Arcona 460 yacht sinks after rudder stock failure 

Ofc theyre fine!! Other wise it wouldnt have been uploaded

@@lester8403can u shut up

@@lester8403can u shut up

@@lester8403 Grow up. Stop embarrassing yourself.

@@Alsatiagent-zu1rxdeep

With the right kind of eyes, you can just make out Queequeg mast high going down with her.

Spade rudder boats are for coastal waters only, if even then. Its not just this issue, but when it hits something (logs, containers, reef etc) it will rip out of the boat and leave a big hole behind. Nobody sane sails blue water with spade rudders

@@rykehuss3435 I personally agree, but it comes down to preference. Some sailors want to sail fast. Look at racing designs. The rudder is hung on the transom. If it breaks, you remove it, fix it, replace it, all in perfect safety. Vs catamaran designs for example. A disaster waiting to happen. One bump and the rudder top can break through the hull and you get a 2 foot crack you can't plug.

@@Dryer_Safe Racing boats are for competition. Have you ever been on board one of them? very uncomfortable. Most people want to enjoy their time on the water

Having bulkheads around the crowbar sticking in the hull a rudder represents should be doable. Many boat have all the same construction, something hits it and a big hole in the hull is the result. This way of building it lowers the production cost.

@@Dryer_Safe Most Cats are a disaster waiting to happen. Look what happened to parley revival two weeks back. The deck got loose from the hull. Their luck was the nice weather. Like you mentioned, their rudder is also totally exposed and the hull moves one to two inches in heavy seas because it is so lightly build.

That had to be very painful to watch. Sorry

@@private-private either you are a troll or you have no concept of just how traumatic this is.

@@roadboat9216 I do Freddy. Ive raced all my life, did the fastnet race last summer starting in a force 7 and reaching hurst head 4 hours later where it was force 9 watching a life raft run down the side of our boat, the radio blaring with broken fingers, smashed faces and broken booms. Im know exactly how traumatic it is and Im not a troll. What I am Freddy.. is sick of hollow hysterical words that have made all of us victims, all our experiences the best or the worst it could be when neither is true and that stupid shitty meaningless phrase of " Im sending you my love" to a complete stranger from a stranger means absolutely FA. There was nothing "heartbreaking" about the rudder stock breaking and the boat sinking very very slowly because everyone got off and the insurance company most likely paid the bill. NOTHING was heartbreaking. Fastnet 79 was heartbreaking. Sydney Hobart 97 was heart breaking and with all due respect Freddy many of the people leaving hysterical comments here would want to get a bloody grip because in all of my sailing life I have never ever witnessed such over the top over emotional comments from an event of a boat sinking where no one was hurt in any way except a rudder stock, boat and an insurance premium. Jesus wept the drama of so many here is cringe. Stay at home and play golf then.

@@private-private Youve got to be a troll, no one is that confused in the mind unless they need professional help.

@@deksea No Dave, Im not a troll, Im just not an hysterical queen like you and so many people who have left comments. Now you very clearly have embraced your feminine side Dave but out at see what is needed when a boat is sinking is some masculinity otherwise things get really bad quickly. I have raced umpteen offshore races in all conditions. What I am getting frustrated at is with people like you and all the hysterical people claiming how heartbreaking this is, how sorry everyone is and you Dave and all they drama queens need to get a grip on your emotions. Its a yacht that is most likely insured and the people are safe in a life raft videoing it. Terminal cancer is heartbreaking, Car crash fatalities is heartbreaking, Drowning at sea is heartbreaking...... videoing your boat sinking from a life raft is not heartbreaking, no one needs to be " So sorry" no one needs to be " so grateful" they are ok because those words are hollow just like " sending our love through the internet" is hollow when the sender and the receiver dont know each other. You see Dave thank god Ive never had you on a boat at 3am in a force 9 with a broken GPS screen because I would need someone who was not hysterical, I would need someone like this man who calmly and quietly documented everything so that the rest of us might learn to double check our rudder stocks. Stay golfing Davey boy and stay out of the water. You see one of the problems here with over dramatisation and hysterical people is that you Dave and all they "heartbroken" people watching a boat sink would DEMAND offshore racing is banned, mountain climbing is banned, rugby and football is banned because watching it is just so heartbreaking for you all that you need to be protected from it so you all ban it and really all that does is bring everyone down to the hysterics level rather than letting people really live, risk and perhaps die doing what they are doing so again, no troll here, just someone who wants other drama queens like you get a grip.

