The Fastnet Race Disaster

[Coast]

The 1979 Fastnet race was the twenty-eighth Fastnet race, a yachting race competition held since 1925, generally every two years. In 1979, it was the climax of the five-race Admiral's Cup competition, as it had been since 1957.

Storms during the race wreaked havoc on over 306 yachts taking part in the biennial race, resulting in 15 fatalities. Emergency services and civilian vessels from around the west side of the English Channel were summoned to aid what was the largest rescue operation in peace-time. Those involved included naval ships, lifeboats, commercial boats, and helicopters.

wikipedia.org

An Atlantic depression to the west of Ireland, which was expected to bring gales to the sea areas around the West country, was deepening ominously-far more than usual for depressions at this time of year.

As it approached the stretch of sea between Land's End and southern Ireland it turned into one of the worst storms to hit the area in high summer for many years. Winds increased to force 10 (a mean speed of 60mph) and torrential rain reduced visibility to a few yards.

Fifteen yachtsmen lost their lives making this the worst yachting disaster of all time.

Only the dedicated work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution crews, the Coastguard, Royal Navy helicopter crews and ships, including the Dutch destroyer 'Overiisel' acting as guard ship for the race fleet prevented the race becoming an even bigger disaster.

The Fastnet Race Disaster, as it became known, also changed the rules of sailing forever. New rules and regulations were brought in with special equipment having to be installed on board all yachts. It was, said organisers, never to happen again.

At its peak, lifeboats from the Isles of Scilly, Sennen, Penzance, Lizard and Falmouth at sea for many hours, some for 42 hours without a break. All were searching for crew members washed overboard from yachts which had been hit by terrific storms and mountainous seas. Many had turned over, proving a hazard to other shipping. No one knew at the time just how many people were struggling to stay alive or how many people had been lost.

Search and rescue helicopters from RNAS Culdrose that took part in the rescue operation were operational non-stop over many hours and aircrew saw huge amounts of debris scattered all over the sea between Falmouth and the South West Approaches. They winched many people to safety, taking them to the comfort of the Culdrose medical centre before returning to the disaster zone.

Penzance Harbour, and later Falmouth, soon became littered with damaged yachts tied up alongside showing just how terrible the storm had been during what should have been the peak holiday season and sunshine.

Many of the seasoned sailors who survived the disaster were from Cornwall and spoke of the “worst conditions they had ever encountered.” Masts and rigging were torn from hulls, some boats overturned, some broke up and others were left floundering without crew.

Many saw their colleagues lost overboard not to be seen alive again while others received injuries from falling masts and rigging.

www.boatingcornwall.co.uk

The weather, was forecasted to hit Force 8. Tough conditions but within the range of anyone racing in the Fastnet. As storms sometimes do across Britain and Ireland, this storm worsened rapidly. It increased to Force 10, hitting Force 12 in some locations. The worst of weather hit most of the fleet in the worst possible place at the worst possible time, in the Channel approaches or close to Fastnet Rock. Too far from land to head for a safe port before the storm hit and even then, the parts of the coast of Ireland or Southwestern Britain that were reachable were notoriously dangerous.

According to the race inquiry, 70 per cent of the entrants faced Force 11 or above with winds of 55 knot or more and waves of 30 feet or more. Many faced waves of more than 40 feet. Close to half the boats reported a knock-down to horizontal or almost horizontal, a third reported that their boat rolled beyond horizontal. Most terrible of all, one eighth of the fleet were capsized entirely and dismasted. Several began to sink as the washboards had fallen out on the roll and every massive wave filled the boat faster than the crews could bail.

messingaboutinboats.typepad.com

Edited August 13, 2009 by Coast

[knocker]

Neither the formal report of the Fastnet Race inquiry nor the official meteorological analysis seemed to explain all that had happened during this disaster. In particular, although it was a very severe storm, it wasn’t exceptional, so why did this unprecedented carnage take place? Was there something going on that was slipping under the radar? Very many experienced competitors stated that the wind strength was not unusual, but that the sea conditions were the most dangerous they had ever experienced. Most of the damage done to the yachts was due to the waves and not to wind. Perhaps the clue lay here.

Allan Watts, a meteorologist particularly concerned with small boat navigation, decided to dig a little deeper and the result of his research, Fresh Evidence on the Fastnet Storm, was published in the Journal of Navigation in 1982. For © reasons I can’t upload the article but his original description of the storm can be found in the Fastnet Race Inquiry Report and is worth a read.

http://www.blur.se/i...ace-inquiry.pdf

To continue. Initially Allan Watts found that there was a divergence of opinion between the Met. Office who were taking their wind speed from their charts (48-55 knots) and many competitors who were convinced that the top strength was into Force 11 (56-63 knots). How best to resolve this difference.Watts took a line of action that at the time was probably unique.

He analysed the barometric records of the yachts themselves having obtained as many as possible from the competitors. The readings of the yachts were checked for accuracy whenever possible by comparing the given readings with the known values at St. Mary’s as the yachts were passing.

