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The state of ocean racing


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The ocean racing fraternity  

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  1. 1. The ocean racing fraternity

    • There's nothing wrong, shut up and stop whining
      21
    • Something's wrong and better to address it now before an unpleasant solution is forced on us
      27
    • Just a bump in the curve it will sort itself out through "market forces"
      8


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That's what I'm trying to find an answer to.

 

I often wonder if the communication, tracking, navagation, weather maping abbilities of today had of been around even in half of it's capacity would some of the fallen heros of Davids eara still be around to defend ocean racing as is happening by a few now. The what if a fellow competitor or nearby ship could have been dirverted .....

 

Today it's in our face, for example BG's photos were in our view before most of the crew got back to NZ. The on the edge level most likely been like it for years, were just hearing all about it while it's hot and in our face.

 

The thing is those that want to and can afford it will, so let them.

 

I'm sure if there was the interest there would have been a corinthian division.

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My 2 cents:

 

How dangerous is sailing? My impressive is that it is pretty safe. Much safer than mountaineering, which is another outdoor sport that I have done a lot of. The recent deaths in the US are rare and tragic. In comparison, we hear about deaths in NZ in the mountains pretty regularly. In Scotland, there are often 20 a year in winter, for a sport with similar participation numbers to sailing here. In Chamonix, where I spent one summer climbing, there would be a death a day. We don't want that in sailing. How many are hurt or die sailing compared to other water sports? Are more lost swimming at the beach? I suspect there are. I certainly do not suggest stopping any of those activities. So why worry so much about this?

 

The improvement in safey standards over the years is to be welcomed. I'm much happier being on a boat that I know is well maintained, raced regularly, regular crew, has cat 3 or better and has a good life raft that is easy to deploy. I hope to never need this last one, but I find it reassuring if we hit something at night at sea then there is a good chance everyone will survive in that worst case scenario.

 

Boats break. It should be expected. There are many reasons why, bad design, fatigue (it wear and tear), bad crew work etc. I don't accept the big wave or too fast theories. These are predictable and should be designed for. If flat foresections cause problems, then design them out. Either return to a slower v-shape or add strength to the hull. Crew will make mistakes sometimes, especially after several days of bad weather. So if the rig relies on precise quick crew work, then watch out. The rig will come down sometime. We have long history of designing, building and sailing boats. Use it.

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I don't think its fair to point the finger at yacht racing for any extra restrictions on offshore sailing. I would say that more cruising boats have been in trouble and in need of assistance than racing boats and in most cases racing boats are self sufficent with a whole fleet of boats ready and willing to rescue one another. Not that this makes it ok for boat to have serious structural failure but more that its accepted that there could be failures and has been for many decades and allways will.

The USA cases are different, they are just bad decisions made possibly by inexperienced or uncapable skippers/navigators. Nothing to do with the boats or gear.

 

Short handed cruising would probably have much worse statistics both in life lost and in $ spent on rescue than race boats. Anything goes wrong and they can't fix it or take care of themselves when exausted. Of course there are exceptions.

 

Insurance expense, I don't buy that one either. Carbon race boat, not cheap to build or fix, big premiums based on boat value. AC might have more to add about that.

 

The volvo argument about boat breakage was more about the entertainment value of the race or lack of it. Again the fleet is pretty much self sufficent in the way that they are close enough to rescue one another and this has been proved many times.

 

Cat 1 requirements, I doubt these failures would make any difference to those requirements for a cruising or racing boats.

 

Yacht racing is like any sport, boundrys will be pushed.

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Another point, if a boat designer or builder does not think the boat is safe to race offshore, then it should be denied cat 1. Then it can't race. If there is structural damage or a build/design fault during a race, then prove the fault is properly sorted before giving cat 1 again.

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I would say that more cruising boats have been in trouble and in need of assistance than racing boats and in most cases racing boats are self sufficent with a whole fleet of boats ready and willing to rescue one another.

 

Short handed cruising would probably have much worse statistics both in life lost and in $ spent on rescue than race boats.

