5 ms·

And as a recreational ocean racing sailer, nothing is more terrifying than seeing one of these bobbing just below the surface.

by wclax04 12y ago

evanb 12y ago
Have you seen All Is Lost with Robert Redford? It came out in the last 12 months, and the premise is that he's sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat strikes a lost container. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
This is the primary reason the catamaran I'm building has a titanium superstructure. I refuse to let an orphaned cargo container floating in the Pacific be my undoing on a circumnavigation.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  When you strike a container at speed all bets are off, regardless of what material your boat is made of. You're in a catamaran, at least you have two hulls rather than just one. And it would appear that the part that is underwater is the most important bit when it comes to striking containers so I'm not sure why you think a titanium superstructure will help you if there is a gaping hole in your hull.
  - reustle 12y ago
    Exactly. Keep an eye on your scanning instruments and make sure you have a raft or two ready.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Maybe he expects to be hit from above by the container?
      - toomuchtodo 12y ago
        No, I expect to hit roughly head on. A container won't show up on radar, and its hard to detect something that near the surface using any sort of transducer/depth measurement device. Titanium is non-reactive/corrosive, lightweight, and extremely durable. I'm extremely confident of the design, ensuring survivability of a container encounter, even at 12-15 knots.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        Titanium is expensive. So people that build hulls (not the superstructure, let's take that as a given) out of titanium tend to make those hulls fairly thin. Containers are made out of thick chunks of angle and square profile welded together, with huge sheets of steel in a double wall in order to make the structure rigid. So rigid that you can stack them 10 to 15 high loaded without any of them buckling. If you ram something like that (at it's own velocity, which will be roughly the speed of the current) at a vessel made out of titanium (thin, because it is expensive) then you're essentially aiming a can opener at a can. I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted. FTR my somewhat checkered career included working for a sail making company and I've seen a few boats that had very mild collisions at sea and on the larger lakes and those definitely did not look pretty. I've never seen a boat come back that had had a head-on encounter with something the size of a container. Titanium is a great material, but it is (very) hard to work, if used properly can give you the same strength as steel for a lighter weight. But due to the higher material costs and higher costs to work it you will more than likely end up with a boat that is just as expensive as a steel one with slightly less displacement or you'll end up with a boat that is much more expensive than a steel one. In the end whether or not you will survive a container encounter depends to a very large degree on what the relative velocities are and how the container is oriented relative to your boat. If the container is dead in the water and you hit it at a 45 degree angle no amount of metallurgy will stop you from having a breached hull unless you go for something that will also survive impact with an iceberg. Which reminds me of some other captain that was convinced his boat could handle anything the ocean could throw at him. Be safe.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    A titanium hull failure is superior to a fiberglass or wood hull failure. Even if I hit a container at speed, the worst scenario is the structure deforming, versus fiberglass failure scenarios.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      A titanium hull is, but you mentioned superstructure, which is everything above the hull.

And as a recreational ocean racing sailer, nothing is more terrifying than seeing one of these bobbing just below the surface.

by wclax04 12y ago

And as a recreational ocean racing sailer, nothing is more terrifying than seeing one of these bobbing just below the surface.

evanb 12y ago

Have you seen All Is Lost with Robert Redford? It came out in the last 12 months, and the premise is that he's sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat strikes a lost container. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

toomuchtodo 12y ago

This is the primary reason the catamaran I'm building has a titanium superstructure. I refuse to let an orphaned cargo container floating in the Pacific be my undoing on a circumnavigation.

jacquesm 12y ago
When you strike a container at speed all bets are off, regardless of what material your boat is made of. You're in a catamaran, at least you have two hulls rather than just one. And it would appear that the part that is underwater is the most important bit when it comes to striking containers so I'm not sure why you think a titanium superstructure will help you if there is a gaping hole in your hull.
- reustle 12y ago
  Exactly. Keep an eye on your scanning instruments and make sure you have a raft or two ready.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Maybe he expects to be hit from above by the container?
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      No, I expect to hit roughly head on. A container won't show up on radar, and its hard to detect something that near the surface using any sort of transducer/depth measurement device. Titanium is non-reactive/corrosive, lightweight, and extremely durable. I'm extremely confident of the design, ensuring survivability of a container encounter, even at 12-15 knots.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Titanium is expensive. So people that build hulls (not the superstructure, let's take that as a given) out of titanium tend to make those hulls fairly thin. Containers are made out of thick chunks of angle and square profile welded together, with huge sheets of steel in a double wall in order to make the structure rigid. So rigid that you can stack them 10 to 15 high loaded without any of them buckling. If you ram something like that (at it's own velocity, which will be roughly the speed of the current) at a vessel made out of titanium (thin, because it is expensive) then you're essentially aiming a can opener at a can. I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted. FTR my somewhat checkered career included working for a sail making company and I've seen a few boats that had very mild collisions at sea and on the larger lakes and those definitely did not look pretty. I've never seen a boat come back that had had a head-on encounter with something the size of a container. Titanium is a great material, but it is (very) hard to work, if used properly can give you the same strength as steel for a lighter weight. But due to the higher material costs and higher costs to work it you will more than likely end up with a boat that is just as expensive as a steel one with slightly less displacement or you'll end up with a boat that is much more expensive than a steel one. In the end whether or not you will survive a container encounter depends to a very large degree on what the relative velocities are and how the container is oriented relative to your boat. If the container is dead in the water and you hit it at a 45 degree angle no amount of metallurgy will stop you from having a breached hull unless you go for something that will also survive impact with an iceberg. Which reminds me of some other captain that was convinced his boat could handle anything the ocean could throw at him. Be safe.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  A titanium hull failure is superior to a fiberglass or wood hull failure. Even if I hit a container at speed, the worst scenario is the structure deforming, versus fiberglass failure scenarios.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    A titanium hull is, but you mentioned superstructure, which is everything above the hull.