one australia yacht sinking

America’s Cup: Sinking of One Australia

Published on March 5th, 2019 by Editor -->

The dramatic moments on the 5th of March 1995, when during round four in the round robin stage of the America’s Cup challenger series, and in a match race between One Australia and Team New Zealand, the Australian boat split and sunk within two minutes off San Diego, CA.

This was an unprecedented event, and while it occurred when the internet was new, significant commentary now exists online. Alongside this YouTube video is a post by King Cliff which seeks to offer closure to the speculation on how such a complete failure could happen:

I built this boat. Yes, the primary winch failed and they transferred the load to I think the running back stay winch. I’m not a sailor, just a boat builder. Either way, it’s like trying to break a stick with your hands close together and then moving them further apart. The boat wasn’t designed to take the load applied at such a distance.

Plus, these boats weren’t designed to be in conditions like this (18-20 knots). They are flat water boats. The race should have been called off. If it was flat it probably wouldn’t have broken even with the winch failure.

A design flaw? In a way yes and no. It only had two bulk heads. Mast bulkhead and a keel bulkhead and both were mealy ring frames and not full bulkheads. But that wasn’t the true problem IMO. The boat was as hollow as a drum. It sure was cutting edge but it had no longitudinal strength. No beams running fore and aft to stop it breaking in half.

I brought this up three times but was told I wasn’t being paid to think. All I wanted to do was put two short longitudinal beams running maybe a few meters fore and aft of the keel box. But no. Weight was the key factor and the order of the day. I think if they were in it may not have broken. It certainly wasn’t too thin a carbon layup.

Why did it go down so fast? The hull and deck finished weighed only 1.1 tonnes. Incredibly light for an 80 foot maxi. The mast was 135 feet long and the single longest carbon structure ever produced. The mast had 40 tonnes of load pulling down on the mast bulkhead. But the cause of it sinking so fast was the foil and bulb attached below had over 17 tonnes of metal combined.

The foil was solid stainless steel weighing 5 tonnes alone attached to a 12 tonne lead bulb below it with small stainless steel wings off of it. So a 1 tonne broken cork being pulled down by 17 tonnes of steel and lead. Down she went!

It certainly wasn’t badly built. It was a masterpiece of construction built to incredibly high standards. NASA standards. In fact NASA took interest in what we were doing as it was built to the same layup as the space shuttle and we were treading new ground and finding breaking points with new technology.

Why did the three fellas stay on the front for so long? Because there was confusion as to if someone was still down below. You can see one guy leaning down shouting through the forward hatch. Inside was full of sails and nothing else. Up to two people are down there at any one time feeding sails up through the hatches or dragging them back down below. Throw in a few hundred tonnes of water and a recipe for disaster for anyone below. Once they were somewhat sure no one was below, they jumped off. They had no choice anyway.

But the key point to make is that the Kiwi boat had the boat speed on us from the start. Even if nothing went wrong they were going to beat us hands down.

Tags: America's Cup , One Australia , tragedy

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Historical Video : Sinking of the One Australia in America’s Cup 17 years ago

Dramatic moments in the regatta between One Australia and Team New Zealand, of the Challenger America’s Cup series, the Australian boat splits and sinks after two minutes off San Diego, on March 5, 1995.

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Fire aboard the 27m princess in fort lauderdale, videos: 39 meter yacht sinks off the coast in italy, dramatic video: ship breaking up after being hit by a....

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ONEAUSTRALIA SINKS AT AMERICA'S CUP

All 17 crew members are rescued.

America's Cup challenger trials off San Diego were thrown into turmoil yesterday when top contender oneAustralia cracked down the middle "like a cookie," according to one observer, and sank suddenly in wild, windy weather during a race against fleet-leading Team New Zealand.

No crewmen were lost or injured when the pale green, $3 million, 75-foot racer plunged to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in about 500 feet of water less than five miles off Point Loma. The boat was considered irretrievable, according to Marcus Hutchinson, a spokesman for Cup organizer Louis Vuitton.

However, the Associated Press reported, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was expected to contact the U.S. Navy to see if the yacht could be salvaged.

Winds of 15 to 20 knots and steep, choppy seas also dismasted the new French entry, France 3. And on a neighboring defender course, where U.S. entries vied separately, both Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes and the all-women's entry, Mighty Mary, were forced by the heavy weather to drop their mainsails and sail the course under headsails alone. Conner finally gave up and the women were easy winners.

