have you ever heard of something like this happening to a hat?

[brian4190]

in an emergency situation like that you would have to improvise.... even if it meant useing your last few flares to light the cigars

 

[GaryNW]

Actually, Uniflite built several thousand boats for USN in their Bellingham Wa plant. Over 500 PBR's alone. For years,they won every contract for frp USN boats. You have a big advantage on small qty contracts when you have molds for every existing fleet boat. Yeah, I worked there.

A few true stories. A few months ago, not one but two tankers had anchors broken in heavy seas in the north pacific. They were in the hawse holes and the anchors themselves broke (not broke off from the chain). They were not allowed to enter Puget Sound with only one anchor rigged. New anchors @ 30000 lbs each were air shipped from Asia. The coast guard was planning to inspect the broken anchors to determine why they failed.

Story #2. During WW2 a USN light cruiser had it's bow break off in a typhoon. They limped into Pearl Harbor and another ship in the fleet hooked onto the bow and towed it in. The yard welded the bow back on and she was back in business. Says a lot about USN damage control. I think it must have broke aft of the fwd turret or it seems like the ground tackle would have caused the bow to go vertical.
I don't need to be in such seas!
Gary

 

[captddis]

Someone who knew the Uniflites history posted that it was really beat from hard charter use and had stringer problems before the current owner bought it. It was unknown if the problems were properly repaired. Abuse anything long enough and it will fail.

 

[Trojan]

We built many military type Jeep vehicles. None of them were built like the civilian vehicles. They had all kinds of reinforcements added. I would not think for a moment that the military boats were not reinforced in a way that the civilian boats were not. I have had the unpleasant moments where I have hit waves 10-12ft. plus. Where the bow was under water on my 43 and it stopped the forward movement of the boat ( it felt like a week ) then the boat caught up. The boat did not shudder or move that I could tell only stopped. I did not think that any wave could halt the forward movement of that boat. Boy was I wrong. It was not pleasant, but I was stuck in that compromise for about 45 minutes. Until the storm let up. I was unable to turn the boat without the fear of rolling it. This was one of the infamous Lake Erie killer chops. Hatteras builds great strong boats.

BILL

 

[Bob Bradley]

Did you notice they grabbed the rum, cigars , water and blankets. I would have been really mad if no one grabbed a lighter

The epirb was 5 miles away, but hey, at least they had the rum and stogies.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Someone who knew the Uniflites history posted that it was really beat from hard charter use and had stringer problems before the current owner bought it. It was unknown if the problems were properly repaired. Abuse anything long enough and it will fail.

Now that makes more sense. I knew we were missing part of the story here.

 

[spartonboat1]

We built many military type Jeep vehicles. None of them were built like the civilian vehicles. They had all kinds of reinforcements added. I would not think for a moment that the military boats were not reinforced in a way that the civilian boats were not. I have had the unpleasant moments where I have hit waves 10-12ft. plus. Where the bow was under water on my 43 and it stopped the forward movement of the boat ( it felt like a week ) then the boat caught up. The boat did not shudder or move that I could tell only stopped. I did not think that any wave could halt the forward movement of that boat. Boy was I wrong. It was not pleasant, but I was stuck in that compromise for about 45 minutes. Until the storm let up. I was unable to turn the boat without the fear of rolling it. This was one of the infamous Lake Erie killer chops. Hatteras builds great strong boats.

BILL

Alriiight...I have been asking for the most severe conditions encountered by a Hatt owner on this site, and the above is the current winner! Esp. in a 43'MY...that she did not shudder impresses me the most. But if you were stuffing the bow....yoww. It sounds like Erie is almost as bad, if not worse, than Lk. Michigan. I did get caught in 7-9's in N. Lk. Huron in my 43MY a few years ago, and mostly checked down and road decently, 11-12Kt indicated, but they were thankfully head seas. No where to hide.

I sailed on a 700' ore carrier on the Great Lakes in the 60's and were were out in 10-12's. From aft, she looked like a big snake in the water with a considerable amount of twisting, turning, and "hogging" in the center. Where I stood felt stable, while the bow rose and fell 12', while mid-ships would rise and fall out of synch with bow and stern.

 

[captddis]

I can pass on a sea story where I was concerned. In November 87 right before Thanksgiving, I was bringing a new 1988 model 53 YF down to FL from Hatteras. The whole trip had been cold and windy.
The last ocean leg was from St Augustine to Ft Pierce. Forecast was for 4 ft. Left St Aug. in nice weather, By Cape Caneveral it got much worse. My friend was ahead of me in a new 65 C and he later told me they were getting pounded and did not think we were out there.
I normally just skirt the security buoys off Cape Caneveral. There were huge breakers on the shoals so I headed to the mark off Hetzel shoal. It got worse and worse. The water was full of wood timbers that came off a ship and the spray was so intense that we would go for minutes at a time in zero visibility, somehow we did not hit any of them.The boat would come to a stop when we got smashed by the waves and I was sure the windows were going to blow out at any minute. We were making 2 kts over the bottom at times!
It got to the point where my mate steered and I worked the throttles. I told him to no matter what not to let us get broadsided. After clearing the shoal we could not make the turn for Ft pierce as planned and had to head more southerly. As we got closer to land we were able to start to turn.
When we finally got to the inlet it was awful. I decided to ride a wave in, we got in position and hit it. Right as we got to the entrance a huge standing wave appeared in front of us that we were looking up at. Got right up on it and it broke in front of us. My friend said he had only heard about people doing that. He wanted to know how I did it, In all honesty I could not tell him.
We got tied up in the dark and I went to bed, No dinner, nothing.
I never want to do that again. Dave

 

[motoryacht lover]

There was a mid 70's 42 Hatteras in Wilmington, NC that had been repowered with Cummins and was much faster than it was originally and I believe it had the keel cut, well, it apparently went off a 12 footer at 28 knots and the damage was extensive. It made it back to the yard so it did not break apart but the cabin sole came up and the forward bulkhead had problems, the rear salon window was shattered. I can't remember if there were stringer problems. The yard repaired the boat and not long after I saw it was for sale. I wonder how much was disclosed to the potential buyers?

