Structural failure at sea.
Documented structural failure incidents from the Logbook — 7 records, each with sources, lessons, and the SeaWise procedures that address it.
← Search & filter the full LogbookStructural failures — a lost keel, a sprung plank, a chainplate letting go — are the emergencies with the least warning and the fastest downflooding. The accounts here are sobering, and their lesson is mostly upstream: the maintenance, survey and rig checks that catch the crack before the sea does. When one lets go, it is a flooding and abandon-ship problem, immediately.
About 7 a.m. on 5 July 2026 a 30-foot sailboat was lost roughly five miles east of Hornby Island, in British Columbia's Strait of Georgia. The two men aboard said a rogue wave smashed her windows and flooded her, and she sank, leaving them in whitecapped seas. A Comox charter skipper heard their Mayday on VHF, raced over in his fishing boat, and with a helicopter overhead helped recover both. The Coast Guard took them to hospital; both survived.
Forestay failure under reduced sail in 38 kt of wind; the crew of three cut the wreckage clear and made Brest under jury rig over three days.
The 42 ft monohull Rauruahine was abandoned 80 nm WNW of Cape Reinga after a chainplate failure flooded the saloon; crew of two recovered by container ship.
On 9 July 2016 the cruising catamaran La Mangue Bleue left Mayotte for Madagascar with four aboard. At sea its two hulls separated when the bolted cross-beam connecting them failed — all 126 bolts had worked loose — and the boat broke apart. Two crew were rescued quickly by fishermen; two more drifted on a piece of hull for eleven days and 222 km before being found alive near Nosy Bé on 21 July. All four survived.
The 40 ft Beneteau First Cheeki Rafiki lost its keel and capsized 720 nm SE of Nova Scotia during a delivery passage; four British crew lost.
Italian-built 54 ft carbon racer; keel fastenings gave way en route Maldives → Red Sea, the yacht inverted in under 30 seconds — the couple drifted nine days in a leaking liferaft before a Belgian tug spotted them.
Late on 2 February 2007 the owner and four crew sailed the Max Fun 35 yacht Hooligan V from Plymouth toward Southampton after out-of-season repairs. At about 0320 the next morning, 10 miles south of Prawle Point, her fabricated steel keel detached and the yacht capsized without warning, killing one crew member. The MAIB traced the failure to fatigue cracking at a keel weld, worsened by design flaws and 160 kg of ballast added in 2005 without re-engineering.