Super yacht sinking - did the crew bravely survive or did they abandon their the passengers

[mids2019]

So....most of the crew survived this tragedy but the passengers died. Do you think it will emerge the crew should have e done more to alrt the passengers and indeed put their lives in danger to attempt a rescue? Maybe it was all just too fast?

I just think there seems silence from the crew at moment despite being survivors of a sinking vessel who have a story to tell. Are lawyers advising they stay quiet on this?

Beware of what you see written by people who have never been close to what some say a" super yacht " can or canot do. I do understand a tad. I'm a 66 year old who spent 40 years working on yachts. I know the med well
And to those that don't know it's Italian law to bring changes of manslaughter to any unexplained death. ie: when senna crashed and died at imola at a F1 race the team were automatically charged with Ms. .
Ya have to wait..

@3luckystars

@Namename12345562 it’s a slightly cyclical argument about Mike Lynch “not being able to defend himself if he didn’t have so much money”

The fraud allegations related to whether or not he had that money legitimately (from the sale of Autonomy to HP) or if he and his co-defendant committed fraud eg inflating revenue statements in order to receive it.

This is a tragic event that the crew wouldn't have had time to act upon. I imagine your adrenaline kicks in, and it was literally sink or swim. Nothing like titanic.

It's an awful event ...considering the family were celebrating. ( Dad under house arrest previous year in which he was found not guilty. )
I feel very sad about this event.
Think possibly human error will be to blame as other yachts in area were not affected by the storm, or was it wrong place wrong time.
So sad.

Sorry, that's an error^

What a vile comment @Thefsm
they are still human beings. Hannah Lynch was 18 years old. Doesn’t matter that her father was a billionaire. I feel for all those that died and those that survived.

I agree, the existence of billionaires and the vast inequalities that they represent are an obscenity.

People are not sympathetic because they are billionaires. They are sympathetic because they are human beings who have died in an awful tragedy. I couldn't care if they were worth 200mil or 200 quid tbh. There was a baby on that yacht,who luckily survived. Would you have said the same if that was a different outcome.

@Thefsm Shame on you that your sheer bitterness at the wealthy overrides any sense of compassion or decency. Mike Lynch was a self-made man from Irish roots.

I think it's totally wrong that each cabin isn't equipped with oxygen container for emergencies / sinking like masks on planes - yes it can only be a limited supply of oxygen but maybe could last two days? That way people would survive in closed cabins.
Not sure if it's the case on all yachts or just this one.

I think canisters of oxygen would be a fire risk? And I don’t think there’s a canister reasonably big enough to last two days - think about scuba diver canisters.

The oxygen supply for anyone other than crew on a plane really doesn’t last that long (I think around 30 mins though assume varies a bit with plane capacity)

An 80 cubic foot scuba canister will last 45 mins-1 hour at a 40ft depth. It will be less of deeper - the yacht settled 50m/150ft down.

Entirely speculating but It's possible there was no marina or harbour that could accommodate them due to size (?)

And he was known for being kind and generous. He was very intelligent so didn't suffer fools gladly but he was known for being humble and down to Earth. He became rich because he was very intelligent and took the risk to set up a very innovative business.

After being found innocent of the US charges in June he was planning to set up a charity to help those without financial means to get justice in the US court system. A decent man by all accounts, who had lived for 12 years under the shadow of legal threats of which he was found not guilty, following being extradited and separated from his family for 13 months.

He then had just 74 days of freedom to recover and try to restart his life before this tragedy. And his daughter and also several other people - several of whom seem to have also done a great deal for charities etc - also perished. Anybody who cannot accept that it is a tragic of it all must have had some kind of moral bypass.

Some of these comments are really shameful aren't they? I guess there are always some nasty, bitter keyboard warriors around lookong to try to turn any event into a class war or something. Very distasteful.

You'd imagine someone would also need to be a very experienced scuba diver (and have head lamps etc.) to have any chance of making it out of a sunken vessel. And as people have mentioned, there could well be obstacles & blocks. That 45 mins or less would be used very easily.

