South Atlantic Capsize

South Atlantic Capsize (Lessons Taught by a Big Ocean Wave)

Dudley Dix

Figure 1 - Black Cat on her home waters, rounding the Cape of Good Hope soon after the start of the 1700 mile 2014 Governor's Cup Race from Simonstown, South Africa, to Jamestown on the island of St Helena. Photo courtesy of Paul Leisegang.

To my late Dad, Ronnie Dix, thank you for everything. I did not realise just how much you taught me until after you were gone. To my wife, Dehlia, thank you for all of your support over the decades and tolerating my boating adventures as bravely as you do.

Copyright © 2018 by Dudley Dix

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2018

ISBN 978-0-359-14190-6

Dudley Dix Yacht Design

1340-1272 N. Great Neck Rd #343, Virginia Beach, VA 23454-2230, USA

Website: www.dixdesign.com

Blog: www.dudleydix.blogspot.com

Also by Dudley Dix:-

Shaped by Wind & Wave – Musings of a Boat Designer - 2012

(ISBN 978-0-557-47098-3)

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank those who have permitted me to use their work.

Dave Mabin for his photos taken at the start of the 2014 Cape to Rio Race. (https://www.facebook.com/dave.mabin)

Sean Collins and Gavin Muller for their photos taken during our very brief adventure on Black Cat.

Paul Leisegang for his photo of Black Cat rounding the Cape of Good Hope during the 2014 Governor’s Cup Race, used as frontispiece.

Darrin Henry for his photos of Black Cat taken at the finish of the Governor’s Cup Race at St Helena. (http://whatthesaintsdidnext.com)

Butch Dalrymple-Smith for his stories about his experiences in a Southern Ocean capsize in the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race.

I would also like to thank people and companies that assisted with preparing Black Cat for the Cape to Rio Race and were very tolerant of a distressingly awkward and trying situation. The crew really appreciated what you did for us and allowing us to get to the start line. I hope that I haven’t left anyone off the list below, in no particular order.

North Sails

Southern Spars

Action Yachting

Manex & Power Marine

Steve Searle of M-Rad

Herman the German Zimmerman

A massive thank you to all who were involved in the very comprehensive rescue operation that was put in motion by the South African Navy and the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), to assist multiple boats in difficulty over a large piece of ocean and assisted by Cape Town Radio and the Cape to Rio Race organisation.

Foreword

When I started writing this book it was to be a simple telling of our story of being capsized less than 18 hours into our anticipated 3-week voyage across the South Atlantic. This was as part of the fleet of ocean racers competing in the Cape to Rio Race between Cape Town in South Africa, and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in January 2014.

As I got further into my writing, the style and aim of the book gradually evolved into something different from what I had intended. Once I saw this happening I decided to change course and write the book the way that it seemed to want me to do it. It still contains the material that I originally intended but there is also a lot more.

Very few people have ever been inside a large boat when it capsizes. Of those who have, only a few have written about it to describe what happened. I am not aware of anybody educated in small craft design who has been through this experience and has analysed in any detail what is happening to the boat, the crew and anything else inside and outside the boat during the capsize process, from upright to inverted and back to upright. I have attempted to do that, to help other sailors to understand what can happen to them and their boats, possibly helping them to better prepare their boats for the unfortunate occurrence, should it befall them in the future.

We tend to think that these things only happen to other people. Then, one day, we find that we are among those other people ourselves. That is when the benefit of having taken note of the experiences of others is of real benefit, when we have prepared our boats to have the best chance of surviving the conditions and of protecting the crew, bringing them safely back to port.

Expanding further, I have included discussions of the basic principles of stability, how various boat types behave, how features of the shapes of hull, keel and superstructure affect the way that the boat will behave in waves, whether upright, upside-down or transitioning between the two, as well as how to interpret stability graphs and the effects on stability of water ballast tanks and canting keels.

This is all intended to help the layman to understand the subject, not as a tool for calculating stability characteristics. So, you will find it all to be written in layman’s language and you won’t find any calculations, complicated or otherwise.

I have included two stories written by Australian Butch Dalrymple-Smith about the capsize of the Swan 65 Sayula II in the Whitbread Round the World Race in November 1973. Butch was one of the crew on that boat and since then has made his mark designing boats, first with Ron Holland and now with his own business Butchdesign. These stories appeared in Yachts and Yachting magazine in March and May of 1974 and are included here with permission from the author.

There is also a chapter illustrated with photos showing what one man has done to prepare his boat for that possible capsize sometime in the future. This is not just any run-of-the-mill boatowner, he is a physician involved with the German search and rescue service and has seen the results of a rescue boat capsizing. That decided him that it is worthwhile to prepare ahead of time, just in case he needs it.

Finally, in this eBook version I have added a chapter with advice on how to escape from an inverted boat. This is not simply a matter of taking a breath and swimming out to the surface. This chapter highlights the many factors that need to be taken into account when attempting to exit the boat, to reach the surface and survive.

I hope that you find some of this information to be useful for you, your boat and your sailing.

Dudley Dix

The History

The Cape to Rio Race was started to encourage South African sailors to voyage across the South Atlantic Ocean in sailboats, to race each other across this large expanse of open blue water. The interest in such a race grew out of the success of South African Bruce Dalling in placing second in the 1968 Single Handed Trans-Atlantic Race. He did this in the 50ft Voortrekker, designed by Ricus van de Stadt and built in South Africa from cold-moulded timber. The boat and the race generated intense interest and Bruce Dalling became a national hero.

