Not a trailer sailor

[Captain Kidd]

Tragedy in Mediterranean.

Declared "unsinkable" by the builder, the Bayesian sinks in storm. $40 million, 184' yacht with 246' mast. Six of the 22 on board perish.

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[Norm L.]

Modern vessels are designed to be unsinkable from anticipated risks. Berserk nature is not covered as a boat should not be in the middle of a hurricane, which should be avoided or a tornado which cannot be avoided. I think a power boat of that size would be badly battered but probably could survive. Without the mast and with closed hatches maybe that one could.
I know of many sinkings due to an incident which would be fine if they didn't have watertight doors open. It has happened to sailboats with water in the cockpit and the hatch open. I think I remember stories here about keeping at least the lowest board in the hatchway.

[Wayne Howard]

Its retractable keel was retracted reducing the righting arm too much. The mast then flooded when it hit the water and there was no way the boat was recovering from both issues. And the final straw was the open doorway on the down side quickly flooding the boat.

https://loosecannon.substack.com/p/yacht-design-experts-dissect-how?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=390002&post_id=144203968&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=ca4tx&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[Riley Smith]

They got whacked. Like a flyswatter from the clouds, smack! So, now how many of you want a taller mast? Sigh, to me the attainment of the possible and the reality of the prudent have diverged...My prayers for those lost.

[Norm L.]

That will do it Wayne. No one planned on that boat needing a float on the top of the mast.

[Norm L.]

In my reading I saw two very interesting opinions on the loss of this vessel. both were from experts, one being an ex-captain of the vessel. They both had opinions that fitted with mine concerning the mast and open ports. The ex-captain goes into excellent detail. His comments may have also made some other sailing sites.

The article here is more argumentative about maritime views. Read it if you want. But the details are in two of the comments below the article.

https://splash247.com/what-can-we-learn-from-the-sinking-of-the-bayesian/

[Krusen]

I strongly agree that with the owner aboard, it is hard for the captain and crew to control safety related procedures and activity.

 Racing on OPB's (Other Peoples  Boats), there can be many times where safety was compromised to get to an advantaged position.  Minor collisions, or groundings, or impacting markers result.  Occasionally, major damage or injury takes place.

The hard choice for the crew is to leave a winning boat, and hunt for a berth on a lesser boat.

Sometimes an owner sees the obvious solution, and the crew sees another.  We had finished a major race to St. Mary's, just inside Point Lookout, Southern MD.  The young part of the race crew had returned to their cars by shuttle bus, Doug and I were returning with the owner to the home marina at Washington Sailing Marina.  The plan was to run the diesel all the way home, make it in one day.  The departure was at sunup, and all was well as we reached the portion of the channel in open water, but the diesel quit.

The owner announced "Dirty filter, Norman, give me a hand, and I will change it"

I said to Doug, "Unroll the Genoa, I will take the tiller, we will sail".  Doug did as I asked, and when sheeted and cleated, went below to hand tools.  Shortly, I was running out of water, called Doug, he came up, and we tacked, then he returned bellow.  That tack took us to the main stem of the Potomac, plenty wide and deep, I adjusted sail, and continued North.

Important sidelight, "sheeted and cleated" was 3 turns on the winch, and just one round turn on the cleat, the bitter end was in my hand.  3 quick flips, and the sail would have been free.

It turned out that we had additional problems with the engine, and sailed all the way home.  We dropped Doug off at Quantico Marine Marina, and spent the night there, sailed the rest the next day.

Countermanding the instructions of the owner could have been a problem, but the owner had found from experience, that my choices were the best at the time, so rather than argue, he went on down to the engine room.  Getting under way in a narrow channel was important, and ultimately, when he gave up on getting the engine going, I had made good 5% of the distance home.  Later, we encountered a strong thunderstorm, crossing the river ahead of us, I called for dropping the main, furling the Genoa, and drifting until it passed.  The owner disagreed, but added that I seemed never wrong on weather, so we did drift for half an hour, and we just got light rain on the edge of the storm, which had a lot of lightning.

Doug called me a few days later, thanked me for my success at changing the plans of the owner, he would not have done so.

Several of the members here have sailed with me, and know that I can be very insistent when I think it is important to do things differently.  But I rarely simply do things my way, if there is time to discuss.  The thunderstorm was a 5 minute discussion, and a 2 to 1 vote to drift.

The owner was a dedicated racer, and had over 100 trophies.  Winning was very important to him.  I had the supreme advantage that I knew weather and wind interaction with the shores, plus made a notebook of tidal flow and depth.  This allowed me to plan, and adjust as we went, just where in the river we should be, for best distance made good.  Joining the pack is a loser in tidal waters.