“SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – A catamaran carrying dozens of foreign tourists on a pleasure cruise capsized off Costa Rica on Thursday, killing four people, emergency officials said. The boat, which was on a day trip to the popular Tortuga (Turtle) Island, sank completely about 9 miles off the country’s central Pacific Coast. Survivors reported that strong waves filled the boat with water and caused it to sink, he said.”
This could be another chapter in Stuff Done Wrong. I don’t know any more than the above, but can speculate on forensics from the pictures. Like most corporate designs, way too narrow overall. Is it even 20′ wide? Probably was a beam-on wave hit it. Clearly it it metal. Many places in South/Central America choose steel for budget reasons. Surely would help it sink. It also is stuffed from end to end with deck. That also makes surviving the waves harder. Compare to Holo or Kai Oli Oli.
I wonder if Derek will be upset that I was first to report this in multihull media again? And that it sank? And thanks, Lance. My guys always seem to be first with the news.
I understand several emails to the company have failed today as well as earlier this week or more.
Ok there have been several fails over the last vew days. Many email are getting to me, but many are not. I have spent hours this week talking to tech and running diagnostics. Apparently it is still a mystery to them.
I just got word that Charles Chiodi, founder of Multihulls Magazine passed away yesterday. For decades he was the center of gravity of multihulls. A quirky but tireless advocate. He really gve me my start when I created my 30′ performance trimaran design in 1983 I think it was. Nobody else was thinking that tight forestays were needed to go to windward. I had a kind of seastay inside the hull. Charles was intrigued and gave me a couple of pages as I recall. Was all rock and roll from there.
Keep a tight forestay Charles as you sail on.
I see on Steamradio that Russell Brown has just discovered tortured plywood chapter in Gougeon’s boatbuilding book. http://www.ptwatercraft.com/Begining%20Tortured%20Plywood%201-6.pdf And Steamradio is typically in awe of anything multihull royalty do. I do see that if he had used the tortured plywood chapter of the CM construction manual, he could have saved a lot of work and mystery. I do understand that for many people the goal is not to have the boat but to embark on a personal discovery. I get that. If the goal is to get into a developed ply (or other) multi, my builders and I have probably sorted out the mysteries long ago. The KHSD CM Construction Manual has a chapter on tortured ply and of course the CM for bigger boats. (Ever try to bend a 9mm sheet of ply?)
I will gather and post here some of the illustrative tortured ply pics in the Manual as soon as I get caught up on deadlines.
It looks serious. Like a halyard going aloft, the board hold-down must have gone aloft. Nick needed brave crew to climb up and retrieve it! When I designed the boards, I never expected to have to designed steps into the boards. Boards are for pointing. In this case I think it might not be Nick’s cat pointing, but the other boats in the bay. KHSD 42 located SLO in California.
