An interesting piece that contradicts the early reports about crew leaving vents open:
> The company speculated that the crew did not close a watertight door between this hatch and the engine room.
(...)
> But witnesses, an Italian official familiar with the investigation and the underwater video challenged the company’s versions of events. The footage appeared to show the watertight door to the engine room closed, and the Italian official said the divers had not seen any open hatches on the hull.
> Mr. Borner also said that after rescuing the captain, he asked him if he had shut the hatches. The captain said he had. Mr. Borner shared pictures taken by his guests a few moments before the Bayesian sank that appear to show that hull hatches were closed.
Overall, a very informative article, it analyzes boat's documentation and compares it with other boats from the same manufacturer.
Even if after all the investigations it turns out the manufacturer were without blame (which usually is not the case) their attitude doesn't reflect well on them.
Do you want to buy your yacth from someone who will blame everyone but themselves when things go wrong? I would rather buy a yacht from someone who will incorporate all the learnings into their new designs to make them as safe as possible.
The attitude of "we are perfect, somebody else's fault" stinks, even if they are. More so if they are not.
There are two possibilities: it’s their fault or it’s not their fault.
In either case it’s advantageous to do what they did: either you’re wrong and the fact that your defective product killed your customers far far far outweighs any messaging you did before that comes to light, or you’re right and the initial message shows confidence in your product.
Not making a statement shows the inverse: that it could be your product to blame, and if that story is what people run with then it’s much more harmful in the long run even if it turns out to be not your fault.
Nobody makes purchasing decisions on big boats based on the perceived and subjective pettiness of their PR department.
Hard to ignore they're trying to use their own employees as unwilling scapegoats of a very expensive mistake. If they were a wiser cartel, they'd know to generously bribe their employees so they willingly accept the blame.
No. Boeing is a case in point. When companies act defensive like that they burn trust that they are a serious engineering organization. I simply don't trust them at this point because they don't appear to be vocally self critical (or at least just quiet while the facts are being collected).
I agree with you and upvoted your comment as see it's down voted. It's a very valid point that would be their default position regardless of moral obligations but it does read this is a design flaw related to grandiosity from the article.
I disagree IF their design was flawed. Regulated professions like engineers who presumably designed this thing have moral and legal obligations to not crank out a death trap and say it's the buyer's fault. It's actually something I don't respect about the tech industry a whole with a wild wild west approach so probably not a popular view here.
It should also be noted that the fishermen in the area all received notice of incoming storm activity and many of them took precautionary measures HOURS in advance of when the storm actually hit. Whoever was the bridge watchstander on duty during that time should have been paying attention to the immediate near term weather forecast info. This was an entirely preventable incident.
This was a very informative article. It seems they should have shut down the generator and hvac and closed the vents. Pretty wild that a 45° heel angle caused it to ship water, that sounds pretty scary, as does the 75° righting angle with the keel up.
one of the quickest ways to ruin the way an established boat plan 'swims' is by adding a tall rig after de-masting.
it's extremely enticing to 'add more sail' to a boat in order to squeeze more speed out of it, or achieve easier lufting.
turns out that marine architecture is a lot harder than one thinks at first glance, and just about everyone that tries to tweak specs afterwards does so in such a way that makes the boat categorically worse.
(don't ask me how I came to realize this after many dollars spent)
the joke is, "the 2nd best day of your life is the day you buy your boat" which makes the listener think "2nd? oh, must be after your wedding/birth of child"
and then you say "the 1st best day is when you sell it"
Yeah, I seem to remember the full phrase is something like, “Advice for millionaires: if it floats, flies, or [fornicates], rent it.” Advice does not apply to billionaires, which is a category Mike Lynch may have snuck into depending on whose reporting you believe.
As distasteful as the last part of that advice it, I can see the sense of the rest of it. You need to have enough money that the inevitably high ongoing maintenance costs (and I guess depreciation) simply aren’t a concern, or even something you have to think about because you have people to take care of it for you.
Bottom paint is about $250/gal. It takes us about half a day to sand the hull and roll on a layer. My 40' sailboat can be covered with 1 generous coat with 1gal with a little left over. $7k for bottom paint must either be a huge boat, an expensive crew, or both. It's just not all that expensive if you're willing to put in a little effort.
I’m no boat expert but doesn’t your statement imply some level of ease of dragging a boat out of the water to perform this operation? Something tells me that pulling a 40 foot sailboat out of the water, turning it over, painting it, and returning it into the water isn’t necessarily the most straightforward operation. A lot of complexity is probably loaded into “it takes us” and if we took a gander at the hourly rates of everyone involved in said operation as well as the upfront cost of the equipment to perform said operation as well as the safety measures required to execute the operation properly I feel like we would be a lot closer to the $7k number than the $250 number
You just take the boat to the travel lift and it hoists out pretty easy.
Under 1 or 2 boat bucks for in/out lift, dry storage, and paint if you DIY is reasonable for smaller vessels, like under 30’.
The tough part is scheduling and finding a boatyard if there’s not one close.
If you don't enjoy working on boats owning one sure would get expensive. I guess I'm lucky in that I don't have to pretend? Sure beats office politics, I wish it paid nearly as well as computers.
This can be done for free by just beaching the boat and working during low tide. Although that can be illegal nowadays in some places. Plus a 40 foot boat is much larger than required for cruising anywhere you want- if your boat fits on a trailer it is not only easy to paint, but probably can get by without any.
I didn't factor in haul out and storage because that's a separate thing from bottom paint. Haul out and transport costs about $1k/yr and storage cost over the winter is a further $1k.
Hourly labor rates are $0, I share ownership with 2 other people and we all pitch in.
If you're an engineer, I'm just going to x3 to x10 that time estimate to come to something realistic, just like I do with the engineers at work.
That way it includes going to buy the paint and sandpaper, putting the boat in a drydock or otherwise on land, finding and dragging out the tools and getting power to them, drying the boat, cleaning it, eating, toilet breaks, taping off the edges etc, letting the paint dry, cleaning up everything afterwards, putting the boat back into the water and probably tons more that I missed.
It depends. For example, if the previous paint contains environmentally harmful compounds, you can not sand it without the infrastructure to collect the dust. The details depend on the location (regulation), but typically you need to hire this out.
