Are these crossings merely the ill-advised voyages of extremely fortunate sailors? Or is it possible that properly equipped and under command of an expert skipper, some of these mini-cruisers manage quite well in the conditions found off-shore?
Most of us don't have the desire to subject ourselves to the risk and tedium of a small-boat ocean crossing. But we're still quite happy to learn what we can from the adventurous few who dare. We don't ask questions intent on our own "blue-water passage," just to glean any information that might make our own sailing safer in the lakes, bays and coastal cruising grounds we frequent.
For a detailed examination of small boat seaworthiness, Small Craft Advisor sought comment from three experts:
John Vigor, a full-time boating author and editor based on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, John has five books in print, the latest two being "The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat" (International Marine) and "Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere" (Paradise Cay). Mr. Vigor is the former managing editor of Sea Magazine and is a former South African national dinghy sailing champion in the International Mirror Class. He has 15,000 miles of deep-sea experience, having both raced and cruised across the Atlantic in boats of 33 feet and under.
Stephen Baker, of Stephen Baker Yacht Design, was educated at England's Southhampton College of Higher Education in yacht and boat design. Mr. Baker has designed everything from catamarans to centerboard cruisers, including Mini Transat and Globe Challenge boats. Stephen's responses were the focus of last issue's Speed Q&A article.
Dudley Dix, of Dudley Dix Yacht Design. A 1979 Cruising World Design Competition winner, Dudley is a graduate of the Westlawn School Of Yacht Design. Mr. Dix designs yachts of many types and materials for professional builders. He also specializes in detailed plans for amateur builders, having built many of his own designs for his personal use. Most recently the Didi 38 "Black Cat" which he sailed from 1995 until 2000, including three crossings of the South Atlantic.
SCA: How critical is speed for safety at sea?
VIGOR: It's not critical at all. Speed is not what you should look for first in a seagoing boat. It's very satisfying to sail a fast boat and to make fast passages, but as far as safety goes, the best case you can make for speed is that it's sometimes helpful.
Speed may in some circumstances be a substitute for seaworthiness, but it's not one in which you should place all your faith. By that, I mean a fast coastal cruiser might, with luck, race into a port of shelter before a storm breaks. And a fast ocean cruiser may be able to make it to the safer "navigable" quarter of a hurricane. But any deep-sea boat should be able to survive "normal" storms without speed. Furthermore, any prudent skipper will presume that even if his boat is fast, sooner or later he'll run into bad weather anyway. In that case, the boat must be able to take it.
Even if you have good satellite information about upcoming weather patterns, what good will speed do you in the middle of the ocean? We're talking about weather systems 500 to 1,000 miles across, moving toward you at 20 knots. Suppose you find yourself in the track of one and it's 24 hours away. What then? Well, naturally, you'll try to get to the favorable side of the low. Okay, say your "slow" boat does 5 knots and a really "fast" boat does 7 knots, that means you'll cover 120 miles and 168 miles a day respectively. Is the extra 48 miles going to make a difference to your safety? It doesn't seem very likely to me, particularly since the exact tracks of weather systems are difficult to forecast with such precision, and sometimes make unexpected swerves that astonish the weather forecasters, but don't surprise anyone who spends time at sea.
It's actually difficult to talk sensibly about speed because the term is so relative. A "slow" 35-footer might average 5 knots, a "fast" one 6 knots. A displacement boat's speed is, after all, determined mainly by its waterline length, so a big boat will be fast, a small one slow. But small boats can be very seaworthy, despite their lack of speed. Think of John Guzzwell's circumnavigation in the 20-foot Trekka and Blondie Haswell's multiple crossings of the Atlantic in his 26-foot Folkboat Jester. Eric Hiscock took his 30-footer Wanderer III around the world twice--or was it three times?--in a slow but very safe manner. And then there's Joshua Slocum, father of them all. His Spray would be regarded today as very slow and clumsy, particularly to weather.
