Not cat related but worth checking out.

45 to 50 knot winds and 10 meter seas.

54 off the 116 fleet have retired....

The 2 leading 98 foot super maxi's are now out of the race.

Konica Minolta launched of a 10 mtr wave, splitting the cabin aft of the mast.

Skandia hit a sunfish damaging a rudder then the canting keel locked on one side. The crew abandoned ship and now reports have come in that it has now lost its keel and rolled

Check out releases from

Sydney to Hobart http://rolexsydneyhobart.com//
Sail-World http://www.sail-world.com
Sailing Anarchy Forum http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showforum=1
In Sailing Anarchy look under Hobart retirements and Hobart Dramas

Hi all,

most amazing part about all this news is they won't allow multihulls in this race as they have been considered to unsafe to race to Hobart. They still haven't woken up to the fact that canting keels etc. put greater strains on hulls because of weight attached than modern multihull designs.

Would love to introduce them to Orange etc. Don't get me wrong this would be a tough race for any multi but I am sure thier old storey of multi's being unsafe can not stand up any more.

Regards Gary.

And do not forget that moderns multi's are now capable of outrunning bad weather.

To story of Hobart seems to be that all boats in trouble get trapped in a bad spot and are killed. The faster boat nearly always manage to sail into saver zones.

Wouter

W.
While it may be true if the Cat/Tri is running away from the weather.. They can out run a weather system.

The Sydney/Hobart one may not get the chance..
The challenge is you have a south running warm water current coming up against a cold front system..
To get to Hobart you need to sail south and into any front..

Saying this I would love to own a Open 60 and do the 'Hobart.. Not sure how a 60 would handle 15 meter waves coming from head on in 50 knots..
S

I have some Hobart documentaries on tape and they all seem to point to a rather small zone of exceptionally bad weather in the larger picture of generally bad conditions. Mostly likely just because of this convergence of the two currents and the weather systems coming in from the southern polar ocean. Pretty much the boat outside this zone get bad weather but not of the magnitude that would kill them.

I venture that a small detour around such a bad spot bu a multi wouldn't hit its result to much and no boat is as slow as one that is on the bottom or sitting like a duck with all sails down riding out a particulary violant storm.

See it just like the dull drums, multi's can look for a passage through it along a much wider front than a mono hull can. As a result they can minimize the impact or slip through and escape the worst. I venture that finding a passage of relative mild conditions may be found in the same way.

In relation to Open 60's, I don't think these will hold up to well, They are designed to the extreme and they don't have much margin left. However the newer designs that are intended to participate in more ocean crossing races and the maxi cats should be able to.

After all Bass strait is bad but the Southern Ocean in general is bad and the maxi car have survive that one quite alright.

Wouter

Most Southern Ocean multihull passages have been in a downwind direction with the swell. While the Southern Ocean is certainly treacherous, the part of recent multihull circumnavigations where most structural damage has occured is while beating to weather in the Atlantic on the way back home. It's more about the wind and wave direction than strength and size.

These guys in the Hobart are beating to weather in horrible conditions. Minolta's cabin roof buckled inward because her keel kept trying to go downward and hull nearly collapsed from the buoyancy after landing off a wave. One of Skandia's huge canting keel hydraulic rams snapped in two leaving the keel swinging wildly. I don't think many multihulls would survive this beating. Upwind is hard on anything.

I will be able to get a first hand account in a few days time, One of my good friends is skippering a Sydney 38 and has just retired - from what I can find so far it looks like they are making for Eden to then decide what to do next.

Scooby,

What's the name of the yacht?

Dave

Obsession

I personally havent sailed in the Hobart.. But have been in a Albany in a pocket maxi.. We hit 45-65 across the deck and 30 meter waves. Not long swells but short sharp walls.. Up one and launch off the top and drop 10 meters..
Not a nice time.. My skipper retired from a long highly successful international career after that race..