You'd also probably be getting hypothermia in lower depths of water quickly (it can happen quickly enough even on the surface, and not even in particularly cold water).

The entire point of any safety procedures is to avoid people being trapped in the vessel in the first place.

The manufacturer stated that no passengers should have been sleeping in cabins in those circumstances (in addition to other comments about raising the anchor/s, having the engines on, manouvering the the yacht as far as possible towards the wind etc. lowering the keel fully.etc.).

If any case accepts that should have been done, it's (already) known with certainty that it wasn't, so you would imagine there will be prosecutions; and the obvious target is the captain. Since the crew are ultimately under them in the line of command.

Sorry I read 45 mins at 40ft as at 40m; if it's 45 mins at only 40ft, it's obviously unfeasible.

Agree re scuba diving expertise, @HazelPlayer

As for the rest about what was/wasn’t and should/shouldn’t have been done, we wait for the investigation, I guess.

I agree. The divers who went down had a line attached from the surface to the vessel so they knew exactly where to go. They still only had 12 mins inside on each dive. And that was when it was settled, and they were not in shock, and had appropriate equipment, cameras, clothing, and a team of them working together, oxygen tanks etc.

The idea someone woken in shock in their pyjamas (not diving gear!) by the sea rushing in at force into a sinking ship, in panic and with no equipment and likely no experience of diving (and with some of those who perished being in their 70s) is ridiculous at best.

Some of the comments on this thread are totally clueless.

The pressure change alone would have done them in. You can't sink to 150ft in minutes and survive. It must have been truly gruesome.

You'd have to sleep in a diving drysuit, with your tanks beside you, be an extremely experienced diver, have some kind of direct escape exit in your sleeping space (and one that could somehow get around the pressure of the water rushing in it as a vessel sank very quickly .... .and somehow withstand the pressure of a potentially very fast descent. Even if physically possible, is every sailor or passenger now going to become an experienced diver?

It sounds a bit like expecting airline passengers to be experienced parachutists who use parachutes to exit a plane in the event of an emergency.

If it was feasible, you'd imagine it would have been done by now, given the length of time people have been leisure sailing and the amount of money that's gone into developing design and technology.

Anyway I have a feeling this case will end up hingeing around whether the captain could reasonably have been expected to have mustered the passengers to the top level, and possibly whether they could reasonably be expected to have done some of the other measures mentioned by experienced commenters, like lowering the keel. If any openings can be proven to have been left open, before or during the storm, that will be a major point too.

@MidnightLibraryCard Mike Lynch is quite a remarkable man. Thank you for writing that. I have only just been reading about him, having been aware of him tangentially over the years through the Autonomy/HP lawsuit. His death is a profound loss, as is the loss of his daughter and the other lives on board the yacht.

Maritime law and Deep sea certification for all sailing deep sea includes the fact that the captain’s word is law on board.

Doesn’t matter if the ship/yacht’s owner is on board they must do exactly what the captain orders.

So the question is this. Rough weather at sea is not like on land. The sea would have begun to move and the boat rock. crew should be on 24 hour radio watch and another on 24 hour sea watch and should have warned the captain. There must have been a speaker system and passengers are lawfully required to undertake lifeboat drill.

First instructions for crew to close all hatches and portholes and then get into harbour.

The second duty for the captain is to ensure safety of passengers and organise the crew to get them off.

The captain stays with his ship because he has to try and save it. when he leaves it is salvage and he has to report to the admiralty if RN and to ship owners if mercantile or private why he lost command of his vessel.
It is almost always poor seamanship.

The captain of the Corsa costa is currently in gaol.

An oxygen cannister is of no use. How many people know how to use a fire extinguisher?

When you are suddenly immersed in water under pressure with low visibility, the first thing most people do is panic. Panic alone can kill even experienced divers, much less someone who has never dived before. It does not take long to die in those circumstances, much less fiddle with an oxygen cannister. The water pressure on your eyeballs will make it very difficult to see out of that is why divers wear masks. It is completely disorientating.