Sometimes you'll hear it said that a good fast boat can outrun a storm. Well, sure--if it can maintain a 20-knot average for a few days. There are people who stand to make money from promoting the idea that big fast boats are safer than smaller slower ones. They build and sell big fast boats, which are much more expensive than smaller slower boats, so they spend a lot of money trying to persuade inexperienced buyers that speed equals safety. It's an emotional appeal that seems to work well--I mean, what kind of jerk would sacrifice the safety of his wife and kids for a lousy few hundred thousand bucks?
Nevertheless, slow boats withstand storms very well. Colin Archers, Westsail 32s, and John G. Hanna's Carol and Tahiti ketches are better known for their ability to handle bad weather than for their speed--although that's not to say they're not capable of speed. They're usually sailed slowly by choice, or because they're under-crewed. But when they're really pushed, they can show the fleet their heels. Nobody should forget that Dave King won the prestigious Pacific Cup Race from San Francisco to Oahu, Hawaii, with his stock Westsail 32, Saraband, first in class and first overall on handicap. According to the eminent marine scientist C. A. Marchaj, safety at sea involves four distinct factors. "It is impossible to design a waterborne craft which would be totally immune from all the perils of the weather and so be fit and safe at sea in all statistically probable conditions," he writes in Seaworthiness--The Forgotten Factor. But, he adds, the probability of disaster can be reduced so that some boats will have a better chance of survival than others.
These are the four factors: the design of the boat; the severity of the weather; the experience and competence of the crew; and pure, plain luck. So, while the design of the boat, which dictates its speed, is of paramount importance, it's only a part of safety at sea. In fact, you only have to look at the Guinness Book of Records to know the truth of this. See how many cockleshells have sailed across the Atlantic, some (like Eric Peters' 5-foot 10 1/2-inch Toniky Nou) smaller than a bathtub. Not much speed there. Speed is nice, but it's not essential to safety.
SCA: In order of importance, what features or characteristics would be present in a small (25-feet or under) sailboat of your own design that you would willingly take off-shore?
BAKER: In rough order of importance:
1.Unsinkable - using solid flotation if possible, such as thick foam core. 2. Fixed keel
3. Easily reefed
4. Fully watertight companionway
5. Enclosed cockpit (i.e. full lifelines)
6. Full height lifelines (27")
7. The ability to self-right from at least 125 degrees of roll (180 preferable but hard to achieve)
9. Sealed mast with external halyards (to help with self-righting ability) 10. Enough headroom to at least sit upright while on the head (an under-rated characteristic).
11. Sailable (and preferably sailed) by 3 or 4 maximum. 12. Fast enough to get out of trouble (also an under-rated characteristic) 13. Open accommodations to avoid claustrophobia 14. Large enough berths (6'4" minimum) for all crew. 15. Real head with holding tank, chemical toilets just don't hack it in a storm
16. Watermaker
17. SSB
18. All items required for a Class I Offshore race as defined by ORC, if not already included. A life raft is a really comfortable thing to have around, but difficult in 25ft. I realize I would probably have to work very hard to get all this into 25ft, but I'd love to try.
SCA: Are large sailboats inherently safer in ways that simply cannot be addressed within the limitations imposed by the waterline length of a smaller boat?
DIX: In my opinion, large boats are safer than small boats in three respects. They are: the ability to resist roll-over, their increased visibility and the benefits resulting from greater speed.
The larger size gives her increased inertia. That means that a lot more energy is required before a wave can roll her. A 20-ft cruiser can expect to be rolled or to at least put her mast into the water at least once on almost any serious ocean crossing. A 40-ft cruiser has a chance of being rolled on a circumnavigation and being knocked flat a few times. A 100-ft cruiser is unlikely to ever experience either. Her larger size also makes her a far bigger target for ships or other vessels to avoid. That applies to being seen by eye in any kind of visibility and also on a radar screen. That substantially reduces the chances of a large yacht being run down when compared to a small yacht.
The factors affected by speed are the need to carry stores for the passage and the ability to sail toward or away from weather systems. Essentially, the smaller the vessel the longer it will take for a given passage so the greater the stores that it must carry. The bigger boat has a greater ability to carry stores but has less need for them if it has a small crew.