But those mishaps paled by comparison to the oneAustralia disaster, which occurred a third of the way through the eagerly awaited second matchup of the top two challenger boats.

Team New Zealand rounded the second mark of the course 21 seconds ahead of oneAustralia. As the two boats charged back upwind, oneAustralia smashed into a wave and "snapped in the middle like a cookie breaking," said veteran offshore sailor Renee Mehl, and began taking water at a rapid rate.

Skipper John Bertrand said he doesn't know what broke. "We came off a wave and heard a crack," he said, adding that the boat filled and sank in 2 1/2 minutes.

Support boats from both oneAustralia and Team New Zealand raced to pick up crew members from the water. Team New Zealand, the black boat that so far is undefeated in the Cup season, retired from the race out of respect for the lost boat and concern for the crew.

Conditions were at their worst for the fragile Cup racers, which are built for San Diego's usual six to 12-knot winds. Race organizers don't start races in winds of more than 20 knots, and sometimes will cancel racing in less wind if seas are extremely high due to offshore storms.

Bertrand said the crews from his own boat, France 3 and Team New Zealand all advised the race committee they believed conditions were excessive, but conceded the winds were "generally within the agreed conditions" for racing.

He said at the time of the sinking, winds were 20 to 22 knots at the top of the mast. Visibility was 300 to 500 yards because of rain storms, and swells were moderate, but topped with a steep chop.

He said the boat sank so quickly, it was all the crew could do to get off. "I told {helmsman} Rod Davis, I think we're going to sink,' " he said. "It was pretty clear. And then I was in the water with Rod."

The loss throws the challenger series for the Louis Vuitton Cup into confusion. The Aussie entry was second in the standings with 43 points, 12 behind fleet leader Team New Zealand with 55.

Both remain assured of advancing to the challenger semifinals March 18, and oneAustralia still will advance, but using an older boat.

This was the second oneAustralia to enter the series. The first boat raced the first two round-robins before being replaced by the newer model. Bertrand said he hopes to reenter the old boat in the series by Tuesday after seeking a bye Monday to prepare it.

"As I said to the boys, we'll live to fight another day," he said. But whether the Aussies will be competitive in the older boat is hard to judge.

Most observers reckoned they made significant speed advances with the newer boat, and only seconds had separated them in their first encounter against Team New Zealand, which they lost.

Meanwhile, the dismasting is a death knell for France 3, which entered today in fifth place, eight points behind Nippon, which is nearly certain to take the fourth and final place in the challenger semifinals.

Nippon beat France 3 Saturday, and sixth-place Spain wound up the winner over the French today after the mast came tumbling down.

It caps a disastrous year for the French, who dropped their first race boat from its crane during a launch last fall, extensively damaging it, then lost the keel and capsized the same boat two weeks ago during a training session.

The result on the defenders' course draws that competition tighter. Stars & Stripes had entered today's racing tied with Kevin Mahaney's Young America for the lead in the trials with 32 points, with the women's Mighty Mary well behind with 14 points. Victories in this final round-robin are worth seven points each, and the victory -- their second in three races this round -- lifts the women's total to 21.

Both U.S. teams had mainsail problems in the strong winds. Conner was forced to drop his mainsail early on the first leg and sent bowman Ralf Steitz up the 110-foot mast for repairs. Steitz stayed up for a half-hour, but couldn't fix the problem, and by then the women were well ahead.

When Mighty Mary's mainsail broke down later, the two boats simply sailed around the course under headsails alone, with Conner finally dropping out. CAPTION: Chase boats scramble to pick up crew members of the yacht oneAustralia, which split across the middle during race in windy conditions and choppy seas.

Yachting: Infamous crash still gives you that sinking feeling

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Australia One's sinking in San Diego in 1995 is still synonymous with Cup racing.

"That is the reality of living on the edge. That's what we do in the America's Cup - sail on the edge. It's a bit like Formula One. They're on the edge too. People have crashes, people get killed. It doesn't stop F1 and it doesn't stop the America's Cup either. If you are not on the edge, you are not competitive."

The speaker was John Bertrand, skipper of One Australia, the 1995 America's Cup challenger, which is still the only boat to lose a race by sinking when - in a seminal America's Cup moment - it broke up and sank off San Diego when racing Team New Zealand.