The new race quickly developed into a means for newbie cruisers to travel in the company of other boats at the start of a voyage to the Caribbean. Many continued from the Caribbean to eventually circumnavigate.

The first Cape to Rio Race was in 1971, attracting 69 entries that included boats skippered by Robin Knox-Johnston and Eric Tabarly. Entries have varied over the years, with the largest fleet being 126 boats from 19 countries in 1976.

The course links two of the most beautiful cities in the world, dominated by mountains that were close neighbours eons ago. Continental drift inched them away from each other, to their current separation of approximately 3275 nautical miles and an ocean apart.

The start is in Table Bay, at the foot of Table Mountain, part of the mountain range that forms the infamous Cape of Good Hope. This area is  also known as the Cape of Storms, for good reason. At the finish is Guanabara Bay, below the Sugar Loaf and Corcovado Mountain, topped by the Statue of Christ.

Most of the races to Rio de Janeiro have included Trinidade as a mark of the course. Don’t confuse this with Trinidad in the Caribbean. Trinidade is an island 740 miles off the coast of South American and is Brazilian territory. 30 Miles East of Trinidade are the vertical rock pillars of Martin Vaz. They form an obstruction that must be taken into account by navigators but are not part of the course. They could be passed on either side.

This race has been run every 3 to 4 years since then, with occasional breaks or course changes for various reasons, mostly related to politics and us South Africans being the pariahs of the world. We really are nice people if you take the trouble to get to know us.

In the 1980’s sanctions against South Africa and sports boycotts rendered South Africans unacceptable in much of the world, so the race was put on hold. For a few races it went to Punte del Este in Uruguay and was named the South Atlantic Race. This destination wasn’t as popular with the South African yotties because of the increased distance to thrash against wind and current to work back to the north, if cruising to the Caribbean was the ultimate reason for participating in the race. More recently the race has finished at Salvador about 1000 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. In 2014 the finish was again in Rio.

I sailed in the 1993 race, which was the first one to run after the two-decade break. There was huge pent-up demand for this race to resume, resulting in a fleet of 83 boats setting off across the South Atlantic. I sailed that year on the Shearwater 39 Ukelele Lady. The spelling of her name is not a typographical error, she was so named due to an error made by the craftsman who carved the wooden name boards for her transom, so the name stayed.

Ukelele Lady is a fibreglass production boat that I had drawn for Gerfried Nebe. She was built by Nebe Boats for the race and belonged to South African TV and stage entertainer Nick Taylor. Although a classic cruiser, she is a rather fast cruiser and Nick brought on some seasoned round-the-buoys racing helmsmen to crew the boat under a professional seaman as skipper. The skipper, Dave Powell,  was the only one on board who had sailed across an ocean before. He had done this in an earlier Cape to Rio Race on a very heavy old cruiser. I sailed on Ukelele Lady as navigator and crew-master. Although we were short on ocean-crossings, we weren’t short on coastal, offshore and inshore sailing miles.

Nick Taylor wanted to race to Rio and cruise back to Cape Town, primarily to film the double voyage and make a marketable video. To that end we had a non-sailing professional cameraman on board as well as a considerable quantity of camera equipment. The return voyage was via the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha. The video was completed under the title The Singer and the Sea, available from Nick’s website at http://nicktaylor.co.za.

Figure 2 - Shearwater 39 Ukelele Lady, a classic cruiser with a turn of speed.

We were racing a cruiser in the cruising division of the fleet and we did this with a great deal of enthusiasm. We pushed Ukelele Lady as hard as we could all the way across the ocean. We petrified the owner with our refusal to slow the boat in gales, even when we couldn’t see where we were going on moonless nights. We sailed his boat deep into every thunderstorm that we could intercept, to catch more wind or to catch water because our water management skills weren’t as good as our sailing skills. In short, we, aside from the owner, thoroughly enjoyed our first ocean crossing. We won no prizes but we did win lots of admiration for our surprising speed on a classic cruiser. Our staid old cruising skipper was congratulated on the zest with which he had raced across at his age and I think that he really enjoyed his first real racing experience. We chafed a few halliards, broke a few blocks and blew our best spinnaker to pieces 50 miles from Rio. We gave Ukelele back to Nick in Rio de Janeiro a much more experienced lady than when we got our eager hands on her in Cape Town. We gave her back ready to carry him back to Cape Town for the second half of his movie.

I really enjoyed that race. It left me aching for more of the same. I enjoyed the sense of isolation. Even in a big fleet of boats we had periods that we didn’t see another boat for days, yet from the spreaders I could see 2 or 3 competitors over the horizon.

It awoke in me a deep love for ocean sailing.

Figure 3 - Occupying my favourite seat in the 1993 race, high in the rigging.

The Boat

It was during that 1993 Cape to Rio Race that I decided to build myself a new boat for the following Cape to Rio Race. At the time my own boat was Concept Won, which I had built to my CW975 design but lengthened by the addition of a 500mm scoop to the stern. My design had won the 1979 Cruising World Design Competition, which decided me to build it for myself. I had cruised and raced her in Cape of Good Hope waters for 7 years, winning occasional races and sometimes achieving remarkable results. It was on Concept Won that we achieved a massive handicap win in the Hout Bay to Table