There's an interesting parralell with the voyage of the Apostle Paul from Palestine to Rome, just under 2000 years ago. The ship carrying him met with a storm of the type you describe. Eventually the crew were able to hold the ship with four anchors off the coast of Malta during the night. The next morning they decided to let the anchors go and allow the wind to drive the ship into a sandy bay - a manouvre that was successful. The account of the shipwreck is given in Acts 27. A well-known book by an experienced British sailor, James Smith, sought to validate the biblical account based on modern knowledge of the behaviour of winds and storms in the Mediterranean. It was published in 1848 with the title "The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul".
Yes, and a research expedition in the year 2000 found all 4 anchors in the bay, in a line as if they had been let go as a ship was being driven toward the shore in a storm. The anchors were independently dated by an antiquarian ship expert to be from circa 1st century AD. Read The Lost Shipwreck of Paul that tells the amazing story of the search for and discovery of the anchors on Malta, written by Bob Cornucke.
Thanks for this John. Interesting points indeed. We have a 12 meter ketch (two masts) made of steel. She is a Joshua designed for Bernard Moitessier in the late 60s. She is a double ender (like a viking long boat) and has a wine class profile with a long keel, external rudder and inboard ballast. She is arguably the most sea worthy sailboat ever made and we were lucky to find her. Bayesian is - for us - an unsafe design. I would not take my family on a boat like that. I would race on it but not with them. She has a flat bottom, like a frying pan, and the only thing stopping her from turning turtle at any moment is a long thin keel with a huge heavy bulb on the end. That is all. The idea is to get speed and ability to turn on a dime. What is worse that keel is not part of the boat and can move up and down - for port entry and so on. Her mast is too high. That long thin keel is there to counteract it. This raises her center of gravity dangerously. In olden times a 55 meter long boat would have had up to three masts and long bowsprit and overhanging rear boom which allows the same sail area overall as Bayesian achieved with that 60 meter mast. No mast, for us, should ever even approach the length of the hull and certainly not go beyond it; and certainly not with that hull profile or keel design. Bayesian, in our view, was an accident waiting to happen, by design. We do not think the skipper was aware just how unstable she was. Not his fault. That is a pretty radical modern racing type design. We survived near ship wreck in a storm off the Bahamas in 2010 because of our hull, low masts, clean flush deck and three anchors. Our boat would, we think, not have noticed the squall that hit Bayesian. We think the Bayesian skipper sensed little threat from that weather forecast as he over estimated Bayesian's stability, hence the open hatches and lack of urgency or prep. The squall hit the mast and the windage - resistance from the over high mast alone - was enough to knock her on her side in seconds. It looks to us as if she up filled through the open port holes and hatches and sank in 16 minutes dragged down by that mast. Earlier we though it might have been an issue with the keel but the news over the past two days points to the mast. We feel sure the crew were taken completely by surprise, never believing Bayesian could be that unstable or could possibly topple over so fast in those conditions and with that sea state. Perhaps, to add insult to injury, the keel was raised to improve the riding at anchor and that did not help one little bit. The position of the keel will be key for the investigators. For us, what this tragedy demands is designers should tell owners and skippers very clearly about stability issues with flat bottomed boats with high masts and lifting keels.
