Sailor Explains: What Caused the Fastnet '79 Disaster

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A very interesting reminder of a race that changed yachting. I was sailing in the British Team on a 50 footer called Blizzard with a highly experienced crew of 14. I started my career in the ‘60’s in Australia and my first Hobart was on a 27 footer called Zilvergeest. So I count 7 Hobarts and about the same number of Fastnets. We rounded the Rock at about 0300 and started to hear the radio distress calls. Our wind indicator was pinned on 70 knots so we made the decision to stop racing and get home without becoming a burden to the rescue services by pushing our luck. I know Matt Sheahan and knew a few others who lost their lives that day. It was all very distressing. The IOR Rule came out in 1969 and it’s fair to say that it stalled yacht design for fifteen years. Its introduction coincided with mass produced glass fibre boats and marinas both of which attracted new people into the sport. New and inexperienced sailors. Before that it is fair to say that we raced because we loved sailing and it was a relatively unknown activity to the public. Wet and unfashionable. At this time I worked in Nicholsons and was the resident IOR consultant tweaking handicaps. The rule was supposed to mathematically handicap any existing yacht up to about 70 feet. As soon as it was introduced designers started to design new boats which concentrated, not on speed, but on lowering the handicap. The beam was the first measurement and was put in because it REDUCES speed and gains a lower handicap. The rule also penalised stability and broad transoms while giving credit for a deep forefoot. These features coupled with high aspect ratio rigs and unbalanced sail areas under spinnaker produced yachts that were dangerous in inexperienced hands when pushed to racing limits. The ’79 Fastnet had been preceded by two easy, light wind races 77 and 75 which meant that the new sailors considered it a fashionable event for chaps and chapesses to have on the social calendar. This is why many were caught out in ill equipped yachts and no experience of the conditions – which I have to say were pretty awe inspiring. After IOR we reinvented stability and better hull and rig design. I am a yacht designer and one of my Europa 30 footers was cruising the Bristol Channel in the ‘79 gale crewed by an architect and his wife and two kids of 11 and 13 en route to Devon from Cardiff. They made it through a terrible night and anchored in Lundy Island. The place was deserted - but they found the entire 30 population in the tiny church praying for the yacht they had seen founder during the night. In fact the Matthais family stood at the back of their own memorial service.

By focussing on one boat the author was able to make a succinct video picking up the important points particularly about how designers were focussing on speed rather than seaworthiness. I was on a wooden long keeled cruising boat a bit further south in Biscay. We eventually took down all sail, trailed warps and endured a very difficult 24 hours. One thing alluded to in the video was that in the Fastnet many boats were abandoned by their crews but survived the storm. Often it is the human reaction that a "life raft" will be better than the mother boat, even though it is a flimsy vulnerable inflatable and in reality offers less protection than the yacht which was abandoned.

Six months after this I launched on a SAR mission from Lajes Field in response to a Mayday from an American boat that had been in this race. I was the AC of a USN P-3B. The crew was attempting to sail back to the U.S. and their boat had been dismasted in an enormous storm. It was late at night, the ceiling was around 800 feet, and the winds were gusting in excess of 50 kts. We found the boat —in fact I had to ask the crew to stop firing flares at me. The sea state and winds were so high it was pointless to drop the SAR package, because it would have just rolled away with the wind. We found a freighter about 30 miles away but couldn’t get it to respond on VHF. So, I buzzed the bridge a couple of times and then dropped a line of smoke markers (which show up as flares at night) indicating where I wanted the ship to go. The master got the message and turned to follow the lights. Two hours later the freighter reached the sailboat, and the master did an amazing job coming alongside the boat to rescue the crew. I was talking to the sailboat skipper the entire time. He remained calm and collected, even as his boat was sinking. I remember him telling me he and the crew were from Massachusetts. Never did collect the case of beer he promised me. This boat survived Fastnet but the winter time North Atlantic did her in.

As a skipper of many years I have one major issue with this boat. A sail boat that cannot right itself on a nock down is not a sea worthy boat and should not even be on the water let alone out there.

I’ve been in some very wild seas and we would never try and run with the swells when we were in danger of pitchpoling. Standing operating procedure was to set out a stern drogue, go down below and man the vents so that during lulls they were opened to allow air through. On one occasion we spent 7 hours this way and able to tell the tale.

An extremely clear and concise commentary, one of the best I have ever seen. The well-illustrated and straight-forward points made about wave formation and behaviour, and how racing rules influence boat design, are excellent learning points even for experienced sailors. I have had the privilege of talking and sailing with survivors of the '79 Fastnet and their experiences profoundly influenced my own attitudes towards safety preparations and sailing practices on my own boats.

I talked to a Dutch navy officer that was involved in the rescue operation of the Fastnet race. His ship was requested to be around "just in case". Well, it turned out to be the worst experience of his naval career. But, they managed ot rescue a number of people together with the UK navy. It was horrible, he said.