Absolutely heartbreaking... :(

@@ubertuna1 is not about his money man

@@ubertuna1 there is a toddler crying in the video. pretty sure the condition of the boat was his last concern.

🥺

That's not his first wreck...

Old sailors knew it but it can't be said today as all major boat yards assure that their rudder is safe. I's not the first one which broke in that way.

Spade rudder- not keel or skeg hung. Investigation complete.

@@lungarotta A few months ago a solo sailor (german) had the same problem, his boat sank in less than half an hour near Brazil. He survived and is looking now for his next boat and said never again he will buy one with a spade rudder. The boats name was MJambo.

The problem isn't /wasn't just that it was a spade rudder, the problem was that the manufacturer used an aluminum rudder shaft to save weight (aluminum doesn't have to sheer strength for this application) and owing to the known vulnerability of spade rudders failed to include a watertight bulkhead to isolate the rudder stock throughhull should a failure (collision) occur. Other boats with spade rudders have suffered similar damage and not sunk, because they were designed to survive such an event.

Most boats have a bulkhead in front of the rudder, however, most have holes cut in them to run pipes, wires etc.

@@alansailing1387 this is very true and utterly bizarre - I am currently working to re-route pipes, wires etc correctly through the bulkhead to keep it watertight, or, at least watertight 300-400mm above the waterline. It's nonsensical design.

Why is that?

I think most people understand what you're saying. They're completely exposed and have to take so much more strain that a skeg mounted rudder. If boats are going to have rudders like this then they need to have water tight bulkheads so total rudder failure isn't going to mean total loss the boat.

A few months back a german guy, his sailboats name is MJambo, had the same problem and his sailboat sank near Brazil in less than half an hour. He was a solo sailor and was able to call for rescue which arrived a few hours later. Really terrifying especially if it happens at night in heavy weather.

@@HMPennypacker Too dainty for me. It's only a matter of time until I'll run aground or hit something. I've already logs in a river.

@@davecopp9356 and now he bought an Amel with Skegged rudder......

Great idea… could be worth a try

I've got six air bags in mine connected to three dive tanks. Previous owner installed them for unassisted record attempt.

@@blairhunterable are you a Hunter Blair?

@@johnstidworthy3370 no I'm a Blair hunter

Abraham Lincoln had a patent for just such an invention.

That is an interesting observation, rudder stock of aluminum, Stainless is the preferred choice as you point out, but then again, we fly at 30000 feet in aluminum structures......scary thought.

@@pmgear You're also not dunking an airliner in corrosive water. Look up the galvanic series. AL is three metals (none of them common) above Zinc, the material we use as sacrificial anodes. And the biggest flaw is that it is a spade rudder. OP, do yourself a favor, get a proper bluewater boat.

It may interest you to know that the rudder was not made by Arcona but rather by an outside firm that supplies steering systems to many yacht builder around the world.

@@sheerluckholmes5468 So, even cheaper, outsourcing production rather than designing and building in-house. Shame people fall for this.

Edson Marine steering systems supply also Bavaria, Benetaeu and other mass market factories. Problem here is application design to particular boat

If they're so cheap as to build bulb fin keels and spade rudders, then no. It would interrupt making money, which is all that matters to them.

