Wooden boat myths?

[BarnacleGrim]

I've had my share of naysayers telling me not to get a wooden boat, but the most memorable one was a woman from northern Norway telling me that "wooden boats are dangerous because they can split open with no warning at sea and kill you". She had grown up around wooden fishing boats, but I can't help finding the story a bit dubious. :rolleyes:

Has anyone here ever been killed by their boats splitting in half for no reason at sea?

[Canoeyawl]

The killed ones aren't talking today

[John B]

The Colin Archer( someone will remember its name was it R 100 101 something like that.??) that sank in the North sea or Baltic sank because it split apart at the garboard due to a mechanically jointed scarf around its mast step kelson area letting go.

eg.

[TerryLL]

Certainly have been many a tired old troller or seiner gone down in Alaskan waters when a plank sprung. A very good cat friend of mine lost all nine of his lives in such a mishap, though the humans on board were happily rescued.

[Steve Lansdowne]

Nope, none have split apart for NO reason, I'm sure. There was a reason they split apart.

[BarnacleGrim]

I suppose the risk increases with heavy use, such as fishing in bad weather in Alaska or the North Sea. And then there are big race yachts made out of exotic materials where things seem to break all the time...

As for pleasure boats, I'm guessing it's more common that they simply succumb to neglect and sink at the mooring. Reminds me to get those timbers fixed before launching this spring...

[Ian McColgin]

Just as there's a reason for a wooden hull failure, especially in harsh weather, so there are reasons for glass failures, iron failures, aluminum failures . . ..

[BarnacleGrim]

Of course. It's just that this person seemed to tell me that wood was an inherently unreliable boat building material, and that it was wooden boats in particular that had these catastrophic failures.

It seems to me that it's bad design, bad weather and bad skippers that kill people, not wood in general.

[John B]

A local exotic construction maxi yacht which had the misfortune to be launched just prior to the new canting and powered winch boats ( out classed almost immediately) fell off a wave and broke right across the boat amidships.
Astonishing that it doesn't happen to more of them I think. Pick up a 90 ft boat and drop it 20 ft on something hard at the bow and stern.
Anyway, although she was ruptured across the deck they jury strengthened her and got her home.

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

There are just as many stories about fibreglass boats ...

[John B]

There are just as many stories about fibreglass boats ...
Yeah.. mostly keels dropping off or rudders slogging out and holing them,although the layup scantlings on some moderns are incredibly light . Scary light.

[TerryLL]

Have seen several very heavily built aluminum boats with gaping cracks in the bottom, a few with just the radio antenna above water.

[Lew Barrett]

It seems to me that it's bad design, bad weather and bad skippers that kill people, not wood in general.

And bad maintenance......or none.

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

We had a large new Hunter sailboat go aground on the big shoal at Wapoos a couple of years back...about a 38 footer or so. After it was determined that the inexperienced owner should abandon ship, the boat proceeded to pound itself to death... which consisted of it breaking the keel and deck joint, which is all that hold the premade hull panels together. The boat ended up as a series of panels that were mostly flat. Nothing left of it. Scary.

[BarnacleGrim]

This is a bit of a digression, but could a grounded boat, as a last resort, be saved by deliberately swamping it? Has it ever been attempted?

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

That depends a great deal on what it's grounded on, and the sea conditions. Up here, it's all rock... nothing much can be done if the wave action is severe.

[BarnacleGrim]

We have the same here. As a small consolation, rock shoals won't show up from nowhere, they stay put, unlike the mud.

They have a TV show here modelled after Cops where the coast guard goes after pleasure boaters. Usually GRP power boaters with more money and BAC than sense running aground or getting speed tickets. A brand new 50' fly bridge cruiser full of drunks went aground in the mud. The skipper was apparently sober, but the drunk owner suggested they just leave the boat there and continue the party. Fortunately for the owner's rich dad the coast guard were able to talk some sense into them :rolleyes:

It's amazing, a show like Cops would never work in Sweden because the crooks know they can't fight the police anyway. But oddly enough the average Svensson turns into a speed freak every time he gets behind the wheel of his Bayliner. :D

[James McMullen]

Has anyone here ever been killed by their boats splitting in half for no reason at sea?


I think we might have to get the system administrator to enable séance mode in order to get these people to respond. . . .

[Bob Adams]

There are just as many stories about fibreglass boats ...

More. Lately on a diesel forum I have heard of 15 year old Ocean sportsfishers splitting in half along the keel at sea.

[BrianW]

But oddly enough the average Svensson turns into a speed freak every time he gets behind the wheel of his Bayliner. :D


For some reason it makes me sad to know there are Bayliners in Sweden.

[James McMullen]

I know what you mean. I hope there aren't any jetskis, too, but I fear there probably are.

[py]

I once built a very lightweight lapstrake clinker ply canoe, all epoxy joins, no fastening. Dropped it, literally, into the water from the dock, 4' or so and the bloddy thing split in two. Fixed that OK and later i had it tied to the foredeck of my boat going from Oz to PNG-we pushed through a few big waves and the poor little canoe got ripped in half by the ropes that were holding it to the deck. I didn't die, but I guess it proves that old lady knows what she's talking about.

