Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

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Tacky79
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Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Tacky79 » Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:50 am

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to boating. This video [linked below that shows a boat trying to enter Jupiter Inlet in Florida] made me think: what went wrong here? The boat looks pretty low in the water, especially the bow. Could this happen to a Boston Whaler?

https://www.instagram.com/p/Baz5WKWlIrv/
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Don SSDD
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Don SSDD » Sun Oct 29, 2017 5:19 am

More expert people than me will reply: I'd say this boat was on the wrong side of that wave, he should have stayed behind the crest. Once he went over the crest and hit the downside, his stern got lifted and his nose dove and plowed under. The comments said too much weight in the front, but I don't think it was that.

A Boston Whaler is the unsinkable Legend, it would not sink like this thing did. With its superior buoyancy, it may not have plowed under like that, and, if it did, not sure it would roll like that. It will still float when swamped and with the outboard head above water. Theoretically, you could then restart and with power, it would bail the water out the stern in a Whaler this style.
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Don SSDD
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Don SSDD » Sun Oct 29, 2017 8:12 am

That video poster has several of these videos on line taken from a drone.

Not a place for anyone who has little experience in this type of water, which includes me.
1986 Outrage 18 with 2001 Honda 130 HP
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Phil T
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Phil T » Sun Oct 29, 2017 11:32 am

Anyone can stuff the bow of their boat. I did it in my Outrage 17 but did not turtle or sink, just partially swamped the boat.

The key element is the boat in Tacky's video link sank. All Boston Whalers do not sink. If a whaler, it would be swamped and possibly upside down but on the surface.
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Sun Oct 29, 2017 2:01 pm

The boat shown in the linked video has several problems:

--foremost, the hull has a very fine entry at the bow and lacks reserve buoyancy there; when the bow is pushed down into the back of the wave ahead, the boat begins to pivot around the bow, exposing the hull sideways to the next, very closely following and larger wave; once the wave hits the hull sideways, the hull rolls, and the boat capsizes;

--secondarily, the pilot made a bad choice of which wave to ride in; usually you wait outside the inlet, pick a wave that looks suitable, and ride that wave, staying behind the crest; it looks like the pilot picked a small wave to ride; the wave got stalled at the mouth of the inlet, and a much bigger wave came up from behind; it would probably have been better to ride in on the bigger wave, staying in the trough behind it or on the back side of the crest; the waves stack up at the inlet because there is an outgoing current due to falling tide.

As for a Boston Whaler boat, the classic Outrage type moderate V-hull boats LOVE to go downwind and down sea. They have very ample reserve buoyancy at the bow, and the entry is not so fine, reducing the tendency to bow steer.

The boat in the aerial motion picture recording also looks like there is a lot of weight in the bow to begin with, and that probably increased the problems. Also, a Boston Whaler of that length would have twin outboard engines. That would reduce the tendency for the bow to yaw off to one side and give much faster steering response.

While a Boston Whaler hull won't sink, it can capsize and invert, and once inverted the hull will remain inverted for a long time. See

http://continuouswave.com/whaler/cetace ... age76.html

Tacky79 wrote:Could this happen to a Boston Whaler?

To answer the initial question: yes, this could happen to a Boston Whaler, but I think a Whaler classic moderate V-hull would be better able to tolerate those conditions.

porthole
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby porthole » Sun Oct 29, 2017 2:32 pm

Jupiter inlet can be very dangerous and there have been quite a few pictures and videos of boats not doing well when the surf is up.

This guy (above linked story) just didn’t heed the surf conditions before he made his entry.
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:28 pm

The photographer will be uploading a high-resolution 10-minute long recording that shows in more detail what happened to the boat. In a thread on a newspaper website, the photographer comments that the pilot cut back on the throttle just before the capsize. That probably was a big mistake, as it allowed the large wave behind him to overtake the boat, lift the stern, push down the bow, and slew the boat sideways. Instead of slowing, he should have maintained speed and stayed with the wave in front of him. He was, however, probably concerned about the lack of buoyancy at the bow, as the bow was just staying afloat as it encountered the previous wave crest.