He plotted the results along the rhumb line from Scilly to the Fastnet Rock at four synoptic hours, 1900, 2200, 0100 and 0400 BST. Something quite surprising showed up. A series of troughs in the isobars which would not be detectable from the course plot of barometric readings from the professional reporting stations in the Fastnet area. What Allan Watts called a meteorological oddity. Some of these troughs were 3 to 6mb below what otherwise might have been expected Allan Watts considers that the role of these troughs in the disaster may well have been crucial. Another major factor involved was not the average height of the waves, but the number of ‘episodic’ waves that were generated by the storm. An episodic wave is one of those normally rare waves of excessive height that may well be bred by superposition of wave trains in any storm of severe gale proportions that blow for sufficient length of time to make the proposition a probability. It would appear that in the Fastnet there may well have been dozens of these waves.

Back to the troughs. The revelation of the troughs in the airstream over the Fastnet fleet provides a possible cause for locally enhanced winds. Allan Watts noted that when yachts were reporting mean winds of up to 55kts and gusts into hurricane force (64+ knots) they were mainly to be found close to the troughs. At the same time boats within a few miles were only recording winds of force 7 and, importantly, AW believes that it is this variation of speed across the wind field that caused the strange seas and contributed greatly to the disaster.

Sea and wind conditions are extremely difficult to analyse but Stephens, Kirkman and Peterson have done some very pertinent work in the area. The part that is of particular importance to the Fastnet shows that when the wind speed suddenly increases the seaway follows without a significant time interval. In other words winds suddenly generated by local meteorological conditions induce immediate heightening of the sea under them-an increase that will not be experienced in surrounding parts of the wind field not subject to the local increase.

Allan Watts goes on to say that analysis of waves capable of capsizing yachts in the way they were doing during the Fastnet yacht race shows that they must be very steep and that there is a fast moving ‘jet’ at the crest of the wave that is moving at perhaps twice the speed of the water in the lower part of the profile. Apparently such waves were responsible for capsizing several NOAA weather buoys between 1977-9.

A couple of his main conclusions were:

(i) In the troughs that developed over Fastnet the wind increased on the periphery of the trough, but there was a lowered wind speed near the axis and outside the periphery of the trough.

(ii) Thus surface ‘jets’ only a few miles wide were flanked by lower wind speeds. As the seaways builds without appreciable delay, so massive waves developed along the jets, but lesser seas existed on their flanks. The transverse wind shear may therefore account for the high seas experienced by the crews of the yachts in the 1979 Fastnet storm.

Refs.

Watts, A., Fresh Evidence of the Fastnet Storm, Journal of Navigation, 1982.

Stephens, O. J. Kirkman, K. L., & Peterson, R. S., (1981). Sailing Yacht Capsizing. Society of Naval Architects & Marine Engineering.

AVHRR 13/08/79 0903UTC

Edited September 14, 2010 by weather ship

[johnholmes]

thanks for that input Fred, and of course to C for yet another great in depth post. Quite where you get all this is a ystery mate, I'm still trying to catch up on your superb B0B thread. Its certainly not something I had seen before and Allan was a highly respected meteorologist so I see no reason to argue with any of the findings you mention. Meteorologically fascinating about the troughs embedded in the flow and their quite localised effects.

I was on holiday close by RNAS Culdrose and went to Lizard Point and watched their frequent trips back and forth. Also saw some of the yachts in varying states of damage in the shelter there as they tried to clean up a bit. Perhaps the most well known was Ted Heath. His yacht looked a wreck as they pulled in but later that afternoon he was interviewed on her, sipping his gin and whatever with neither him nor his boat looking anything like they did under the Lizard!

Edited September 14, 2010 by johnholmes

[knocker]

I agree John that it is Meteorologically fascinating about the troughs embedded in the flow and their quite localised effects. AW made a rather telling point about this that I will quote.

"The revelation of the troughs in the airstream over the Fastnet fleet provides a possible cause for locally enhanced winds. However, to develop such a trough and keep it for several hours in one place, as one trough is shown to do, (diagrams are useful here-my comment), demands some more or less stationary cause which in the gathering wind field of an advancing depression is difficult to envisage. Thus I cannot as yet give a satisfactory account of what caused these troughs, but the yachts' own barometers revealed them as being there."

Whether AW has resolved this problem since I know not but I imagine the opportunities for detailed research in this area are a bit thin on the ground.

[knocker]

Thought this may be of interest given the large number of forecasters in the forum.

The Fastnet storm-a forecaster's viewpoint.

© Crown copyright 1981, the Met Office

[johnholmes]

a fascinating read, 10 level model, my how time flies, 60+ I think it is now.

It also illustrates just how very difficult, be it 1981 or 1987, with the model output and data available it was to get near to the correct forecast. Hindsight is a wonderful attribute but none of us have that sadly.

Mind you there are times even today when forecasts are not very impressive in a relatively short time scale.

Meteorology is all science but there is a degree of art in it as well, always will be. The art of 6th guessing just what may happen.

[knocker]

a fascinating read, 10 level model, my how time flies, 60+ I think it is now.

It also illustrates just how very difficult, be it 1981 or 1987, with the model output and data available it was to get near to the correct forecast. Hindsight is a wonderful attribute but none of us have that sadly.

Mind you there are times even today when forecasts are not very impressive in a relatively short time scale.

Meteorology is all science but there is a degree of art in it as well, always will be. The art of 6th guessing just what may happen.

I didn't realise it was up to 60 these days. Yes I remember the example just a few weeks ago when the rain forecast spreading from the west was still wrong just prior to the event.

[johnholmes]

70 it seems when I checked this link

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/modelling-systems/unified-model/weather-forecasting

so its hardly 7 times more accurate than the 10 level model in my view!