Depends on the enclosure, a small well engineered pod yes, as the loading is known and has been compensated for and with a safety factor ,including a roll bar system for impact by another boat.

we put one over at 122 and raced 2 days later,tough plastic boat designed to keep the Boss alive.

From memory, maybe wrong: The f16 canopy lament is acrylic/polycarbonate/acrylic. There are two versions the 330kt 1/2" and 550kt 3/4". kt is: knots rated for a cold bird strike (defined density projectile). There's lots of detailed .pdfs available on the internet.

We used the .750 with the acrylic facing and did not cut hatches in them on that first boat.

I checked the F16 I have and its 17mm.

The Ettore one was 12mm. When we looked at it the leading edge of the cockpit/lens was 4 ft from the bulkhead.

pat W

Thats one of the reasons I hate Tandem cockpits.
IMO they do not take a rollover good despite the fact that I've witnessed some walking away from flips like that ( on small 3C class boats at under 2000lbs total.)

Full canopy, wow. From what I've seen the front 1/3 of the canopy is usually cut and installed. Sitting in the sponsons, below the water line, the front of the canopy is mounted directly above a "sealed" bulkhead, the rear where the lid closes is directly above another "sealed" bulkhead. Looks to be perhaps the strongest parts of the boat. Everything aft the back of the lid I think is kevlar, not part of the original canopy, it just looks that way.

Some good stuff here, and some not so good, most of it is already documented in the UIM standards used from the late 90's to a few years ago......when they were apparently abandoned in favor of lighter weight construction...which may have resulted in the Victory Team tragedy two years back.

Bottom line is this is all whispering in the wind without the racing organizations enforcing ANY standards whatsoever. As long as 10 and 20 year old safety systems ...and boats...can race, tragedy is just a heartbeat away. We need to reassess the safety processes and enforcement methods...and then apply the engineering, speed limits, life support and other standards required for true injury/fatality prevention.

One final thing......above a certain speed and dynamic...you are moving into the area of trying to make a plane crash survivable.....and that may be stretching the limits of reality...at least in this decade.

Now resume your regularly scheduled programming.

T2x

Perhaps now that these tragedies have hit home the US , racers themselves will begin to want to do something about their own safety and demand that the orgs provide proper safety requirements and enforcement, after all the racers do this for the fun/hobby of it...no money in it for them.

Please forgive me, I'm just brainstorming. I do not have any boat building experience.

I keep thinking of the company that builds the parachutes for airplanes. Could this be adapted? Release of the parachute at a certain angle. Do you attach to an escaped pod? Do you attach to the transom of the boat to prevent rollover?

Totally ignore if I'm out of line.

brsparachutes.com

There are some good ideas on this thread. My contribution regards finite element analysis.

I believe that a combination of fea along with the panel test that is used by the OPC catagory of APBA would go along way to building safer race boats. I believe it enough to have purchased my own copy of NEiNastran which is one of the better analysis software for composite analysis. Here are images from a study for Offshore 3C that I recently did for the UIM as a volunteer.

Like some others, I'm having difficulty posting photos. Here are the links:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

It sounds like some of the builders have the staff that can do this kind of work, has anyone else done it? I know Gurit did a limited amount for the Victory team after the accident.

T2X commented that the organizations don't make and enforce good safety rules. My experience has been that they are very reluctant to do so because of the cost and fear that they will drive racers away from the sport. Ultimately it is up the the boat owners and drivers to insist that the boat builders build them a safe boat and are willing to pay for it. Only then will the organizations feel that they can set standards and enforce them.

Finally, is this thread going to peter out without any positive action taken?

Tom Stanley