When Keels Fall Off — Cheeki Rafiki & Assigning Blame

Posted on by May 7, 2018

Cheeki Rafiki After Losing Keel

When the keel on the Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau 40.7 sailing yacht, broke off in a storm in the mid-Atlantic in May 2014, the yacht capsized and four UK sailors died. Why did the keel fall off and who was to blame for the deaths?

In response to the second part of the question, the British courts chose to blame Douglas Innes, managing director of the Stormforce Coaching, the firm which owned and was responsible for the maintenance of the yacht. Innes was charged with manslaughter and with failing to operate the yacht in a safe manner. In July of last year, he was found guilty of the lesser charge, failing to operate the yacht in a safe manner, contrary to the Merchant Shipping Act. At the end of last month, a jury acquitted Innes of the manslaughter charges.

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Politics Creates Chesapeake Crab Crisis

Posted on by May 4, 2018

The good news is that the waters of the Chesapeake are getting progressively cleaner and the crab population has experienced a significant rebound. The bad news is that anti-immigrant politics have plunged the Chesapeake crabbing industry into chaos.

First, more on the good news. Last year, a study by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science reported that in 2016, Chesapeake Bay fisheries received an “A” for the health of the blue crab, anchovy and rockfish populations. Blue crabs scored 90 percent, improving drastically compared with two years ago, when the grade was 32 percent.

The really bad news is that despite the recovery of the crab fisheries, there is a dramatic shortage of workers to pick the meat sold in restaurants and supermarkets. The anti-immigrant policies of the current administration has resulted in 40% of the seasonal crab workers not receiving temporary visas to work in the Maryland crab processing plants.

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Bowhead Whales, Jazz Singers of the Sea

Posted on by May 3, 2018

Photo: K Stafford

Last month, researchers from the University of Washington released a study performed over four winters which recorded 184 bowhead whales singing beneath the ice in Greenland. What they found was remarkable. Kate Stafford and other UW oceanographers discovered that the songs of the bowhead were far more complex and nuanced than perhaps any other whale, including the humpback whales, which are well known for their yearly songs. Some have called the bowheads jazz singers for the creative variations in their songs.  Science Daily reports:

“If humpback whale song is like classical music, bowheads are jazz,” said lead author Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “The sound is more freeform. And when we looked through four winters of acoustic data, not only were there never any song types repeated between years, but each season had a new set of songs.”

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Akademik Lomonosov — Floating Chernobyl or Nuclear Titanic?

Posted on by May 2, 2018

The media has called the Russian floating nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonosov a “Floating Chernobyl” and a “Nuclear Titanic.” Is this just headline hyperbole? Or, is the barge-mounted 70-megawatt nuclear reactor a serious threat? It is hard to tell, which is scary in its own right. 

The floating reactor is currently on its way to Murmansk, a town in Northwest Russia, to be loaded with nuclear fuel. Once operational, the plant will be connected to the electrical grid in the Arctic town of Pevek in 2019. It will be the world’s northernmost nuclear reactor, capable of powering a town of 100,000 people. The reactor barge will be anchored at the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Arctic, northwest of Russia.  The almost 500-foot long Akademik Lomonosov has a displacement of around 21,500 tons.

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Of Eleven Littoral Combat Ships Commissioned, Zero Deployed in 2108

Posted on by May 1, 2018

The saga of the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) continues. The ships were intended to be small, versatile and relatively inexpensive. So far they have succeeded only in being small. The Navy intends to have around 30 of these ships built and so far has commissioned eleven. This year, the Navy plans on not deploying any of the LCS. Maintenance issues have many of LCS tied to the dock. The program itself is not new. The first LCS was commissioned a decade ago, but the problem-plagued ships have seen relatively little actual service. 

The LCS, which early on earned the nickname “Little Crappy Ships,” are actually two different ships types. The Freedom Class are monohulls while the Independence Class is a trimaran design. Why the Navy chose to develop tow very different designs in parallel is the subject of some discussion. The LCS were originally intended to be built for around $200 million a copy. Their cost has not risen to close to $600 million each. Both classes have been plagued with reliability and maintenance issues. It is also unclear whether the LCS would have much a chance to survive actual combat. The ships were designed to highly modular able to switch between various mission configurations, but this flexibility has proven to be largely illusory.

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The Fourth Amendment vs the Penn. Fish and Boat Commission

Posted on by April 30, 2018

A very interesting case was argued recently before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Superior Court over a $75 fine issued to a boater for not having enough life jackets aboard his boat. The issue before the court, however, was not life jackets, but the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

It all began in May of 2016, when Fred Karash and four friends were enjoying a boat trip on Lake Erie on Fred’s 23-foot cabin cruiser. Without warning, they were boarded by law enforcement officers and detained for an hour, while Fred’s boat was searched. The officers admitted they had no reason to suspect the boaters had violated any law or regulation but claimed the right under state law to search any boat at any time on any Pennsylvania waterway in order to conduct a “safety inspection.” As it turned out Fred had all the required safety equipment aboard but was short one life jacket. The officers issued a ticket for $75 and sent Fred and his friends on their way. 

Now, most would have simply paid the ticket, while perhaps uttering a few choice curse words beneath their breath. Fred Karash chose another course. Continue reading →

SSV Oliver Hazard Perry — Employment Opportunities

Posted on by April 30, 2018

SSV Oliver Hazard Perry is the largest civilian sailing school vessel in the United States and the first ocean-going full-rigged ship to built in the U.S. in over 100 years. Her accommodations hold 32 people overnight in addition to her 17 professional crew. And speaking of professional crew, the Oliver Hazard Perry Rhode Island organization is looking for applicants for all positions for the spring/summer 2018, including captain, mates, engineers, ABs, deckhands, steward, bosun, medical officer, and program manager.  To learn more, click here.

