Winter 2005 - New England Multihull Association

oat went over just like it was a beach
cat. It went over very easily and it took
me very much by surprise. Looking back
on it, if we hadn’t trimmed the spinnaker
so tight, if we’d been able to ease it
quicker–but it was on a self-tailer and I
told them to trim it. If someone was holding
the spinnaker sheet in their hand
they could have eased it. It went over
very fast–the boat didn’t stop, or stall. It
was one complete motion–the boat went
in, then straight up. I grabbed the traveler
line, then I was hanging, then I was in
the water up to my chest, then I jumped
up on the trampoline. One crew member,
Duane [Zelinski, the owner] was in the
cockpit and went down below. Two guys
were out on the net, one on the main,
one on the spinnaker. The fifth man,
Louie, was forward and he actually had a
self-inflating life jacket on and he got
stuck momentarily–he was pinned under
a small forward lacing under the boat but
he was able to get out. I saw everybody
was accounted for. No one got hurt;
there was little damage to the boat. We
did not break the mast or anything.
Ted Grossbart (TG): Rosebud II is a
formula 28, a scaled
down formula 40 with
a bigger rig–an
extreme boat and we
had added racks to
the boat so it was at
that point 28 feet long
and 34 feet wide.
This was in the
Ted Grossbart
Gloucester Schooner
Race [September 1, 2001], gusty, with
sharp lulls, up and down. We had been
sailing fine, letting stuff out in the gusts,
and pulling in in the lulls during the first
part of the race. It was an offshore
breeze and close to the shore you get a
lot of funneling. We were on a close
hauled to close reach course and got hit
by a puff that was much bigger than we
had before. There’s some question as to
whether the jib sheet jammed, but I don’t
really think that was the issue. We went
over at 45 degrees, the bow went in, the
boat went up, and started to come back
[up]–we thought we were all right. Then
we got hit by another gust and quite
slowly [we went over]. We’d been doing
about 28 plus. Once you’ve gone over on
the side you’re way up in the air, two or
three stories up looking for a landing
place. Most of the crew was out on the
rack which hinged with some slingshot
action, so they went in first. It was really
a sort of best case situation with no real
injuries, just black and blue marks, and
no serious damage–we were sailing a
week later. [We were] right along the
shore, the harbormaster and Coast
Guard were there.
The Coast Guard at first didn’t want
to help, then the harbormaster came
over, took a line and got us almost all the
way over but they didn’t have enough
horsepower. We also didn’t have a bridle
rigged. Once the Coast Guard saw it
was going to work they wanted to join
in. They flipped us back over and had a
pump, then took us back into Gloucester.
The obvious lesson is we had too much
sail area up. It’s an extreme boat, we
knew we were on the edge, we were
thinking capsize, and we got caught.
Ira Heller (IH): Syd and I were sailing
in the NOOD Regatta in 1995 [in
Mothra, an F27 trimaran]. The race was
being held in upper Narragansett Bay
near Gould Island. There had been a hurricane
that passed south of the Atlantic
coast with large rollers coming into the
bay. It was blowing out of the north at
about 25 knots with the wind against the
waves. It was a windward/leeward
course and we were sailing with a symmetric
spinnaker. I found it difficult to
jibe. We decided the best course of
action before we passed the mark was
to take it down and handed the spinnaker
sheet to a monohull sailor [with little
multihull experience]. We stuffed the
bows into a wave doing 15 knots and the
boat slowed down, the stern started to
come up, we got hit by another gust and
the fellow holding the spinnaker used it
as a brace to hold himself instead of
releasing it, so it continued to pull the
boat over the bows. I held onto the tiller
to hold myself from sliding into anything.
I found myself in the water–I ended up
underneath the boat. I realized I was in a
dangerous situation, and I was hoping I
was choosing the right direction to
swim–it’s very disorienting There’s limited
visibility in the
water–maybe 6
feet. I had the
presence of mind
to grab a breath of
air before I hit the
water. I didn’t
know where anyone
else was until
after the capsize. Ira Heller
Sydney Miller (SM): At the time we
were glad we weren’t wearing our autoinflating
life jackets,
and we were glad we
weren’t tethered to
the boat. I was on the
net getting ready to
take down the spinnaker
and I remember
thinking I wish there
was another way to
Sydney Miller take the spinnaker
down. I thought I would be counting
heads, and hoping I was not going to
have to go diving looking for anyone. I
was very aware that when the boat
came over there were going to be lines
everywhere. In most cases we have all
been incredibly lucky that up to this point
no one has been entangled. It was largely
luck. I was glad it was daylight, and I
was glad that we were racing and there
were other boats around. It was an
unfortunate combination of wind and
waves, but it was also user error.
Joe Colpitt (JC): I was asked to help
the owner of a 49 foot lightweight cruising
tri [sail] from Martha’s Vineyard to
the Virgin Islands in November, 1981. We
left the second week of November. After
a day or so I heard on the radio that a
hurricane was south of Cuba. It turned
into an extra-tropical cyclone and swept
north at us at 30 knots; it caught us about
200 miles north of Bermuda.
We beat into it going south for quite
a while, then turned around and started
to run before it with the storm jib. We
didn’t have a drogue or a sea anchor. It
kept building and around 9:00 at night,
we plowed into the huge waves right up
to the main beam, all three hulls, then
they would pop up, and we would plow
in again. I kept jibing the storm jib accicontinued
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Winter 2005 N E M A
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