Dear David, thanks so much for this thorough and astonishing comment. Wow, you own a ketch designed for the great Bernard Moitessier -- of my favorite, eccentric heroes. You are the second experienced yachtsmen who has pointed out to me that the mast height and hull design of the Bayesian were dangerous. Though I have never really understood the modern mania for the sloop sail plan on such a huge pleasure sailboat rather than just building schooners and ketches, I am still surprised by your remarks. Though I understand that such a tall mast has great windage and leverage, I'm amazed that it's enough to knock down such a huge boat with no sails set. The reports I'm seeing indicate the Bayesian still had a draft of 4 meters with the keel fully raised. To be sure, I don't see any reason to doubt your view of the matter. I'm just surprised that the marine architect, Ron Holland, and the skipper, James Catfield (another Kiwi) didn't fully appreciate the design danger that you point out. Thanks again for your comment! Best regards, John
Compare Joshua Slocum's ship, the Spray, with Sir Francis Chichester on the Gipsy Moth. Slocum built his ship, and he could tie the helm and sleep. Chichester had his built and its bulb keel and rigging meant that the Gipsy Moth swung around the keel. He had too much sail foreward. One of my friends was the first able bodied seawoman in the British Empire, a Cap Hornier who set sail from Copenhagen in about 1933 at age 23 or so aboard L'Avenir, a 4-masted bark owned by the Erickson's in Copenhagen. The men told her she should be home washing baby's pants and she told them that they should be wearing them. In her book My Year Before the Mast, there is a photo of her on a yardarm with her mates - I think someplace near Cape Horn. If the AKC would have let me have so long a name, my Newfoundland would have been named "Freedom Crosses the Line and Rounds the Horn to Freedom's Harbor." These days, we have toy boats, made of fiberglass.
Thanks John. I feel sure that Holland and Catfield were aware of the risk but underestimated it. A similar sort of thing happened in Sweden in 1628. The modern mania for flat bottomed sloops with high aspect ratio rudders, lifting keels, high masts, in boom furling, and so on, is a current design piety in pursuit of speed, maneuverability, comfort and convenience. The safety cost is explained away with word salads and talk of "procedures". Maybe they even have a case. Such boats look flashy. Impressive high tech talk sells new things. Our Joshua is slow, heavy, a bitch in a tight harbor, small inside, won't point up worth a damn, rolls, makes people sea sick, but she is seaworthy and safe. We suspect that after Bayesian the tend such super yachts may change back to something more traditional and inherently safe.
The mast length is not the problem. The ship designer can calculate that you have ample righting moment to right the ship from flat on the water. The keel was 200 ( ? ) tons, even in up position and that is enough moment to right the ship in every angle. My father had a 62 foot Standfast with a liftable keel, a yacht of this concept like the Bayesian. You are right about the flat bottom, that made our yacht having 2 broken masts in its lifetime of 20 years: the flat bottom caused deformation of the carbon fiber hull in certain wave patterns, which made the boat bump continuously straight into the waves under speed, where the deformation of the bending the hull , on and off causing released tension in the rigging for short moments, that came back when the elasticity of the ship hull tensioned it again within milliseconds and causing immense compression stresses in the mast, and the mast even went loose from its place down in the ship from its foundation, breaking power cables of the ships lights into it. When I was in the front of the ship, I saw that the deck went up and down 15cm with every wave bump on 7 knots speed. Our mast broke in wind force 8 in the English Channel near the island of Wight. So these flat bottoms lack stiffness along its length and will not go smooth into the waves. But flat bottoms have advantages of less draft and being able to enter less deep harbors and being able to surf with winds from behind. The problem that I saw with the Bayesian is that when the mast is in the water , rolled up sails and the mast itself, fill with water ,becoming heavy and that righting can be slow against the wind force on the mast. Some portholes and doors on the deck must have been open, otherwise the boat could not have been filled with water. That is the most irresponsible behaviour. Going 90+degrees flat on the water is not dangerous for sinking a sailboat, it can and WILL happen, and is only dangerous because you can fall into the sea, or tumble inside the cabins, but leaving open entrances for water, is stupid even on anchor. We had a very long mast as well, and that is really not an issue. The mast and rigging are very light compared to the ship, so the ship design was not relevant to the sinking of the Bayesian. All other points I agree with. You have to expect a couple of storms of this kind every year in the Mediterranean. In these storms, no anchor will hold, and you have to start the motor to keep on your place. In Turkey, we had a storm like this and even under full motor power we went backward against the wind in gusts, trying to avoid the coast. Lack of seamanship is to be considered in this accident. Not being prepared for these kinds of things, perhaps hesitant to wake up the guests and enter their cabins to check their portholes and make them prepared, is a possible factor. It could be linked to the character of the owner and possible arrogant ways to deal with the crew. In storms like this, you have like 15 minutes preparation to have an "all hands awake and on deck" to get ready. Sinking is not an issue when there are no holes in the hull. Not guarding the weather and not leaving enough anchor watch guards is just super ignorance. When the first wind gusts come, the motor should be on. The swa does not forgive ignorance and punishes. A ship is not a floating hotel, it is dangerous when not alert. Every ship owner should know that. It is always an adventure.
Very good points. I'm sure modern yachts, (and many other things) rely heavily on computers to micro-control their systems and compensate for an otherwise unsound design. User error can quickly become catastrophic.
Agreed. Consider an violin or acoustic guitar. Design unchanged in centuries. For us, there is some hubris in thinking the wisdom of ages can be suddenly be changed.
The experiencing of a sudden 50 knot squall was probably not in the designer's memory bank, and not designed in, for a flat bottomed high windage mast with the portals open. Those winds once experienced are not forgotten
The way this world has been working it is neither a stretch or a struggle to consider foul play or foul incompetence…both have been the driving force of the last few years!
Thank you, John for such a well written and understandable explanation for what happened, as we thus far know and what should have happened… explaining there is indeed a gap. This all leads us to understand better what all of our gut instinct is screaming, “there is something terribly wrong with that ship sinking.” How ever it happened technically, God is in control and what you reap in this life we will surely sew in this life. There are never random coincidences.
The strangest part of this story is that not all the passengers got out. Initially the timeline I read from storm to sinking was 4 minutes, now it is 16?? Seems like it should have been enough time to evacuate everyone, especially because the passengers who died (including Lynch, his lawyer and the chair of Morgan Stanley International) must have been in the nicer cabins, well above the waterline. Even if those cabins had open windows (on rainy night??), what I presume to have been the highest cabins above the waterline should have flooded last.
Questions:
-- How is it that 9 out of 10 crew members were able to escape but 5 of 12 passengers died? (It doesn't look good that the captain and mate got off; leaving aside what they did or didn't do about coping with the storm, what did they do about evacuating the passengers, which is the highest duty of licensed marine professionals?)
-- The yacht was not built like, for example, a cargo vessel or naval warship, where below deck hands need to climb ladders to get out. How far would the passengers need to go to get out of their staterooms? Why could they not get out? Presumably most of the passengers who perished, who were mature professionals, were not dead drunk like a bunch of passed out frat boys, even if there had been a party the night before.
-- I understand that the survivors were in a raft? How was the raft deployed and who deployed it? When did crew members (including the captain and mate) board the raft? Or did the raft deploy automatically and did all the survivors swim to it?
-- A yacht such as this presumably would have very sophisticated electronics, including among other things alarms that would indicate a dragging anchor. Possibly major changes in wind direction and strength. Did this vessel have such alarms? Were they functioning? Even if there wasn't a night watch, why didn't such alarms give the crew time to take defensive action and to make sure all the passengers were safe? Did the crew rely too heavily on the alarms and therefore not keep a proper watch? (Note: there have been many instance in recent years of yachtsmen who got into real trouble by relying on electronic navigation instruments which failed or were not properly calibrated instead of keeping paper charts and following time-honored navigational practices.)
John, Congratulations...we have all seen the evolution of your thinking on THIS subject, and you have rightly changed your point of view as you got more information. Your thinking (and writing) is a model of good reporting and good analysis.
