yachting monthly crash test boat

• Yachting Monthly
• Digital edition

Crash Test Boat

• May 4, 2011

What's your worst sailing nightmare?

What’s your worst sailing nightmare? Sinking or capsize? Have you ever run aground on a lee shore?

Yachting Monthly has acquired a second-hand 40ft Jeanneau Sun Fizz 40 ketch, which we will be using over the coming months to test major disaster incidents on board.

Our Crash Test Boat series will be used to test theories about what to do in a disaster scenario.

The aim is to give you the best possible tools to avoid and troubleshoot catastrophe afloat, as well as the confidence to use methods that you know have been tried and ‘Crash Boat tested’. Watch videos from the Crash Test Boat series

2011 programme of controlled sailing disasters

Meet the Crash Test Team

Robert Holbrook: “Why I bought a boat to wreck”

Buy the Crash Test Boat iPad app

• Yachting Monthly
• Digital edition

Crash Test Boat – A life in pictures

• November 16, 2011

In 2011 Yachting Monthly ran a unique project to test what happens to an ordinary yacht in extraordinary events. It was designed to enlighten and educate boat owners and yachtsmen though a series of real life disasters.

The Crash Test Boat

The ‘Crash Test Boat Series’ is an initiative launched by Yachting Monthly editor, Paul Gelder, back in 2011. The intention of the series is to replicate a wave of ‘controlled’ sailing disasters. We’ve been involved as a principal participant of the series for the past decade.

Why would Admiral trust a yacht to this lot?

We’ve seen all sorts of yachting disasters – from UK coastal dramas to mid-ocean calamities – and have dealt with many insurance clients who have fallen victim to the unexpected or unavoidable.

We’ve sponsored a series of ‘crash tests’ that were carried out by the daring folk at Yachting Monthly, to help promote safety and good seamanship.

The Crash Test results

The Admiral Yacht Insurance Boat Crash Test: The Final Chapter

Crash Test Boat Faces Final Test: Gas Explosion

How to Cope with a Galley or Engine Fire on Board

10 ways to Save a Sinking Yacht

Boat Leaking – The Best Ways to Plug a Broken Through Hull from Yachting Monthly

How to Create a Jury Rig

How to Cope with a Yacht Dismasting

What Happens when you Capsize and how do you prepare for it?

What to do When you Run Aground

Admiral Marine is a trading name of Admiral Marine Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 306002) for general insurance business. Registered in England and Wales Company No. 02666794 at Beacon Tower, Colston Street, Bristol BS1 4XE. 

If you wish to register a complaint, please contact the Compliance and Training Manager on  [email protected] .  If you are unsatisfied with how your complaint has been dealt with, you may be able to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).  The FOS website is  www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

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Crash Test Boat: How Yachting Monthly took a 40ft boat through 8 disaster scenarios Paperback – September 5, 2013

From the people behind the UK's leading sailing magazine for cruisers comes Crash Test Boat , a dramatic documentation of controlled sailing disasters which has the potential to save the lives of each and every seaman who buys it. Crash Test Boat is unique in its field, with no other title on the market aimed at explicitly revealing at first hand what happens when a boat encounters a major disaster. On the spot reporting with action photographs show what happens when typical family boats fall victim to eight different types of sailing disaster. How quickly does a cabin fill with water when the hull is holed? How do you control a gas leak or fire on board? What should you do first when dealing with a dismasting or a capsize through 360 degrees? By providing cruising and racing yachtsmen with vivid accounts of such extreme events, Crash Test Boat equips the reader with vital knowledge on what to do if disaster strikes and, ultimately, gives everyone on board a greater chance of survival if the boat is overcome. It is a fascinating, enlightening and instructive read. Each chapter opener is accompanied by a scannable QR code that takes the reader directly to the live-action YouTube footage of the relevant crash test, with informative and engaging commentary throughout from the Crash Test Team.