Sanding takes multiple person-days and can be the wrong method (depending on details). Media blasting (like soda) is much preferred but requires machines and infrastructure to collect the run-off. In ideal situations, sanding is not necessary at all.
It can be several boat bucks, or just about a hundred dollars. It depends.
It does contain harmful compounds. It wouldn't work to prevent growth otherwise. You use a random orbit sander hooked up to a shop vac just like when you sand anything else (unless you prefer dust going everywhere).
For a 40' sailboat it doesn't take multiple person days, it takes about a quarter of a person day. More if you really have to take off a lot of layered up material. And you're right, blasting would work better in that case.
> It does contain harmful compounds. It wouldn't work to prevent growth otherwise.
Nowadays there exists bottom paints such as polysiloxane based ones that work by creating a very hard and smooth surface that critters find it very hard to attach to, rather than poisoning them.
There are levels of toxicity. For some old paints, allowing the dust or run-off from pressure washing to touch the ground would be violating some regulation. Removing those old paints is more complicated. They need to be removed completely and cleanly, so sanding is a bad choice.
This isn't the case for any paint now purchasable, but most still contain biocides that you want to avoid for your own health when cleaning or sanding.
7k$ is about what yards quoted for such a job in NorCal. It's easy to DIY if you know what to do, but (1) it's a nasty job (2) it's toxic (3) it takes time and (4) you still end up paying about 2k$ if you're thrifty (in NorCal). I both hired and DIYd the job and it's a wash as to whether one prevails over the other. If I were doing nothing else but boating fulltime, I'd DIY it. But I have a job and family.
Hi, 45' boat owner here. Steps are pull the boat out by travel lift and block it. Power wash the bottom. Put up dust barrier. Don tyvek suit and mask. Sand with dust hose. Power wash the bottom. Paint first coat. Dry. Paint Second coat. Dry. Lift boat move blocking pads. Paint pad area. Dry. Paint Second coat. Dry. Launch boat by travel lift. Paint is $320 per gallon I need 2 gallons and a quart. Total time is 2 days if they hustle, 3 if the pull is late in the day. Lucky for me, they have not found blisters or any thing that takes fiberglass work, that adds time.
Last time I had it done it was $6450 including tax. 7 boat bucks.
Your process, while undeniably more correct than mine, is substantially more involved. Mine goes like this:
1. In the fall, drive the boat onto the hauler's trailer, unstep the masts, and transport it to the yard. Place on blocks and pressure wash.
2. Winterize the boat, wait for spring.
3. In the spring, break out the shop vac and sander and sand the hull. Since it's a multi season ablative paint, don't sand it all off--just enough to smooth it out and get the dried, hard top layer off.
4. Roll on a coat of paint.
5. When the truck arrives to splash the boat, slap some paint on the spots where the stands' pads were, and where the blocks were under the keel.
6. Step and rig the masts.
7. Splash the boat and go sailing.
Steps 3-7 take place on two consecutive days, along with a bunch of other maintenance activities.
I find sailing to be a fun low cost, sometimes even slightly profitable hobby… I own a very small (17 foot) cruising sailboat I maintain myself and get endless fun for less than the average teenager spends on a cell phone. It has an even smaller sailing dinghy/tender I built myself from old redwood fence planks. It would be the last thing I would sell even if destitute- because although small I could live on it for free, and can also use it to get fresh seafood for free- not to mention traveling without fuel!
(to paraphrase Sterling Hayden) my body is only about 6ft long… I sleep as well and have just as much fun on a 17 foot boat as I would on a 184ft boat- and despite being small mine is much more seaworthy than Bayesian was.
This is true in many things. Most car mods make the car objectively worse unless you really need the niche thing the mod does - and even if you think you do, be really sure.
I'm a full-time RVer and see this all the time with diesel trucks. The trucks get "deleted" and modded for more power and to disable the DEF system. Almost everyone I've known throughout the years begins having transmission trouble within months, especially after heavy load. A few swear by it. I've got a very expensive Cummins and I'm hellbent to leave it stock (and under warranty).
the issue isnt that they disabled their DEF system or deleted their DPF or EGR, it's that they probably installed new ECUs or flashed new fuel maps or something and boosted the power beyond the torque abilities of the transmission attached. In a lot of diesel RVs the transmissions are normally good to 2,000lb-ft, but the engines can be pushed beyond that pretty easily.
My truck owning friends like to blow through transmissions at 50-60K miles by driving their trucks like sports cars and aggressively short shifting while on power. None of them do “truck things” so it’s always a head scratcher as to why they continue to do this.
AFAIU modern diesels have lower combustion temperatures in order to limit NOx formation. I imagine this comes at a cost in thermodynamic efficiency.
Similarly particle filters, catalytic converters and whatnot reduce efficiency via exhaust backpressure.
So all in all, reducing non-CO2 emissions do come at a cost in CO2 emissions (or fuel consumed, if you like). Is it as much as 15%? No idea.. And is it all worth it? I'd argue yes, old-school diesel exhaust is nasty stuff.
Yes, this is the exact trade from Dieselgate, as well - higher combustion temperatures increase efficiency, reducing CO2 output, but at the expense of much higher NOx production. It’s easily 15% or more.
Exhaust back pressure is not an issue at all on diesels because they all run big turbos.
As for your later point...I very much concur. I started masking (n95) during the pandemic, and haven't stopped. I have a... large number of health issues including several respiratory ones. Exhaust in general really is nasty stuff. I live in pretty quiet smallish (100k) town, and it can be bad enough around here with all the pollen, but I wasnt recently on a whirlwind trip through the north east that saw me visit the dense urban cores of DC, Philly, Manhattan, and Boston. The difference in odor on the occasions I'd take my mask off on the sidewalk were kinda shocking as someone not used to it.
Out of curiosity do you live in the Great Lakes basin? I moved from Indiana to the West Coast, and I am always shocked at how bad the air quality is when I go back, even in rural areas. During wild fire season I monitor AQI, and when I zoom out I always see that Indiana is just as bad as the smokiest days on the West Coast.
Something about the large, hardly noticeable depression traps bad air at a regional level. I wouldn’t move back for a myriad of reasons, but everyone is always surprised when I list air quality as one.
Similar migration (IN->CA), it has changed my life. I had the worst sinus/migraine issues growing up and my breathing has dramatically improved after moving out of Midwest, even compared on the worst wildfire weeks out here.
