It is pretty unusual to hear about a cruising catamaran capsizing. Seems to happen more often to cruising trimarans. Cruising catamarans are normally pretty heavy, undercanvassed, and relatively slow.

Because of the cruising and boat deliveries that Rick and I have done (in the distant past), I am VERY curious about what went wrong here.

They had time to drop their sails and throw a couple of anchors over and write about it in the log, so it sounds like they weren't concerned enough to radio to the Coast Guard and give their position and say they were in trouble. And they didn't even get out the epirb.

Here's my theory: They had a bunch of anchor line hanging down under the boat, one of which apparently tangled around a propeller. Possibly the lines got around one or more of the rudders, too, so they couldn't steer. So they got sideways to a big wave, the boat rolled over and demasted, and everybody was swept off the boat and separated from it in the capsize.

Sounds logical and possible to me, because they probably weren't tethered to jacklines.

If they had deployed a drogue/sea anchor off the bow or off the stern, it would have kept the boat more in line with the waves fore and aft.

Rogue wave, of course, coming it at another angle, all bets are off -- on ANY kind of boat. If the crew had all been below decks, and hatches closed, when it happened, they would probably have been okay.

I guess we will never know what really happened. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I DO know that when you are doing a boat delivery and are beng paid for X number of days to get the boat there, it is a whole lot different from "cruising," where you carefully plan your time to coincide with good weather. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />