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?

Passengers in their cabins. But crew escaped on a lifeboat. It does sound as if something went very wrong.

It sounds like the crew and some passengers entered the liferaft from the water. If so, the vessel went down/capsized very quickly and only those on deck survived. They may have been thrown into the water and had to swim for the liferaft. Crew would have been on deck to try to manage the boat as the worst of the storm hit.

Still a lot of questions over why the boat was not prepared for bad weather, whether there were procedures to wake guests and get ready to evacuate, how the boat was handled when the anchor dragged - others used the engine to maintain control.

You would expect the crew to be up and about first. They would have to be deciding what to do - can we handle this or do we need to get people up?

Mike Lynch's wife (the actual owner) was saved, the crew may have been discussing it with her when disaster struck and it was too late to do anything. As we are learning, this is a very unusual accident.

In a bad storm the crew would have been up and about first, so maybe they just didn't have time to wake the passengers before disaster struck.

How many hours notice did they have of the storm?
Storms don't usually hit people with radio, sat nav, mobile/satellite phones etc. "suddenly".
All the fishing boats were in harbour. How many other vessels sank?

If they haven't followed all correct procedures for a severe storm, including prepping passengers; the yacht manufacturer or designer isn't going to be prosecuted, the sailing/operational crew probably are.

@

"Passengers in their cabins. But crew escaped on a lifeboat. It does sound as if something went very wrong."

As @MrsKwazi said the crew were awake and on deck and the passengers were below decks asleep.

The yacht capsized, the crew went into the water and after the yacht had sunk the life raft popped up which they then climbed into.

The crew did not "escape " into any lifeboat but they should have woken the passengers and got them into life jackets and on deck.

The crew did save people.
The woman with the baby was, I think, helped/pulled onto the lifeboat presumably by the crew who had inflated it/managed to climb in. If the yacht went down as fast as it seems it did that is all you would get the chance to do.

The level of assumption on this thread is quite frankly staggering and clearly shows most posters haven't got the faintest clue what they are talking about - many of the suggestions I've read are downright offensive.

People died, the survivors have lost friends and loved ones.

Leave it to those who know what they are doing to work out what happened and if there is any blame to be assigned.

The telemetry from the boat said it took 16 minutes to sink, from when it started dragging anchor. There was plenty of time to have prevented this.
In a storm like that they should have regularly been monitoring the anchor to see if it was being dragged across the seabed, which it was. If this happens, it’s a big danger to the ship as it may become snagged on something.
The captain should have had all crew and passengers in the assembly station, not on deck or in their cabins.

It's this information that is the most damming imo. Everyone should have been woken up and sent to the emergency assembly point. Someone fucked up.

I used to work in that industry and what you just said is a bunch of BS.

The crew are responsible for evacutation the passengers. They may not be able to rescue them all and they are no supposed to die in the process, but they are supposed to do everthing they can to get as many people off a sinking vessel as possible. The captain and officers of the Concordia did neither. That captain has rightfully lost his license and will likely spend a good portion of the rest of his life in jail. I doubt he will every set foot on another ship.

I can't say much about this yacht disaster yet. There will be an investigation and it will include the actions of the crew.

How on earth do you expect anyone on MN to know?

There is going to be an investigation.

Wait and see.

I feel your post is in bad taste to be honest.

But apparently there was bad weather about at the time.

It was 4am and the deceased are the people who were sleeping below when the boat was hit without warning and went down shockingly quickly. What do you think the crew could have done for them at that point?

I assume they had something to do with getting everyone else into the life raft from the deck and water; not much more they could have done. And they were perfectly entitled to save themselves at that point; they were paid crew on a private sailboat, not indentured servants. The owner of the boat had a responsibility to them, too.

Exactly.

This is a distasteful thread and it doesn't do those who died any favours.

@SparklyBlueTop

"Exactly.

This is a distasteful thread and it doesn't do those who died any favours."

There seems to be a section of MN who thinks that despite massive media coverage to discuss anything other than happy news is distasteful.

It's perfectly reasonable to discuss what happened, just because it's online doesn't make it any worse than when people discussed the titanic or even the Marie Celeste when the events happened.

How many hours notice did they have of the storm?
Storms don't usually hit people with radio, sat nav, mobile/satellite phones etc. "suddenly".
All the fishing boats were in harbour. How many other vessels sank?

It looks like the boat was hit by a water spout, they are a freak event and you cannot predict them. They knew about the storm.

There are nuances in all of this.

News in the media is in print, chat shows, or radio.
Chat shows are usually drivel, and the red top media is no better.

But at least some of the more heavyweight radio interviews include expert comment from maritime experts for example.

No on here is one of those I assume - but who knows?

The OP started their thread with 'blame' and expects non experts to make a decision on that.

It's pointless because no one here can possibly answer the questions in her first post.

All it turns into is a meaningless 'chat' with most posts being based on pure speculation.

Someone speculated that the lady who went to sleep on deck with baby had left the door open to interior causing water to enter quickly.

The water spout is probably what sank the yacht but the storm dragging the anchor is what should have been the start of a possible evacuation process. The other yacht in the vicinity was doing all the normal safety procedures, this yacht did nothing. The question is why.

@SparklyBlueTop

"There are nuances in all of this.

News in the media is in print, chat shows, or radio.
Chat shows are usually drivel, and the red top media is no better.

But at least some of the more heavyweight radio include expert comment from maritime experts for example.

No on here is one of those I assume - but who knows?

The OP started their thread with 'blame' and expects non experts to make a decision on that.

It's pointless because no one here can possibly answer the questions in her first post.

All it turns into is a meaningless 'chat' with most posts being based on pure speculation."

You could say most threads on MN are just "meaningless chat" and even if it is that's ok, it's a huge event in the media and all the posts on here represent what people are talking about off social media the same way as the public would've discussed the sinking of the titanic.

Social media like MN hasn't made it worse, it just reflects the conversations people have anyway.

According to some, it was a contributory factor. I posted about this earlier.

From what I can make out the ship wasn't secured for a storm. Hatches were open, ship in open water.

I believe it sunk in just a few minutes having been capsized by freak weather.

The lady and husband who survived with one year old were not in their cabins at the time the boat started to sink. They had gone up to a higher deck due to the storm disturbing them.

I think the ones that perished were asleep in lower cabins and couldn't be reached easily to alert them. There just wasn't time. There would barely be time to get off the ship on the upper level.

The crew all live and sleep in very close quarters and share cabins. The alert would have been instant for them as it only took one person to shout to wake them all. They had those precious minutes to orientate themselves and get off, they would have been faced with a boat quickly filling with water and had to escape for their lives.

It didn't happen that quickly. Those poor souls down below raced to get out and were found on the opposite side of the boat from their sleeping quarters, so they were awake or woken. There was roughly half an hour from the "tornado" which no doubt woke some of them, until the actual sinking.

It was a liferaft.

These can be deployed and inflated in seconds, as a boat is sinking. You literally have to pull the hydrostatic release. Sea survival training includes getting into a liferaft from the water, and retrieving others.

It's not like it was on the Titanic.

But at least some of the more heavyweight radio include expert comment from maritime experts for example.

No on here is one of those I assume - but who knows?

I have been on MN for 14 years and one thing I have learned is that people have all manner of expertise. Obviously they are not going to say what their job is though, particularly if they are in a small industry.

I know of a Head of Planning for a large local authority who was told by a scathing MNer that she "obviously knew nothing about planning" on one particular thread.

We live in a society that is unable to move on without casting blame.
It seems like the crew were on deck, the passengers were sleeping, the accident was sudden and fast and little could be done.

The Costa Concordia was a different scenario entirely.