SOME CLARIFICATION

First, most Rave skippers have never pitchpoled. They've only read about it from the few that have. Second, it's about a spectacular as a capsize but presents an unenviable position of not being able to recover with a single-handed skipper.

["Raves go over frontwards-- from flying out of the water at speed if altitude is poorly controlled, then coming down nose first. Result is a rapid, acute dive, as the inverted T-foils hit first and present a negative angle of attack while still going fast."]
A Rave will fly out of the water but usually only once or twice per owner when he is learning how to tension the flaps. When a Rave flies out of the water, it PANCAKES with a big splash because it does not gain enough altitude to arc into a dive. The pitchpole happens when, like a cat, the bows dig and that happens after an unexpected big gust or simply bad trim.

["The center hull fills immediately, stern is straight up."]
The central hull does not fill unless waves are breaking into the boat. In fact, when Dave towed my boat to shore I had been out there for five hours and more than a little hypothermic by the end of the day. There was no water in the hull because after a pitchpole the boat floats with the beam about a foot above the water's surface and the first opening to the hull is two feet above the beam.
Calm water would have to jump up three feet to get into the crew's seat hole. If the central hull had filled, Dave's boat would not have been able to tow me to shore.

I tried hanging off the stern while Dave's boat with a line tied to the stern tried to pull the Rave back to vertical. The problem is that pulling a pitchpoled Rave simply pulls the boat through the water. So, we gave up and I sat out there for five hours while the rest of the regatta was run. A drogue forward of the beam, opposite the pulling line attached to the stern, would have provided the resistance needed pull the boat back to vertical.

The Rave is seventeen feet wide with three T-foils five feet deep and a short rig. With a platform like that, there has not been one report of a Rave capsize.