That said here is how it is supposed to work.
First off we plan for a bit of habitability when upside down. Just relying on the foam insulation/floatation it should sit about with the deck about 12" underwater and slightly bow down. There is an access hatch at the bottom of the wet locker to get out onto the bridge deck. Tie points are in place to rig hammocks to get out of the water down below. A few waterproof flashlights are kept below. The fuel and batteries are all out in cockpit lockers and any leakage should stay out there.
When the weather is ok for righting we give it a try.
The actual righting method involves stern over bow righting. The bows are flooded and submersed which puts the stern into the air, then the stern is pulled down to the surface. At that point the bows are bailed out. Everything get soaking wet but we are right side up.
If the mast is still up (down) when capsized it helps the righting effort with its sealed bouyancy, but it is not critical.
The forward sections are not foamed so they are easy to flood and when flooded the mast should bring itself to the surface. Getting the rest of the way requires a lever and some weight. The lever is the catwalk/boarding_ladder/righting_lever. The weight is just a bunch of 4 gallon emergency_bouyancy/water containers I normally carry in the bows.
About 50 of these tied together provied the weight. The catwalk is unpinned from its pivots up forward and connected to the pivots on the underside of the bridgedeck. The anchor windlass is on the catwalk and is a spooling ratchet type ( sorta like a huge trailer winch ) and provides the purchase via a 2/1 block at end of the cockpit. Swell action should help with the takeup being done as the swell lifts the floating containers.
Extra stuf for the contigency includes:
Pivot points welded on for the catwalk.
A couple of permantently rigged blocks.
Making the wetlocker drain also removable.
Hardpoints welded in for the hammocks.
Multi use 4 gal containers ( used cooking oil jugs about 50 cents each )
Using fastpins rather than bolts for the catwalk pivots.
Non skid and harness tie points on the underside of bridgedeck.
I worked on a 40' production cat in El Salvador in 1978 with this designed in ( never got into production ) and also included it on my 23' cat. It is just a simple bit of low cost planning for a bit of peace of mind for the most part I think. One nice aspect with the use of aluminium is that it is easy to adjust the flooded center of bouyancy with the placement of foam.
Copyright © 1998 Tony Bigras.