I have intentionally capsized the Bonnie Dune many times. Under calm conditions, I always manage, with notable difficulty, to get her righted and bailed out.

The one time I capsized unintentionally, conditions (25 mph winds, 2-3 foot chop and 38 degree water) were such that after several attempts, I had to abandon ship. See "The Wreck of the Bonnie Dune.

I have always carried extra inflatable flotation under the center thwart, but today I had the idea of setting up a rapidly deployable system for putting that extra flotation in a more helpful position during a capsize self-rescue.

Each bag has forty pounds of buoyancy when fully submerged. I hope that this will make capsize recovery slightly easier.

Two items are not apparent in the video. The first is that I intend to have a sea anchor bent to a rode and tucked behind one of the flotation bags so that I can quickly put it to use in holding the bow into the weather. Secondly, when the boat is all bailed out and set up for sailing or rowing to a safe harbor, temporarily lifting the dagger board will instantly free the float bags to be brought back aboard.

I'll post an update to this thread once I test it all out on the water. That may be a few weeks.


Video

This message has been edited. Last edited by: David Bixby,

David I'm glad you built a Skerry and are active on this forum. That is a creative idea. I wonder how big a sponson it would take to keep the boat from capsizing in really bad weather? Two gunwale length inflatable pool noodles could be hung on if the conditions are marginal.

greg.

Hi Greg. I hope all is well with you and your family. I enjoyed watching your red boat YouTube video. I'm hoping the bags will help make the boat a little more stable while I am bailing it out.

Have you been enjoying your Skerry this summer? I haven't had as much time as usual this year but I did take Bonnie Dune for a week stay at a rental lake house with my folks on Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. My Dad brought is new American 18 sailboat which Bonnie Dune and I held our own against.

The day before yesterday I was sailing on a nearby mountain lake. I started out with about 3 or 4 mph of breeze and then got hit by a surprise howling gust to about 20mph or 25 mph. I went ashore and reefed the sail which helped deal with the freak gusts that came at intervals for the rest of the afternoon. That's what got me thinking about a system to right the boat should I ever be knocked down again.

Hi David
Your float system is promising. I am really concerned about capsizing and your system would be really useful I think.
Lake Ontario is COLD even in summer and I don't figure I would have much more than about half an hour to recover before being in some trouble.
I had been thinking of using 3 noodles with strings in the middle hole and attaching them to the 3 bulkheads (?) under the boat if I capsized. Not very dignified looking! I'm already using noodles for protection against the docks.
I have a plastic plug for the daggerboard hole.

I'm really interested in seeing how well the floats behave in real conditions. It would be great to have a video.
Thanks for sharing.
Christine

Hi Dave,
Where did you get those float bags? Great idea! I am going to make a ladder of rope and pvc for help getting in the boat (when it doesn't have water in it).
I'm still building my boat. Hope to float it in two weeks. It will have a loose footed lug sail for ease of setting and reefing.
Thanks for the pictures and movies. I'll get some on the web when she's afloat.

David it has been a slow summer for me as well. I usually average 15 to 20 outings per year but am much below that this season.

Christine do you wear the type one style life vests? Those big lakes are cold and strong. A couple of May's ago I was out rowing on lake Huron with a land breeze of 30 knots, big rollers and 40 degree F water temp. I didn't lose the boat but after a few minutes of being slapped around like a new inmate I was glad to get off that water. Even though I only got out past the breakers, I remember tightening up my type 3 vest thinking I should have something better on.
The next day was the most perfect row I ever had. With gentle rollers & every other boat still covered in blue tarp, I had the whole lake to myself.

greg.

Hi Greg
No I don't wear a very good life vest. Although the water is really cold, its often above 30C (85-90) outside and the lifejacket is hot.

I think I will get a wet suit for the fall. Maybe a shortie would work.

Went out today in 22 knot winds (well gusts of 22 knots, mostly around 18) and it was exciting! Not a drop of water in Cricket.

Lucky waves were very small. I can't imagine getting the boat righted and bailed even in these conditions though.

Christine

quote:

Originally posted by John-H:
Hi Dave,
Where did you get those float bags? Great idea! I am going to make a ladder of rope and pvc for help getting in the boat (when it doesn't have water in it).
I'm still building my boat. Hope to float it in two weeks. It will have a loose footed lug sail for ease of setting and reefing.
Thanks for the pictures and movies. I'll get some on the web when she's afloat.