In San Francisco for a 1995 reunion and Australia II's victory in 1983, Bertrand's comments have obvious relevance today. The flying AC72s had their leashes shortened when the wind limits were dropped by 10 knots in the name of safety following the fatal capsize of Artemis, killing crew member Andrew Simpson, in May.

In the midst of the One Australia reminisces came another, more poignant, reminder of the relevance of that sinking to today.

Iain Murray was on board that day and is now the regatta director of the 34th America's Cup. He was also the man at the forefront of the safety recommendations made after the Simpson death, which created controversy. Some felt they were disadvantaging some competitors and rewarding others. Now some feel too much racing has been lost to winds the AC72 can handle.

"For a very short period of time, we didn't know how many people were safe," said Murray. "When you go through a process like this [Simpson's death and the safety measures], you go back to those moments - they never leave you.

"You hope that a little bit of this from a long while ago will stand you in good stead as you go forward."

His old shipmate Bertrand didn't quite agree: "I think in hindsight, they [the wind limits] are a bit too conservative. These things can sail in 28 knots, in my opinion.

"But you can see how the responsibility and liability issues might affect things and maybe not enough people fully appreciate how these things are unstable surface effect machines.

"The whole sailing world has changed - they are getting huge lift off the water and these boats require more teamwork than any other America's Cup.

"After all, you are sailing them on a toothpick [a reference to the boats racing on hydrofoils] and a rudder."

If Murray and Bertrand have a slight difference of opinion on the wind limits, they are united in their memory of that fateful day on One Australia. Peter Montgomery's TV commentary was unforgettable, as were the pictures of the big yacht cracking up the middle and sinking within two minutes. The film went on the internet and became, at that stage, the most watched event other than the moon landing.

It led to one of the most famous quotes in Cup history.

Rod Davis (now the coach of Emirates Team NZ) was helming the boat that day and almost casually remarked to the burly Murray: "Big fella, are we going to sink?" The equally unflappable Murray said: "Yes. We are going to sink."

He was right. It was all over in two minutes, the tonnes of lead ballast in the hulls dragging the boat to the bottom of the Pacific.

No one died but the favourite to have done so was crewman Don McCracken who, in spite of being a Volvo round-the-world yachtsman, couldn't swim. "Dog paddle was about his lot," said Murray.

McCracken was one of the last off the yacht, thrown off the bow by the force of the sinking - just as well, as he could well have been sucked under in the vortex.

New Zealand's Murray Jones, now with Oracle Team USA and a four-time Cup winner, was on NZL32 and watched in horror as the yacht cracked and sank in front of them.

"The whole [NZ] boat went quiet. No one said a word," said Jones. "We just hoped no one was suffering - we were all concerned someone was hurt."

"One of the things that has stayed with me was the comradeship," said Bertrand. "The Kiwi chase boat picked some of our guys up. They were horrified at what had happened. We are blood brothers out of the water, regardless of the fact that we are mortal enemies on it. "

In the end, it came back to safety. Murray - then a competitor - said the organisers had asked the teams whether they wanted to sail: "I guess our egos got ahead of our brains a bit. Of course we wanted to race - but we got a bit ahead of ourselves."

That day, not only did One Australia sink, other boats were damaged on a day Jones said they should not have raced. The Australians stayed in the regatta, re-building their pace boat. They beat all other challengers except New Zealand, who won the Louis Vuitton Cup and went on to take the America's Cup - for the first time - off Dennis Conner in Stars & Stripes.

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YACHT RACING

YACHT RACING; One-Liner Helps Lift A Sinking Feeling

By Barbara Lloyd

• March 12, 1995

The dark humor that so often follows misfortune has settled in among America's Cup camps here, including One Australia. Despite being the butt of the jokes, even the team from Down Under has been able to laugh.

It has been a week since the syndicate's new, $3 million yacht, One Australia, suddenly split apart and sank in 500 feet of water. The exact cause of the debacle will probably never be determined. But the humor helps to soothe some of the sting.

"What's the difference between One Australia and a teabag," goes one quip. Answer: "A teabag stays in the cup longer."

With their own brand of humor, Australian crewmen showed up on the start line in their older, backup boat Tuesday -- their first race since the sinking -- wearing bright red life jackets.