 

I'm not aware of any research that would back that up or not , and thus can't accept it at this point. And any such research would have to measure rescues per total boat miles . In other words there are 400-600 cruisers who sail to and from NZ each year, maybe 10 racing boats/year, thus to be comparable there would need to be 40-60 times as many cruisers who need rescue in absolute numbers. As I say not aware that anyone has actually done the arithmetic so for now I'd say let's drop that line of reasoning.

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Picking up on a theme from a few posts back, that of smaller fleets, and of the average boat length being larger than say in the 70s.

 

I think a lot of that has to do with economy. Nowadays, fewer people who own the 30-40 foot boats can find the cash reserves and have the ability to bugger off for 2+ weeks to sail to Noumea. Moreover, their crews who were formally mates etc who may not own the racing boat but could find a couple of weeks off, can certainly not afford to do it any more. People, in general, have less disposable cash now than they did 30y ago. The folk who now enter these races are from a different demographic to the folk who could have been entering 30y ago.

 

The problem is also partly communication. Thesedays, the media know of a boat in trouble almost before SAR, and as it's a reality struggle of life and death it makes for great TV stories. The result is that while communications have undoubtedly made offshore sailing safer for those taking part (whether they wanted it or not) it has also resulted in the general public, and worse, politicians (both groups being dummer n' a bag full of hammers wrt to sailing) becoming more aware that "lives are being risked at sea", and more determined in their small world view of things that "something" should be done.

 

The last thing I want is for the PC nanny state to get to the point where they decide if I can go for a sail. And they will because the dumb arse public are the ones who pay for the helicopters to be sent out. And the decision to send out the chopper is not always made by the person on the boat. Sometimes Helicopter rescues have been initiated based on the ravings of some unrelated drunken grandmother. "I see a yacht out in a storm and I think it's in trouble..."

 

Every man and his dog wants to be a hero and get in on the action, and we have another "rescue" which probably wasn't necessary. But it's another way in which the stats are added up against us when we want to get insurance or go ocean.

 

I don't want it to get to the point where I have to have an expensive sat phone before I'm allowed to leave NZ for somewhere else. If you can't get insurance without all these things then it will pretty much kill the whole idea of and reasons for buggering off overseas on your yacht.

 

It's already bad enough that you HAVE to have GPS for cat3 - 2 I think. I mean for Pete's sake, talk about legislating people into a false sense of security. What's next? WIll everyone be required to have a chartplotter and autopilot and when the wind is over 15kts you'll have to down sail and have your auto pilot drive you home or your insurance is void?

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both groups being dummer n' a bag full of hammers wrt to sailing

 

Vaild point, those without a full understanding of the sport could be making decisions based on their knowledge (or lack of) of the sport.

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Fantastic posts by bartb and Booboo. They echo my point but whereas mine was purely the voice of opinion theirs are voices of experience. But we agree.

 

I struggle to understand the outrageous leap of logic that says that a few incidents in an offshore race are likely to threaten any aspect of other boating activity.

 

Where on earth to do you get that from?

 

The title and options at the start of this thread were obviously designed to provoke a vigorous debate but I find them sensationalist and worthy of the worst kind of tabloid journalism. The kind of knee jerk reaction you'd expect to see on the front page of a rag like the NZ Herald.

 

Nobody here can supply accurate figures on the ratio of cruising boats that get into difficulty compared to racers. Of course you would expect the racers to experience more failures because that is the mode they are sailing in. Where is the surprise in that? But at the same time when I lived in GH and used to meet the annual blue water cruisers that arrived into NZ for the summer, I was surprised by how many if them had significant breakages or issues needing to be fixed from their crossing.

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AC - my comment re insurance was just an observation of the increased costs of coverage for going offshore - whether it is due to an increase of marine claims or the fact that those insurers are needing to cover other risks - I have no idea... but one thing for sure -the costs of replacing broken gear /boats isnt going down so maybe it all compounds ...

Food for thought...certainly not suggesting there is a lack of experience on the boats doing these races...