John,

The float bags are some old kayak flotation bags that I picked up on the bargain table at my local canoe shop. They are conical in shape, so I sewed cylindrical canvass outer shells for them. The conical bags are being used as bladders or inner tubes inside the cylindrical canvass shells. My canvass cylinders are about 10" by 17" giving them about 40 lbs of equivalent water volume.

Getting back into a swamped Skerry solo without letting the gunwale dip below the water level is nearly impossible with or without a ladder in my experience. I have been using the technique of flopping in quickly over the lowered gunwale and accepting that more water was going to flow in. Then I get down as low as I can in the center of the boat and start bailing like mad. I use my weight and, in the future, my flotation bag outriggers, to carefully balance the boat against the sloshing water and any wind or swell influence until she is mostly bailed out. Using a big detergent bottle scoop, bailing takes about five minutes. A ladder right at the stern might be of some use re-entering, especially if the boat is empty of water. That will take some experimentation. I look forward to hearing about it.

David

This message has been edited. Last edited by: David Bixby,

Sunday I laid Bonnie Dune over until the seas flooded in and she settled on her beam. It made a few experimental efforts to figure out the best way to get both flotation bags deployed while the boat was capsized, then I came up with a way that should work pretty well as a standard procedure. When I climbed aboard the flooded boat over the the quarter rail, I found her to be much more stable than usual with me on board bailing. I used to have to be extremely careful and quickly offset the sloshing water by shifting my weight to keep her upright until I had done substantial bailing. Of course that made it unlikely that I could ever bail her out in rough conditions. This time she sat nice and flat and I felt no tendency for her to try to roll over every time the on board water sloshed a bit. I'm hoping that this will expand the conditions under which I can expect to perform a self rescue. How far they are expanded is still not known. Obviously more testing and practice needs to occur.

Linda videoed the whole episode on our cheap waterproof camera, but I was so far off shore that the video, with its poor resolution of me and my tiny boat is pretty useless. We'll try again some time with better equipment and a better vantage point.

In regards to this floation issue, I wonder if enclosing the space under the center seat to build in floation would add enough boyancy? This would also displace some volume of water in the boat. I'll have to take some measurements to figure out volume. The boat may ride a bit higher when flooded. However it would not have the stability benefit of Dave's floats on the outside of the beam. Other than increasing the weight of the boat and adding more work to finishing, is there a good reason not to do this?

This may be something to consider:
When I have a passenger in the boat while sailing, I've found that the best place to have him/her sit is on the floor, facing aft, with their back against the bow seat, legs straddling the daggerboard trunk...(that way he/she is low in the boat, facing me, centered, seated comfortably (on a crazy creek chair for some padding), and doesn't need to move much for sailing trim. Having enclosed floatation built into the center seat would compromise that leg room.

Julie K.

John,

Enclosed space under the center seat is what I always have had. The flotation bags that I am deploying outboard after a capsize have always been lashed into the boat under the center seat. They do have all the effects that you listed but do not help stabilize the boat while bailing, other than causing there to be less water in the boat to bail. I have practiced capsizes with the bare hull, with the flotation under the seat, and with the bags deployed outboard. On a scale of 1-10 for self recovery ease (1=impossible and 10=effortless and consistent in all imaginable conditions). In my experience, it breaks down like this:

Bare hull with no mast or sail = 4
Bare hull with sail rigged= 2.5
Hull with flotation under seats and sail rigged= 3
Hull with flotation bags deployed outboard, sail rigged, and sea anchor (drogue)= 6

I encourage anyone who expects to be able to deal with a capsize to practice and experiment when conditions safely allow.

Improving performance of any sailing task is, in my opinion, based half on technology and half on technique. The technology side requires novel or traditional creative gadget solutions, while the technique side requires practice.

Good point Julie. I may build in a box on the back side of the seat for stuff I need access to like binoculars, charts, sunscreen etc.
I have dumped my share of sailboats. Some had enough flotation that they were easy to right and some not.
I've read about sea anchors but never got around to using one. Guess I'll add that to the todo list along with flotation bags. I saw some inflatable bumpers in a marine catalog, West Marine maybe. I think of the Skerry as a seaworthy "Peapod" or "Faering".
I may not have all this on board before I have to get the boat in the water, soon. I'll be careful, , really.