Coming from NWI, I know the mills had a lot to do with subpar air quality, but I had similar issues when I lived on the far Northside of Chicago so it seems to be more regionally affecting.
It's a similar top reason on my list to not living there long term again
North Carolina. Locally it's not so much exhaust type stuff, but all the damn pollen, which I'm somewhat allergic too. Pine trees for miles. I'm about 50 miles inland from the coast so lots of wetlands so in the summer (Which means basically... late March through mid October - it's going to hit 82 here toomorrow) it's oppressively hot and humid.
> Exhaust back pressure is not an issue at all on diesels because they all run big turbos.
Not sure what you're arguing here. Isn't it quite obvious that resistance in the exhaust system means that the engine has to do more work to push the exhaust gases out; work that otherwise could be used to turn the crankshaft. Now of course a lot of that extra energy is wasted in any case, particularly if there's nothing like a turbocharger to make use of it.
Practically all diesels have turbos. You have literally have to go back to tiny tractor engines form
The 60s to
Find ones that aren’t. Turbos already provide a ton of back pressure. What’s downstream of that is pretty irrelevant
My tractor from the early 00s doesn't have a turbo. Plenty of VW and Mercedes Benz cars built in the 80s and 90s don't have turbos.
Backpressure aft of the turbo is something you really want to avoid because it makes the turbine much less effective. The whole point is to use a pressure and thermal gradient to do work.
I was under the impression the engine had to be run hotter in order to break down the NOx particulates in the exhaust gas recirculation scheme which led to higher fuel burn.
hmmm interesting. In a gasoline engine with high temperatures, NOx is produced, but it is fixed by the catalytic converter. So I guess that's not possible with a diesel, so they have to lower temperatures. That must lower the efficiency of the engine because (I think) the temperature difference governs efficiency.
Currently only smaller engines are EGR+DPF only. It takes having an SCR(&DEF) system to reduce emissions to legal limits on most larger engines now and the technology has been combined to have an engine with EGR+DPF&SCR(&DEF).
There are issues with engines and the active regeneration that has to occur in order to clean the DPF(basically engine has to get very hot and burn out the buildup) and also issues with DEF, which is an ammonia solution, both with the electronic dosing units failing and solution purity.
I’m curious how combustion temperatures are lowered like you say - is it a pv=nrt relationship hinging on changes in compression ratio or something like injector technology?
Yes, the latest generation diesel engines have lower compression ration than engines from a couple decades ago. Maybe something like 16:1 instead of 19:1. But also exhaust gas recirculation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_gas_recirculation
The U.S. diesel tuning crowd seemingly never discuss air/fuel ratios. This is a huge mistake. Also it's important to understand how much torque your transmission is rated for and to not stray beyond it. It's possible to reliably extract more performance than the manufacturer supplied but you have to understand what you're getting into. Turning it up to 11 and "rolling coal" is gonna get expensive, and it's super dumb.
Really depends on which crowd you're talking about.
The "I bought a tuner" or "I bought a kit" guys don't care or know enough to care.
Once you start talking about people who are reading turbo specs and whatnot people do very much care (because turbos and injectors are expensive and you want them both to be compatible so they get the most out of each other).
I disagree the diesel crowd doesn’t discuss air/fuel ratios but perhaps I’m misunderstanding something. Sizes and types of turbos, fuel pumps, injector nozzles are frequently discussed.
I do agree rolling coal is dumb but most/many daily diesel drivers don’t like it either, have always seen it as kind of a high school thing.
Maybe they've wisened up more recently but I've never seen an AFR gauge in a tuned diesel in the U.S., however they're as common as EGT and boost pressure monitoring elsewhere.
You can infer the same information it would get you via boost and EGT and whether or not your exhaust visually indicates unburnt fuel. You also don't need super precise AFR in a diesel like you do a high strung turbo gas engine.
Wide band O2 sensors are unreliably enough that they're kind of a pain to keep working accurately long term if you're not on a racecar maintenance schedule and if you aren't tuning things to those extremes you don't need that level of precision anyway.
Basically it just kinda adds up to "not worth it" for street vehicles
Those people are outnumbered 100:1 by people who simply deleted their trucks when the relevant parts gave them problem and kept the power at stock levels. Those people don't have a reason to brag anything like the "muh 100hp tune" people do so you don't hear about them.
In my final high school years, my parents gifted me a 1980 Corolla, and it became my experimental electronics lab for a while.
I installed a pull-out stereo, a separate amplifier, various permanent and movable speakers, etc. I mostly had the pros installed them, but I was always tweaking things at the wire-harness level. I enjoyed my music EXTRA LOUD, with minimal distortion.
And I had one of those basic aftermarket alarm systems. And there I was, constantly tripping the alarm for various reasons, and we lived in a safe neighborhood, so it was mostly an additional annoyance when I set it off, or armed it, or disarmed it: I was being super ostentatious.
So my proudest DIY mod was to install a shiny toggle switch in the dashboard. The toggle switch had the sole function of disabling the alarm by cutting its power. So I basically handed it to the crooks who came along in a few weeks to steal all my cassettes. But honestly, I doubt that anyone on that block was sorry to see me separated from my music at that point.
Most mods in recent cars seem to just undo some of the regulatory emissions controls in exchange for a bit of performance. Engines aren’t leaving much on the table nowadays. CPU overlocking is going the same way.
It depends on the mod. Some mods are easily an improvement; new tires are probably a good example here, because automakers frequently install crappy tires at the factory because of some sort of deal with the tire company, and worse, replacement for that same model of tire end up being much more expensive than better tires in the same size, probably because many consumers mistakenly think they need the exact same tire.
But yeah, most "enthusiast" mods are a waste of money and make the vehicle worse.
I've been sailing on a 13 meter long boat in 40 knot winds, and that mast looks to have more area than the total sail we had up. The moment the wind imparts on such a tall mast must be massive.
Eh, there's some nuance there; the shipbuilder claims they didn't properly prepare and the crew say they did prepare. The limited evidence so far seems to side with the crew.
Old wooden sailing ships had masts that were somewhat retractable in that the upper spars could be removed and taken down on deck. But this isn't really practical with modern aluminum or carbon fiber masts. And it would complicate the rigging.