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Yeah the insurance angle is relatively straightforward. Sailing offshore involves more risks than coastal cruising near home. We all know that whether we actually have an accident or not. And then racing takes the risk a notch or two higher again. Then throw in the fact that when a racing boat comes a cropper (like it drops a rig) it's likely to be more expensive than the equivalent cruising incident cos racers tend to be running more expensive gear.

 

So racing involves a higher risk of an incident and if it happens a higher cost of incident. Hence the risk compounds. Hence the premium either compounds or else it becomes uninsurable except with specialist offshore underwriters.

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Where on earth to do you get that from?

 

 

Recent history.

 

Example? Show us a recent example of a racing incident directly leading to an adverse impact on cruisers?

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Picking up on a theme from a few posts back, that of smaller fleets, and of the average boat length being larger than say in the 70s.

 

I think a lot of that has to do with economy. Nowadays, fewer people who own the 30-40 foot boats can find the cash reserves and have the ability to bugger off for 2+ weeks to sail to Noumea. Moreover, their crews who were formally mates etc who may not own the racing boat but could find a couple of weeks off, can certainly not afford to do it any more. People, in general, have less disposable cash now than they did 30y ago. The folk who now enter these races are from a different demographic to the folk who could have been entering 30y ago.

 

The problem is also partly communication. Thesedays, the media know of a boat in trouble almost before SAR, and as it's a reality struggle of life and death it makes for great TV stories. The result is that while communications have undoubtedly made offshore sailing safer for those taking part (whether they wanted it or not) it has also resulted in the general public, and worse, politicians (both groups being dummer n' a bag full of hammers wrt to sailing) becoming more aware that "lives are being risked at sea", and more determined in their small world view of things that "something" should be done.

 

The last thing I want is for the PC nanny state to get to the point where they decide if I can go for a sail. And they will because the dumb arse public are the ones who pay for the helicopters to be sent out. And the decision to send out the chopper is not always made by the person on the boat. Sometimes Helicopter rescues have been initiated based on the ravings of some unrelated drunken grandmother. "I see a yacht out in a storm and I think it's in trouble..."

 

Every man and his dog wants to be a hero and get in on the action, and we have another "rescue" which probably wasn't necessary. But it's another way in which the stats are added up against us when we want to get insurance or go ocean.

 

I don't want it to get to the point where I have to have an expensive sat phone before I'm allowed to leave NZ for somewhere else. If you can't get insurance without all these things then it will pretty much kill the whole idea of and reasons for buggering off overseas on your yacht.

 

It's already bad enough that you HAVE to have GPS for cat3 - 2 I think. I mean for Pete's sake, talk about legislating people into a false sense of security. What's next? WIll everyone be required to have a chartplotter and autopilot and when the wind is over 15kts you'll have to down sail and have your auto pilot drive you home or your insurance is void?

 

You have summed it up more eloquently than I ever could.

 

And what I feel at the moment is the sailing fraternity as a whole (not just racers) is giving a good reason for the ignorant dumb arse publics arse to grow even bigger!

 

What I feel is that whatever sailor, whatever boat, cruise or race - you should not EXPECT as a RIGHT to be rescued ever. How many skippers would think twice about sailing or racing offshore in some of the boats passed as catergory zero and one these days IF there was no push button rescue option available? And no - I am not hankering back to the days of Eric Hiscock - just trying to make a point.

 

 

I'm going to add part of an article written by Roger Taylor - whom some may remember sailed the 22 foot ROC across the Tasman in the early years of the Solo-Tasman:

 

"And there's the rub. Leaving aside coastal rescues of leisure sailors in difficulty, which is not what I am discussing here, I do not believe that anyone who puts to sea to make any sort of ocean crossing, purely as a leisure activity, be it cruising or racing, should assume any right of rescue whatsoever. There are three principal reasons for this. Firstly an ocean rescue is almost inevitably costly and dangerous for the rescuer(s). Why should others have to put their lives at risk, or disrupt their commercial schedules, to help out those who have knowingly and deliberately undertaken a high-risk venture? Secondly, I believe that if one puts to sea with the non-assumption of the right of rescue, then one will do so with an infinitely better preparation and a much healthier mind-set. Thirdly a change of attitude on the part of leisure sailors may just, if we are very lucky, stop the inevitable future strangulation of our sport through over-regulation.