Also affecting it, the slower boat has few options in dodging heavy or light weather systems, whereas the larger and faster boat can use its speed to move toward beneficial systems or away from adverse systems. That means that the smaller boat has more chance of becoming stuck in a calm and running out of stores and water, so it should possibly carry greater reserves.
The smaller boat also has more chance of having to handle heavy weather. This is due to its not being able get out of the way of the approaching system. And taking longer for any given voyage, more storms will pass over her before she reaches her destination. In balance, a small boat is easier to handle with a small crew. I most enjoy sailing short-handed on 30-40ft boats. That size is seaworthy enough to go long distance yet is comfortable to handle by myself.
A small boat also has lighter loads applied to it by wind and sea. Loadings applied to hull and rig are tiny compared to a larger sister so, when something goes wrong, it is easier to handle.
SCA: What are the most common shortcomings in modern, production trailerables in terms of safety and/or seaworthiness?
VIGOR: I think the thing that worries me most about trailerables is their lack of ultimate stability--that is, their ability to recover from a 180-degree capsize. It might sound melodramatic to talk of a full capsize, but the fact that it can happen is enough to make me wary.
Tests carried out at Southampton University, England, reveal that a yacht of any size can be turned turtle by a breaking wave with a height equal to 55 percent of its overall length. So a breaking wave 11 feet high could invert a full-keeled, heavily ballasted, 20-foot yacht. A light-displacement trailerable of the same length would probably be capsized by a much smaller breaker. I hate to think what an 8-foot wave would do to a 15-foot West Wight Potter. And you don't have to be in mid-ocean to meet an 8-foot wave. There are many parts of the country where sudden thunderstorm winds meeting a contrary 3-knot current can turn a peaceful sound into a raging maelstrom.
The form, or initial, stability of a trailerable can be very good. That's its stiffness, or resistance to being heeled by the wind in the first place; but when it's upside down, what's going to bring it back before it fills with water and sinks? A heavy centerboard is likely to fall back into its trunk. Tanks of water ballast are too close to the center of buoyancy to provide the leverage needed to right the boat from this position. It takes a really heavy lump of metal sticking out a long way from the hull to achieve self-righting ability, and that usually works only in combination with a reasonably narrow hull.
Here's another point. Trailerables are notorious for their lack of watertight integrity. In theory, you should be able to roll the boat over, and up the other side, without any water getting below. In practice, that's a big laugh.
It doesn't take much water down below to make a trailerboat so unstable that she'll capsize, and that's another thing that worries me. There's sometimes no bridge deck to prevent a wave coming over the stern from flooding the cabin. Very few, in fact, have a sealed, watertight cockpit, and most cockpits are so large that if you filled them with water you'd lose practically all your freeboard aft and be very vulnerable to the next few waves coming along. It takes an awful long time to drain a cockpit through those two little drain holes the boatbuilders supply.
On the whole, though, I have to say that small trailerables do their jobs very well and very safely. You just have to remember what they were designed to do, and what limits that places on safety. For example, don't expect to claw your way off a reef or a rock-strewn lee shore in a gale. Many trailer boats gain interior space through high freeboard, or prominent cabin tops, both of which will hinder windward work.
A centerboard is not as efficient as a fin or full keel to windward, either--although a board can be moved aft with benefit to help steering off the wind.
The need for light displacement to keep towing weight down also encourages manufacturers to skimp on hull thickness, and rigging strength, of course, and there are undoubtedly some who succumb to this temptation, though I wouldn't classify it as commonplace. Usually, the culprits are known, and the people who buy their boats are the ones who haven't bothered to do any homework.
Boats that you can tow on the highway have other shortcomings, too, but it's all a matter of compromise. You can't have everything. There's usually very little storage space down below, for example, and the arrangements for the head and the galley can be very primitive, if they exist at all. But at least you can spot those deficiencies from the beginning, and they do not greatly affect safety and seaworthiness.
