Cheeki Rafiki

Your heart goes out to all the sailors and the loved ones involved in this, but it does focus the mind on keels and their attachments. In the old days it never really mattered much as the keels were small and the loads were low. Sadly in some of today's "cruiser racers", ( I have no knowledge of this specific design), this is not the case and when things go wrong it is catastrophic with big keels being attached incorrectly to hull shells, most of the times it works, sometimes it doesnt.
Here is my list of things to do for anyone who has a cruiser racer that does overnight passagges.
Make sure that someone competent has surveyed the keel area, looking for any cracking, movement - its not rocket science you can do it yourself once you know what to look for.
The interface of the keel bolts to the laminate are crucial, small washers onto thin skins are not good, large thick SS plates well seated onto a good hull inner skin are good. Overdesign in this area is what you want.
As a skipper always carry out a check to see that all is in order before a big trip. Brief everybody to prepare them for the worst case scenrio when it all goes dark, everything turns upside down and water starts to come in fast. They need to be mentally prepared for this and have pre-worked out how to get from their bunk and out of an upturned hull in the dark. I dont wear an inflating life jacket for this reason.

Yes but there is the suggestion that the beacons they fired do not work in or underwater so they had to be fired relatively dry and one was fired after the other, not that I have the first idea about any of this and am just grasping at straws.

They've resumed the search at least so we can't ask for more, like everyone else I'm just hope and praying.

Signed and Fb 'ed.

+1 and Facebooked it, I'm optimistic, they knew they had problems so will hopefully have prepared their life raft, a container ship appears to have clocked the upturned hull, so if the US coastguard can be persuaded to calculate the drift from that point they might have a chance of finding them.

Don't these life rafts things have some sort of transponder on them these days?

Signed. Its on Radio 4 now

Edited by rogerd - 19 May 14 at 8:53pm