Round-Robin 4 of the Louis Vuitton challengers' trials ended Wednesday, with Team New Zealand finishing at the head of the pack with a 22-1 overall record, followed by One Australia, the TAG Heuer Challenge, also of New Zealand, and Japan's Nippon Challenge. The four teams are scheduled to begin the challengers' semifinals on Saturday.

"The Kiwis are focused," said Chris Law, former skipper for Sydney 95, the Australian entry that failed to reach the semifinals. "They're managed by a wealth of experience, by people who are sailors in their own right. Third time lucky. I don't think there's any way they'll fold."

Law was referring to Team New Zealand, an Auckland-based syndicate that has been racing the boat Black Magic 2. New Zealand teams have teetered on the brink of America's Cup victory twice before -- in 1987 and 1992 -- then self-destructed with losses in the challengers' finals.

Undaunted and confident, the Black Magic crewmen will be testing boat performance this week to decide which of its two 1995 cup yachts -- Black Magic 1 or 2 -- they will enter in the semifinals. Although its keel design is kept secret, there is speculation that the wings on Black Magic 2 are larger than on any other cup boat. This has prompted competitors to nickname the yacht "Air New Zealand."

Chris Dickson, skipper for TAG Heuer Challenge, maintains that Team New Zealand will not be able to keep up its momentum.

Alan Sefton, spokesman for the Black Magic group, disagrees. After a two-day break this weekend, the crew will be "like brand new," he said.

On the defenders' side, Young America seems to have sorted out its early gear problems and stabilized its crew. Based on the point standings from Rounds 1 through 4, the PACT 95 boat will carry 2 points into the Citizen Cup semifinals. Stars & Stripes will go in with 1 point, while the America crew's new yacht, Mighty Mary, starts at zero.

In question now is whether Mighty Mary is as fast as the syndicate said it would be. Carol Vernon, a naval architect on America 's design team, said that the crew was up against a steep learning curve in figuring out to handle the new cup yacht. On the upside, she said, the boat is fast despite is lackluster performance so far.

None of the three American teams has shown as solid a performance as the top challenger. There is no way of knowing if this actually means the defenders are slower until the two sides race against each other in the cup match, which begins May 6.

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Australia One's sinking "What happened here"?

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This is the first time I have saw this video Wow!! what happens here? Things change quickly during sailing competition. [VIDEO]  

I think that the NA put in the construction plan "fold on dotted line'  

too much backstay pressure drove mast through boat cool eh  

....and it was this event that resulted in the New Zealand beer commercial, "So smooth that it goes down like Australia one!"  

Wow, that was incredible. It is a good thing the crew at the bow jumped off when they did. Another couple seconds and they easily could have gotten tangled up in a sheet and pulled to the bottom. It is pretty amazing the boat went down so perfectly plumb, instead of rolling to one side or tipping aft. You would think the bow would have kept a sizable air pocket and the stern would allow the air to escape and sink faster.  

This is from memory, but my recollection is that there was an investigation into what caused the failure. My recollection was that this boat had previously been damaged and repaired near this area. Also major hardware had been relocated in way that increased the loads near the repairs. The repairs and hardware relocations had not been discussed with the design team who were not expecting that much load in this area. With the compromised strength from the repair in this area and the higher loads from the relocated hardware, the hull failed at the edge of the repair. Adding to this, Aus 31 was optimized for the comparatively light to moderate wind and long swell conditions that are typical of San Diego. My recollection was that it had been the conditions were pretty high winds, and a choppy day which only added to the problem.  

Too much Fosters and Velveeta for the crew. Should have stuck with Vegemite.  

It's ironic that there was a lot of criticism during the last Americas Cup about the unseaworthiness of the catamarans, often from people who were diehard fans of monohull Americas Cup racing. Guess they forgot about this lol.  

Had you been talking about the last century, you still would have been correct since the boats were sailed across as late as the Great Depression. To me this whole discussion about seaworthiness of America's Cup boats makes no sense at all. These are Grand Prix race boats. No one would expect a formula 1 team to drive their cars on the street to the event. (Not even Nascar cars can be driven on the street) so why would you expect the America's cup boats to be constructed with the equivalent of all season radials, passenger seats, and a license tag holder. Jeff  

...and this is why you should always resist the urge to take Onnnnnne more pump on the backstay adjuster.  

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Sinking of One Australia

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Date: May 1995

Location: San Diego, California

Casualties: None

The sinking of One Australia is the second incident featured on Episode 36 of Destroyed in Seconds.

