Boarding Seas

[commanderpete]

This is a purely theoretical question for a cold Winter day.

Say you're on a long Ocean passage. The outboard engine has been pulled out of the motor well and stowed below.

What would be the safest way to configure the lazarette if there is a danger the cockpit could fill with water?

OPTION 1

Use the motor well plug and front cover to the lazarette. Not much water can get in the lazarette and the stern will remain buoyant.

OPTION 2

Don't use either the motor well plug or the front cover. The water can drain quickly out of the cockpit through the motor well. Almost like an open transom.

[Bill]

Option #2 was, I believe, Zoltan's Way . . .  

[ebb]

Option one with an inflatable bag inside.   Old captains like inflatable bags.

[Jim Rester]

Sailboats designed for offshore use feature very small cockpits.  The Commander on the other hand, being a daysailor is about 34% Cockpit.(9'/26') If a person takes a daysailor out in conditions that could end up with boarding seas, his flotation device choice might well be an inflatable doll.  

You could have bouancy, companionship and would not have to listen to someone reminding you of the obvious.

[frank durant]

GREAT idea Jim !  Can you get a "coast guard " approved model??    #50

[ebb]

We have to invent this, ok?
For ballasted monohulls going offshore:

Imagine long slender tube along toerail both sides of boat.   Could be designed as a bulwark cupping the rail, or inside, or outside the rail.   Could be one piece, or two or three each side.  I would vote for one tube each side, about 3/4s of the length centered on the designed balance point - for economy.  Can you see the tube ready to be deployed from an oval, flexible, clamshell package attached to a well supported life rail?  Or lower down to the hull itself, with the rails controling the bags?  Hypolon tube in a shell of UV-protected polypropylene like the Potabote material.

Would be designed to keep an Ariel or Commander (or any small boat) from sinking.   That, let's say,  is about 3000 pounds flotation per side.   CO2 inflated.  I would guess the tube would be around one foot in diameter. 18 to 20 feet long.   And would be repackable by the skipper back into its ready state - a much smaller dimension - after the crisis was over.

Selling points:  Boat is usable,  mother ship is the best possible life saving platform at sea.  Cause of emergency could be attended to at sea.   Life raft unnecessary.   Boat could even be awash but would float evenly, and even provide safety from boarding seas and falling overboard.   In a less disasterous scenario the vessel could still be sailed.

The device,  while not particularly adding to the lines of the boat,  would be viewed as the signature of a self sufficient skipper and an offshore competant voyager.   Cost would be like that of a six person life raft and would be installable by the owner.   Good selling points.   Already SEE it at the sail-only boat show!

There is enough expertise in this consortium to put together something...!

IDEAS, anybody?   Let's go!


[ how'bout:  AIR RAIL or OBUOY!]

[Tony G]

Ebb I'm running with the inflatable doll idea.  It just makes too much sense.

[commanderpete]

Gentlemen, we need to raise the level of discussion here.

Anna K models a new line of boat shoes

[Bill]

Boat shoes . . . right.

Hey Ebb, West Marine sells an 8 foot dingy that has a floatation device that fits your description (no container, however, for the deflated tube).  I think they classify it as a "RIB."  Comes with oars and available sailing gear.

[ebb]

Great ideas have always been scoffed.

But, you know I'll get rich - and the time will come
when Anna K will be sitting in MY cockpit.

And while I muddle with her pumps we'll be
scoffing apple knocker martinis

and be admiring  life saving flotation devices over
a platter of haut hors doeuvres

[commanderpete]

Of course you're going to need more than one boat, maybe a Friendship 40.

Wait a minute...look at that cockpit...a deathtrap!

Cancel my order.

[commanderpete]

Anna has been taking some sailing lessons with Ellen McArthur for 'ya ebb

[ebb]

Always had something for fast women

[ebb]

Somebody should have pointed out that:
total vessel displacement is to the load waterline.
Emergency bouyancy is the minimum extra to keep the vessel from sinking.

Am I correct in thinking,  that once completely swamped the boat reverts back to its actual total material weight?  IE, using the classic illustration,  pushing a basketball into the water requires more effort the deeper one pushes.  But if the ball broke, it would take little effort (weight) to immerse.

Once totally flooded, awash, only actual total weight of vessel plus occupants needs to be kept afloat for rescue.
To float boat above the sheer much more flotation is required.
Therefor the reserve flotation airbags (noodles) idea put forth here should be attached below the sheerline and calculated to provide enough bouyancy so that the swamped vessel could pumped out and 'refloated' at sea.  That's what I had in mind.

Poof!  

As to the original problem.   These days, after decades of forced air-holding boats and fabric,  there shouldbe something, some air bag, that is tough enough to be expanded into a void with sharp protrusions such as the lazarette (viz ob motor) to act as space filling reserve bouyancy.

[mbd]

Now I get ya Ebb.  

How about airbags strategically placed in these "emergency" voids, which could be deployed when needed, then repacked when all is well...  Kind of like an air bag in a car.

I understand that styrofoam has better floatation than the equivalent volume of air - makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better to permanently attach enough of the stuff in the nooks and crannies to make the boat positively buoyant - if that's possible.

Although, the styrofoam option would take up a constant amount of volume, whereas the airbags in their deflated state would take up much less valuable volume...