Very few trailerables are fit to cross oceans or even undertake long coastal passages, though there are some. The Pacific Seacraft 25 was designed exactly for that, although I don't really regard her as trailerable. Like almost any other boat, she can be placed on a trailer and towed on the highway, but she's far removed from the kind of boat you'd take to the lake for an afternoon sail.
It's interesting to speculate that the smaller the trailerable, the safer it might be at sea, given a reasonably fit and experienced crew. My own preference (a minority one, I know) is for small open boats and Spartan camping.
Anyone needing an example of the seaworthiness of a small trailerable need look no further than Chidiock Tichborne, Webb Chiles's 18-foot, open Drascombe Lugger. Chiles sailed old Chidiock almost all the way around the world from the West Coast before his boat was damaged in Saudi Arabia in 1982 and seized by the authorities. Chidiock got flooded often enough, but she never sank.
Personally, I love cruising dinghies. The smaller they are (down to about 11 feet), the heavier the bodyweight of the crew in proportion, and the harder they are to capsize--and the easier they are to right, if you do capsize. I spent a lot of time racing 11-foot International Mirrors in the boisterous waters off the South Africa coast, launching and returning through heavy surf. There were occasions when the swells were so large that you could only see the rest of the fleet when you hit the top of a large wave. I can remember a Mirror losing its rig out there once in conditions like that, but the crew hung on to everything, repaired the broken stay, raised the mast, and sailed back home unaided.
That was a great lesson for me about the safety of small boats at sea. I have always felt confident I could sail a Mirror across an ocean if necessary. The Mirror, in fact, is the only boat I've ever felt completely in control of in all weather. If I were shipwrecked in mid-ocean, I'd certainly rather be in a Mirror than in a drifting life raft. One thing I've never figured out, though, is how I'd sleep. But I guess that would solve itself when the time came.
Mirrors regularly sail across the English Channel, and 16-foot Wayfarers go even farther abroad (perhaps because they're big enough to sleep in) weathering storms at sea like much bigger boats.
But, as we've noted before, the boat itself is only part of seaworthiness. The skill and experience of the crew are equally important. So, if you want to increase your safety at sea, start slow, get to know your boat well, and gain experience in an organized manner. Think all the time about what would happen if she were to capsize right now. Think how you would avoid being caught on a lee shore. Work out ways to get out another anchor when you're dragging. And if you're a dinghy sailor, practice capsizes. Practice heaving to. Practice reefing. Practice sailing to windward under jib only. Practice steering with an oar. All these things can be fun--but more importantly, they build confidence, seamanship, and safety, things you can't buy in a store no matter how rich you are.
SCA: What modifications would you suggest the average trailer sailor make to his production boat to enhance its ability to handle reasonably heavy weather?
BAKER:
1. If it is a centerboard boat, find some means of fixing the board down when offshore. Do not forget to free it up before running into any rocks at the end of the trip.
- See item 9 above
- Flotation, whether solid or air bags, gives a nice warm, fuzzy feeling when the weather turns nasty and no land is visible.
- Make sure your reefing system is capable of being operated in the dark, in 50 knots of wind, under a very hard, cold shower, in a bathing suit. Practice this before leaving, it will make your kids laugh if nothing else.
- Make sure your steering gear is bulletproof. If possible, take a spare rudder or something that can be used as one. Single-handed racers have to demonstrate an "alternative means of steering" before being allowed to race, with reason.
- Motors. If you only have an outboard, it is best to stow it out of the weather, but make sure you can put it into play in the same conditions you practiced reefing in.
- Heavy weather sails are a necessity. With no motion you have no control.
- Before leaving, check your rigging, replacing any part showing signs of excessive wear or fraying.
- Check all hatches for watertightness. This is easily done with a good hose and spray fitting. A pressure washer will do even better, and again, the kids will love it.
- Pulpits and stanchions should be checked for condition, and replaced if necessary. If you don't have lifelines around the whole boat, fit them.
- Some sort of self-steering gear can be handy, but is often not possible on a small boat. If no self-steering, 3 crew are a minimum.
