Bill Gibbs

Yes to the multi more stable reaching, and a big multi more so

Dumping the headsail early helps.  If you avoid the pitchpole and are releaved, you might miss that your boat is now rounding up (massive weather helm as only the main is drawing and no flow for rudders) into a lateral capsize.  Time to dump the main .

Excellent post. Dumping the main sheet helps too though. Yes it will be pushed against the sidestays so won't depower right away, but because the boat will round up without a headsail, eventually the main will depower too. Happened to me at Cape Mendocino.

I have experienced these situations too, did the wave nose plant on the back side of Santa Cruz island, did the round-up after hitting a kelp island off Pt Dume.  Survived both, but they leave memories.  Or should I say lessons?

Basically MaugonNacra20 & Mark K have the multi-perspective right.
 
Wave piercing/low buoyancy bows work much better on small cats where crew weight is an effective/fast bow trim option.  Safe big cats need more buoyancy up front.
 
No-mans land is the better term.  Sail higher and you can head up in a puff, sail lower and you can fall off in a puff.  From a beam reach it's a long way in either direction to depower and probably ineffective & dangerous to try.  Better to trim out.  Since this is many cats fastest point of sail, it is to be enjoyed, not avoided.  Hull flying on a beam reach is all sail trimming.  A lateral capsize is the normal danger.
 
PItchpole danger usually occurs sailing downwind fast, gybing thru 90 degrees or less.  Falling off in puffs to depower.  As the wind increases, the gybe angle decreases, until there is nowhere to fall off to.  Sail loads exceed bow bouyancy and oops.  If you are only watching AWA and AWS, you can be in for a nasty surprise.  AWS is greatly diminished by boat speed.  Waves (or anything that slows your boat) are a common pitchpole factor.  Bury the bows into a wave back surfing deep, boat slows, inertia rotates the bows down, wind clocks aft and builds as AWS grows to TWS.  Heck of a way to find its really blowing 30+.  Way past time to have reduced sail.  Dumping the headsail early helps.  If you avoid the pitchpole and are releaved, you might miss that your boat is now rounding up (massive weather helm as only the main is drawing and no flow for rudders) into a lateral capsize.  Time to dump the main .
 
Any multi can be sailed downwind into a pitchpole at some wind strength and sea state.  In extreme conditions it is unavoidable under bare sticks.  Any multi can be sailed into a lateral capsize.  The crew keeps a multi safe. 
 
If Artemis broke first causing the crash, then it wasn't crew error.  Usually capsizes are crew error.
 
This accident does highlight why "capsizing" cannot be an acceptable part of large multi-racing.  What's fun on a beach cat doesn't scale up safely.

Like against like is always more accurate.

So don't pick on multi's, complain about PHRF inaccuracy in general. Though there is no known solution.

PHRF ratings will be extremely accurate if the wind condition and sea state any particular boat is rated for exists 100% of the time from when that boat starts until when that boat finishes.

 

It's the dead hours, wind patches, higher or lower wind speeds, tactical decisions and atypical TWA that accounts for the differences, none of which impacts are easily calculated (or even known in most cases) so it's easier to say that if the rating was different the result would have been more realistic.

You are correct.

When conditions vary from the ones used for the rating, similar boats still perform similarly, but dissimilar boats do not, leading to rating inaccuracies proportional to the amount of the condition variation and the amount of boat dissimilarity.