 

I would like to enlarge somewhat on each of these points. Firstly let's look more closely at the expense and risks of marine rescue. These seem, in most cases, to fall either on national taxpayers or on private shipping lines. In Australia, where over recent years the taxpayer has funded many rescues of yachts racing either in the southern ocean or in the Sydney-Hobart Race, voices of dissent are starting to be raised. A recent article in one of the Australian tabloid newspapers called for an 'end to the race'. Des Ryan, writing in Sail-World.com, a southern hemisphere sailing web-site, questions the growing incidence of rescue as an accepted aspect of ocean sailing. The basic thrust of these articles is twofold. Firstly why should the taxpayer bear the brunt of the cost of these rescues? Ocean sailing is perceived, correctly, as an elite middle class sport. Why should the man in the street have to fund its safety net? Secondly why should the helicopter pilots and rescue boat crews have to put themselves at extreme risk for ocean sailors? They too have wives, husbands, sons and daughters.

 

Des Ryan makes the very valid point that there is no other sport in which rescue services have to take such risks. The closest analogy is probably mountain rescue, but a mountain rescue team will be operating under much tighter and more controlled conditions than an offshore rescue unit, be it air-borne or sea-borne. If state-funded services are not available for rescue, it usually then falls on the nearest available merchant ship to step into the breach. Why should the shareholders of a private or public company have to pay the cost of disrupted schedules to rescue the crews of yachts sailing the ocean purely for pleasure? Why should they have to put their own craft at risk too?

 

We assume that they will always do it because it is the lore of the sea. However this was lore that developed over many centuries when the only sailors on the oceans - merchantmen, fishermen, navy men - were there because it was their job to be there. They were not there by choice. They were certainly not there for pleasure or leisure. In fact to most of them the concept of wanting to go to sea as a leisure pastime would have been unimaginable. To assume that professional seamen, and the owners of the ships they navigate, are going to be willing to underwrite the cost of rescue of 'amateurs' for all time could very well, in the long term, be an assumption too far.

 

An assumption of the right to be rescued is a poor starting point for the ocean sailor. It is my view that much of modern so-called 'safety' equipment, in particular the Emergency Position Indicating Rescue Beacon - the EPIRB - insidiously militates against the proper preparation of yachts and their crews for ocean sailing. Its unspoken message is that at the press of a button help will be on its way. It is the ultimate safety net. It should not be. The ultimate safety net should be the uncompromising preparation and seaworthiness of the yacht to be sailed, and the proper mental attitude of its crew. My point here is that a good proportion of the effort and expense of fitting out a yacht for the sea these days goes into gadgets perceived as 'safety' equipment - EPIRBs, radios, satellite telephones, in other words equipment designed to help the sailor communicate his plight - rather than into ensuring the three pillars of yacht survival - that the yacht will always float (or alternatively is so uncompromisingly strong and watertight that it cannot be sunk), that it can always be jury-rigged, and that it can always be steered. To assume rescue as of right and therefore to compromise on proper and rigorous preparation for every eventuality, is an abdication of real personal responsibility. It is too glib. It is too easy. It smacks of selfishness. If preparation is not uncompromising and thorough, then sea-going becomes a gamble. That is fine, as long the sailor who gambles is fully prepared to face the consequences of losing that gamble. There should be no last-minute reprieve on the back of someone else's forced risk-taking.

 

Unless the ocean-going sailing community changes its attitude and accepts that there should be no assumption of the right to be rescued, then it is highly likely that in time governments will respond to taxpayer unrest, and pressure from the likes of the International Maritime Organisation, to find ways of curbing the escalation of rescues. And we all know what that means. More rules. More regulations. More inspections. Less personal choice. Less freedom.