In the disastrous Sydney to Hobart race the vintage wooden boat called the Winston Churchill, which weighed 17 tons if i remember correctly, was picked up by a huge wave and literally thrown like a spear into the back of the wave in front, smashing the boat to pieces. That shows you how bad it can get

Hi Macrib What can I say. I am Chris Freer and I’ve worked in every aspect of yacht design, marketing, racing and construction all over the planet for more than 60 years (now 80) and in that time I have watched the industry grow from nothing to the mega rich environment it is today. So back to 1969 and the IOR. The time when Apollo 11 landed on the moon with less computing power than a basic ‘phone. And that is what you must consider. The GRP yacht business was just starting and I arrived in UK from Aus in 1970 to run the first and only marina in the Solent at Campers. Admirals Cup was sailed from the piles opposite Lallows in Cowes. We hand drew and lofted the lines of yachts and then hand built them, normally in wood. All calculation was by hand or slide rule because the pocket calculator arrived in about 1974. A big yacht at the time was about 55 with 70 footers like Ticonderga and Stormvogel regarded with awe. Yachting was male, uncomfortable and for those who loved sailing – ladies didn’t want to get in a dinghy after a drive down from town and ‘camp’ in a smelly damp yacht on a pile mooring – there was no public awareness of racing or any social status to owning a yacht. The Cowes ‘balls’ were for the rather scruffy competitors not the swanky ‘down from towners’ – ladies came over on the ferry and stayed in hotels. Because the international scene was growing there was a desire to use one rule to handicap yacht racing fairly. In Aus we used RORC rule as did the Poms but the Yanks used CCA and the Frogs had no rules at all as far as we could tell. So a very worthy team of designers created the IOR. It was not written to be ‘designed’ to. It was meant to rate the yachts of its time by a series of measurements create a fair ‘rating’ for offshore racing. So the creators looked at what made boats slow or fast in the their day and generated a mathematical system running to 74 pages. I still have my copy. Things which made yachts go ‘fast’ were stability, narrow beam, powerful ends, long overhangs, oversize sails (150% J ring any bells). Things that made boats slow were heavy displacement, beam, short ends, low stability, inefficient fractional rigs and big engine installations. There was no idea to equate the wetted area of long keel boats to fin and skeg because the latter were very few and far between. You get the picture. We rarely designed boats specifically for rule in those days – customers wanted nice looking boats with good accommodation (Pacha) for cruising and seagoing strength in all departments. They raced their cruisers. Sail inventories were very limited and low tech and many still had wooden ,masts and galvanised rigging. But things were changing rapidly as the ‘civilised’ world got wealthier and started looking for new things to do with money. The key events were the advent of cheap mass produced GRP yachts, cheap marinas to keep them in and low interest rates coupled to tax relief on loans. Marinas with loos attracted more ladies and this led to the desire to socialize with the local natives in the yacht clubs – especially if they were ‘Royal’ and had a decent restaurant. The boom was on. Morgan jackets and yellow wellies. This is the answer to your question. The entry point of the maths for the new rule was the beam measurement. Big beam initiated a low handicap because it affected the depths midships and forward as well as the aft and forward girth slopes. We also had the angular midships measurement which falsified displacement. (remember rating bumps) The forward depth stations were important so we had narrow waterlines fwd with deep sections. Bow down trim lowered rating so, downwind, the bow immersion could overpower the rudder and narrow stern sections and cause a broach. The big spinnakers and narrow mainsails on the masthead rigs set the centre of effort way off centreline and caused helming problems. All this with a rule which penalised stability. The high displacement length ratios coupled to the low lift bows meant that the boats did not surf easily or respond to gusts by surfing, they just rolled, another reason for loss of control. The IOR governors responded to any innovation with a ‘Banning Committee’ – bloopers, full battened mainsails, twin rudders, trim tabs, asymmetric dagger boards, carbon rigs, gennakers etc etc all got banned. The engine allowance EPF was a joke and meant that boats of this generation on the market now usually have lousy installations. The punters rushed to the cruiser racer production boats and fleets increased, but those who wanted to win bought stripped out boats and re-added the weight with internal ballast which made the boats more stable and reduced pitching moments. They also hired heavy crew – rail meat – and hired rating consultants like me to optimise the rating process with a few tricks we knew. The ordinary punter didn’t have a chance. Then we went into an era of custom IOR race boats – about 1975 – and the fleets started to decline because production boats could not compete and the racing became the growing preserve of the rich owner with a semi pro crew. By about 1981 it was all over and fleets went into steady decline, although the Rule staggered on until IMS and CHS and the rest of the new rules took over with a little more success and common sense. The IOR rule produced a ‘look’. The 51 degree bow profile, the pinched stern and the IOR keel. Boats won races not on speed but handicap – you came in a day late and ‘won’ – hence the statement that IOR put yacht design back. But the advertising of race wins led the punters to believe that fast boats won races. If we had tried to sell a plumb bow, fat transom, bulb keeled yacht with a genneker the punters would have laughed and run a mile because it did not have ‘the look’ or that all important ‘rating’. Remember the horror which greeted the first Renault Espace when it hit the UK market (those practical Frogs throwing away the rule book again) – today every wannabee school run mum wants the biggest people carrier.) As designers and boat builders we could do nothing. Give the sheep what the journalists and yacht club ‘experts’ told them to buy and take the dosh - or go bankrupt as a pioneer. It has taken over 20 years for the public to get the message that they have freedom of choice. Why should a self elected committee and their rule dictate your enjoyment and investment. The trouble is that fashion and myth dominates a fundamentally amateur sport and owners and crews regurgitate bar room technology with little technical knowledge. The trend in newly designed ‘classics’ is a case in point. They are fashion anachronisms in denial of all the innovations (why build a heavy displacement ‘replica’ in carbon fibre !!!!) which make modern yachts more useful, enjoyable, habitable and much easier to sail. Why did people idolize Swans. Not competitive – horrible, uncomfortable exposed cockpits and cramped companionways and gloomy interiors like tombs. Sailing Range Rovers. Furling gears, better hull designs, broad transoms and big cockpits, twin wheels, fully battened mains, big engines, proper stability, cruising chutes, carbon rigs etc etc have transformed yachts and made them appropriate to the real needs of modern sailors – if they can take the time to listen.