People have been successfully modifying vessels to better fit their uses for thousands and thousands of years. This wasn't even modified after delivery. It was built to order this way by the OEM. Everything has tradeoffs. Sometimes people go too far or choose the wrong attributes. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
People have not been making vessels with 237ft masts for thousands of years. That boat literally had one of the tallest mast ever to exist on a boat. You combine the “extreme” nature of this boat with an extreme weather event and you get an extremely outlier outcome
Materials science has advanced quite a bit since the Preussen though. Aluminum, or even carbon fiber masts, rod standing rigging, Dyneema (UHMWPE) ropes, etc., all add up and drastically reduces weight.
Not saying the Bayesian design was or wasn't insane, I don't know, but my point is that it shouldn't be judged compared to what was done over 100 years ago.
Yes, the yacht is a much smaller ship but it has half as many masts it's masts are aluminum, it has engines so it doesn't have to run sail in poor conditions to maintain control authority and benefits from 150yr of improvements to watertightness.
I get that everyone wants to act smug because "everybody knows that you don't put big weight high up, hehehe, stupid billionares" but I'm betting that when the dust settles, the circle jerking dies down and the reports get published the end result will be the mast being a contributory factor (I'm betting on the reduction in righting moment rather than wind area) at best and that the outcome would not have been that much more unavoidable had the same other currently unknown errors been made on the other ships of the class.
A modern ship in good state doesn't just sink in minutes from capsizing. Other stuff had to have gone wrong here too. These vessels are designed that you can spend all day burying the bow in wave after wave. A little dip of one gunnel into the water should not be catastrophic. TFA discusses this.
Having a home designed (previous owner) world sailing vessel with a mast that is bigger then the original designer's spec. It made it around cape horn and has seen a lot of high latitude low atmospheric pressure no problem.
I've heard it argued that a longer mast makes the boat more stable like a tightrope walker with a pole.
Not GP or mech eng, but I suspect something similar to the following:
Sail area ~square mast height
Mast wind force under sail ~linear sail area
Mast diameter ~square mast wind force under sail
Mast wind force reefed ~linear mast diameter
If that's right, then you're in quadratic shit. How much bigger was the mast, a metre taller or - like the Bayesian - tens of metres?
The main problem is various vents along the side of the hull. Typically these are placed closer to the centreline of the vessel such that they can't be flooded at extreme heel angles. On luxury vessels they are placed out of sight of guests and in this case along the hull. Hatches into the water tight compartments were close to the centreline but in this case flooding would have occurred rapidly through the various ventilation systems instead.
The boat builder will blame the crew for not closing these but I doubt there was any procedure to actually close them. The engine needs to run to generate power and the engine needs fresh air and an exhaust.
I’m baffled (boom boom) as to why the vents aren’t designed such that they don’t allow water ingress - surely this would just be a matter of a manifold with a float in it, or a Tesla valve or similar. Fails safe, no power required.
Thankfully, international shipping safety standards aren’t left up to individual manufacturers. Having worked on ships worldwide for several years, I’ve seen how each major incident drives tighter, more effective regulations.
The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), established in 1974, is continually updated based on lessons from past accidents, mandating strict requirements for all ships over a certain size. Parts of SOLAS even apply universally to all ships on any voyage, regardless of size. https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International...
Was there any regulation limiting the placement of external vents beyond a certain threshold? Or was it just a gentleman’s agreement between designers?
I don't work in the maritime industry so I might easily be wrong, but my understanding is that these rules are generally enforced not via national laws directly but via insurance. You can build any kind of ship you like, but then you have these classification societies that verify whether a ship has been built to standards, and if not they won't certify it and you'll have a very hard time getting insurance for your vessel. And in the end national laws tend to say things like your ship needs to be insured etc., not directly how it must be constructed.
The issue with maritime insurance, is that ocean going vessels spend a great deal of time in other countries from where the owner registers the ship, and also time in international waters, which are not governed by the laws of any country.
So you average insurance company is not interested in providing insurance.
If you want to read more about the history of martime insurance, you could start with the history of Lloyds of London.
I would gently remind you and others to read the room carefully on this topic. While a lot of people on HN didn’t know Mike, Stephen, or their families personally, a lot of people who knew them personally are on HN.
Boeing is a company, and companies don’t make decisions. People do. So who at Boeing is motivated enough to take on the personal liability of a first degree murder conviction?
> who at Boeing is motivated enough to take on the personal liability of a first degree murder conviction
Say an exec at Boeing paid someone to pay someone to 'handle' the situation. "Will no one rid me of these meddlesome whistleblowers - oops I dropped my huge luggage case of unmarked bills" kind of thing... I'm not saying they did, to be very clear, just answering this hypthetical.
Where would you put the odds of that person ever facing "a first degree murder conviction"? If it's anywhere over 1%, I think you might be naive, and would benefit from looking at actual conviction rates for serious crimes (~2%) [0].
Even if they were incredibly sloppy about it, the motivation to admit in front of the world that Boeing did this to multiple whistleblowers is strongly in the wrong direction.
And as others have pointed out, repeatedly, Boeing is in the business of killing people. Billions of easy dollars are at stake.
So, who at Boeing might be motivated enough to take the <1% chance to keep raking in billions of dollars, protect America's 'reputation' (such as it is), and personally keep cashing in 6 or 7 figures a year? Any of them. Damn near all of them. Easily over 80%. It's not a job for people of conscience.
>and would benefit from looking at actual conviction rates for serious crimes (~2%) [0].
Murders have much better clearance rates than other "serious crimes" (whatever that means), so the chances of getting caught is probably far higher than 2%.
Good thing it’s always suicide via gunshot to the back of the head and drowning in freak storms and accidental slips out of hospital windows that keeps taking out these journalists and whistleblowers and not murder!
If you click the link in the article to the author's paper [0], "serious crimes" are defined in detail...
And you were correct to call that out. Thanks! Happy to be wrong on this one.
True conviction rates for specifically reported murder/manslaughter are generally around 50%. Theft and Burglary indeed skew the numbers a lot, with an extremely low clearance rate and vastly more reports. (All theft/burglary losses combined are only a fraction of wage theft [1], for perspective.)
All that said - if these were murders, they were committed by people with a vastly different set of resources compared to the average 'crime of passion'. I doubt that conviction statistics re professional murder are easy to come by, but I'd bet everything I own that they're significantly lower than 50%.
And how many of these recently-employed and recently-deceased people were whistle-blowers? I mean, I don't know, it's Boeing, it could be a high percentage.
