cold water is way beyond survival time, even in a gumby suit.

Old saying: Man plans, God laughs. [censored] happens.
 
#31 ·
Now that the raft is confirmed to be still on the boat, your theory seems the most likely, especially with the windows blown out. It is surprising that in those conditions whoever was at the wheel was possibly not tethered in. In those waters they would not last more than a couple of hours before hypothermia set in.
Besides not being there in the first place, what lessons can be taken away from this? Tethered below decks with some sort of temporary air supply? Always tethered on deck? What could have been done to avoid this outcome? These boats (unlike mine and many full keel boats) apparently do not sink so "stay with the boat" has got to be priority #1.
 
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#27 ·
The rescuers said the yacht's life raft had not been deployed and was still in its storage space.

An image showing the life raft still in position had been "shared with and acknowledged by the [men's] families", the Coast Guard said later on Friday night.
Well, I am sorry, but thats the most difficult news. The crew must then be assumed be lost.

Mark
 
#30 ·
Wow - the keel has gone. Sorry to speculate, but the keel area was damaged/bolts loosened. They started taking on water, alerted coast guard. Bam! Keel tears off, boat flips with liferaft still secured. Tragically, chances are one or more were below trying to find/fix the leak...damn. I was really hoping that when they located the hull, the sailors would be in the vicinity...
 
#39 · (Edited)
That's a great close-up. What would you say the thickness of the hull is? Looks mighty thin but maybe it's just the scale of the picture.

From reading about these things, it seems the keel is simply thru-bolted with big "fender washers" on the other side of the glass. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHEETIN ME! Who in H comes up with this kind of "engineering?" "The boat had gone aground and maybe there was damage?????" Well, it IS a sailboat folks. Sailboats FREQUENTLY go aground without their keels falling off shortly thereafter.
 
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