Record Quantities of Microplastics Found in Sea Ice

Posted on by April 28, 2018

A new study has found record quantities of microplastics in sea ice. The study, published this week in Nature Communications, demonstrates “just how pervasive this type of pollution has become in every last corner of our planet,” says Melanie Bergmann, one of the study’s authors. The researchers found extremely high concentrations of plastic in their samples—up to 12,000 particles per liter of sea ice, or about 45,000 particles per gallon. The majority of particles were microscopically small. 

The ice cores were gathered from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean in the spring of 2014 and summer of 2015. They were taken back to the laboratory, where they were analyzed for their unique plastic “fingerprint”. The BBC reports that the “plastic fingerprint” from the ice samples suggests they were carried on ocean currents from the huge garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean or arose locally due to pollution from shipping and fishing.  More than half of the microplastic particles within the ice were so small that they could easily be ingested by sea life, said Ilka Peeken of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the study.

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Tug & Barge — a New York Harbor Love Story

Posted on by April 27, 2018

Here is a short and beautiful video to end the week. The video by Paul Demonte features two historic vessels in New York harbor — the 1907 built tug Pegasus and the Hudson River railroad barge, Lehigh Valley No. 79, home of the Waterfront Museum.

Tug & Barge: A New York Harbor Love Story from Paul Demonte on Vimeo.

Cape Horn Race — 500 Years After Magellan

Posted on by April 26, 2018

A new race is being organized for 2019 and 2020 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Strait of Magellan in 1520. Dubbed the “Cape Horn Race,” it will have four legs:

  • The Cape Horn Transat — Gibraltar to Buenos Aires, November 2, 2019
  • The Cape Horn Team Challenge — Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. December 29, 2019
  • The Cape Horn Cup Chile, Round Cape Horn Island Race — January 19, 2020
  • The Magellan Grand Prix — Punta Arenas to Punta del Este — February 8 – 18, 2020

The race was conceived in 2006 by Alec Honey and the late Rear Admiral Roberto Benavente of the Chilean Navy. Alec Honey raced around Cape Horn on January 23, 1974 as the navigator onboard Great Britain 2 in the first Whitbread Round the World Race of 1973-1974, the predecessor to the Volvo Ocean Race. 

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Update: Submarine Owner Peter Madsen Given Life Sentence in Murder of Kim Wall

Posted on by April 25, 2018

We have been following the grim saga of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall since last August.  Ms. Wall disappeared after going on a trip in Copenhagen harbor onboard Peter Madsen’s private submarine, UC3 Nautulis, as part of an interview. The submarine sank under mysterious circumstances and Ms. Wall disappeared. Mr. Madsen was rescued and subsequently charged with murder. Ms. Wall’s dismembered torso washed onto a nearby beach eleven days later.

A court in Copenhagen has found Mr. Madsen guilty of premeditated killing — equivalent to murder — in the death of Ms. Wall and has sentenced Madsen to life in prison.

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Toy Ship Adventure Sails On, Crosses the Atlantic

Posted on by April 25, 2018

The extremely small ship Adventure sails on. Last year we posted about the Playmobil toy pirate ship, named Adventure, launched by brothers Ollie and Harry Ferguson, 9 and 6 years old, respectively, from the port of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. After adding ballast and flotation to the just less than two-foot-long craft, the brothers sent Adventure to sea, with a note asking anyone who found the little ship to contact the boys and then send Adventure on its way. 

Last summer the unlikely craft sailed about 390 miles to Denmark, then on to Sweden and then Norway. In Norway, it was taken aboard the full-rigged training ship, Christian Radich, which, late last year carried the craft into the Atlantic and launched it off the coast of Mauritania. A GPS tracker was also added to the tiny vessel.  Recent reports have Adventure off the coast of South America, bound roughly for Barbados. Continue reading →

More Details of John Fisher’s Loss Overboard in Volvo Ocean Race

Posted on by April 24, 2018


John Fisher

Years ago, when I sailed briefly on tall ships, I heard that the two most at-risk groups when going aloft were total novices and the most experienced old hands. The novices knew little, while the experienced sailors grew complacent. This came to mind in reading new details which have emerged related to the tragic death of John Fisher, a sailor on the Volvo Ocean 65 Sun Hung Kai-Scallywag, who was lost at sea after being knocked overboard in the Southern Ocean last month. A few salient points:

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On Earth Day — What Dame Ellen MacArthur Learned Sailing Solo Around the World

Posted on by April 19, 2021

I realize that I am in a rut. Every Earth Day, I say the same thing. Over 70% of the surface of this planet is covered by water, so referring to the planet as “earth” is just wrong. But be that as it may, the misnamed planet is still called Earth and Earth Day is a worthwhile celebration of protecting the planet, both the soil and the watery portions.  Below is a TED talk by one of the world’s great sailors, Dame Ellen MacArthur, about what she learned when she was sailing around the world alone. As she circled the globe alone, she began thinking about the idea of “the circular economy,” an intriguing insight. Definitely worth watching.

The surprising thing I learned sailing solo around the world | Dame Ellen MacArthur

Philomena Cunk: When Horror-show Nelson Won the Battle of Trafalgar Square

Posted on by April 21, 2018

Remember when Lord Horror-show Nelson defeated Napolean Cumberbatch at the Battle of Trafalgar Square? No? Good, because it never happened. Once again, here is an excerpt from Cunk on Britain, Episode 2, in which the clueless Philomena Cunk thoroughly mangles the history of Britain. Here is about 2 minutes of silliness. If you would like to watch the entire episode, click here.