Idk if you think someone owes you 4 billion, maybe you'd start thinking about not letting it slide, and make an example out of him. His co-defendant, did within a few days as well, which is interesting. People die for a lot less, and if you have money on that magnitude, perhaps you can get someone to stage an accident, people die for a lot less.
That assumption is wrong is if you look at the world as whole. A big big old Soviet country comes to mind. High ratio of 5th floor window related accidents.
Do you think those 5th floor murders were out of spite? I don't think so. Probably they had a very clear motive: Preventing the victims from threatening the current government and scaring others to fall back in line.
I don't think it can be reasonably argued HP murdered the people who scammed them to scare people from trying to scam them in the future.
Humans murder humans for all sorts of idiotic reasons. Are you so confident a corporation cannot hold a grudge, or more simply, see value in “sending a message?”
Maybe the net benefit is more cowardly journalists and whistleblowers across the board.
No sarcasm intended, from the details of both incidents they seem unrelated and not meant to send a message. Whatever the motives it seems unlikely anyone could arrange a storm to target the yacht.
Gunports were meant to be used while sailing. (Good documentary: the pirates of caribean)
reason according to wikipedia:
> Vasa sank because she had very little initial stability—resistance to heeling under the force of wind or waves acting on the hull. This was due to the distribution of mass in the hull structure, and to the ballast, guns, provisions, and other objects loaded on board placing a lot of weight too high in the ship. This put the centre of gravity very high relative to the centre of buoyancy, thus making the ship readily heel in response to little force, and not providing enough righting moment for her to become upright again.
My memory of vasa museum:
At that time, ship designers not necessarily calculated center of mass and center of buoyancy.
They did, however the vasa was modified mid-build to have higher ceilings in the royal stareroom and therefore a substantially higher centre of mass, as this change had knock-on effects all over the design. They added something like a meter and a half of height, and it was substantially more massive than necessary as it was built into already laid down timbers that had been intended to accommodate a lower topdeck level.
So… there are parallels. A wealthy owner saying “I want this”, and a shipbuilder deviating from a previously established design to meet their whims, resulting in compromised stability.
The way this is told in elementary school in Sweden (source is Swedish) is that the Vasa was too narrrow, given it's height. So then the question is, how much wider should she've been to carry the extra height. Vasa's sister ship, Äpplet (the Apple) had a similar deck layout and was about a meter wider. As a layman, considering the technology at the time, it does not sound so much more wider.
A small amount of beam makes a tremendous difference in hull stability.
Anyone who's had experience with rowing shells will be quite aware of this. Beginner's / open-water vs. flat-water shells differ in width by only a few centimetres, but the difference in handling is profound. Both are unstable to the absolute novice, but even a fairly experienced rower from a wider shell will find the handling of a narrower one much more precarious.
(Both are also inherently unstable with CoG well above midpoint, but the dynamic stabilisation provided by the rower or crew is much more critical for the narrower, and faster, shells.)
>As a layman, considering the technology at the time, it does not sound so much more wider.
Think about the lever arm of that "other half meter" of ship that you're dragging up into the air when you heel the ship over plus the increased displacement of the half meter you're burying into the water.
Remember, ships aren't really subject to huge propulsive forces relative to their mass compared to land vehicles. So something like an extra meter is gonna make a pretty big difference.
That was normal-enough practice. In a good harbor, in good weather...any normal ship would have been okay.
The real problem was the Vasa's design & weight distribution - which were disastrously unstable. Which problem had previously been demonstrated in simple dockside testing. Here's Wikipedia's account:
> In the summer of 1628, the captain responsible for supervising construction of the ship, Söfring Hansson, arranged for the ship's stability to be demonstrated for Vice Admiral Fleming, who had recently arrived in Stockholm from Prussia. Thirty men ran back and forth across the upper deck to start the ship rolling, but the admiral stopped the test after they had made only three trips, as he feared the ship would capsize.
A combination of factors: Excessively narrow beam, additional gun deck, resultant high centre-of-gravity, healing over, and then shipping water through gunports.
Gunports are most usually open when guns are firing, which occurs as a ship is under way. Merely having open gunports should not imperil a ship.
The Bayesian similarly had a high CoG and windage courtesy its tall mast, and was apparently susceptible to shipping water should it heel sharply and/or encounter high seas, as seems to have been the case.
Were mistakes made? The retractable keel was up. I'm no grizzled mariner, but that feels like a thing you'd want to do in a storm. Feels like at that point your yacht has all the stability of a guy standing up in a canoe.
I sail a 1962 Block Island 40[1] with a retractable bronze centerboard. Granted, it's no mega yacht, but it has an aluminum mast that is at the thinnest 3/16" because at the time people didn't understand the material and were afraid of it. The main boom is a solid wood tree trunk that takes 3 of us to rig every year. Its solid fiberglass hull is 2" thick at the keel, tapering to about 1" at the toe rail, with solid fiberglass decks tapering from about 1" at the rail to about 3/8" where they meet the cabin top. In other words, this is a heavy, overbuilt, brick shithouse of a boat. But it's designed well and has enough ballast to be safe with the board retracted.
The fact that the keel was up is no excuse at all.
Adjacently, one glaring omission from the Times' coverage was reports of those gigantic cabin windows shattering. I wish they'd addressed that. I didn't know about the unseaworthy vents, but just looking at the pictures it seemed obvious that if you put that boat on its ear in any kind of weather you'd break those windows and sink.
I've had my boat with the rail 2' under water in 6'+ choppy Buzzards Bay conditions gusting over 30kt and it was a hoot. When I imagine a floating hotel like the craft in the article in a similar situation, that's probably a fatality. I wouldn't be able to sleep onboard a boat like that.
EDIT: There are also numerous examples in the historical record of whaling ships, clipper ships, war ships, merchant ships, and the like getting knocked down in storms and besides maybe crew being washed overboard and busted rigging getting through it relatively unscathed. It's absolutely inexcusable and shameful in the year 2024 for this to happen.
It's pretty shocking that a boat with no sail area could get knocked over bad enough to sink that quickly. Something had to be seriously wrong with the design. I'm not particularly salty, but I've sailed in 25-30kts with the rail buried and not even had a second thought about the boat sinking. I've been knocked down with full sails up in 25kts, and had a broach while racing -- sailboats can be expected to spend at least brief amounts of time on their side, even if you're not out doing anything particularly dumb. I just can't fathom how a boat wouldn't be able to survive 2 minutes on its side and still be signed off by a builder.
