SpanishInquisition
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I think it's going to boil down to whether the crew's response was lacking or not, the circumstance of a waterspout would trump any responses they employed. It's akin to being impaired driving your vehicle when the bridge you are on collapses. Your impaired state is irrelevent. The waterspout I experience a few years ago in the Gulf of Mexico was a fair weather waterspout and it caused some damage to outdoor furniture and blew out car windows once it arrived on shore. A tornadic waterspout in bad weather is a whole different animal according to this article.
Waterspouts can be as dangerous as tornadoes on land – expert Q+A
Waterspouts form over warm bodies of water (lakes as well as the ocean). Fair-weather waterspouts are thankfully more common and often form from cumulus clouds.www.preventionweb.net
It was actually downburst and I think what matters is why and how the presumably inferior and smaller 1950s-built Sir Robert Baden Powell not only survived unscathed but helped with the rescue of the Bayesian, which was only a few hundred yards away. I very much get the impression that Captain Borner was being far more proactive during this time actively handling his vessel personally against both the wind and avoid a collision with the Bayesian while it sounds like at this time that it was a deckwatch on hand with the captain of the Bayesian not coming out until after the vessel tilted and only then was having the crew collect debris. I do think the Sir Robert Baden Powell was less prone to catastrophic failure despite being an antique and that the captain or the SRBP acted far more appropriately in taking personal charge of navigating the weather and hazards and I'm guessing it may come down to comparing how the SRBP crew acted versus the Bayesian crew to determine who would get charged with what on the Bayesian but crew responsibility will be mitigated at least to some degree due to the Bayesian's design. I do think the Bayesian captain in particular may be responsible for not mustering the passengers when the vessel tilted and was taking on water as the vessel was in immediate risk of sinking and passengers becoming unable to escape. I think - or at least hope - he may have been concussed so couldn't think clearly due to injury rather than that being his clear-headed judgment to have the crew be collecting debris while the ship sank rather than collecting passengers.