Eric Sharp Kiwi 35 should be axed from Mackinac races
Post on: 2011-11-02 By: admin
An investigation by U.S. Sailing into the deaths of two sailors during the last Chicago-Mackinac Race has reached a conclusion many people reached years ago -- high-performance, lightweight yachts like Wingnuts don't belong in long races out of sight of land.The report concluded that Wingnuts flipped during a midnight storm on Lake Michigan in July, killing skipper Mark Morley, 51, and crew Suzanne Makowski-Bicklel, 40, because it wasn't designed for the conditions that can be encountered in offshore racing.Every experienced sailor knows the primary responsibility for the accident lay with the skipper's decision to take a boat like that on a race where A.) It would be as much as 40 miles offshore, B.) They must sail at night when emergencies are far harder to handle and C.) The weather service forecast well in advance that there might be severe thunderstorms.You have to wonder why the Chicago Yacht Club didn't ban such boats from the 300-mile race years ago, although I'll bet they'll be banned now (and also from the Bayview Yacht Club's Port Huron-Mackinac Race).Wingnuts is a Kiwi 35, and there's nothing wrong with that design in the proper place. With its speed and demand for physical agility, Wingnuts would be fun in around-the-buoys races close to shoreThe design would seem to contravene one of the Chicago YC's race rules that says "Boats shall be strongly built, watertight and, particularly with regard to hulls, decks and cabin trunks, capable of withstanding solid water and knockdowns. They must be properly rigged and ballasted, be fully seaworthy, be built to resist capsize, and must meet the standards set forth in these" seaworthiness requirements.There's no way to argue that a boat that depends on the weight of eight crew members scrambling around the deck to keep it upright is "built to resist capsize" and "capable of withstanding solid water and knockdowns."In recent years, a lot of sailors have gone to light, fast "sportboats" that are more affordable and exciting to sail. But sailing a boat like that in bluewater races is like flying over big chunks of ocean in a single-engine airplane. Most of the time you'll get away with it, but if anything goes wrong, you're in trouble.The U.S. Sailing report noted that multihull sailors jokingly referred to boats like Wingnuts as "trimarans without training wheels." That's because Wingnuts' central hull is as narrow at the waterline as the hulls of many tris, but it lacks the two outboard hulls, or amas, that give trimarans their stability.In light to moderate winds, up to about 15 knots, this makes them very fast because they are much lighter than most boats their length and have a smaller wetted surface area, reducing drag that is the primary speed limiter on sailboats.But it also makes the wingboats much more tippier than other keel boats. If they are hit by a really big blast of wind and the leeward wing digs into the water, there's not enough weight in the keel to keep the boat from going over completely.One owner of a Kiwi 35 had painted "Call 911" on the underside of the boat's hiking wings as a joke. But enough of those boats had flipped in different parts of the country over 20 years that the joke obviously had a basis in reality.We can't undo what happened in the Chicago-Mac race last summer, but we certainly should be able to learn from it.Contact ERIC SHARP: 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com. Order his book "Fishing Michigan" for $15.95 at www.freep.com/bookstore or by calling 800-245-5082.
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Eric Sharp: Kiwi 35 should be axed from Mackinac races
An investigation by U.S. Sailing into the deaths of two sailors during the last Chicago-Mackinac Race has reached a conclusion many people reached years ago -- high-performance, lightweight yachts
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