part 2: Northern Marine 90' Yacht Capsizes Upon Launch...!

Update

Just got a call from my buddy out there...they moved the 90 back into the building in the middle of the night, and at the time of the launch the hard top had been installed, so when they got back to the building the dollies were still attached, so get this....they took a chain saw and cut the hard top off...wiring and all....to get it back in the shed...apparently they want this boat out of sight of everyone. This is getting crazy...anyway he had no update as to any litigation progress.

If you look at the photos, the link to which I posted in #168 above, you will see this isn't the case. The flying bridge was removed before they ever started the move, and it occurred in broad daylight, as you can see.

O.K. So my source is a big fat liar...maybe he just makes this stuff up as an excuse to call me.

I live there, bro. Either you or your friend are making stuff up.

Does this look like the middle of the night to you or that the flying bridge has been removed with a chain saw? I was there when they attached the crane to remove the darn thing.

Honestly, we can't know whether your source is lying, you are lying, somehow one of you is terribly confused or whether your source just feeds you these things because they think you're so gullible. We'd like to all give you the benefit of the doubt that someone fed you false information. You'll have to ascertain why they did so. Certainly a hard lesson learned. Regardless, I know others who saw the same trip Delfin did. He posted a link to the photos. The truth around New World and Northern is crazy enough, so certainly needs no embellishment.

There is no way the boat was sold for that much. I would guess the build was cost ($1.9 million) + time and materials. Or $1.9 million was the initial down payment......You'd have $1.9 million into it just building the shell of the boat.

I live in Houston, he lives out there. Honestly, I don't give a rats ass...it doesn't concern me one way or the other...I was just reporting what I was told. Won't make that mistake again.

I've seen the invoices as entered into the court documents. Publicly available. $1.9 included the change orders. They've been buying business with low bids. Just go to Skagit County Superior Court and there it is.

The mistake wasn't reporting second hand information, the mistake was the attitude that you copped when it came out that your information was not reliable. Second hand information being wrong is no reason to get defensive.

If Tad Roberts is a licensed or certificated naval architect then his "discoveries" might keep the subject on an even keel.

B.C. is one of those areas where any stylist or designer can call himself a naval architect, or allow others to do so for him.

Until another Naval Architect with a PE and 30 years in the business is given access to all the data it seems a bit dodgy to pile on with the "looks top heavy" crowd.

I agree, the new cruise ships look very top heavy, but they're stable. It depends on the design and where the weight is located and many other factors besides looks.

Tad Roberts Yacht Design

Dynamic Energy Solutions | DES Alternative Power Storage Consultants George Roddan Vancouver BC Canada

It's all kind of academic until it gets to court and the guy who put the PEng stamp on the drawings gets to say if his instructions and advice were followed. But until then, it is unfair to have outsiders who lack the same qualifications and who were not involved in the project or had access to all the data claiming to have found "glaring" errors.

Roddan did an excellent escape clause though, regardless. They indicated needed to have them check again when more work was done. They were very careful not to say "it's ready to go."

Looks Top Heavy Crowd?

Of course this fine yacht is not Top Heavy, neither does she look Top Heavy and she did not turn turtle the first time she tasted water..Jeez, what was the "looks top heavy" crowd thinking ?

I think that the point that they are going for is that "looks top heavy" is not now nor ever will be a reliable measure of whether or not it actually is top heavy. Because the distribution of weight within a modern boat is highly discontinuous and because a variety of factors in the shape of the hull itself make it impossible to accurately approximate stability in your head the level of accuracy needed and the level of accuracy obtainable are no where near each other. The fact that someone used an unreliable measure doesn't mean that the measure is suddenly vindicated. In addition to that there is a lot of retrodiction going on, where people who didn't see it before knowing that it did a barrel roll go back and look at the pictures and convince themselves that it looks top heavy. It's kind of like looking at your horoscope after something big happens, and convincing yourself that the horoscope had predicted it. Similarly before every single major ship voyage in recorded history there has been someone with a bad feeling or premonition about it. When things go wrong 100% of the time there is someone who can say "see I told you so" even though they didn't have a way to peer into the future.

The actual test of how top heavy it is will be highly influenced by the actual distribution of ballast in the ship, which will be invisible to the onlooker from the outside of the boat. Really before it hit the water we had no way to tell from the outside whether it was all down next to the keel, or all tied up in stone work on the port side extended fly bridge.

Most sailboats would roll right over if you launched them without the keel on them.

The boat wasn't ballasted correctly and underballasted or under the final ballast amount to launch it in the manner they did. Obviously something went way wrong with the launch, but unless we can see the boat, see the ballast and it's location, and was at the launch we all are just poking straws......until a real naval engineer looks at it and formulates a cause.

If this site had a "Thanks" button it would have been pushed for that post.

What I was referring to were calculations in the Roddan report Roberts noted that seemed a bit squirrely. For example, the grey water tank is shown as positioned 53.5' above the keel, or hovering someplace overhead, apparently defying gravity. Also, the main fuel tank is listed as being located somewhere below the keel shoe, apparently bolted onto the bottom side of the keel. One of his specialties is stability studies, so I presume he can read the report and draw informed conclusions, but I have no idea what his experience is, other than apparently designing a lot of boats.

And I don't think I was piling on the "looks top heavy" bandwagon. Heck, Nordhavns look top heavy to me but have stability that appears sufficient, so 'looks' are irrelevant. I was merely referencing the one piece of supposedly empirical data on the vessel we have to look at, and its apparent deficiencies.

Passagemaker had a piece about this. They had little to say. Joined in in saying that the casual observers opinion isn't worth much, but also had a bit of a diatribe about the long experience of Northern Marine (missing the whole NM/NWY thing) they also said that the engines were pickled as soon as the hull was drained (good) that there were a total of 8 people on board for launch, and that we don't know where to put the blame. I'd say that 100% of the blame probably rests with the people who designed, built, and launched the vessel. All the speculation has been about how specifically they screwed up, but screw up they did.