Oci-One Kanubi wrote:

(William R. Watt) typed (perhaps without
thinking?):


no BS. I put sponsons on a 7.5 ft sailboat. Keep them above the waterline
where they don't add to hull resistance through the water. Without teh
sponsons I'd never get back into the boat after a cpasize.

Craig Smerda ) writes:

....oooh Timmy's back! Wheeeee! Just as fall set's in, the rat's try
getting back into the barn. Well good luck getting rid of the little
critter again.



Ditto Mary's experience, sort of. I can remember, when I was in first
or second grade, my dad and me righting a capsized Penguin-class
dinghy (11'5").

It does depend a lot on the design of the boat. Boats like the Sunfish are
trivial to get back on since they hardly take on any water when capsized.
The small sailing dinghies I've used are only a little harder, but they all
had flotation installed under the seats on the sides of the cockpit which
acted as internal sponsons when swamped. OTOH, someone had converted an
old rowboat for sailing which only had a little flotation - mainly in the
bow and stern. When swamped it had barely enough stability to stay upright
by itself and promptly rolled over if anyone tried to get back in.
Additional sponsons would have been useful with that design.

'Course, my dad was a sailor; it's obvious that you
ain't. On the other hand, no-one in this forum, to my knowlege, has
ever said that it is unreasonable to choose sponsons as part of yer
emergency kit; we don't say sponsons are utterly worthless, we say
that mandating their usage is foolish and that the safety and rescue
programs that the lunatic rants against are a more effective way to
save lives. ...
Whereas, under a controlled training program, the degree of exposure
is increased only gradually, concomitantly with the increase in the
skill and experience needed to deal with the inevitable problems.

The first seakayaking self-rescue class I took involved training in the use
of both paddle-floats and inflatable sponsons. My impression is that
sponsons are included less frequently these days, probably largely as a
result of Tim's rather acerbic 'sales technique'. It's unfortunate since I
do believe there are situations in seakayaking where sponsons are a good
device to have available.

On 26-Aug-2003, Peter wrote:

Additional sponsons would have been useful with that design.

A better design sounds like a solution. Patching a bad design with
sponsons is not a solution. Timmy's approach is to patch bad
combinations of inexperienced paddlers and the wrong conditions.
Proper education and experience with good equipment make more
sense.

I tackle tougher conditions than most of the paddlers I know. My kayak
has very low initial stability (high secondary). I have never flipped over
unless I wanted to. My rolls are about as bombproof as I can get. Even
if I lost my paddle and spare, a paddle float is faster to inflate and I could
easily roll up with it on my hand. What would I want sponsons for?

Mike

Michael Daly wrote:

On 26-Aug-2003, Peter wrote:
The small sailing dinghies I've used are only a little harder,
but they all had flotation installed under the seats on the
sides of the cockpit which acted as internal sponsons when swamped.
OTOH, someone had converted an old rowboat for sailing which
only had a little flotation - mainly in the bow and stern. ...
Additional sponsons would have been useful with that design.


A better design sounds like a solution. Patching a bad design with
sponsons is not a solution.

As I pointed out before, the better design for sailing dinghies already
includes flotation that acts as sponsons when the cockpit is flooded.
Putting in those sponson-like flotation chambers was a solution.

Timmy's approach is to patch bad
combinations of inexperienced paddlers and the wrong conditions.
Proper education and experience with good equipment make more
sense.

I tackle tougher conditions than most of the paddlers I know. My kayak
has very low initial stability (high secondary). I have never flipped over
unless I wanted to. My rolls are about as bombproof as I can get. Even
if I lost my paddle and spare, a paddle float is faster to inflate and I could
easily roll up with it on my hand. What would I want sponsons for?

You, or someone with you, is incapacitated (i.e. incapable of balancing
and/or bracing for stability) and you're far from shore. Putting sponsons
on the boat with the incapacitated person would allow the other paddler to
tow them to safety. Without sponsons I'd juryrig a paddle with a pair of
paddle floats to act as outriggers, but I'd expect the result to be harder
to tow and not as secure as properly designed sponsons.

On 26-Aug-2003, Peter wrote:

You, or someone with you, is incapacitated (i.e. incapable of balancing
and/or bracing for stability) and you're far from shore. Putting sponsons
on the boat with the incapacitated person would allow the other paddler to
tow them to safety.

Good in theory, but in practice, the sponsons don't provide enough stability.
Timmy's sponsons attached to an empty kayak increases the stability about
as much as the same kayak without sponsons but fully loaded with gear.
I wouldn't tow a paddler in an otherwise unsupported, fully loaded kayak.

In rough conditions. the sponsons can increase the likelyhood of a collapse,
since high initial stability on a steep wave means less stability overall.

In calm conditions, sponsons may be fine, but the best thing for a disabled
paddler is a contact tow. You can see them and deal with them more
quickly than with a tow. If there's a third person, use that person to stabilize
the incapacitated paddler and tow the duo. I've done that in a real emergency
and it's not so bad.
..
Without sponsons I'd juryrig a paddle with a pair of
paddle floats to act as outriggers, but I'd expect the result to be harder
to tow and not as secure as properly designed sponsons.

That's a good approach, but I don't think it would be so terrible to tow. Folks
I know who have tried it say it's reasonable to tow. YMMV.

If sponsons were _significantly_ better than competing approaches, I'd support
them. However, they are better in some ways and worse in others. The net is
six of one, half dozen of the other. If you prefer sponsons, that's fine - use
them but make sure you've practiced. They are no more or less likely to save
a life than other approaches.

Mike

Peter typed:

[snip]

The small sailing dinghies I've used are only a little harder, but they all
had flotation installed under the seats on the sides of the cockpit which
acted as internal sponsons when swamped.

Whoa, please, Peter! You completely turn the discussion around, and
make it meaningless, when you use language this carelessly. There can
be NO SUCH THING as an "internal sponson". By definition, a sponson
is one of many kinds of *projections or protuberances from the hull*
of a vessel. By strict definition, it need not provide any floatation
at all, as the many small-gun sponsons that were hung off the edges of
the decks of older warships.

You are equating "sponsons" with "floatation chambers". And the value
you are ascribing to sponsons is the value derived from the feature
Timmy's *inflatable* sponsons' share with floatation chambers: they
hold air. It is realistic to say "sponsons act as external floatation
chambers"; it is meaningless to say "floatation chambers act as
internal sponsons."

Nearly no-one posting to this forum would argue against floatation
chambers in any kind of boat. Floating yer boat is crucial, and
floatation chambers ameliorate some of the problems inherent in
capsizing. You have turned the meaning of language around and are
fallaciously praising sponsons by saying the floatation chambers (very
good thing) acted as sponsons (a questionably good thing). Floatation
chambers have the salutory benefit of a *secondary* characteristic of
(Timmy's inflatable) sponsons, but floatation chambers do not
necessarily have the problematic *primary* characteristic of sponsons,
that they protrude beyond the hull and compromise the hull design.

-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
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