• Print length 176 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Adlard Coles
• Publication date September 5, 2013
• Dimensions 7.4 x 0.5 x 9.5 inches
• ISBN-10 1408157276
• ISBN-13 978-1408157275
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Adlard Coles (September 5, 2013)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1408157276
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1408157275
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.11 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 0.5 x 9.5 inches
• #3,406 in Boating (Books)

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The Crash Test Boat: Book Review

Posted by Karen Larson | Book Reviews , Dogwatch , Reviews

First they acquired a boat, a 40-foot Jeanneau Sun Fizz ketch. Then they ran it aground for an article discussing groundings and methods of getting off, capsized it for an article about what happens in a capsize and how to secure things in the cabin, followed by a dismasting … you get the idea. After the dismasting, the next month’s article focused on the possible jury-rigs that will get you home. They sank it, caused serious leaks to test ways to plug them, and set off fires to practice putting them out. Are we having fun yet?

Finally, they caused a gas leak and subsequent explosion that blew off the cabintop. Since that was the most dramatic event and the grand finale, there’s a video of that event. You don’t want to miss this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxm3uMy6MPI . While they were at it, they made videos of the rest of the abuses they invented for this boat and posted them on YouTube. This book provides a handy QR code for videos of seven of the eight destructive tests. There were remote cameras inside, for example, when the boat capsized and when it exploded. That did it for me. I had to figure out how to scan QRCs on my iPad. I downloaded a free app and sallied forth.

Following the explosion, since the Crash Test Boat didn’t sink, they hauled off what was left of this poor abused sailboat to a boat show or two as a real show-stopper meant to cause people to consider safety practices on their own boats. Even Great Britain’s Princess Anne, a keen sailor, stopped by to see the Crash Test Boat and left with a thoughtful expression.

Mere humans created this series. What’s more, they were editors and authors and subject experts very much like the mortals at Good Old Boat . I know they were plenty busy with other projects and the daily grind of making a magazine happen. Some of them even have real lives beyond the magazine and sailing activities. They don’t walk on water. How then, were they able to pull off a feat like this every month?

The red tape alone would have dampened my resolve. In his introduction, Paul Gelder briefly describes the agencies that had to be informed and had to give their approval for every test. Appeasing every agency and bureaucrat was, no doubt, the most daunting task of all.

Each chapter in this book tells about the events and what was learned to make us all better sailors and boat owners, of course. But each also discusses how the destructive tests were accomplished: the setups and executions. Each includes equipment reviews where appropriate — equipment such as rig cutters or fire extinguishers — and also shares true-life stories of sailors whose boats were involved in similar disasters, whether it be sinking or fire aboard.

I wish they would have given bylines to the author of each article. I was not sure whether all articles (chapters) were written by the same individual or not. But it’s disconcerting to have the information presented in the first person singular as “I did this” or “I thought that” without knowing which of the team members did or thought such and such. Some of the British expressions, such as the “head torch” someone wore during one of the tests, will stop you cold for a moment until you realize that these folks speak the King’s English and we speak whatever it is that we speak, and it doesn’t include head torches when we mean flashlights on ball caps or elastic bands.

Sailors often say we should do a man-overboard drill on our own boats. Some of us actually do run a practice MOB event from time to time. But none of us is willing to run a practice grounding, capsize, dismasting, jury-rig, sinking, leaking, fire, or explosion. We must read about these events and take measures to avoid them on our boats based on what we learn in this way. We should be very grateful that a whole team of individuals at Yachting Monthly — editors and authors, subject experts, and members of the regulatory agencies, heroes each and every one — took the time and trouble to run the events, record what they learned, and share it with the rest of us.

All we have to do now is buy the book and read it. I highly recommend that you take that action. This book is an eye-opener.

The Crash Test Boat: How Yachting Monthly Took a 40-foot Yacht Through Eight Disaster Scenarios , edited by Paul Gelder (Adlard Coles Nautical, 2013, 176 pages)

About The Author

Karen Larson

Karen Larson and her husband, Jerry Powlas, began sailing together in 1990 and founded Good Old Boat magazine together in 1998. Retired these days, they still have too many boats and a long list of ongoing boat projects. They sail Mystic, their C&C 30, on Lake Superior and Sunflower, their trailerable Mega 30, during the shoulder seasons.

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