I was a quartermaster (navigator) aboard the USCGC SPAR, a 180-foot buoy tender. The rocky shoalwater of coastal Maine was our stomping grounds. At anchor, a 24-hour watch was SOP. We took regular fixes with visual bearings, radar ranges, depths, and Differential LORAN (pre-GPS), made regular log entries; it was not that different from an under way watch. Anchoring is not mooring and any cut-rate skipper knows this. The Bayesian was not, of course, a military vessel, but the skipper had to have been cream of the crop. Then again, I had a skipper on a 110-foot patrol boat who was hooked on pep pills (what’s up Paddy Mack!!!), so you never know.
Thanks so much, John. Your analyses of this incident, backed up by a true expert's opinion, (the shipbuilder's), asking all the right questions*, possesses ALL the credulity of true journalism and investigative reporting. We The People believed we HAD this in our supposed "free press", guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. Today's experts in the MSM fake news are akin to a parade of clowns, and, sadly, that same parade, or their cousins, are ruling over us at the moment. While it's more palatable for me to surmise that these ruling clowns are either drug-addled or incompetent, they are "asleep at the switch", just like skipper of the Bayesian may have been. I say, "more palatable" because KNOWING that the clowns are perpetrating this destruction on purpose is a harsh wake-up call! However, my heart is screaming aloud in my mind that more clown-devised sinister schemes are afoot for my beloved nation and they and their devisers are EVIL INCARNATE!
* I was tickled to learn of your friendship with Dr. Risch and that his response was included in a subsequent Bayesian article. Granted, I am a nobody, a grammie in Florida, who sniffed out a rat in the schemes of the co-vid nonsense and contacted Dr. Risch directly. I located his email, included in the white paper supplied by the Frontline Doctors in their first covid summit back in June 2020. HE RESPONDED BACK TO ME!! This was before he was flooded with emails and invited to appear before Congress and everywhere else! Dr. Risch was email buddy and Dr. Zev Zelenko was my texting buddy. God rest Dr. Zelenko's courageous soul and magnify his joy in heaven!
"Civilizational collapse, then, looks like this dynamic at the scale of an entire civilization: a low-grade but constant loss of capabilities and knowledge throughout the most critical parts of our institutions, that eventually degrades our ability to perpetuate society. There might be a sudden point where the superstructure gives way dramatically, such as occurred during the Bronze Age Collapse, or there might be slow accommodation to this convergence to zero, as with the Byzantine Empire. The key dynamic here is the loss of the subtle social technologies that allow us to solve the succession problem. Running a large and complex institution requires skills which are often difficult to fully pass on."
TF, the nation is collapsing due to the loss of the will to live and fight and retrieve its roots. the nation has been infiltrated by a subversive communist spirit that criticizes all things, that specifically focuses all of its efforts to undermine and attacks the societal foundations of America and the West at its core roots: Freedom and prospertity through hard work and merit, Christianity, freedom of conscience, speech and worship, and the nuclear family. All other discussions about the loss of knowledge and related are just distractions as they name the direct consequences of the results of the above foundations that are under a state of non-stop subversive attack.
The problem with every news cycle these days is we have no idea what is true or not true. even my well honed cynicism as a result of corona mania does not make me think anything more than the crew was simply unprepared, negligent in this case. Bad weather blew up they didn't take the right precautions and unfortunately, the ship went down fast. otherwise, to whom are we pointing the finger who needed this man dead after his acquittal and how did he get a little old lady to run over the other guy in England just days earlier?
There's an interesting parralell with the voyage of the Apostle Paul from Palestine to Rome, just under 2000 years ago. The ship carrying him met with a storm of the type you describe. Eventually the crew were able to hold the ship with four anchors off the coast of Malta during the night. The next morning they decided to let the anchors go and allow the wind to drive the ship into a sandy bay - a manouvre that was successful. The account of the shipwreck is given in Acts 27. A well-known book by an experienced British sailor, James Smith, sought to validate the biblical account based on modern knowledge of the behaviour of winds and storms in the Mediterranean. It was published in 1848 with the title "The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul".
Yes, and a research expedition in the year 2000 found all 4 anchors in the bay, in a line as if they had been let go as a ship was being driven toward the shore in a storm. The anchors were independently dated by an antiquarian ship expert to be from circa 1st century AD. Read The Lost Shipwreck of Paul that tells the amazing story of the search for and discovery of the anchors on Malta, written by Bob Cornucke.
Great book!
That Biblical account is rich with truths, symbolism and metaphors, while also being very technically accurate. One of my favorites.
Thanks.
Thanks for this John. Interesting points indeed. We have a 12 meter ketch (two masts) made of steel. She is a Joshua designed for Bernard Moitessier in the late 60s. She is a double ender (like a viking long boat) and has a wine class profile with a long keel, external rudder and inboard ballast. She is arguably the most sea worthy sailboat ever made and we were lucky to find her. Bayesian is - for us - an unsafe design. I would not take my family on a boat like that. I would race on it but not with them. She has a flat bottom, like a frying pan, and the only thing stopping her from turning turtle at any moment is a long thin keel with a huge heavy bulb on the end. That is all. The idea is to get speed and ability to turn on a dime. What is worse that keel is not part of the boat and can move up and down - for port entry and so on. Her mast is too high. That long thin keel is there to counteract it. This raises her center of gravity dangerously. In olden times a 55 meter long boat would have had up to three masts and long bowsprit and overhanging rear boom which allows the same sail area overall as Bayesian achieved with that 60 meter mast. No mast, for us, should ever even approach the length of the hull and certainly not go beyond it; and certainly not with that hull profile or keel design. Bayesian, in our view, was an accident waiting to happen, by design. We do not think the skipper was aware just how unstable she was. Not his fault. That is a pretty radical modern racing type design. We survived near ship wreck in a storm off the Bahamas in 2010 because of our hull, low masts, clean flush deck and three anchors. Our boat would, we think, not have noticed the squall that hit Bayesian. We think the Bayesian skipper sensed little threat from that weather forecast as he over estimated Bayesian's stability, hence the open hatches and lack of urgency or prep. The squall hit the mast and the windage - resistance from the over high mast alone - was enough to knock her on her side in seconds. It looks to us as if she up filled through the open port holes and hatches and sank in 16 minutes dragged down by that mast. Earlier we though it might have been an issue with the keel but the news over the past two days points to the mast. We feel sure the crew were taken completely by surprise, never believing Bayesian could be that unstable or could possibly topple over so fast in those conditions and with that sea state. Perhaps, to add insult to injury, the keel was raised to improve the riding at anchor and that did not help one little bit. The position of the keel will be key for the investigators. For us, what this tragedy demands is designers should tell owners and skippers very clearly about stability issues with flat bottomed boats with high masts and lifting keels.
Dear David, thanks so much for this thorough and astonishing comment. Wow, you own a ketch designed for the great Bernard Moitessier -- of my favorite, eccentric heroes. You are the second experienced yachtsmen who has pointed out to me that the mast height and hull design of the Bayesian were dangerous. Though I have never really understood the modern mania for the sloop sail plan on such a huge pleasure sailboat rather than just building schooners and ketches, I am still surprised by your remarks. Though I understand that such a tall mast has great windage and leverage, I'm amazed that it's enough to knock down such a huge boat with no sails set. The reports I'm seeing indicate the Bayesian still had a draft of 4 meters with the keel fully raised. To be sure, I don't see any reason to doubt your view of the matter. I'm just surprised that the marine architect, Ron Holland, and the skipper, James Catfield (another Kiwi) didn't fully appreciate the design danger that you point out. Thanks again for your comment! Best regards, John
Compare Joshua Slocum's ship, the Spray, with Sir Francis Chichester on the Gipsy Moth. Slocum built his ship, and he could tie the helm and sleep. Chichester had his built and its bulb keel and rigging meant that the Gipsy Moth swung around the keel. He had too much sail foreward. One of my friends was the first able bodied seawoman in the British Empire, a Cap Hornier who set sail from Copenhagen in about 1933 at age 23 or so aboard L'Avenir, a 4-masted bark owned by the Erickson's in Copenhagen. The men told her she should be home washing baby's pants and she told them that they should be wearing them. In her book My Year Before the Mast, there is a photo of her on a yardarm with her mates - I think someplace near Cape Horn. If the AKC would have let me have so long a name, my Newfoundland would have been named "Freedom Crosses the Line and Rounds the Horn to Freedom's Harbor." These days, we have toy boats, made of fiberglass.