Also, regarding roll stability: there is nothing intrinsic in the hull construction of a Boston Whaler that will mean its roll stability will always be better than other boats. Roll stability is related to the hull design and weight distribution in the hull. The double-bottom foam-filled Unibond construction will keep you floating after a capsize, but the foam won't prevent a capsize. Good boat handling prevents a capsize.

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Todd
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Todd » Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:06 am

The surfer in the video made national news, he was featured on the CBS program Inside Edition. His name is Sam Ruskin and he's 13. Said he wants to be a professional surfer. Looks like he might make a pretty good lifeguard too!

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Dutchman » Wed Nov 01, 2017 12:50 pm

Sam was on ABC World News, too. I hope the boat owner learned from his mistakes or take some classes on boat handling.
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Water Over the Bow of a Boston Whaler

Postby jimh » Wed Nov 01, 2017 2:03 pm

I have had water come over the bow of my Boston Whaler 22-foot classic hull only twice, and both times were due to extremely large wakes from other vessels.

Once, the Pacific Northwest we had a crossing situation with a container ship that was heading into open water of the Pacific Ocean. The container ship was making about 15-knots or more speed, and the wake was very substantial. We tried to accelerate to cross ahead of the ship to avoid taking the wake on our bow, but we did not have enough speed to safely make it. We had to eat his wake. We made it over the first two waves, but the bow of our Whaler was too low to rise on the third wave, and part of the wave rolled onto the foredeck--the closed foredeck of our REVENGE model, not the open foredeck of a center console boat--and green water rolled aft and up the windshield. No harm done, other than some water splashing into the cockpit from less than perfect seams in the windshield and weather canvas.

The second time was very similar, except the other boat was some megayacht cruising at high speed in the Georgian Bay inland route, throwing another monster wake. Same outcome. Made it through the first two waves of the wake, and took some water on the foredeck on the third wave.

I have never been in a situation where I thought the bow was going to stuff into a wave and not come out. We did have some tense moments a few years ago while heading downwind in the North Channel of Lake Huron with a really big following sea. Our classic hull Boston Whaler was holding its own, but one of the newer Boston Whaler boats in our Great Lakes Boston Whaler Cruising Club (GLBWCC) group, a c.1992 23 Walkaround with a finer entry at the bow, did take green water over the bow at one point. The lack of a tendency for the classic hull to want to bow steer in those conditions is really appreciated when you are the helmsman.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Wed Nov 01, 2017 4:14 pm

Fellas--I don't want this thread to wander off into a discussion of every possible video showing every possible boat entering every possible inlet. This thread is about the particular boat on a particular day with particular conditions.

Comments about behavior of Boston Whaler boats in following seas would be much more appreciated than comments about other videos.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Wed Nov 01, 2017 5:42 pm

Tacky79 wrote:I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to boating.


Relax. The Jupiter Inlet is known for being a problem to enter with an outgoing tide and big waves coming in from the ocean. The day pictured in the video looks unusually bad, even for that inlet. As a new boater, unless you plan to immediately go out in really bad conditions and then try to enter one of the worst inlets on the Atlantic coastline, you don't need to get too worried about your Boston Whaler boat going down.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Dutchman » Fri Nov 03, 2017 1:11 pm

[Taking water over the bow] must be something to do with that third wave. We had [water over the bow] once in my Montauk 150 on the St.Lawrence Seaway Thousand Islands area.

We were idling along, and the Admiral was sitting on the front bow cushion leaning against the front bow-rail enjoying the views. A large tour-boat came by accelerating and throwing a good wake. I was turning the boat to take the wakes 50- to 90-degrees head-on, but I reacted too late. There was no problem with the first two, then the last one came; we took some water over the bow resulting in a wet bottom for the Admiral. The green water ran aft and the bilge took care of it. We never feared for our lives but it was unexpected.
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Sun Nov 05, 2017 9:28 am

DUTCH--thanks for the first-hand account of a situation in which your Boston Whaler boat took some water over the bow. The reason this occurs with taking large boat wakes and the third wave seems to me to be caused by the first two wake waves getting the bow oscillating up and down, with increasing motion, and the very closely spaced third wake wave hits while the bow is still rebounding upward from the second wave.