Incident [ ]

In the Americas Cup (or Louis Vuitton Cup), for over 150 years, the fastest yachts from around the world compete in hopes of winning the sport's most prestigious trophy. But before a crew can challenge the defending champions for the title, they must compete with other yachts in a series of qualifying rounds. Off the coast of San Diego, California, the 1995 qualifying heats turned out to be the most dangerous and costly in the cup's history. In an effort to be the fastest boat on the water, the captains push their crews and their state-of-the-art vessels to the limits. The yacht French 3 loses a mast and has to bow out of the race. Another of France's entries loses a heel and the crew scrambles for safety as the boat capsizes. But it's the Australian team with their entry, One Australia who will suffer the greatest loss. Conditions are rough with high winds and choppy seas. The Australian team is in second place, but halfway into the 18 and a half mile race, a crack appears in the center of their carbon fibre hull. Today's racing of One Australia will be halted, and the crew moves quickly to lower the sails. The crack widens and the yacht begins to slip beneath the waves. Yacht crews do wear life vests, but the boat is sinking so fast, the crew have no time to put them on. The entire crew quickly abandons ship, as the 75-foot long hull breaks into half. Following boats pluck the captain and all 16 crew members as the yacht buckles in on itself. In less than two minutes, the $3 million vessel sinks into 500 ft of water. The cause of the sinking is simply because the rough sea snapped the lightweight carbon fibre boat in half. Two days later, they return to the competition with One Australia's backup boat. This was the first time in the history of the entire cup that a boat sank during a race.

Gallery [ ]

• This is the third incident in the series that involves a yacht/sailboat. The first two were the yacht and ferry collision in Episode 31 and the incident where a sailboat was capsized by a wave in Episode 35.
• This is also the third incident in the series that happened in San Diego, California. The first two were Shawn Nelson's tank rampage in Episode 11 and the hydroplane crash in Episode 24. Coincidentally, one of the two incidents also happened on water
• 1 The skateboarding accident of Jake Brown
• 2 The stunt accident of Robbie Knievel, part 1
• 3 1993 Pantai Remis landslide

Green Point beach near Yamba littered with debris after abandoned boat runs aground

A remote beach near Yamba on the New South Wales north coast is littered with debris and diesel after a boat ran aground and was smashed to pieces in the surf overnight.

Witnesses said the boat was abandoned by its occupants as they were attempting to cross the Clarence River bar around lunchtime on Monday. 

NSW Road and Maritime said the occupants were evacuated from the vessel by a NSW Marine Rescue crew.

Angourie resident Oli Coe said he later saw the vessel adrift about 2 kilometres offshore.

He watched the boat throughout the day and at one point saw another vessel alongside it.

He said someone boarded vessel and put out its anchor.

"As the wind got up through the rest of the afternoon, we watched the boat drifting and dragging on its anchor and eventually it just dragged way too far and ended up on the beach," Mr Coe said.

At one stage Mr Coe and two friends used jetskis to get out to the boat to see if they could do anything to help.

He said he could not understand why it was not salvaged before it ran aground near Green Point.

"There was definitely some damage to the boat but it was in perfectly good condition [before that]," Mr Coe said.

Clean-up concerns

Locals spent Tuesday morning on the beach, dragging piles of debris above the high tide mark in a bid to ensure it is not taken back out to sea with the next high tide on Tuesday evening. 

Angourie resident Kim Wood said the usually pristine beach at Green Point looked like a "rubbish dump".

"I'm looking at kilometres of debris," she said.

"There is timber, there is oil cans, jerry cans full of diesel, so much plastic, and everything is soaked in diesel.

"You can still see all debris in the ocean."

Ms Wood said the area was home to a wide range of birdlife including oyster catchers and curlews.

Too dangerous to tow

NSW Maritime said the boat was deemed too dangerous for authorities to board or tow.

Senior boating safety officer Bret Ryan said authorities needed to put safety first.

"Marine Rescue revisited the boat several times on Monday, and eventually the Water Police came from Coffs Harbour," Mr Ryan said.

"They came to the same conclusion that it was too dangerous."

"At that point the vessel was secure and the hope was it would remain in that position but unfortunately that didn't happen."

Mr Ryan said the main hazard on the beach was from any sharp objects that might remain buried in the sand.

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