Thanks John. I feel sure that Holland and Catfield were aware of the risk but underestimated it. A similar sort of thing happened in Sweden in 1628. The modern mania for flat bottomed sloops with high aspect ratio rudders, lifting keels, high masts, in boom furling, and so on, is a current design piety in pursuit of speed, maneuverability, comfort and convenience. The safety cost is explained away with word salads and talk of "procedures". Maybe they even have a case. Such boats look flashy. Impressive high tech talk sells new things. Our Joshua is slow, heavy, a bitch in a tight harbor, small inside, won't point up worth a damn, rolls, makes people sea sick, but she is seaworthy and safe. We suspect that after Bayesian the tend such super yachts may change back to something more traditional and inherently safe.
The mast length is not the problem. The ship designer can calculate that you have ample righting moment to right the ship from flat on the water. The keel was 200 ( ? ) tons, even in up position and that is enough moment to right the ship in every angle. My father had a 62 foot Standfast with a liftable keel, a yacht of this concept like the Bayesian. You are right about the flat bottom, that made our yacht having 2 broken masts in its lifetime of 20 years: the flat bottom caused deformation of the carbon fiber hull in certain wave patterns, which made the boat bump continuously straight into the waves under speed, where the deformation of the bending the hull , on and off causing released tension in the rigging for short moments, that came back when the elasticity of the ship hull tensioned it again within milliseconds and causing immense compression stresses in the mast, and the mast even went loose from its place down in the ship from its foundation, breaking power cables of the ships lights into it. When I was in the front of the ship, I saw that the deck went up and down 15cm with every wave bump on 7 knots speed. Our mast broke in wind force 8 in the English Channel near the island of Wight. So these flat bottoms lack stiffness along its length and will not go smooth into the waves. But flat bottoms have advantages of less draft and being able to enter less deep harbors and being able to surf with winds from behind. The problem that I saw with the Bayesian is that when the mast is in the water , rolled up sails and the mast itself, fill with water ,becoming heavy and that righting can be slow against the wind force on the mast. Some portholes and doors on the deck must have been open, otherwise the boat could not have been filled with water. That is the most irresponsible behaviour. Going 90+degrees flat on the water is not dangerous for sinking a sailboat, it can and WILL happen, and is only dangerous because you can fall into the sea, or tumble inside the cabins, but leaving open entrances for water, is stupid even on anchor. We had a very long mast as well, and that is really not an issue. The mast and rigging are very light compared to the ship, so the ship design was not relevant to the sinking of the Bayesian. All other points I agree with. You have to expect a couple of storms of this kind every year in the Mediterranean. In these storms, no anchor will hold, and you have to start the motor to keep on your place. In Turkey, we had a storm like this and even under full motor power we went backward against the wind in gusts, trying to avoid the coast. Lack of seamanship is to be considered in this accident. Not being prepared for these kinds of things, perhaps hesitant to wake up the guests and enter their cabins to check their portholes and make them prepared, is a possible factor. It could be linked to the character of the owner and possible arrogant ways to deal with the crew. In storms like this, you have like 15 minutes preparation to have an "all hands awake and on deck" to get ready. Sinking is not an issue when there are no holes in the hull. Not guarding the weather and not leaving enough anchor watch guards is just super ignorance. When the first wind gusts come, the motor should be on. The swa does not forgive ignorance and punishes. A ship is not a floating hotel, it is dangerous when not alert. Every ship owner should know that. It is always an adventure.