 

[captddis]

I did some work on a series 1 1970 45 C that had been repowered and did 35 kts. The owner wanted cockpit access to the ER and had the aft bulkhead cut. It regularly popped windows from racking and I heard that a section of the chine started to seperate en route to the Bahamas. There were different versions of the cause. One was the fasteners for the spray rails. But I believe it was a combination of , The boat going faster than it was designed for, the cut bulkhead causing the hull undue flexing and the owner not pulling back on the throttles.
A while back Lee Dana one of the head engineers at Bertram talked about repowering older boats and the resulting increase in stress put on hulls that were designed for 15 to 20 kts. It was interesting and it points out that even quality boats can be pushed past their design limits.

 

[Boss Lady]

Hatteras used 1" thick plywood bulkheads, and there were three of them on Boss Lady. Paul added an additional 2" of plywood to each bulkhead that makes them 3" inches thick. The factory floor stringers were inadequate in my opinion. The floor stringers in the forward section of the hull all had busted tabs that connect them to the hull. Paul doubled and tripled the number of floor stringers. I can see where they could have problems with structural integrity on a repower. I think Hatteras over relied on the strength of the fiberglass in the series one boats. The glass is plenty strong but it still flexes too much, we added enough supports to rigidly strengthen the hull bottom and reduce the racking between the hull and topsides. I would not recommend a large HP increase without some extensive reinforcing being done to the bulkheads and stringer system, I feel confident that the glass is overbuilt, but the factory bulkheads are rather flimsy.

 

[Walter P]

We had a similiar experience as Dave coming up from Fla about 8 - 10 years ago. We should not have left port but as everyone knows, most of the time when a disaster at sea occurs it was caused by poor judgement. In order to maintain our schedule we took chances that we should not have.

Coming up the coast we were really hitting some walls of water. We also did the helm with one person and the thottles for the other. Just as we started to feel that we should make Cape May inlet in another hour or so a giant wave came right at us and crashed over the foredeck, house and eventually took out the windshield. We were in the lower station on a 43 DC and were lucky to be alive. I thanked God every minute that we were on a Hatteras. Every wave caused us to crash into the next but the boat made it except for a broken window and a soaked station with 2 scared guys cold and wet.

A thorough inspection the next day did not disclose any structural damage of any kind. We had plenty of stuff to clean up that left the cabinets and a few broken pieces of furniture but the boat was OK. Those ol boys in North Carolina build pretty good boats.

Walt

 

[Genesis]

Ok, here's my worst sea story on my Hatt....

We had a VERY BAD run coming home from St. Pete to Appalachicola, which, at the time, was one of my ugliest. 8-10s for 8 hours in the gulf. It was NOT fun - but we broke nothing.

But then, about two years later, we got caught out at the Spur fishing by a freak storm that came out of the north and literally formed just offshore, running straight towards us. There was nowhere to go; we were 100nm offshore at the time we got the warnings, and the storm was between us and port.

So, we ran up as far as we could, since the WX alarm guy was saying it was going to get WORSE as it got further offshore. We wound up doing the last 40 miles into it - dead nuts on with about 40kts of wind in our face.

It was flat awful. Green water over the bow several times, and we were stopped more than once. I was able to do the throttles and wheel - but just barely. I had a friend of mine up top with me - everyone else was in the cabin - with life jackets on. It took us eight hours to make the 40 nautical into our "bailout" port, which THEN required us to run another 35nm up the ditch to get home.....

NOT quite "kiss the ground", but pretty close......

 

[Paul45c]

Karl, I'd hate to be caught out that far offshore -- like you say, nowhere to go. It's darned nice to just be running coastally and have your pick of inlets spaced close together when it's time to throw in the towel.

Case in point was yesterday, for me. Though it's only 35 mi south, my family had never been to SoBe (Miami Beach). Gone by it several times en route to the Keys, but just never made the time to stop in. My two teen girls plus one of their friends decided they needed to shop , so this was the weekend. Just for the sake of taking in scenery, we only ran the outside south to Port Everglades (Ft. Laud) and then did the ICW down to Miami Beach Marina. Going home, though, we had less time and really wanted to do the outside run. Normally, that's just an hour and a half out in the ocean for our boat. The wind really kicked up and the forecast was spot on -- it was supposed to turn ugly in the afternoon. It did. BUT, the winds were SW, so at least partially blowing offshore. I knew it wouldn't be much in the way of seas near shore. Even still, you would not believe the looks I got from a few dock neighbors at the marina when I mentioned I was at least going to TRY running outside. If figured it was no big deal, as Gov't Cut (the main Miami inlet) was right next to the marina. If it was too nasty, a quick u-turn and it's the ICW all the way home. It was no problem at all.

What an angry dark-looking ocean, but it was actually fun running in that quartering sea. It was beautiful. I wouldn't have wanted to be 20 mi. offshore in it, but where I was it was just great. The comfort, though, is knowing that I'd have my pick of Gov't Cut, Haulover, Pt. Everglades and (home) Hillsborough Inlets over such a short run home. Always nice to have options.

 

[egaito]

ROFL!

Yeah... cigar, no fire. That would suck.

Isn't that why they pack flares in life boats?