Three of the crew cut the liferaft free and the skipper joined them in the liferaft. The crew was rescued at 0430 by a nearby ship and the body of the fifth crew member was found at 0655 by the Salcombe lifeboat.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) report published on August 14 says Hooligan V was the first of 10 yachts in a class developed by the Dutch yacht designer Maarten Voogd, for use in Recreational Craft Directive (RCD) Category B waters.

The yacht was apparently designed following the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) standards. It was built by Breehorn BV in Woudsend in The Netherlands and marketed by Max Fun Boats BV.

Unbeknown to the designer, however, the builder sub-contracted construction of the hollow keel to a steel fabricator who had no marine experience. The fabricator changed the design of the keel and incorporated a fillet weld in a critical area to ease manufacture and to reduce costs but without adequately assessing the stresses to which the keel would be subjected in service.

The MAIB says although the designer was made aware of the keel changes, he did not validate them.

In 2005, the owner of Hooligan V contracted a UK yacht designer to optimise the yacht for IRM and IRC1 racing. This involved adding a further 160kg to the keel bulb.

No supporting calculations
One again, says the MAIB, there were no supporting calculations, nor were checks made against the ‘original’ or ‘as built’ design drawings to ensure that the modification would not adversely affect the design to cope with the ‘in service’ loads.

Hooligan V was salvaged and brought into Plymouth. On investigation it was found that the fabricated keel had failed just below the fillet weld connecting the fin to the taper box which was inserted into the hull. Laboratory metallurgical analysis confirmed that the keel had suffered fatigue failure in the fillet weld area, which had been subjected to high bending stresses.

Defects were also found in the keel taper box welds and two of the three keel bolts had also failed.

Independent analysis of the ‘original’ design calculations confirmed that they did not achieve the required Safety Factor. Further analysis of the keel design, as built, showed this failed to achieve the required safety factor by an even larger margin and that the subsequent addition of extra bulb weight in 2005 had exacerbated the situation.

Hooligan V’s fabricated keel was unable to withstand the ‘in service’ bending stresses and this led to the conditions of fatigue failure and consequent capsize of the boat.

Who Cares, a Dutch owned Max Fun 35 yacht, had also suffered fracture of its keel, but in this case the cracking was noticed before the keel completely failed. The existence of this second case provided confirmatory evidence about the inadequacy of the keel design and construction.

As a result of the MAIB investigation, the Max Fun 35 yacht keel has been redesigned and now exceeds the minimum required safety factor. New keels have been fitted to seven out of the nine remaining boats.

Following this unfortunate incident, the MAIB recommendations include:

• The need to ensure that the appropriate safety factor is applied to designs and that the build standard is fully documented.

• An amendment to be made to the Recreational Craft Sectoral Group Guidelines to include keel construction standards.

• The safety issues identified in this report to be promulgated to the marine industry.

BB’s done its bit in helping with the last recommendation. But we can’t believe the checks weren’t done on the keel alterations…