Very good points. I'm sure modern yachts, (and many other things) rely heavily on computers to micro-control their systems and compensate for an otherwise unsound design. User error can quickly become catastrophic.
Agreed. Consider an violin or acoustic guitar. Design unchanged in centuries. For us, there is some hubris in thinking the wisdom of ages can be suddenly be changed.
The experiencing of a sudden 50 knot squall was probably not in the designer's memory bank, and not designed in, for a flat bottomed high windage mast with the portals open. Those winds once experienced are not forgotten
Totally agree.
The way this world has been working it is neither a stretch or a struggle to consider foul play or foul incompetence…both have been the driving force of the last few years!
Indeed, the list of compounding factors is too co-incidental to be accidental.
Correlation may not be causation, but it is high probability.
Wow. John Leake. Your knowledge and firsthand experiences are amazing. And you're still young!
We do know, for sure, though, that Nero persecuted and murdered thousands of Christians.
John Leake, you provide a wonderful perspective here. Bravo!!!!
Thank you, John for such a well written and understandable explanation for what happened, as we thus far know and what should have happened… explaining there is indeed a gap. This all leads us to understand better what all of our gut instinct is screaming, “there is something terribly wrong with that ship sinking.” How ever it happened technically, God is in control and what you reap in this life we will surely sew in this life. There are never random coincidences.
Totally agree….there are NEVER random coincidences.
It is obvious that "Atlas is shrugging, and the Captain might have been heard to utter, "who is John Galt?"
"Plausible Deniability" is the operant context for any "event' in Bayesian "predicted" / "synthesized" "reality".
The strangest part of this story is that not all the passengers got out. Initially the timeline I read from storm to sinking was 4 minutes, now it is 16?? Seems like it should have been enough time to evacuate everyone, especially because the passengers who died (including Lynch, his lawyer and the chair of Morgan Stanley International) must have been in the nicer cabins, well above the waterline. Even if those cabins had open windows (on rainy night??), what I presume to have been the highest cabins above the waterline should have flooded last.
Questions:
-- How is it that 9 out of 10 crew members were able to escape but 5 of 12 passengers died? (It doesn't look good that the captain and mate got off; leaving aside what they did or didn't do about coping with the storm, what did they do about evacuating the passengers, which is the highest duty of licensed marine professionals?)
-- The yacht was not built like, for example, a cargo vessel or naval warship, where below deck hands need to climb ladders to get out. How far would the passengers need to go to get out of their staterooms? Why could they not get out? Presumably most of the passengers who perished, who were mature professionals, were not dead drunk like a bunch of passed out frat boys, even if there had been a party the night before.
-- I understand that the survivors were in a raft? How was the raft deployed and who deployed it? When did crew members (including the captain and mate) board the raft? Or did the raft deploy automatically and did all the survivors swim to it?
-- A yacht such as this presumably would have very sophisticated electronics, including among other things alarms that would indicate a dragging anchor. Possibly major changes in wind direction and strength. Did this vessel have such alarms? Were they functioning? Even if there wasn't a night watch, why didn't such alarms give the crew time to take defensive action and to make sure all the passengers were safe? Did the crew rely too heavily on the alarms and therefore not keep a proper watch? (Note: there have been many instance in recent years of yachtsmen who got into real trouble by relying on electronic navigation instruments which failed or were not properly calibrated instead of keeping paper charts and following time-honored navigational practices.)
Bingo! Your questions target the issue. 16 minutes is a long time in a life or death situation.
John, Congratulations...we have all seen the evolution of your thinking on THIS subject, and you have rightly changed your point of view as you got more information. Your thinking (and writing) is a model of good reporting and good analysis.