John --

I bought one of those round canvas buckets that Woodenboat sells to keep my stuff in, and I really like it. It holds a small drybag where I keep my boating sundries (binoculars, bird guide, wind meter, sunscreen, gps unit, VHF radio, charts, waterproof digital camera, tide guide, etc), and has room to stuff my paddle jacket and a couple water bottles, & snacks too. I keep it in the car-- so it's easy enough to just pull the drybag when I go kayaking. The bucket tucks nicely in that space under the center seat-- and is easy to hand the whole thing over to a passenger to fish out whatever we need.

Also: I took two small blocks of wood (I used some leftover mahogany from the rails) drilled a hole through each, sealed the blocks with epoxy, and then glued one to the inside of the floatation chamber and tied a long loop of line through each, to which any small item that goes into the floatation chamber gets attached (e.g. a ditty bag that contains container of oar leather grease, first aid kit)...which solves the issue of having stuff "disappear" into the chamber, unable to be reached ever again. Obviously, one would not want to load up those chambers with lots of stuff, but it is handy for a few things that you want to have "always there."

It sounds like you're getting close to being on the water!

Julie K

Great idea Julie! I have just the right canvas bag with lots of pockets that I bought at the Maine boat builders show. So, I built the boat to fit the bag?! hmmm. Also, I bought two 8 inch deck plates to access the floatation chambers. Thanks for the line inside idea. I was wondering how I was going to reach the small stuff. I'm putting holes in those frame sections that stick up the sides for tying things to.
Thanks to all you sailors for the helpful tips and ideas!

Hi David
I finally got around to capsizing my Skerry and trying to recover it.
I posted in the CLC forum ( http://www.clcboats.com/forum/ ) but in a nutshell:
There were a few ah ha! moments.
As you figured out the boat is utterly unsteady because of its mast/rigging.
I unmasted it while it was on its side. Dead easy it just slides out.
Then the boat SELF RIGHTED! This happened because I have noodle bumper pads on the side of my boat. Photos of noodles on my site:
http://www.christinedemerchant.com/sailing.html
There was lots of freeboard and I had no trouble getting in and bailing.
I'm sure your floats will work and I think that my stupid little noodles would also work if I tied them together from the underside if I needed them. Since I have them anyway because I launch to a dock and there is always waves then it would be a simple effort to just joint the noodles with a rope that runs under the boat. 6 floats 3 on each side joined by 3 ropes.
Anyway I will try when I'm next inclined to get wet. So no worry, the boat is recoverable in the event of a capsize.
Christine

Christine,

Great work! Thanks for sharing your experience. I had always been worried about pulling the mast while the hull was lying on its side, thinking that when the foot slipped out of the mast step, it might torque while still in the mast partner and jam or damage the boat. I will play with that technique when I get a chance.

When the big one ever happens in adverse conditions, its nice to have a plan A, B, C, etc. Even better to have experimented and know which plans work best.

I have a theory that it doesn't matter whether the DB is in the trunk or not. I think I could bail the Skerry out either way.

The justification goes like this:

I have turned the hull over in shallow water and then very carefully climbed aboard the boat to find that the water level is right at the level of the center thwart. If I assume that this level of water is close to the level of water outside the boat with me on board, then any additional water taken aboard during a deep-water flounder over the gunwale to re-enter would have a surface slightly higher than the sea surface outside the boat. This may mean that the water level in the boat is temporarily higher than the DB trunk top, but the water flow through the trunk will be outward not inward until the hull rises to its natural flooded draft with one person on board. My estimations may be in error a bit in either direction but the result is that the flow through the DB slot will be either outward, non-existent or very slowly inward while I am bailing furiously by the bucket-full. In any situation, It is not going to significantly change how long it takes to bail out the boat.

Just somethin' else to test out I guess.

Thanks again for sharing your experience with this. It gives me some new food for thought.

David

An interesting video on the topic of recovering a capsized dinghy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LtaAHsqTM&NR=1

Hey All:

Interesting forum discussion on flotation, capsize recovery, and safety.

http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70604&highlight=skerry

Jim V