C&N managed yacht sinks off Sicily, 7 missing

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by Tillikum

Indeed, and

with the keel almost certainly in the raised position, and look how quickly she recovers even against the force of the wind! By no means an inherently unstable design.

I wonder if there was a rush to deploy another anchor which suddenly held and being somehow across the beam, pulled her over? It would mean pulling the mast down against the wind, which seems almost inconceivable at first glance, but with a circular wind pattern perhaps what first pushed her part way over against the anchor rode then suddenly shifted or turned and pushed her the rest of the way down to horizontal?

In that situation those vast salon picture windows: are they made to stand the force of submergence? If they "blew in" a vast amount of water could enter very quickly.

When your cabin door is suddenly the ceiling and has even a foot of water on top of it, can you get it open? As you think all the while: "she's going to right any moment now!", as the water keeps pouring in at 50lbs a cubic foot...

But at the same time, given her capacity for rapid recovery even with the keel up(?), one wonders what could hold her down far enough for the water to keep coming in for minutes through the blown in salon windows?!

The video from the villa if one watches the masthead light and its position throughout, really shows nothing: the light remains almost stationary from what I could see.

Mast horizontal in port does not vouch for inherently stable. Pressure on the mast from the wind will diminish once healing starts and the balast/keel should then keep the boat from healing further. But.... then the weight of the mast takes over and completes the move to horizontal.

My 44ft boat with less than 1m draft would be the equivalent (in reality 2.3m) which would in that hypothetical situation certainly feel uncomfortable given the size of the mast.

[El Pinguino]

If you look at this photo you can see that she had two sunken 'outside entertainment areas', one just aft of the mast, another under the 'bridge'.
I would suggest the doors which would be quite big - no washboards like us common folk - to the aft area were open if only to let the people out. This of course would let the water in.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024...y=75&auto=webp

[El Pinguino]

And furthermore.
I have enlarged a bit of that pic.
Note how there is no coaming around that sunken area, at least not in that area just for'd of the yellow lifebuoy light and that the 'entertainment area' extends almost the full beam of the yacht.
Therefore submerge the deck edge and you have water entering the boat.
Knowledge of beam and freeboard would let you calculate angle of heel required to down flood. I would suggest that angle is not that great.

Edit - I've also enlarged part of the GA posted above - yep - extends to within inches of the deck edge.

[Tillikum]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

Mast horizontal in port does not vouch for inherently stable. Pressure on the mast from the wind will diminish once healing starts and the balast/keel should then keep the boat from healing further. But.... then the weight of the mast takes over and completes the move to horizontal.

My 44ft boat with less than 1m draft would be the equivalent (in reality 2.3m) which would in that hypothetical situation certainly feel uncomfortable given the size of the mast.

Good point about the wind force on the mast diminishing as the heel increases. and as you say, the weight of the mast would be a factor in accelerating and increasing the heel when a certain point. Although one gets into the complexities of how much weight how far out from the deck and so on.

I know what you mean, it's a complex subject, but I use the term "unstable" to mean a vessel which is top heavy and does not right herself quickly.

This is a vessel which is unstable in the sense that she rolls quickly, but she also recovers quickly: https://www.marineinsight.com/naval-...surface-ships/


The speed of her recovery in the NZ incident is striking for a vessel of that size, to me at least.

If the salon windows were intact I am at a loss to see how she could be held horizontal long enough to fill with water unless there were a number of large ports open, companionways etc. The fact that the divers had to break windows to get in suggests nothing was open, making the whole thing much more of a mystery.

Could she have swung around when knocked down and somehow fouled the mast on the broken-free anchor rode? Was it chain or a high-tech synthetic cable that has some bouyancy or was light enough to be somewhat "picked up" by the waterspout and thus fouled the mast or a spreader/crosstree somehow, making it impossible for her to right?

Could well be there are survivors in air pockets. Hopefully they will proceed on that possibility.

[Morph]

Looking at that video in NZ-- that was one hell of a tornado that went through-- the catamaran was a 50+ foot Schionning cat that was thrown across the harbour like a rag doll. And of course, the boat did not sink in the marina when it went over to what looks like nearly 90 degress, so clearly something was different in sicily to NZ. Ie the righting moment is probably OK, but maybe hatches, aft doors etc were open.

My take is that, I still don't htink they were anchored, if they were holding station, then there would be a crew on watch so when they got hit they were there trying to save the boat-- and, apart from the chef, all the crew survived, so they must all have got some small amount of warning to get out of bed and get on deck, the passengers, not involved with the running of the boat were of course stuck in their cabin.... poor buggers.


For a boat to sink that fast, something catastrophic had to have happened for it to go down in minutes, hence my thinking about lightening and through hulls...

[Bowdrie]

Originally Posted by Tillikum

Could well be there are survivors in air pockets. Hopefully they will proceed on that possibility.

They're in a sailing yacht, not a submarine.
Should they be in an "air pocket" that air pocket is compressed to the same level as the outside water pressure at that depth.
Ask a diver what the de-compression tables say for someone breathing air in ~a 75psi compartment for a couple of days would be.

