© Attainable Adventure Cruising Ltd and the authors, all rights are reserved.
Nothing on this website or in direct communications received from us, or in our articles in the media, should be construed to mean or imply that offshore voyaging is anything other than potentially hazardous. Dangers such as, but not limited to, extreme weather, cold, ice, lack of help or assistance, gear failure, grounding, and falling overboard could injure or kill you and wreck your boat. Decisions such as, but not limited to, heading offshore, where you go, and how you equip your boat, are yours and yours alone. The information on this web site is based on what has worked for the authors in the past, but that does not mean it will work for you, or that it is the best, or even a good way for you to do things.
“How often do you hear that from me?” 😀
Perhaps not in that sentence, but you try to help people overcome difficulties, dangers and fears, while showing it’s neither especially difficult nor dangerous, as the site name indicates: It’s attainable. That’s a pretty positive attitude, that shines through, and that I applaud! Thank you!
Hi Stein,
Thanks very much for the kind words, particularly valued today because I spent half the night fighting a bug on the site!
Hi John,
Like you I have never dipped the boom on a typical cruising boat but also most of my offshore miles are on other types of vessels so I am not a great data point. One where dipping the boom is a real problem is some of the gaffers that have booms of like 60′ on beams closer to 20′. We did a couple of different things to deal with this issue although all of them are far from perfect. The common ones include:
Your solution of reducing sail as needed and rocking the reefs combined with the typical geometry of a cruising boat is much better. Dipping the boom could be scary but I have never seen any actual issues with it on those boats. What worried me far more is that putting the boom in the water means you lose your ability to spill more wind and this was a contributing factor in multiple stability casualties.
Eric
Hi Eric,
Glad it works for you.
Every time you write about big gaffers my respect for those who sail them safely goes up another notch. We don’t know how easy we have it in the smaller Bermuda rigged yacht world.
Hi John,
I always took comfort in knowing that a lot of these boats used to do stuff like fish on the banks in the middle of the winter prior to useful weather forecasting. The stuff that they used to endure was unbelievable and the boats were not always well maintained. Nowadays, when we hear of a vessel being caught in these conditions, it is considered negligence such as Robin’s decision on the Bounty. While an awful lot of lives and vessels were lost, the stories of the ones that survived made me realize just how much they could take if handled and maintained properly. To point number 6 of your latest article on boat and gear evaluation tips, with modern forecasting, modern design, modern materials, a well maintained boat and appropriate skills, an appropriate safety buffer can usually be built up so that it is not dangerous.
Eric
Hi Eric,
Good point. Some years ago I had the privilege of listening to the last living crew member (since passed) tell the story or getting caught by nasty storm in the bight of Sable Island on the original Bluenose and how through the great seamanship of Capt. Angus Walters, they survived it. The sad part of the story is several other schooners did not survive that and other storms around the same time and their crews make up a huge percentage of the names on the Fisherman’s Memorial in Lunenburg.
Two more sailors were killed last night, both by crash-gybing booms in the Sydney-Hobart race.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-27/two-die-in-separate-incidents-in-sydney-hobart-yacht-race/104760416
Since it’s only been a few hours and there’s no report out yet, people are naturally speculating. And misinformation is rampant; stuff like “you shouldn’t use preventers in high wind because they do damage when they break; save them for light air only” is being upvoted on reddit etc.
Yes, we know that it is possible to engineer a safe and seamanlike system that will safely control that boom – but a worrying number of people seem to treat dipping the clew, crash-gybing, broaching, getting whacked on the head, etc. as just “things that happen”.
No, they don’t “just happen”. They’re the result of predictable physics, and we can design around them.
Hi Matt,
What horrible news, and even more disturbing to hear that people are using it to draw ill advises conclusions. Hopefully we will learn more about what happened from the promised inquiry. That said, I do think there are some conditions on some racing boats where a preventer is not necessarily the best solution, so I will try and keep an open mind until we hear more. Of course the other way to look at it, which I tend to favour, and alighns with your comment, is that if someone died a mistake we can learn from was made by definition. Like you, I don’t like the “these things happen” approach.
When I sailed on Gaffers, we had “tripping reefs”. Basically a reef that only sets at the clew and lifts the boom end. On most cruising boats I favor a mainsail with a slightly cocked boom: like you said easier on the bimini and the crews heads.