No not the force 12 the solo guys just experienced in the southern ocean. But scary enough to make one look for the EPRIB but we didnt have them back then..

Yes the two currents and a front is localised.. However to get to hobart the Rumbe line goes right through the area you described.

I guess upwind should be structurally harder on boats with a keel, because they require more energy to move, so when hitting a wave they also have more energy to loose. Also, they loose it faster due to their shape.

Anyone can confirm that? A rigorous answer would be quite complicated, but maybe Wouter can enlighten us.

Luiz

Luiz,

I would agree with that statement wholeheartedly - but - monohulls are a lot more solid by nature of their shape. A multihull crashing through those kind of waves would not be landing flat on all surfaces and the dangling entities (i.e. hulls / amas) and their connections would have to bear huge torsional and shear shock loading. Not to mention that the multi-hull is sailing considerably faster even if taking a conservative pace.

I think that a multihull is more susceptible to structural damage in those kind of conditions than a monohull (gasp). HOWEVER...a multihull is much less likely to completely sink than a monohull if something does go wrong.

Ellen MacArthur is about to endure her third 50-60 knot storm. What does that say about being able to outrun all bad weather?

Maybe she is overtaken them ?

Wouter

When Bass straight really "gets up" the waves resemble a monstorous "washing machine" with huge swells from one direction and waves breaking on top of the swells travelling in a different direction, and when I say "huge" it is a conservative generalisation. There are "rogue waves" that can appear from almost any quarter regardless of the direction of the swell and the wind, and gusts of 90 to 100 knots are a regular occurance when small (in area), intense lows converge from different directions as they funnel through Bass straight, meeting lows coming around Tasmania from the Tasman or up from the Southern oceans, all combined with an approx' two to three knot, warm current travelling south down the east coast meeting the cold waters of the southern ocean It can be an absolute "hell" to try sailing in. The Southern ocean on the other hand gets very "big" very "rough" and very dangerous, particularely the further south you sail across it, but it is completely "open" ocean with the winds travelling around the world without coming into contact with any land mass (for most of its spread) and as such it is a very different type of "sea" to sail in, with much more predictability when compared with the waters in Bass straight.

>>Anyone can confirm that? A rigorous answer would be quite complicated, but maybe Wouter can enlighten us.

Too many factor involved to give a meaningful answer.

Banging and Slugging around a 1000 kg lead keel is sure as hell putting a lot a stress and strain on mono contruction as well.

And the fashion these days is to make monohull racers with relative flat keel lines to get them planing. These vessel are far removed from the classical working boats that could survive petty much anything. Both the mono's and the multis'

But again to main idea was to not be at the spot where the [censored] hits the fan.

Wouter

Maxi Cats are still relatively new and designers are lacking the knowledge of the stress these boats will be under as they found out on 'The Race' boats. With more data gathered from racing in real life conditions as apposed to on a computer the more reliable the designers predicted stress calculations will be and the more reliable these boats can be build, reducing the downtime repairing breakages. The boats will also become faster because of this and the skippers will have the ability to push the boats closer to its ability as at the moment the limiting factor on speed is the boats ability to handle the punishment.

With the data gathered from 'The Race' boats and maxi cats in the near future...... You should not have a problem designing a reliable multi for around the world or Sydney to Hobart.

Remember also that maxi multis are very under-developed and under-researched compared to canting keels which were originaly first seen some 30 years ago or Maxi Monos. I think the biggest challenge would be trying to convince the CYC that a Multi is just as reliable / safe or even more so than a mono

On ellens website one does infact see headlines to the effect of "Today Ellen overtook bad weather again....." I'm not quoting exactly cause i read it yeaterday and I'm lazy, but yeah, she's moving right along there.

Ellen tries to sail into "bad" weather.

They talk about sailing with the lows as best as possible then, when they lose them, they try working to catch back up to them again.

Just need a few of the larger cats and Tris to start a race near the official race line and head off.. Remember the CYC started Mari Char to sail along side the race. I think it was 1990.