It's a thing you can expect to happen, like falling while downhill skiing. Only the most extreme situations are like "if you fall, you die". If it's like that every time you go out, the prognosis is grim.
EDIT: I can actually count on one hand the number of times I've been in situations like that and while it's a hell of a lot of fun it's not something you bring your friends, family, children, etc along for..
I’ve only been sailing a few years, but I racked up about 500nm of racing this summer. I’ve only been in these situations a few times, but had a ton of confidence in the boat and the skipper. It’s honestly a ton of fun, and feels more dangerous than it is, since the boats are (supposed to be) designed to handle this. That said, I keep the family away from this sort of thing, and take them out on our family friendly coastal cruiser for more leisurely sails.
In order to enter e.g. the Newport-Bermuda race you need a minimum stability rating of 115. IIRC Bayesian's angle of vanishing stability was 75° keel up, and the vents started taking on dangerous amounts of water at 45°. That's not a boat I'd ever feel safe on! The skiing analogy would be like every single run is maximum consequence.
In this case, though, the boat was designed to run in many conditions (e.g., under engine, at anchor, etc.) with the keel retracted. The keel was only intended for use under sail.
Presumably the thinking was that with all the sails down, there was no need to have the keel lowered. Which it probably wasn't, until the boat suddenly gets hit hard by an unexpected gust from the side and the windage of the rig is sufficient to capsize it.
What would the advantage to not have it lowered be? Like you're sitting there, sails down, anchored. Why would you go "Nope, better if keel isn't lowered"?
> Why would you go "Nope, better if keel isn't lowered"?
We don't know yet. The rumour is that the mechanism of the extendable keel was prone to banging in the lowered state. You don't want to be disturbing the sleep of the guests paying you fortunes. That plus the also rumoured fact that the operating manual only required it to be lowered when sailing could explain why the crew did not opt to lower it at anchor.
All of the above is based on internet whispers. The investigation report hopefully will answer this question with authority.
Pretty ironic that the single mast, that was added for sailing speed, was the likely cause yet they never used the sails. They just enjoyed it looking imposing and different.
These stories sound so abstract, and it’s hard to remember that real people suffered a real tragedy. I was visiting my friend at Princeton, when an acquaintance of his remarked that both of her parents were on the yacht. Really brought home how real it all was.
I don't know... Somebody posting on a message board about the parents of an acquintance of a friend is a lot of steps. I don't think an anecdote that indirect makes the event any more concrete for the reader.
For me it was more of an “oh sh*t, that person had a family.” And I feel like it’s easy for that to get lost when reading about people generally. Especially famous and wealthy people.
Nice windup but I'll take the bait. It's hardly the same, is it? Doing something known to be very safe versus doing something known to be very dangerous, knowing full well that you're violating the law. What do you propose instead?
Right so Mike Lynch was in a huge legal case in the US, and ran a company that was large at least by UK standards, which meant that his action affected thousands of people, making this noteworthy.
People aren't surprised that crappy overloaded rafts sink. But they're surprised that top-of-the-line yachts sink in a minor squall.
It's not confusing to me why one is more noteworthy than the other, technically. The wealth of the loss of life isn't really what's the difference here.
One death is a tragedy, ten thousand deaths is a statistic. Human psyche is built to understand death this way, don't pretend we are not. They are merely alluding to the fact that there are many millions of impossibly sad and tragic deaths daily. Why do we choose to care about some and not others? Abstraction is a necessary mechanism.
> There is a very strong opposition against people smugglers in Europe. Many people are trying to stop them! There are protests in streets!
The people that are protesting in the streets against this seem mostly motivated by xenophobia and racism rather than concern over the well-being of the would-be immigrants.
>Beyond being exceptionally tall — more than 40 feet higher than the original foremast — it was also very heavy, at least 24 tons of aluminum, possibly more.
the yacht is 500 ton, 4m draught (with the retractable keel not extended). The mast is 72m height. So, the 24 tons at say 30m above center of buoyancy require - minimum - 240 ton at 3m below the center of buoyancy. Add to that that the center of buoyancy is inside the body at some depth under the deck, so the weight of the body above the center of buoyancy also needs corresponding weight (lever momentum, ie. mass x lever length) below the center of buoyancy. Doesn't look good.
This isn't a square rig, but a bermuda rig. You don't go climbing on those.
And while the article doesn't explicitly say that sails was stowed, it does mention that they were only under sail propulsion once during the trip and that they started the engines to maneuver into the wind. While a (rolling? I don't know the English term) sail is somewhat exposed to the elements even while stowed, its rolled up fairly tight.
In short, I strongly doubt either wet sails or climbing crew contributed in any way to the sinking.
Correct. But my point was about the design & stability calculations. Not about the rigging state at critical moment, when this vessel failed. (And if things go seriously wrong up in the rigging, a few of your crew might just have to go climbing. Just like "sails could be wet", safety margins must allow for that.)
The rumour I heard on “The Yacht Report” youtube channel is that when the retractable keel was down it was noisy. (Probably because there was enough play in the mechanism so it was banging around as the waves passed.) And the thought was, again according to this unverified rumour, that they only needed to extend the retractable keel when they had the sails up.
Now obviously nobody sane would make the knowing trade to risk their life for a bit of quiet. But it is easy to imagine the crew getting into the habit of retracting the keel so they can keep the rich guests comfortable. And especially if they were doing that on the regular and nothing bad happened ever people would normalise it and see it as the correct operating procedure. One might view this as a form of normalisation of deviance. “The gradual process through which unacceptable practice or standards become acceptable. As the deviant behaviour is repeated without catastrophic results, it becomes the social norm for the organisation.”
(Technically speaking of course it is only normalisation of deviance if this was unacceptable practice. If it is true that the ship’s operating manual did not require them to have the keel down in that configuration then it is not deviance and then the term does not apply.)
Will be interesting to read the exact findings about this in the investigation report once it is out.
I thought the keel only needed to be down when they were something like 70 knots out at sea with the sails out, otherwise it was in the 'keel lite' position.
Like yourself, I await the investigation report, however, I suspect that will be a bit underwhelming and only confirm speculation. It is not good to speak ill of the dead, so it will take a lot longer before someone tells the unvarnished truth. I suspect that will be a story of folly, with the big mast being the 'invisible clothes'.