Cool to see you branching out into non diving related maritime incidents. I love it.

I am not a sailor, but this narrator explains this tragedy so lucidly,so sad though.

I raced the 1979 Fastnet as crew on GitanaVI ,I was twenty five years old....a very tought experience ...we finished at 6th place overall

Outstanding storyteller! Riveting explanations, that keep even us "Non sailors" glued to the screen. Although tragic, your recounting is excellent.

Loved your video. Thx Re: abandoning to a life raft The rule I was bought up with is ‘never step down into a life raft from a boat, only get off the boat when you have to step up into the life raft!

Very good explanation of this tragedy. Poor Matthew having to watch his dad float away :(

😮I sailed in this race with my step father (Peter Goodwright) John Lilly (boat owner) and Bill Monroe. Rounded the Fastnet set the spinnaker and crack shredded. Looked at the following seas and hoped for the best. Came 1st in class.

Great video, thank you for the analysis. It often escapes modern era sailors what these rules are there for, until the shit hits the fan. As an offshore amateur I have done a number of races. The recent 2023 Gotland Runt (Round Gotland [Baltic Sea]), a top level international event, saw 85% of the fleet retire due to the conditions. I was helming in heavy sea state with cresting waves of 4 - 5 metres in a X-442 with far too much sail up for the 45 knot winds. I have done some dramatic things, Everest and seen the Fastnet up close, so I wasn't completely out of my comfort zone. But as nav I had fought and lost a battle over using the J2. It was exhausting to helm with so much power on. We were crushing it in the standings, but with 40% of the race done, we were already reduced from three watches to two as the crew was thinning out due to seasickness and exhaustion. I took to my sail bag bunk once my watch ended and was resting up, when all hell broke loose. We were headed on a crest and the boat spun in wild gibes and smack downs. I braced myself between the galley wall and a hand hold in the coach roof. The helm did their best as the boat completed a 720 pirouette. We caught a break with a lull, eased the sheets and got the boat under control. The reefs in the main had, of course, snapped, and all we could do was to hoist the main to save it from disintegration. Heroically, the deck crew saved the sails and continued toward the relative shelter of the Gotland coast. Then the drama started. During the chaos, a crew member had screamed out, clearly in pain. He was in the pulpit as the run away traveller caught his lower leg multiple times. He now sat relatively passively in place clipped in. I was doing the rounds to check everyone below and above deck. He gave me a thumbs up. But it was a slow thumbs up. He was an experience sailor, solid character and had contributed much to our success. So, I wasn't going to let this be. Where does it hurt? Lower leg. I move his leg, his face stiffened and my hand was red on his black all weather gear. He started to fade. We grabbed him and he manage with help to get below. I worked his boot and gear off to reveal a huge chunk out of his calf muscle. A real gusher. The poor guy did his best to stay with us. We loaded him up with pain killers and then he uttered the words.. I have a heart condition, I am on blood thinners.. OMG, there was no stopping the bleed. I strapped his good leg up to the coach roof and cleaned the wound with saline (don't use alcohol! on deep wounds). Luckily no bone breaks but an ominous double puncture wound into his Tibia. We called in a medical emergency, but the helicopter was full of rescues following a number of snapped rudders in our vicinity. It had to get back and refuel and then come out to us. We turned for the closest coast guard station which was a down wind run with an improving sea state. Connectivity in the Baltic is what you might expect from Swedish waters, with an open line to the paramedics and the coast guard, we determined that we were the fastest option to get him to care he needed. The crew kept him talking and the coast guard escorted us in to their berth where there was an ambulance and a helicopter on station. He was quickly whisked away to hospital, stabilised and patched up. He is recovering with 45 stitches. Afterwards, we all agreed that there are better ways to loose weight.

This is awesome, you explain some of the complicated details so well. Brings back memories when I was thinking about to the Webb Institute. Great job.

Remembering that Sydney to Hobart race where Navy Helicopter pilots winched boat crews to safety with 60 foot seas kissing the bottom belly of the helicopter. Hero's in anybody's language.