If you find yourself at sea during a hurricane or a storm, this is probably the safest boat to
be in since it can self right itself in about 12 seconds. I suppose a submarine would technically
be much safer in a hurricane, but among surface boats, this is the one. The 47-foot Motor
Lifeboat, or simply 47 MLB, is a rescue boat operated by the United States Coast Guard. It
can handle winds up to 60 knots and break surf of up to 20 feet. In a nutshell, it’s a beast!
The 47-foot MLB is in fact very special, but some of those features were not without controversy.
The concept behind the self-righting feature is actually simple as you’ll see,
but if you are prone to seasickness, I highly recommend you avoid this boat at all costs.
As you can imagine, the ride is not exactly … pleasant.
But fortunately for you and me, we can avoid the sea sickness and just watch this video,
because the crew that operate the MLBs love filming themselves and others who are in distress,
so we can show you things like this. By the way, don’t feel bad for this guy who was stuck in the
storm. He is probably the luckiest bad boy you’ve ever met. But why after being rescued,
he walked away, and was then arrested by the police, is Not What You Think!
You can’t just have anyone operate this beast in a storm.
These badges are called “surfman checks” and they represent every surfman going back decades ago.
The Surfmen are the guys and gals, who make the motor lifeboats special.
They are the ones who operate the boat in surf and heavy weather conditions, and go out in weather
that even the saltiest of sailors wouldn’t dare. And on top of that, they save lives.
No wonder that the old motto of the US Coast Guard, or more precisely,
the old US Life-Saving Service, was “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.”
With that said, the surfmen's primary objective is actually “avoidance” – that is to avoid waves
at all costs. But in practice that is an impossible task. This is why surfmen train,
and they train a lot. It can take up to six years to earn the elite certification of a “surfman”.
The enlisted petty officers receive training at the Coast Guard National Motor Lifeboat School,
which is located in a very dangerous place: the mouth of the Columbia River.
Nicknamed “the graveyard of the Pacific”, since 1972, more than
2000 ships have been lost in this firehose-shaped region. But what makes this area so dangerous?
Columbia river is the largest North American river that flows into the Pacific Ocean. The current
from the river, traveling at speeds of up to 7 knots, can be accelerated by an outgoing tide.
The current then collides with the incoming swell from the Pacific ocean over the bar’s shallow
water. This creates extremely steep-breaking waves even on a relatively calm day. The
Columbia River Bar is considered the world’s most dangerous entry to a major commercial waterway.
No wonder those handful of individuals who safely navigate the Columbia bar make 180 grand a year!
The surfman training program is considered one of the most challenging water-rescue training
programs in the world. All gear worn by the surfmen is important, including a drysuit,
helmet and a life vest. But it's the “heavy weather belt” that is the most critical.
The heavy weather belt allows the crew to stay connected to the boat in case the boat
is struck by a wave or even flipped over. But as we mentioned earlier, their priority is to avoid
waves, which looks something like this: there's a wave peak, and two shoulders, the “nearside”
and the “farside” relative to the position of the boat. This means you have two options:
slow down and go toward the nearside shoulder, or speed up and travel toward the farside shoulder.
Just avoid the wave breaking over the boat. While it may seem easy and fun trying to outrun
the waves, in reality, you are never 100% sure if you can avoid the breaking peak of the wave.
For this reason, surfmen are also trained on how to deal with breaking waves.
Positioning the boat toward the incoming waves is called “squaring up”.
This allows the boat's bow to absorb the wave’s energy and keep moving forward.
It may look like an exhilarating experience, but it forces you to realize how small you
are when you are looking up at a gigantic wave coming at you,
and if the boat is not squared up, a wave can hit the vessel on the side and flip it over, which is
known as “knockdown”. Even worse, the boat can capsize and pull everyone onboard underwater.
This is where the heavy weather belts become vital lifelines.
It may take as little as 10 seconds for the boat to self right, but ask anyone who
has experienced something like this, and they’ll tell you: it feels like eternity!
But how can this boat self right itself, while regular boats would sink after capsizing?
pilot boats also use the self-righting designs, as they often operate in extreme conditions.
These boats self-right with the help of built-in ballasting and having the right weight
distribution. A boat needs 3 things in order to self right: First, the center of gravity must
be very low and second, the center of buoyancy must be very high. This means a capsized boat
would always tend to flip around and upright itself, but not without the third component.
The vessel must maintain watertight integrity, otherwise it would fill up with water and sink.
For example, the 47-foot MLB has 11 separate watertight compartments as
well as a sealed buoyancy tank that is located above the flying bridge.
This helps make the vessel unstable in the capsized position, forcing it to upright.
But just because the 47 MLB has the self-righting capability,
it doesn’t mean surfmen purposefully try to roll over their motor lifeboats during training.
According to its marketing brochure, the boat flips back up with fully functional equipment.
According to the actual operators, however, capsizing an MLB would most certainly result
in some sort of damage, be it superstructure, broken electronics or even popped out windows.
As a result, most MLBs in service spend their entire operational life without
capsizing or having to self right themselve. There is talk that some surfmen do bring their
boat close to capsizing during training, and occasionally some actually capsize.