We have lots of these stories at the moment, from Oceangate all the way to the Boeing 'projects' that have been off the mark. You could 'explain it like I am five' to write a really good story book for bedtime reading for kids, going from the depths of the ocean to space, with follies that follow the same story, all the way. What a great time to be alive.
>One section of the Bayesian Stability book related to the use of the moveable keel… and defines when it must be lowered. In this vessel’s case it was required to be lowered when using sails, and/ or when over 60 nautical miles offshore (regardless of whether sailing or only using engines). At all other times, it could be in the raised position.
Perhaps interesting for people, 'knots' is actually a measure of speed rather than distance and relates to the practice of counting how many knots in a line (rope) went over the stern of the boat during a certain time, giving the speed of the boat relative to the water (https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/knots-measuring-speed-s...)
Absolutely right. My first interpretation of that "something like 70 knots out at sea" was that it is the purported limit speed over which they must lower their keel. But that interpretation would be... improbable to say the least.
70 knots (~130 km/h, ~80 m/h) is ridiculously fast for a sailing ship.
I just checked and the fastest ever instantaneous speed reported by a sailing ship is lower than 70 knots. (68.33 knots to be precise)
I felt that I had misspoke with 'knots'! I only know miles, but miles are a land thing and I knew they used something else on the water. Should have checked sources!
> You could 'explain it like I am five' to write a really good story book for bedtime reading for kids, going from the depths of the ocean to space, with follies that follow the same story, all the way
From what I understand, leaving the keel up would be reasonable enough if a boat was rigged as designed. Typically the boat would be ballasted differently if you have a retractable keel/centreboard. Sounds like converting the rig from a ketch to a sloop is probably the root of the design issues, combined with some troubling risks of down flooding from the various vents mounted close to the water line.
You should have positive righting moment with the keel up and sails rigged, otherwise it's totally unsafe. When you're sailing downwind you have the keel up for speed. If you get knocked down in this situation--a broach, for instance--the boat needs to be able to right itself otherwise you probably die. This boat sank when it got knocked down, and it doesn't seem the keel had anything to do with it.
Do you know that raising the keel when sailing downwind was standard procedure on ships like this, or are you extrapolating from experience on dinghies and small keelboats? There are many yachts where keels are retractable, but left down when sailing downwind (the Hobie 33 comes to mind).
Check out the link somewhere here in this discussion above from the previous Captain of this boat explaining the architecture of the boat and the keel situation. It sounds like that probably had less to do with it than the vents being opened to run the HVAC.
In context he was trying to place blame on the crew, so he clearly meant "unsinkable when crewed correctly." He goes on to claim that they must not have properly closed hatches &c. for the storm.
The Titanic, at least, _was_ largely operator error (they shouldn't have tried to avoid the iceberg unless they were certain that they could do so; it was designed for a head-on collision and _that_ would not have sunk it).
As a slight aside, if anyone is interested in the topic the 'standard' introductory text is apparently 'Principles of Yacht Design' by Larsson and Eliasson. In particular, including a chapter on stability calculations. You can find an older edition freely available on archive.org.
Seems like yachts are kind of like the private airline industry- when a super rich person can afford to request a bespoke design, safety requirements sometimes get eased. Plus less testing of the boat could be it. Pilots and captains for unique designs/mods might not have as much experience as commercial airlines: https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/is-flying-private-mor... One example is the standardization of buttons in an airplane make it easier to know where to locate the important latches in an emergency.
Also, it's possible some of these basic balancing and center-of-gravity considerations were already known over 500 years ago- it's when a novel feature gets prioritized that the fundamental stability of the design gets overlooked.
> Also, it's possible some of these basic balancing and center-of-gravity considerations were already known over 500 years ago
To nitpick, properly being able to do these kinds of stability calculations are a considerably newer invention. E.g. the famous Vasa ship capsized in 1628 because at that time ships were still designed based on rules-of-thumb and the experience/intuition of the builders, with no stability calculations done.
Pretty sure the builders knew the Vasa wasn't stable.
The King of Sweden wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.
Just 358 years later,
the people in charge of a different kind of ship,
named Challenger,
also wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.
>In the last part of the inquest held after the sinking, a group of master shipwrights and senior naval officers were asked for their opinions about why the ship sank. Their discussion and conclusions show very clearly that they knew what had happened, and their verdict was summed up very clearly by one of the captains, who said that the ship did not have enough "belly" to carry the heavy upperworks.[81] When other ships that predated stability calculations were found to lack stability, remedial action could be taken to increase the beam.
Also the original builder and his successor both died before completion. (Not suspiciously, but makes responsibility in construction harder)
The incompetente decision to anchor there. And to stay there with the forecast. Knowing you are the captain of a yacht with the tallest mast! They were anchoring on a sort of reef. Where wind and waves in strong winds can be very dangerous.
Further more no precisions the stay on deck, start the engine, get the guest on deck or on shore. This is what his Dutch neighbours did!
I didn't read the article but did it shed light on why some survived and some didn't? I am wondering if those who didn't survive probably died from trauma/injury during the capsizing, or was it because they were incapable of swimming in the rough waters?
> was it because they were incapable of swimming in the rough waters?
Maybe that was the case with the chef who was found outside of the vessel. The rest of the casualties unfortunately seems to have been trapped in the capsized vessel. (This is based on my present knowledge of rumours, the proper investigation is still on-going and our understanding might change.)
Silly tradeoff, but typical of motor sailors/sailing.
Wind isn't blowing the right direction? Easier to motor than tack. Sailing upwind? Easier to motor than have the guests stumbling into walls due to heel. Variable winds? No wind? Have to be at <place> by <time>? Easier to motor.
Further more, there was a forecast. But no real action.
You can blame the yacht builder. But then you are an incompetent captain..sailing in and accepting guest in a very dangerous environment.
This is not boat vents or the angle of the yacht on the water. It’s about a captain who should have make decisions, not to sail, not to anchor, get the guest off board. Lower more life rafts..
I don't really understand all the media hubbub about this. People die in private boats all the time, probably several more that week alone. But this is being treated like a major disaster and someone must be held responsible.
Is it just because it was some rich guy that died? I don't think that makes it worse in any way than any other accident where people died, to be honest.
