Mayday & rescue in Rosario Straights

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Is that an Axopar brand boat? Looks similar.
 
No knowledge of boat type. I've been out there in 3 to 4 footers, that was no fun. Sounds like they took 6 footer green water over the bow to smash in the windows.
 
A passenger on that ferry told me it was an Axopar 37. The windshield burst when it was (apparently) hit with a large wave in the ~6 foot seas. That injured the skipper moderately severely who was said to be bleeding a lot. Then it started taking on water, from additional waves I assume, and they feared sinking as the bilge pumps could not keep up. The water intrusion also shorted out the radios.

What I wonder is how fast it was going. It doesn't seem likely that a windshield would "blow out" and shatter just from winds (which were in the 20-30 knot range supposedly although freak gusts can occur in the islands). Those boats can go over 40 kts and that would be a lot of momentum if it hit a wall of water going fast. Or I wonder about other aspects of the design such as the forward rake windows paired with generally low profile/freeboard that might catch waves.

Thankfully it seems everyone is OK after the rescue.
 
Glad everyone was OK. With injuries from shattered glass I wonder what type of glass this was? Always assumed front glass was laminate or some type of safety glass.
 
I'm glad everybody and the dogs are now safe. Hats off to the ferry capt'n and crew and the CG. I'm really glad folks like that are out there.
 
Me too. Hope I never have to make a VHF call like that.
Makes me think this boat didn't have a backup handheld radio, something I keep close out there.
 
We see Axopars on YouTube Boat Zone channel all the time in Miami area. The hull shape looks like it would pound your teeth out.
 
Why would people go out in this? It was like this all day. We are newer boaters, looking at this from Chuckanut, we did our own weather go/no go evaluate and it was a clear No. Just wondering how others make this decision.
 
Seeing the pictures of the boat has me questioning the type of glass in those. It sure doesn’t look like it was tempered by the shape of the shards. I didn’t see any laminate either, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. But I did see some really nasty looking pieces of glass that could really do some damage.
Certainly not a good look for axopar.
I’ve often wondered about that style of boat, with the low, wave piercing bow and forward rake windshield. I guess I won’t wonder any more.
 
Safety talk time --

Wrong time, wrong skipper, wrong place and wrong boat for the conditions. It is great to see the boat and crew survived with a professional emergency response effort.

Rosario frequently gets ugly with several different converging channels, strong tidal currents, winds funneling in from Juan de Fuca etc. The Axopar is a fair weather boat. It is not designed for boarding seas as one of the rescuers stated.
Of note, the boat was returned to a safe harbor by one of the rescuers.

Bad things happen on the water with three current mishaps now current on TF. We should all take note, be aware and not let the allure of the sea overwhelm common sense.
 
Hmmm...boat safely returned to harbor by someone that probably knew what they were doing. :speed boat:
 
psneeld said:
Hmmm...boat safely returned to harbor by someone that probably knew what they were doing. :speed boat:
Click to expand...

And wasn't injured from getting a load of glass to the face.

I get the impression that the problem was more an issue of injured people and not knowing how well the boat would survive if they continued more than the actual damage to the boat. The article also mentioned the ferry providing some shelter for the damaged boat while the CG crew brought it home, which may have helped avoid a repeat slug of water through the now missing windshield.
 
On a different note, the windshield should not have shattered. Apparently this failure is what led to the distress call. Axopar has some work to do.
 
sunchaser said:
On a different note, the windshield should not have shattered. Apparently this failure is what led to the distress call. Axopar has some work to do.
Click to expand...
Do I hear recall work?
 
huruta said:
Why would people go out in this? It was like this all day. We are newer boaters, looking at this from Chuckanut, we did our own weather go/no go evaluate and it was a clear No. Just wondering how others make this decision.
Click to expand...

My read on this is it happened on a Saturday weekend, priority was given to "the schedule" vs the weather. Had to get back for some reason.

A schedule can be the most dangerous thing on a boat.
 
Yse schedules can be a problem. Roario Strait can get very ugly very quickly. A few years back we exited Thatcher Pass into Rosario Strait east bound on a day much more benign than Saturday. It got rough enough we tucked in on the west side of James Island and waited all day for conditions to improve. Got home that night much later than scheduled. No other harm done.
GoneFarrell said:
My read on this is it happened on a Saturday weekend, priority was given to "the schedule" vs the weather. Had to get back for some reason.

A schedule can be the most dangerous thing on a boat.
Click to expand...
 
I live just 5 nm from where this happened. Rosario ‘Straight is known for kicking up under windy conditions. Saturday was well beyond being described as windy conditions. No one got caught by the conditions as it had been gusting over 30 all day. Someone made the decision to go when all rational boaters were tying double lines to their moored Boats. I suspect this was only the first of several bad decisions made leading up to the MayDay.
 
tiltrider1 said:
I live just 5 nm from where this happened. Rosario ‘Straight is known for kicking up under windy conditions. Saturday was well beyond being described as windy conditions. No one got caught by the conditions as it had been gusting over 30 all day. Someone made the decision to go when all rational boaters were tying double lines to their moored Boats. I suspect this was only the first of several bad decisions made leading up to the MayDay.
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Agreed. We are in Bellingham right near there and it was NASTY Saturday.
 
Also completely agree. On Chuckanut and it was terrible all day. Poor decision making and avoidable.
 
