Italy - Sailing yacht sank off Italian coast, 15 rescued, 7 missing, 19 August 2024

[RedHaus]

Started out sunny and warm with no warning about a storm coming in until we could actually see it coming at us very quickly. My very pregnant daughter and younger daughter was with us. I immediately sent them down into the cabin and locked all hatches. Pulled the anchor and lowered the keel. We tried to beat the storm to the inlet for safe harbor but that did not happen. We had anchored to fish a little bit. Now I'm so glad it was anchored so that we had time to walk about the sailboat and prepare for a storm. We tried to motor in and the boat was on it's side the entire time, I was hanging onto the lifelines to stay on the boat. Steering toward the inlet. The storm overran us and it was a real wild ride for a while. My daughters were screaming because the water was over the windows. We couldn't cut the engine because water would have came over the back of sailboat and swamp us. We made it into the inlet and then tried to stick it on a sandbar so that we would not collide with people's docks. Missed it by inches.

That is an amazing story @lonetraveler . Thank you SO much for sharing. It is compelling how similar the experience might have been on the Bayesian.

The difference being that you are here to tell your story because you may have done things differently in response to the downburst. And of course your event was during daylight and you could see the approaching storm; the Bayesian's event was during the dark of night, @3:50am and the watchman likely could not easily see the thunderstorm marching towards them.

I wonder if your downburst happened while you and your family were asleep, would you have been able to do all you did in time to save your lives and yacht (drop keel, pull up anchor, close hatches, start engines, steer to inlet)?

I also wonder - since a few of us have tried to no avail to find historical 19-8 data that shows the Bayesian's downburst origin storm could have been predicted by radar or weather alerts - if you had any electronic forewarning?

Lastly, could you estimate the angle your yacht was heeled at while you motored and steered towards the inlet? I ask because we have learned that the Bayesian could not return to upright if it heeled more than 45° (vanishing angle). So many here suspect that design (flaw?) played a role in her demise as she faced a fierce downburst.

Thank you.

 

[SpanishInquisition]

He's trying to put the tall mast at fault but without the keel down and the anchor up and hatches closed there was no way for the boat to not sink.

This goes in part why I think the vessel was unseaworthy notwithstanding that it was built to code. It's both expected and allowed for the keel to be up while the anchor is down as well as hatches being open. They didn't have to have the keel down until they were 60 miles away from port. As a matter of practical use as well as providing more comfort to HNW passengers the vessel is very vulnerable to suddenly capsizing...I also take issue with how glassy the passenger areas were, which further created a hazard when disaster struck and the passenger stairway seemed poorly designed to function during a disaster too. The regulations should change so that a vessel behaving in a predictable way can't sink in minutes and kill everyone in the passenger compartment. It sounds like some mistakes were made like by the engineer, but it shouldn't result in near-instant death as a vessel should have some room for error. I'd expect something more like this with a superyacht taking hours to sink when there's bad weather and crew mistakes:

Inside the largest yacht that ever sank

Few events have ever affected yachting as much as the sinking of the 60 meter Yogi. The largest yacht to ever sink, its wreck strongly hit the Turkish shipbuilding sector and made owners take a hard look at their insurances and dangers, even though no one was hurt. Despite the accident, Yogi was...

yachtharbour.com

There was this relative tiny yacht that was attacked by orcas and they had over an hour to escape:

Killer whales attack and sink sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar — again

An unknown number of orcas managed to sink another sailing yacht near coastal Morocco in the Strait of Gibraltar.

www.cbsnews.com