I just don't really understand the outrage about this. When I hear that a young family is killed by a drunk driver I'm much more angry and sad. But you don't see the New York Times writing about those when they happen on the other side of the world. These people mattered too but they knowingly took a risk by camping out in the sea.
How many of them are poorly designed superyachts, though? Superyachts are perceived as extra safe, and surely design blunders like this one are outstanding in 21st century naval engineering. I think a lot of people on HN would love to read a postmortem on how exactly the process in an experienced engineering company got bent to cater to the client's preference enough to kill him, or at least a safety board investigation report.
1) Rich guy died 2) Crazy expensive luxury vehicle found to be secretly death trap 3) Millions/tens of millions of people are now familiar with luxury yachting thanks to the Below Deck TV shows 4) Undoubtedly some story of incompetence or negligence lurking
“Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, the company that owns Perini Navi, said that when operated properly, the Bayesian was ‘unsinkable.’”
I assign a rather low prior probability to any ship being “unsinkable”, so I’ll need better evidence than that before my posterior probability becomes more than minuscule
It's possible to come close. This is a U.S Coast Guard response boat being tested.[1] Using big straps and winches, it was pulled all the way over until it was upside down. It immediately righted itself.
Most modern rescue boats and lifeboats are self-righting. With proper hull design and enough foam flotation blocks in the right places, boats can be made to right themselves. Unless the boat is chopped into bits, it will float.
It's worth it for those classes of vessels. Their job is to handle very rough conditions. The price of such extreme stability is a rough ride.
Self-righting yachts exist.[2] But they look like rescue boats with nicer interiors.
Many recreational sailboats have enough flotation to survive 90 degrees of roll, with the sails flat on the water. This is called a "knockdown". In small craft, it's usually embarrassing but not a disaster. Larger sailing craft are usually built to avoid rolling that far.
There's a conflict between luxury and seaworthyness. The things you want for rough conditions, such as high freeboard and few openings, conflict with what people want in a luxury craft.
Bayesian apparently couldn't go past 45 degrees without water pouring in.
A stupidly tall and heavy mast allowed wind to push it that far over with no sails raised.
> Self-righting yachts exist.[2] But they look like rescue boats with nicer interiors.
> Many recreational sailboats have enough flotation to survive 90 degrees of roll, with the sails flat on the water. This is called a "knockdown". In small craft, it's usually embarrassing but not a disaster. Larger sailing craft are usually built to avoid rolling that far.
Offshore racing rules tend to specify things like minimum angle of vanishing stability (AVS), they tend to be around 130 degrees. Similarly yachts sold in the EU must fulfill ISO 12217-2 which, AFAIU, also requires a minimum AVS of 130 degrees.
Not sure if that applies to the Bayesian, it might be old or big enough to be exempt from these rules.
A former captain of the Bayesian wrote a 2-page note.[1]
"The downflooding angle for Bayesian was around 40-45 degrees". The Angle of Vanishing Stability was, he says, in the 75 to 90 degree range, depending on whether the moveable keel was down. The movable keel, he writes, weighed 60 tons. It had to be down when sails were raised, but usually wouldn't be lowered in harbor. There were 200 tons of fixed keel ballast.
Yes, I saw that writeup linked to in the discussion earlier. I'm no naval architect, but I'd imagine for such a big boat an AVS of 90 degrees sounds reasonable. But a downflooding angle of only 40-45 degrees, that's just bonkers.
The former captain says that's the angle at which the generator and HVAC air intakes flood. Those are closeable if the equipment is turned off. The US Coast Guard definition is "Downflooding angle means the static angle from the intersection of the vessel's centerline and the waterline in calm water to the first opening that cannot be closed weathertight and through which downflooding can occur."
So downflooding angle safety certification for bad weather apparently assumes the boat being in a buttoned-up condition. But, buttoned up, the yacht has no air conditioning or non-battery power. One article mentions that lowering the moveable keel for more stability results in a much noisier environment below decks. So, rigged fully for bad weather, it ceases to be a luxury yacht.
The ship was in harbor, at anchor. That's not usually a situation in which a ship is rigged for worst case conditions.
Here's a picture of the infamous mast.[1] It's not just a pole. There's a lot of structure with surface area. Nobody seems to have anticipated that wind on the bare mast system was enough to knock the boat down. But it was.
That's just an overview. The real question is, how did a heavily ballasted sailboat with no sails raised get knocked down by wind alone? Other boats nearby did not report large waves.
Nobody has really answered that yet.
About the best you can do is a boat that is fundamentally buoyant or (aka positive buoyancy) via a combination of materials and sealed spaces, which basically means you can submerge it, flip it, fill it with water, and it buoyancy is enough that it will come to the surface.
But if you overload it or damage it and compromise air spaces or break off or crush lighter-than-water materials (e.g., styrofoam filled fixtures and voids), then it's no longer unsinkable. So you're right, nothing is unsinkable. Not even when "operated properly" and maintained properly, there's no guarantee you won't run into unforeseen conditions. An unsinkable boat is as ridiculous as an uncrashable airplane or automobile.
NY Times found that an unusually tall mast, and the design changes it required, made the superyacht Bayesian, owned by a tech billionaire Michael Lynch, vulnerable. Lynch co-founded Autonomy and was celebrating his court case against HP when his yacht sank.
Actually the case that Lynch won was the US vs. Lynch criminal case. HP won their civil case against Lynch years ago (~$4 billion). The deal overall was a colossal failure by HP. The fraud was merely icing on the cake. "HP lost more than $30 billion in market capitalization during Apotheker's tenure, and on September 22, 2011, the HP Board of Directors fired him as chief executive and replaced him with fellow board member and former eBay chief Meg Whitman, with Raymond J. Lane as executive chairman. Although Apotheker served barely ten months, he received over $13 million in compensation." The Autonomy leftovers was eventually sold to OpenText. Also the previous HP CEO (Mark Hurd) went to work for Larry Ellison. He had the highest bonus for any CEO in 2008.
Didn't bother to read the domain and didn't remember the boats name, so I didn't quite understand the title at first. Funnily, it immediately occurred to me, that it must be "that boat", but I half-expected to see some Alex Jones meets Eliezer Yudkowsky attempt to calculate how likely this stuff is to happen using Bayesian inference.
You can't post like this here, and we ban accounts that do, so please don't do it again. You may not owe billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