I was a quartermaster (navigator) aboard the USCGC SPAR, a 180-foot buoy tender. The rocky shoalwater of coastal Maine was our stomping grounds. At anchor, a 24-hour watch was SOP. We took regular fixes with visual bearings, radar ranges, depths, and Differential LORAN (pre-GPS), made regular log entries; it was not that different from an under way watch. Anchoring is not mooring and any cut-rate skipper knows this. The Bayesian was not, of course, a military vessel, but the skipper had to have been cream of the crop. Then again, I had a skipper on a 110-foot patrol boat who was hooked on pep pills (what’s up Paddy Mack!!!), so you never know.
Psychoactive drug addiction is the hidden disease until tragedy strikes.
My skipper came within fifty yards of a head-on collision with the Nantucket high-speed ferry.
Thanks so much, John. Your analyses of this incident, backed up by a true expert's opinion, (the shipbuilder's), asking all the right questions*, possesses ALL the credulity of true journalism and investigative reporting. We The People believed we HAD this in our supposed "free press", guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. Today's experts in the MSM fake news are akin to a parade of clowns, and, sadly, that same parade, or their cousins, are ruling over us at the moment. While it's more palatable for me to surmise that these ruling clowns are either drug-addled or incompetent, they are "asleep at the switch", just like skipper of the Bayesian may have been. I say, "more palatable" because KNOWING that the clowns are perpetrating this destruction on purpose is a harsh wake-up call! However, my heart is screaming aloud in my mind that more clown-devised sinister schemes are afoot for my beloved nation and they and their devisers are EVIL INCARNATE!
* I was tickled to learn of your friendship with Dr. Risch and that his response was included in a subsequent Bayesian article. Granted, I am a nobody, a grammie in Florida, who sniffed out a rat in the schemes of the co-vid nonsense and contacted Dr. Risch directly. I located his email, included in the white paper supplied by the Frontline Doctors in their first covid summit back in June 2020. HE RESPONDED BACK TO ME!! This was before he was flooded with emails and invited to appear before Congress and everywhere else! Dr. Risch was email buddy and Dr. Zev Zelenko was my texting buddy. God rest Dr. Zelenko's courageous soul and magnify his joy in heaven!
This stack reminds me of the article at this link by Samo Burja, "Why Civilizations Collapse" https://thesideview.co/journal/why-civilizations-collapse/
The whole article is a must read
"Civilizational collapse, then, looks like this dynamic at the scale of an entire civilization: a low-grade but constant loss of capabilities and knowledge throughout the most critical parts of our institutions, that eventually degrades our ability to perpetuate society. There might be a sudden point where the superstructure gives way dramatically, such as occurred during the Bronze Age Collapse, or there might be slow accommodation to this convergence to zero, as with the Byzantine Empire. The key dynamic here is the loss of the subtle social technologies that allow us to solve the succession problem. Running a large and complex institution requires skills which are often difficult to fully pass on."
TF, the nation is collapsing due to the loss of the will to live and fight and retrieve its roots. the nation has been infiltrated by a subversive communist spirit that criticizes all things, that specifically focuses all of its efforts to undermine and attacks the societal foundations of America and the West at its core roots: Freedom and prospertity through hard work and merit, Christianity, freedom of conscience, speech and worship, and the nuclear family. All other discussions about the loss of knowledge and related are just distractions as they name the direct consequences of the results of the above foundations that are under a state of non-stop subversive attack.
The problem with every news cycle these days is we have no idea what is true or not true. even my well honed cynicism as a result of corona mania does not make me think anything more than the crew was simply unprepared, negligent in this case. Bad weather blew up they didn't take the right precautions and unfortunately, the ship went down fast. otherwise, to whom are we pointing the finger who needed this man dead after his acquittal and how did he get a little old lady to run over the other guy in England just days earlier?
Not everyone does well under pressure.
Did all of the crew of the yacht live or die? Because their interviews would tell the story.
Seems like the crew survived, with the exception of the chef. The chef, you say? Hmmmmm…