I prefer long keel ,so far never ever any problem !

spade rudder, all you need to know

Ya, it's called 'the internet'

Excellent point. Rudder stocks are sometimes behind bulkheads that could easily be water tight. Same with many saildrives.

it was and it broke everything in the area working around in the waves

Boat is a thing so pronouns it

@@userjarabecko How do you know how IT identifies?

This incident is enough to consign a brand to the dusty pages of history; first their reliability and then their sales will decrease...

There should be planned failure points in the design, so even if the rudder fails, it won't sink the boat. That's a terrible engineering. Saying that 46footer should not be offshore because of its spade rudder is a laughable idea.

Damage control

Looks like it’s made out of aluminum which does not bend like steel.. just snaps

My guess is extensive autopilot sailing leading to fatigue

@@LehewTech okay their are kinds of aluminium (especially those meant to withstand a corrosive environment) which are brittle . But then again why use that material . Makes no sense to me. stainless steel would be my choise

Clearly not or it doesn’t work.

the working around destroyed the area

What is there to hit, a whale ? Or some orca munching on the rudder (no idea if the is stupid from me asking)

Spade rudder and thin fin keel? I can look at the design and see it coming.

@@mattz1230 Do you have any statistics that back up your claim? Or just nonsense hearsay?

@@MurkyDregs No one complies statistics on this. But, here's a challenge. Find ONE proper bluewater boat, with a full/long keel or keel/skeg mounted rudder, and show me where it sunk due to losing the keel or rudder. JUST ONE. Because I can show you dozens of examples of thin fin keels and spade rudder failures.

​@@mattz1230 Spade rudders aren't a safety problem so long as they're on the transom. That way if it impacts something it just tears off instead of tearing a hole in the stern, and since it's accessible you can replace it.

@@phillycheesetake That's not a spade rudder, however, it's a transom rudder. They're well supported, and probably the best rudder design- no complicated bearings or quadrants. Very strong, and you're correct, a transom rudder is a good choice for a cruiser.

Right, this peice of metal got stressed by something really big to break like this. Otherwise, failure to do inspection and look at it to prevent this but I mean you would hear it rub…! In all cases be safe out there

@@jeremypaquette Nope, just water. That's all it needs.

To me it looks like the shaft has failed where the taper meets the parallel section where the steering quadrant bolts

There are only two bearings! At a distance of just under 50 -70 cm from each other. Below this, the spade rudder is free hanging and probably goes up to 160 cm below the waterline. THERE is the problem, namely the enormous leverage forces (1st year engineering or physics lessons.) Anyone who buys something like this should not be surprised at these unfortunately terrible processes. And they are not that rare. No yacht with a rudder on the skeg, standing on the skeg foot and triple bearing has ever sunk because of this. This should finally be understood at some point.

@@thomasescape3002 EXACTLY!!!! Everything you wrote is 100% fact! A Proper Bluewater Cruiser will never have this casualty. It will have a skeg or keel hung rudder. Even if the steering brakes, a good crew can steer because the rudder didn't literally fall out of the boat. That rudder is almost 2 meters on an Arcona. This is a flaw that WILL happen to every one of them eventually.

Rudder shaft smashed a hole in the bottom of the boat.

316L

Cr Mo будет получше вашей нержавейки. С защитным покрытием.

Хотя, с другой стороны, лучше бы он загнулся, но не сломался.

Well a lot of accidents happen due to (part) submerged containers. If they got unlucky and hit one just with the rudder it could create a lot of damage in a very short time. The 460 have a single very long rudder quite far from the keel.

It looks like fatigue failure to me. We have a very good picture of the break. You see there seems to be portions to the break. It does not look like one fast break.

I disagree it looks like it snapped and then rubbed together to create this smooth edge. It broke like an arrow like you would snap a stick in two. There is no side more damaged than the other.

Root cause was a poor purchase decision. They wanted fast and maneuverable and cheap, instead of strong. Ocean doesn't care about how fast you are, how quick you can turn or how much you spent.

@@mattz1230Arconas are not cheap. The are very well built in and in a similar price range as HR