This is CLEARLY a situation where the wrong captain took a capable boat out in weather way beyond his abilities.



The Axopar is a pretty good boat, a and probably my next boat. It handles the waves fine, but needs a good and competent skipper.


I've been in 6 footers in the 28 version of this boat and it was fine. Not a comfortable ride, but it was safe. Didn't knock our windshields and break anything. The 37 is even better. However, not really a good boat for those conditions, but doable. But there's no way in hell, I'd be out there with 6 people and two dogs in those conditions.



My guess is the skipper was trying to keep the speed up and fly over the waves, which didn't work very well. Had he just slowed down and worked his way into better conditions, they all would have been fine.
 
Seavee
I agree that the Axopar is a good vessel. But and a big but, the windshield should not have shattered unless something solid struck it. If not, that is a design and materials of selection flaw. The owner operator IMHO has potential legal recourse. Maybe it wasn't a boarding sea or object strike. Maybe boat flex, frame design or the window itself is at fault.

The vessel is B and Coastal rated. The wave piercing design of the Axopar assumes it will encounter a boarding sea in its rated conditions. Some of us have been in 50-60 knot boats in big seas wave skipping so to speak. We got some thrills but never doubted the vessel.

Don Aronow, Reggie Fountain etc figured high speed big sea operation out more than half a century ago. The Axopar should be able to safely perform in Rosario conditions. The crew, not always. However, until the facts are in, much more is to be found out I'm sure. Maybe a log came over the bow; not an impossibility. Or a pair of binoclears, camera or ?? took a bounce forward.

Rosario can indeed get nasty and yes it was a bad decision to be out that day given the crew makeup. That said, the windshield should not have shattered on its own. The USCG report will hopefully shed some light.
 
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I want to say boat windows are supposed to be as safe a car windows...but that just ain't so in many smaller boats.

The icebreaker in my profile pic had a window blown out of the pilothouse by a wave one night and it was 80 feet above the waterline. Not sure if that's relevant to this incident.... except for that it too had the old timers on the ship surprised as they never though it would have happened the way it did.

I didn't read carefully enough...but was the window blown out close by the ferry? As in could it have been the ferry's wake+wave? While 6 footers with whitecaps are uncomfortable you would really have to stuff the bow to get enough water to break the average window from my experience. With Sunchaser here....factory/install defect? Was it already in some kind of stress from manufacture or just unfortunate boat twist and that was the canary in the mine so to speak.?
 
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Axopar 37s are one of the most successful new designs to arrive on the local scene. In the Yacht Club I am in alone, there are at least 6 of them. I have spoken with an owner, who has moved to his second, with a pair of 300 hp engines. His first had 350s, but the design of the hull has been refined and he reported that the 300s give him a higher top speed and better fuel economy. His to p speed is over 50 knots. One of the things he reported was a reputation that the forward facing windows could blow out when the boat takes green water, which it can easily do, especially when encountering a large wash in flat water, or when trying to make too high a speed in rough water.
Stuffing the bow in a boat that traps the water against the wind shield is the most obvious thing to be avoided with that design. In the boat that is the subject of this thread, conditions mandated a speed too slow to do so, however, the operator must not have had that lesson.....till now.
 
psneeld said:
I want to say boat windows are supposed to be as safe a car windows...but that just ain't so in many smaller boats.

The icebreaker in my profile pic had a window blown out of the pilothouse by a wave one night and it was 80 feet above the waterline. Not sure if that's relevant to this incident.... except for that it too had the old timers on the ship surprised as they never though it would have happened the way it did.

I didn't read carefully enough...but was the window blown out close by the ferry? As in could it have been the ferry's wake+wave? While 6 footers with whitecaps are uncomfortable you would really have to stuff the bow to get enough water to break the average window from my experience. With Sunchaser here....factory/install defect? Was it already in some kind of stress from manufacture or just unfortunate boat twist and that was the canary in the mine so to speak.?
Click to expand...

It was not close to the ferry from the passenger account I heard. The ferry detoured to give assistance to it after he distress call.

koliver's note about the speed being a problem with the windshield sounds quite possible. 40kts, say, against a wall of water is a lot of force. (Or against a PNW log, regardless of the conditions.)
 
Rosario gets nasty with typically waves on your beam. I too wonder about the shattered glass, it is tempered, like the side windows in your car, you can see the small little pieces left in the frame. Tempered glass can only be broken by some small point of contact, like something unsecured in the front of the boat had to hit it. Even a metal clip from a PFD with enough momentum will cause it to explode. You can pound on it with your hand or fist, it does not break. Yup, wrong boat, wrong time, with a schedule, and cascading events.
 
During our long voyage from upstate NY to South Carolina, we sailed offshore as well as the ICW. We learned that almost always a NOAA marine forecast of “waves 3 to 4 feet” underestimated wind and wave conditions. Wave heights forecast as “3 to 4 feet” seas were very often 4 to 6 feet. That’s not counting the occasional waves at 8 ft. So we learned the hard way that while the boat could easily handle the FORECASTED conditions, we would avoid long passages in those conditions in our 38’ trawler.
 
Very true. The "significant wave height" reported in forecasts is not the maximum, but it is the average of the highest 1/3 as forecast. That means that, even if the forecast is exactly correct, we can expect about 1/6 of waves to be higher ... perhaps much higher.
 
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