[Statistical]

Originally Posted by Bowdrie

They're in a sailing yacht, not a submarine.
Should they be in an "air pocket" that air pocket is compressed to the same level as the outside water pressure at that depth.
Ask a diver what the de-compression tables say for someone breathing air in ~a 75psi compartment for a couple of days would be.

While the chance of survivors is very low it isn't impossible. One guy survived 3 days in 100 feet deep water in a sunken tugboat due to an air pocket. In fact he scared the **** out of the divers because they weren't looking for survivors at that point. The diver thought he was a corpse until he grabbed the diver's hand.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-my-air-bubble

Yes decompression is a challenge but that is an issue of logistics not survival. You don't have to worry about decompression until you decompress and you don't need to worry about that unless you first survive.

To be clear I am not trying to overstate the chances anyone survived. The odds are incredibly low. 99.99% chance the divers find nothing but corpses in the vessel but survival isn't impossible (yet). They are however running out of time. Dehydration and hypothermia will eventually kill anyone who did survive the initial descent.

In fact the hardest part about staying alive if you did survive the descent would be the patience to just wait. If someone survived the trip to the seafloor and then tried to exit the vessel they would die. In fact they would likely die without every finding an exit or their way back to the air pocket.

[skipperpete]

Interesting that its the same vessel in the Auckland video. There is a notable difference in the Auckland knockdown, she didn’t actually go horizontal so possibly didnt immerse the deck edge with the consequent dramatic loss of stability that usually occurs, plus there was a dock and other boats that halted the progress. In this latest incident I suspect she went way further and there was an immediate mass migration of machinery, ballast, jet skis, tenders and every thing not bolted down ….to the submerged deck side.

[Bowdrie]

You're right.
His survival was due to an environment/space in an upside-down hull that would maintain airtight integrity.

[El Pinguino]

Deja vu all over again, nothing new under the sun etc
The loss of 'Marques' was just over 40 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_Marques
and 'Pride of Baltimore' 38 years ago.
and 'Concordia' in 2010.

[WhiteWings1933]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Watch what happens to the yacht on the right towards the end of the vid.
So the gust is sustained?
I wonder if its the same yacht?
https://youtu.be/1mofa0QNFi8

Not the same yacht. The yacht in this video in Auckland is Alloy Yachts built ENCORE


Incidentally - Bayesian has a 6 spreader mast, Encore has a 5 spreader. Kind of Obvious isnt it?

[WhiteWings1933]

Originally Posted by skipperpete

Interesting that its the same vessel in the Auckland video. There is a notable difference in the Auckland knockdown, she didn’t actually go horizontal so possibly didnt immerse the deck edge with the consequent dramatic loss of stability that usually occurs, plus there was a dock and other boats that halted the progress. In this latest incident I suspect she went way further and there was an immediate mass migration of machinery, ballast, jet skis, tenders and every thing not bolted down ….to the submerged deck side.

Its not the same vessel - The tornado footage in Auckland is of SY ENCORE, 45 meter Alloy Yachts build. She was completely undamaged by the tornado in Auckland.


website to Encore is here: www.ay45encore.com


Lots of speculation here and discussion about two entirely different vessels which shows really the lack of knowledge being pandered about; Baeysian has a 6 spreader rig... Encore has 5 spreaders, and its REALLY obvious if you look at the footage from Auckland and a photo of Baeysian... This situation is made worse when you work on one and also lost a friend on the other.

[skipperpete]

Originally Posted by WhiteWings1933

Its not the same vessel - The tornado footage in Auckland is of SY ENCORE, 45 meter Alloy Yachts build. She was completely undamaged by the tornado in Auckland.


website to Encore is here: www.ay45encore.com


Lots of speculation here and discussion about two entirely different vessels which shows really the lack of knowledge being pandered about; Baeysian has a 6 spreader rig... Encore has 5 spreaders, and its REALLY obvious if you look at the footage from Auckland and a photo of Baeysian... This situation is made worse when you work on one and also lost a friend on the other.

Thanks for clarifying that very significant detail about the Auckland incident, different superyacht entirely. Everyone on this forum who actually cruises is trying to get some sort of sensible understanding of how such a well built and crewed superyacht could sink almost instantly in weather that we will probably all eventually meet…. and random speculation is going to happen when such a shocking incident occurs

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by WhiteWings1933

Not the same yacht. The yacht in this video in Auckland is Alloy Yachts built ENCORE


Incidentally - Bayesian has a 6 spreader mast, Encore has a 5 spreader. Kind of Obvious isnt it?

Obvious. But doesn't make it less concerning that a 58m yacht was simply blown over and sunk within a very short space of time, if indeed that is what happened. We'll have to wait for the enquiry which will no doubt look into the stability question.

And welcome to the forum, nice first post.

[seagypsywoman]

1. If she was anchored, and sunk quickly, then why is she now lying in 50 m of water? Most boats don't anchor that deep.
2. Superyachts have air conditioning, so the hatches and doors would have been all closed.