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?

That was high risk though - the owner/operator and his attitude to testing and safety have been the subject of intense criticism. One of his colleagues had resigned over it. He got away with it partly due to lack of regulation.

I don't know if his passengers appreciated the level of risk, highly likely not.

This scenario should not have been high risk.

It’s one of those stories that most people know nothing about, so it’s fascinating.

If a dog attacks or there is a house fire, we can all understand. Even a plane crash, a lot of people, even though would not be an aviation expert, would have been on a flight.

But most people have not been on a yacht, and most people have never been crew on a boat or sailed themselves. (Some people couldn’t even spell the word yacht and used a g first instead of a c ) 😊

It’s an unknown world for most of us. But even I would question the life jackets, they are hardly going to be sleeping in them at night. Can a storm come from nowhere in minutes like that. Is there an equivalent of a black box on a boat? Will we ever know?

No black box. yes the weather can change v.quickly. life jackets may/should be in the cabins but have they practiced putting them on, lifeboat drill? usually the Captain is the one to give the order to abandon ship. The enquiry is the only way these questions will be answered.

Is there an equivalent of a black box on a boat?

There’s something called a voyage data recorder but the class that this yacht was built to doesn’t require one.

No black box.

The Bayesian's black box has been recovered and analysed...

Not a black box as such like an aircraft. Fitted to vessels over 3000 tons by law. But there are other legalities involved. As always Google is our friend but a VDR wont tell what happened on deck. maybe in the wheelhouse. We should assume it was working as thats a requirement by maritime law
https://www.seasofsolutions.com/resources/vdrs/

Not a black box as such like an aircraft.

Well, no, it's not a plane. But it has been reported over the last three days that it was found, and what it told of the disaster.

Like when there is a fire, if there had been an alarm to sound which went off in each cabin, as soon as the crew realised there was a serious problem, ie: the 16 minutes before it sank, then this would have woken everyone up sleeping below, giving them time to get up on deck.

For info accident investigators in other industries have become very adept at extracting useful historical data from personal devices such as tablets (e.g. iPads and similar) , stand alone GPS units and mobile telephones, etc etc.

Whether that will be attempted here and whther the immersion in salt water will make such more difficult don't know.

Some people are being obtuse just for the sake of argument and to show off their limited knowledge.

And to poset that a group of highly intelligent, accomplished people wouldn't comply with safety orders 'because they're rich' is beyond ridiculous.

I don’t have limited knowledge, I have no knowledge at all. I’m just admitting that now.

I really think we need to be careful saying "in the 16 minutes before it sank" - as if it was clear in that 16 minutes that there was a catastrophic risk. I suspect a lot of the time was trying to fix things without the understanding that sinking was getting closer.

The 16 minutes does not refer to the crew knowing there was a serious problem, only to that the yacht was recorded as dragging anchor for around that time.

They didn't know there was a serious problem, apparently one of them said they were securing things on deck, the yacht was heeling to a (not extreme) angle and then it suddenly heeled severely, and they were in the water.

They are not thought to have even launched the life raft themselves, it operated on water a sensor (like many lifejackets) and inflated automatically; they were only lucky it did.

Most definitely.

All the sailing crew ended up in the sea but were fortunate to survive (if I've understood correctly).

Experienced sailors/sailing crew do not want to end up in the sea in a storm at night and without definitely knowing the left raft was launched.

That was the position they ended up in and were fortunate the life raft did what it was designed to automatically. They very clearly did not know they were in serious trouble for any amount of time.

@SheilaFentiman of course. But how does 'everyone alert and on deck/near deck' to go straight from unnecessary to too too late, that's the question. What happened in these 15 minutes that meant the opportunity was missed.

There is also the fact that if there is such a bad storm that lives are risk, it’s unlikely you’ll be sleeping anyway! Just because of the noise, the movement of the boat etc….

If people were actually sleeping, (as in all or most if them), then it points towards a relatively quiet evening until things suddenly got very bad.

As for being on deck, when boats are at sea in a storm, you expect people to be inside, not on deck. So that, if the boat capsize, you are in a safe(r) environment until it goes back upright.
Thats wo talking about risks associated with being at the wrong place at the wrong time because you know nothing about sailing in rough weather.

That’s assuming there was 15 mins in which things were very clearly seriously going wrong.

(@HazelPlayer just to clarify, I was agreeing with you earlier - not sure my post was terribly clear.)

As for being on deck, when boats are at sea in a storm, you expect people to be inside, not on deck.

The manufacturer said he'd expect them to be in the emergency gathering point, not down in their cabins. That would be in the floor below deck, not on the actual deck.

He said that the captain "should have gathered all passengers in the safe point. This is protocol. No one should have been in their cabin."

Here is a map of the boat's layout:

BAYESIAN Yacht Layout / General Arrangement Plans (ex. Salute) - Perini Navi Yachts (yachtcharterfleet.com)

No, it means something unexpectedly violent must have happened.

This is protocol

Protocol for what exact circumstances/conditions, one has to wonder.

And did the conditions there meet them.

I suppose then there's the difficulty of exactly predicting how severe something will be compared to forecasts, and freak "events" within it

Well … yes!!

Yes, and also is it the sort of protocol that everyone usually follows or one which is unrealistically strict and is therefore habitually ignored.

People from as far as 1000k away have reported they got the weather warning.

What is the source for this, please?

Also, do you mean a thousand kilometres? Or a thousand metres? Because storm warnings 1000km away aren’t that relevant - that’s the south coast of France