[S B]

This is a bit of a digression, but could a grounded boat, as a last resort, be saved by deliberately swamping it? Has it ever been attempted?
I don't know about grounding, but once a boat swamps it is "relatively speaking"unaffected by the wind. Most of the older type,smaller boats built of wood, lots of wood, didn't sink when full of water. The danger of losing her lessened once it swamped.

[johnw]

I've had my share of naysayers telling me not to get a wooden boat, but the most memorable one was a woman from northern Norway telling me that "wooden boats are dangerous because they can split open with no warning at sea and kill you". She had grown up around wooden fishing boats, but I can't help finding the story a bit dubious. :rolleyes:

Has anyone here ever been killed by their boats splitting in half for no reason at sea?


Yeah, I keep dying that way. It's a real pain. Good thing I believe in reincarnation.

Seriously, the US Coast Guard has been setting some standards that are very hard on planked vessels. The reasoning is that with a bundle of sticks held together by sometimes very old fastenings in sometimes rotting wood, there's a greater chance a plank will doze than, say, a sudden onset of rust on a steel hull.

Of course, any kind of hull can fail. Glass boats that are designed to plane have a lifespan. The pounding will eventually put enough stress fractures in the bottom that the hull will fail. The State of Washington just took some steel ferries built in 1927 out of service because the hulls were cracking. It's tougher to get insurance on a ferrocement boat than a wood one, because it's nearly impossible to inspect the steel structure inside the cement.

Wood takes more maintenance than some other materials. You have to know what you're doing, which for some of us is part of the attraction. It doesn't tolerate neglect the way glass does. So when you get a wood boat, have a good survey done, and keep up on the work the boat needs.

[Mrleft8]

I've heard of glass boats splitting in half in heavy seas, but never a wooden one....Sprung planks, weepy seams sure, but never "split in half". Wooden boats tend to be more "sea kindly" than glass boats too.

[S.V. Airlie]

I don't know of too many boats ( even small ones like 15' boston whalers ) that don't have bilge pumps regardless as to what they are constructed of.. If water can't get in, in varying amounts, bilge pumps would not be necessary.

[Soundbounder]

I've heard of glass boats splitting in half in heavy seas, but never a wooden one....Sprung planks, weepy seams sure, but never "split in half". Wooden boats tend to be more "sea kindly" than glass boats too.I am sure the storyteller was taking a few liberties by describing it as "splitting in half". It was probably a bad crack, or split.
I remember my father telling me that there were a lot of cheap plywood boats made in the 1960s.

[Dan McCosh]

A friend who bought an old trawler had it sink quickly under him on a calm day off Newport, CA, when a plank let loose. The only boat to sink in the Mackinac race, however, was fiberglass. It also went down in a oouple of minutes, apparently after a repaired section of the hull fractured in moderately heavy seas. The Carl D. Bradley, the Daniel Morrell, and the Edmund Fitzgerald--Great Lakes ore freighters, made of steel--broke in two in storms.

[willmarsh3]

We just had an Elliott 770 turn turtle when her fin/bulb keel broke off where it came out of the hull. 4 people got dumped in the 48 degree water. Fortunately everyone was ok.
From the information I have the fin was made of nothing but fiberglass and the bulb weighed about 780 lbs. The break showed torn fiberglass. It's hard to tell by visual inspection that fiberglass is about to fail.
That prompted me to Google "Hooligan V" whose keel broke off and someone was killed. She was covered on the WBF previously.

[johnw]

I've watched those fiberglass fins flex. Pretty scary, when you know the material will eventually fatigue. Nat Herreshoff, who invented the fin keeler, also developed the girth difference penalty that for years made them uncompetetive. His theory was that fuller garboards allowed more structure in way of the keel and made a stronger boat.

[Robert Meyer]

Back in the 60's my friend's dad bought him a folding outboard runabout made from thin plywood. Being 16 and not bothering to read the instructions thoroughly he varnished the parts and assembled the flimsy craft. We unfolded at his cottage near Port Huron MI and thumb screwed the little outboard on the transom. Away we went buzzing the shoreline cottages. The runabout loudly flap smacked it's 1/4 bottom on every wave and seemed to undulate from all directions. A loud crack from the transom signaled the separation of the transom and motor from the boat which quickly became pieces of plywood bobbing 50 yards offshore. Last I saw my friend, a few years later, he was attempting to join the two halves of a Lugar fiberglass boat kit together. Never did see or hear of the results.

[BarnacleGrim]

For some reason it makes me sad to know there are Bayliners in Sweden.
Any GRP boat is either a Bayliner or a Bavaria to me. ;)

[Matt Middleton]

Anybody else remember a poster here almost went down on his way to Catalina, wife and kids aboard? I couldn't find the thread, but it was quite the dramatic story. I think his name was Adam C.