As I mentioned earlier, we have run downwind in several different Boston Whaler boats in some really big waves, and found that the classic Boston Whaler hull just tracks beautifully in these conditions.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Dutchman » Mon Nov 06, 2017 12:13 pm

With my little Whaler I have no problem with waves in a following sea. But with the wakes the boat was coming down when the next wake went over.
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andygere
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby andygere » Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:31 pm

It sure seems like he needed enough throttle to keep the bow up, and he didn't do it. Boats slow as they climb waves and he didn't react to that. He should have been more concerned about the wave behind him than the one in front of him. Once he stuffed the bow it was over in an instant.

I have stuffed the bow of my Outrage 22 Cuddy, and like jimh, we got a little wet but no harm other than that. The bow rose right up and all was well. The same with my Dauntless 16, although my son got completely soaked. That day was a windy one on shallow Cape Cod bay, where the large chop was very closely spaced and we were heading right into it. A bit of trim adjustment on the motor got the bow pointed up a bit more and we were on our way, albeit at less than planing speeds. I do think the buoyancy of Whalers really helps them in these situations, but there is probably no way to know if it would have saved this skipper from a swamping. A sinking is another thing, and he would not have completely lost his boat.

Kudos to the young surfer who came in and assisted. The skipper should have had a PFD on for transiting a known dangerous inlet, and was lucky to get out of that mess alive and uninjured.
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby muskrat » Thu Dec 21, 2017 9:56 am

I remember hating having to run down wind in the rough in my 1981 20' Proline; the oversteer and slipping in the trough was stressful. When I got my first Boston Whaler boat, a 1987 Montauk, I was amazed with her following-seas handling. That hull design really kept a grip on the water. It was actually fun to surf down the big stuff, at any angle. Heading up wind, however, was punishing while on plane. At high idle while giving my back a break I would take an occasional Lake Erie whitecap over the bow.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Thu Dec 21, 2017 11:10 am

Here is motion picture report about another boat capsize at Jupiter Inlet, resulting in the death of two boaters. This incident occurred in November 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GRObuOaNPA&feature=youtu.be

The boat was a 21-foot MAKO center console with a long engine setback bracket and 200-HP Yamaha engine. The boat capsized in large waves after entering the open ocean from the inlet in rough conditions. The actual capsize is not recorded in the presentation; a wrecked boat is seen on a beach being salvaged.

Jupiter Inlet appears to be a dangerous place to enter or exit when the tide is outgoing and there are ocean waves entering the inlet.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby jimh » Thu Dec 21, 2017 11:21 am

The photographer of the drone camera recording that is the subject of this thread is K Cadby. He has posted several recordings of boats at Jupiter Inlet.

In a recording from April 2017, he shows a moderate-sized center console boat entering the inlet in rough conditions. The helmsman does a good job of adjusting boat speed to maintain his position relative to the waves behind him, and often slows down so as not to jump over the crest of a wave in front of him. The recording is on youTube at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8VVX3wywCY

I was hoping that K Cadby would post a longer and higher resolution version of his recording of the capsize in late October 2017 that we have been discussing, but I have not seen evidence he has done that yet.

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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby porthole » Sat Dec 23, 2017 2:42 pm

I put a message out to the videographer that took the drone video, asking if he was going to be posting a higher quality, longer video. But if you drill down through the comments on this particular video, he mentions that he is currently dealing with family health problems
Last edited by porthole on Sun Dec 24, 2017 6:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Capsize At Jupiter Inlet

Postby Wweez » Sun Jan 21, 2018 10:29 am

From the beginning, I have believed this professional was having too much fun, or just got complacent. If he has the experience suggested, and he does have more experience now, he would have been on the back of the wave. That would have been his routine for crossing the bar.

He started this crossing on the front, surfing side, and the rest is history. He may have had one very brief chance to power out to one side, or instead chopping the throttle--and that might have rolled him just as quickly. With less power he had less to no steering, a fine entry bow, and then the next larger wave got him.