Hi Jeremy,

Looks like Great Minds think alike, once again... (grin)

I posted this on another forum yesterday:

Actually, according to the website, there had been at least some sea trialing/shaking down of the boat prior to departure...

http://www.aeroyacht.com/2014/01/02/alpha-01-attacks-the-ice/

But I agree, this loss was to a large extent the result of decisions made before the boat ever left Liberty Landing... Always easy to say in hindsight, of course... (grin)

Not that I was ever asked, but this would have been a delivery I would have passed on, or at least tried hard to convince the owners to consider 'modifying'... With so late a departure in what has been a very volatile and changeable winter so far, I'd try to talk them into simply going down the coast, and spending the winter in the Bahamas, instead... That would certainly be an ideal boat for it...

Or, at the very least, jumping off from Norfolk, or Morehead City, instead... Chances are the charging issue they had (which again, in hindsight, the consequences of which I think is greatly understated in Charlie's write-up) would have been exposed and remedied prior to setting off from further down the coast... I've posted numerous times here the link to Don Street's thoughts on the risk of shooting directly for the islands from further north, and the preference from jumping off from the Chesapeake or Morehead instead, and doing so in mid-January makes even less sense, to me...

However, such routing considerations expose, to me, one of the fundamental liabilities of a multihull for offshore, or for this passage late in the season, in particular... Namely, their inherent lack of weatherliness, and ability to make a COG as close to the wind as a more weatherly monohull...

So, once the determination that the BVIs were to be the destination, the skipper is put into a bit of a box, due to the limitations of the boat's inability to sail a high course to weather... In January, chances are that further on down the rhumb line, you're gonna encounter the winter trades sooner rather than later, and will be on port tack hard on the breeze for perhaps the last 500-600 miles of the trip, and quite possibly more... So, a departure from the Chesapeake, or south of Hatteras - while being considerably safer and more prudent in terms of waiting for a decent window, and getting across the Stream quickly - could make it very problematic to lay the Virgin Islands on port tack... Hell, on a boat like that, leaving from Morehead/Beaufort, you might be lucky to fetch Luperon, much less San Juan... (grin)

Whatever, this was clearly not the right boat to be on in that particular place, at that particular time... Hell, I still can't get over the fact that the steering arms were fixed to the rudder posts with freakin' SET SCREWS... UFB...

Once again, I think it's worth posting the link to Street's take on this passage... He's talking about making the run in the fall, of course - so I'd say this advice goes at least triple for January...

http://www.cruisingworld.com/how-to/seamanship/sailing-south-forget-bermuda

Pretty striking how reminiscent this trip turned out to be of the abandonment of the Swan 46 WOLFHOUND last winter... A midwinter departure from NY, and pressing on despite charging problems that ultimately did them in. For all the discussion of rudder and steering problems, I suspect it was the inevitiable loss of power that became the final straw in their decision to abandon, I like to think a skipper as experienced as Hank would have been inclined to tough it out a bit longer if he knew he'd have power, and the ability to keep the batteries up... Hard to tell precisely where they were when the autopilot first quit due to low power, and they realized the genset was not charging their batteries, but that would have been the deal-breaker, for me... At that point, I sure would have rather been closer inshore, where a hard right turn might have brought me into Ocean City, or Norfolk, where the issue could be resolved before proceeding any further...

Perhaps Charlie should have re-read his blog entry re the loss of WOLFHOUND, prior to going on this trip -. The irony now is pretty striking:

What the heck were those guys doing out there in February? Twas a race delivery... believe it or not. McGettigan bought the boat in Connecticut last fall, didn't get it put together as fast as he hoped, thanks to Hurricane Sandy, but was intent on racing it in the Caribbean 600. So he and three buddies from Ireland jumped aboard and departed Westbrook bound for Bermuda on February 2.

What went wrong was predictable enough. It was exactly the sort of stuff that usually happens when you're shaking down a boat you've just bought. A newly installed inverter/charger didn't work properly and the engine got gunked up with dirty fuel. So there they were 70 miles or so north of Bermie with no house power and no engine and a handheld VHF with a rundown battery. Their only working nav equipment was an iPad that was down to 15 percent of its battery life. Then the weather got rough again, and they suffered two knockdowns.

What would YOU do in these circumstances???

I could launch into my routine tirade about unnecessary rescue calls, but I'll spare you that. (You'll find many such opinions in this forum discussion, if you do care to moralize.) Fact is, I can't promise I wouldn't have done the same thing in this situation, though I do like to think I would somehow have gotten into Bermuda unassisted.

http://www.wavetrain.net/news-a-views/463-come-and-get-it-free-swan-48-available

Well, I hope the owners haven't sold their house in Indiana, yet... What a shame, this was their retirement plan, what was the rush? Spend the winter in the Bahamas, work your way down to the Caribbean via the Thorny Path, if need be...

I can so easily picture how this whole trip developed... The prep of the boat running behind schedule, the race against the onset of winter, the desire to adhere to a schedule, and so on... The single worst delivery I have ever had, unfolded in precisely the same way... The hurried commissioning of a motor yacht going from NJ to the Miami Boat Show in February, trouble from beginning to end, a trip that was truly doomed from the start, as I KNEW it would be... (grin)

best regards,

Jon