 

The attitude of the ocean-racing skipper is therefore one of acceptance of prolonged and heightened risk-taking. The role of the ocean-racing skipper is deliberately to court the highest levels of risk. At the same time this is being done in a yacht that is on balance the least suited to the risks it is exposed to. Light construction, huge rigs, water ballast, swinging keels, excessive beam that make them stable when inverted, minimal provision for major repairs and so on, all mean that when the line is crossed, as it frequently is, and disaster strikes, the situation is not recoverable.

 

The ocean-racing skipper, driving his yacht along that thin line between success and disaster, knows this full well. One does have to ask the question - is this good or acceptable seamanship? I don't know the answer to that. Certainly there has always been a tradition at sea of driving sailing craft to their limits. The tea clippers and grain ships vied furiously with each other to achieve the fastest passages, and for more than just commercial gain. However the skipper of a tall ship hanging on to his canvas too long in the Southern Ocean, resulting in, say, a broach-to and a foundering, had no expectation that a fairy godmother would appear out of the ether to rescue him and his crew. Would the modern ocean-racing skipper be quite so gung-ho if it were absolutely clear that no assumption of rescue could be made? This brings us back to the whole point of this argument. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with high risk-taking, at sea or anywhere else, if the risk-taker is prepared to accept, fully and unequivocally, the potential downside of that risk-taking".

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Yeah the insurance angle is relatively straightforward. Sailing offshore involves more risks than coastal cruising near home. We all know that whether we actually have an accident or not

 

I know a few multi-circumnavigating sailors that would strongly disagree. In fact, getting sea room and getting away from the knarly rocky bit called "land" that has a penchant for putting holes in places not desired - is their number one priority. In fact - it seems their most stressful sailing periods is coastal, not offshore.

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Another good example. We all know plenty of boats have got into trouble around the bottom of Sth America, racers and cruisers alike.

As a result Chile has introduced compulsory rescue insurance. Wasn't it Booboo who told us they chose to sail around Cape Horn under jury rig rather than deal with Chilean bureaucracy?

 

A case of those going before making it more difficult for those who follow. The SSCA call it leaving a clean wake - whenever you travel somewhere be sure the locals will be just as pleased when the next boat arrives.

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Pretty stretched, tenuous examples.

 

I'm looking for a real, tangible, example of where 'reckless' ocean racing incidents have led to any negative impact on my cruising?

 

I doubt there are any.

 

Hence this whole thread is a scare story getting people rarked up about something that isn't actually a worry.

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So after the Fastnet they didn't introduce screening values and that hasn't stopped boats like the 1104(?I'm doing this on the fly so correct me if I'm wrong, have to go to work again so no time) getting Cat 1 even though at least one has circumnavigated.

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So after the Fastnet they didn't introduce screening values and that hasn't stopped boats like the 1104(?I'm doing this on the fly so correct me if I'm wrong, have to go to work again so no time) getting Cat 1 even though at least one has circumnavigated.

 

Dunno, can't comment on that one. But again even if it's true it's a pretty thin, isolated example. One dated kiwi design boat gets a harder time getting Cat 1.... is that really directly attributable to a race tragedy from 33 yrs ago? We all know that lots of positive learnings came out of the Fastnet but that's another topic.

 

The title and poll options of this thread suggest (in an alarmist manner) that the freedom of everday day yachties is under imminent and serious threat because of a raft of new rules & regulations are looming which will negatively affect everyone - all as a direct result of some recent race incidents.

 

That is absolutley not the case. And there is no evidence that this is the case. And nobody can point to any real examples that this has ever been the case.

 

The biggest threats to cruising freedoms seem to come from politics, environmental restrictions, cruising permits, taxes, border controls, pest control, pirates etc etc.

 

Absolutely zero indication that some racing incidents are posing any kind of threat to my cruising or anyone else's that I can see.

 

Prove me wrong and I'll change my view and pay attention and start worrying.

 

But you're not gonna get me wringing my hands and sucking my teeth quite yet...

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