- Food - make sure you can store enough for longer than you estimate the trip will take, and make sure the storage is dry.
- The most often forgotten one - PFDs, two for each person by preference, and wear them! The spares should be stowed below where they are available but out of the way.
- Attachment points for safety harnesses should be fitted to allow you to go all the way to the bow if need be. Please take the harnesses with you.
- EPIRB - don't leave home without one. If you can't afford one, don't go this year.
- The most useful one of all - hire a surveyor for a couple of hours to check your boat thoroughly for suitability. It is an extra expense, but he is more likely to find the weak link than you, and he will be objective. I could probably go on for hours like this, but those are the ones that spring to mind with DO THIS written all over them. The opinions above are based on a serious offshore passage (i.e. Newport-Bermuda type) rather than a "cruise down Long Island Sound" scenario. After 10 years of being involved with the design of single-handed 'round the world racing boats, this is really the short list, but you did say 25ft.
SCA: What did you learn from your experiences in heavy weather in small sailboats, regarding the characteristics most important for safety and survival?
DIX: I live in Cape Town and have been actively involved in watersports for over 4 decades. We are at the convergence of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and of warm and cold ocean currents. The result is sometimes violent sailing conditions which can come and go very quickly. This area is internationally known as the "Cape of Storms", with justification. While we seldom choose to go out in the worst conditions, it is very common to have to fight them to return home after a pleasant day or weekend of sailing.
Sailing in these conditions, I have observed that very few locals ever get into trouble with their sailboats and the rescue statistics are very low. There are boats of all types out there, from ultra-light fin-keelers to very heavy traditional full-keelers, marconi rigs to gaffers. All are capable of handling the conditions.
Back this up with my experience and observation of others from 4 racing crossings of the South Atlantic (3 times in large fully crewed fleets and once double-handed in a small fleet) and I come to the conclusion that there is one major factor which contributes to the ability of the boat to deal with extreme weather. That is the need for an experienced, level-headed and capable skipper, with a thorough knowledge of the abilities and limitations of his own boat. Such a skipper will bring his vessel and crew through almost anything. In contrast, even the most seaworthy of boats may be at risk in moderate weather without a competent skipper.
Proponents of heavy full keel boats would argue that my own lightweight fin-keeler (38-ft with displ/length ratio of 120) is an unseaworthy concept. In 15,000 miles of sailing, she has safely brought me through winds and seas that I would have preferred not to experience. Many boats of similar concept have circumnavigated under competent skippers.
That brings me back to the physical characteristics required for a seaworthy boat. The most important is strength, sufficient strength to withstand the loads of sailing in the conditions for which she is intended. If she stays in one piece, the skipper can concentrate on the tactics required to reach the intended destination or shelter. Those tactics will depend on the strengths and weaknesses in the sailing characteristics of the particular boat.
Knowledge of the limitations of the boat will also guide the skipper on how to act in extreme weather, when to stop sailing for his destination and to rather sail for the preservation of his craft. It will then guide him on whether he should be holding her back, allowing the waves to pass over her, or running ahead of the waves under control.
The first option allows her to hold position to some extent but requires immense strength to withstand the tremendous loads involved and reasonably heavy displacement to reduce the amount that the boat is thrown around by the waves. The alternative requires a hull which surfs quickly and is very easy to control downwind, allowing it to spurt away from the danger of breaking waves.
I believe that the other important requirement is watertightness. In the recent MTN Cape to Rio Race an apparently seaworthy 41-ft monohull was lost. The cause was not established without doubt but is thought to have been through a leak from the anchor locker. That should not have sunk a competently skippered well found boat, yet it did. Those of us who have experienced it know that it can be very difficult to locate a leak, with water running behind hull liners or inside GRP stringers and coming into the boat far from the actual leak. Even if water comes straight into the hull through a puncture or a broken skin fitting, it can be very difficult to find the problem if it is not found quickly, when you can still see the flow direction and follow it back to the source.
Whatever type of boat you have, know its strengths and limitations, and seal the leaks.