That said, even though surfmen tend to record most of their training sessions with their cameras
in order to analyze both their mistakes and achievements, we were only able to find limited
footage of MLBs actually capsizing, except when in a controlled environment. While numerous models
of boats have the self-righting capability, the 47-Foot MLB is also special in many other ways.
Designing the 47 MLB took multiple years and several prototypes which in many cases included
a trial and error approach. The 47-foot MLB is the successor to the 44-foot MLB, operators of
which played an essential role in designing the new MLB. In fact, some of the most important
changes during the development of the vessel came from the operators' constructive criticism.
The biggest difference between older and newer MLBs is the enclosed operating station
which provides excellent comfort for the crew. The 47 MLB has 4 control stations.
On the open bridge there are two control stations – one primary control station on the starboard
side that has a complete set of gauges and electronics, and a console with minimal gauges and
controls on the port side. These control stations can be used in both sitting or standing positions.
The other two control stations are inside the enclosed bridge, with each operator
having access to a full range of electronics, gauges and controls, located between the seats.
The crew of four which operate the boat begin each mission with a risk assessment.
This is a step by step process to numerically rate various factors
like sea and weather conditions, crew experience and vessel conditions.
Depending on the total point, the crew may proceed, request a further review or call
off the mission. The goal is to avoid high risk missions that could endanger the crew.
The biggest design challenges of this boat were the lack of space in the enclosed bridge,
minimal visibility aft of the enclosed bridge, and the quality of the seats.
The test team was not a fan of the seating quality on the original prototype,
so the seats were redesigned until the test team was satisfied. The recently upgraded motorboats
have 5 shock mitigating seats located on the open bridge, and this makes sense – riding over those
huge waves is not exactly a smooth ride, probably feels something like riding a bull in a rodeo!
One huge design change compared to the old MLB is the fly-by-wire control system,
which instead of a wheel and levers, uses a joystick to control the boat. Additionally, many
controls and gauges on the control station were removed in order to simplify the boat’s operation.
The 47 MLB has a deep V planing hull which allows it to exceed its hull speed.
With a top speed of 27 knots, the motorboat can operate at seas of up to 30 feet.
However maneuvering problems were identified with the original design,
where employing large canted rudders resulted in some unpredictable behavior in high-speed turns.
To fix the problem, 21 different skeg and rudder configurations were tested in order
to determine the most optimum performance during both calm and rough water conditions.
But let’s talk about this boat’s controversial design change.
The most unusual features of the 47 MLB are the side recesses that allow the MLB crew
to position themselves close to the water in order to aid the recovery of personnel.
The open bridge consol stations are purposefully located directly above the
side recesses so visibility and communications during rescue operations are greatly improved.
This was the first time that such a feature was added to a coast guard craft, and it turned out
to be controversial. While the crew loved the side recesses for their functionality, the
structural engineers were not happy about them. In their opinion, they weakened the hull structure.
After going back and forth on whether to keep the side recesses or not,
the engineers ended up performing stress testing to see if the side recesses in fact
degraded the integrity of the hull … and they didn’t. A huge win for the operators!
Another victory for the MLB operators was the towline. The towline operators insisted on
having a long primary towline. It was outfitted originally with a 900 ft three and a quarter inch
circumference double braided nylon towline. But during testing, retrieving the towline
manually proved to be extremely difficult, causing fatigue for the crew. So a powered
storage reel was developed and retrofitted on the prototype in order to retrieve the towing line.
But 47-foot MLBs are starting to run out of time!
The 47-foot MLB entered service in 1997 at a cost of $1.2 million dollars per boat,
and with a projected service life of 25 years, which means they are running out of time.
The US Coast Guard currently has 117 47-foot MLBs in inventory and of those, 107 are in active use.
This is why those 107 boats are currently undergoing a service life extension program
at a total cost of 190 million dollars. This will add an additional 20 years to their life by
replacing their obsolete propulsion engines which are increasingly difficult to maintain and repair,
and improvements like changes to structural components and the updating of their electronics.
Now let's get back to this lucky “bad boy”.
On February 3rd, 2023, the US Coast Guard was conducting a training exercise with their future
surfmen in the mouth of the Columbia River when they suddenly received a distress call.
A 35-ft yacht was struggling in heavy surf with a single person on board. The training crew which
was nearby answered the call. But as a newly minted rescue swimmer approached the vessel,
a large wave hit the yacht, which completely rolled it over and threw the man overboard.
The man was pulled by the rescue swimmer to safety as he was lifted into a helicopter.
He was then transported to a hospital to be treated for mild hypothermia.
But here’s where the story gets really interesting really quickly. You’re ready? It turns out that
the yacht had been reported stolen and the thief was actually wanted by Canadian authorities. Oh,
and a few days earlier, the same guy had been caught on security cameras leaving a dead fish
on the porch of a house that was featured in the classic 1985 film, “The Goonies”.
The 35-year old man, who was Canadian, was wanted back home for criminal harassment and mischief.
Lucky for him, by the time the police had seen the coast guard’s photos and realized
it was the same person they were looking for, he had already been released from hospital.
But his luck soon ran out when he was arrested and charged with theft, criminal mischief and
endangering another person’s life. He dropped off a dead fish, and almost became one!
Unfortunately, the police weren't able to confirm the identity of the dead fish!