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K.C. Walker wrote:Tim,
I had to look on Wikipedia to decide whether or not it qualified as a capsize because I wasn't really sure. The boat was only briefly on its side. On the replay in my mind I don't have all the details, like I know that the sails were in the water and the mast was at least partially in the water but I don't know if the mast tip hit. I also did not look backwards to see if the centerboard was out of the water. One part of the replay that I do recall is looking down from very high up watching the water rushing in and thinking, oh, you are actually going to capsize this time, watch to see how the boat sits in the water on its side. And I briefly noted that it seemed to sit at about the midline of the boat.
I have no doubt that had we not been in the hiking straps and laying backwards on the top side that we would have been in the water. Amongst all the other errors that I made, at least that one went my way.
We were actually on a somewhat close reach. The breeze had just been 5-6 kn, so perfect for the BAHS. I think that if any of us had released pressure we would have been fine. I bought bigger 52 mm auto ratchet blocks for the BAHS this year and they're holding too well with the 180° wrap. The 40 mm that I had last year, were about right but one went bad and I figured bigger was better... I'm going to try moving them forward to the coaming where they only get a 90° wrap and see if that does the trick.
K.C. Walker wrote:Tim,
Capsizing and being able to sail away has a lot to do with the boat, the conditions, and how the crew handles the situation. If as you say earlier, your definition of a capsize is that people go in the water and then have to recover, I've done that hundreds of times, including landing on my back in the middle of the sail and turning turtle plenty of times. In those situations I sailed away from most of those, but that had to do with the boat being a windsurfer. I've capsized my sunfish and been able to right it and sail away but that boat has a tendency to turn turtle and then be more difficult.
The amount and location of floatation also has a bearing on how easy it is to recover from a capsize. Though it is counterintuitive, the more floatation you have and the further off the centerline it is, the harder it is to right the boat. The Albacore class boats, also designed by Uffa Fox, are considered pretty easy to self rescue, their floatation is centrally located and when capsized they lay at the midline, i.e. the center board does not come above the water. The JY 15 has a lot of seat floatation and the center board is a good bit above water when the boat is on its side. It is considered non-self rescuing and has a tendency to turn turtle. This is why I was interested to note where my boat floated while on it's side. I think the DaySailer is considered only marginally self rescuing and I don't know whether there is a difference between the DS 1 and the DS 2.
Obviously, things would have been different had I been single handing and the boat on it's side, as I would not have had as much ballast. I do wish I had looked back to see where the center board was with the mast, pretty much horizontal. With the DS 1 the boat fills pretty much instantly with all the water it's going to take on so there's no waiting around for the boat to settle lower as other compartments fill.
Once righted and the boat awash we really only had a couple of inches of freeboard. We definitely could not have sailed as it was extremely unstable. The first order of business was to get everybody to the middle of the boat for balance and get the sails down. We definitely had chop coming over the windward rail and stuff floating out of the boat over the leeward rail. I lost yet another favorite hat! Even though we noticed the hat when it was only, maybe 2 feet past the rail, there was no way I was going to try to reach out for it, because the boat would definitely have gone over again. I don't have suction balers but I think they would've taken care of the last 8 inches of water which would've been nice. I've dipped the rail a couple of other times before getting ratchets blocks and taking on 6 to 8 inches of water in the cockpit, in those situations it would have been nice to have bailers as I was still able to sail.
After I got back to the dock I did check the floatation tanks and they were all pretty much dry, so we had full floatation plus some additional under the rails. I think if it had been any choppier it's likely we would not have been able to stay ahead of the incoming water and would not have been able to sail home.
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