Dead or on the lamb?

[ArMaP]

One other thing I find strangely missing from the story.  Vessels of this length, under charter, are required to carry life rafts equalling 150% of the maximum capacity of the boat.  On this boat, this requirement would have meant multiple life rafts.  Life rafts are mounted on deck in such a way that they automatically inflate when they become bouyant in water (there are also other things which will auto-inflate them, often things like the EPIRB going bouyant).  Why were none of these deployed?

The survivors were on one of the rafts, so at least one was deployed.



If I'm not mistaken, only the cook was found dead outside the ship, the other bodies were found inside it.

[Encia22]

I'm wondering if any autopsy has been conducted at this point, and the whole thing will be blamed on the crew. This smells bad people, and the question is why.

Ok, perhaps something is getting lost in translation in the various news feeds.

Here, from our National Associated Press Agency (ANSA) which I found last night...

There are no signs of trauma on the bodies of lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, both of whom died in the Bayesian shipwreck off the coast of Porticello on August 19.

As expected, the cause of death was drowning.

These are the first results of the autopsies performed at the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Policlinico by Professor Antonella Argo appointed by the Termini Imerese prosecutor's office. The other two autopsies will be performed on Wednesday on the bodies of the president of the Morgan Stanley bank, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Anne Elizabeth Judith.

For the moment, due to difficulties in notifications, it has not yet been possible to assign the autopsies of the other three victims, Mike Lynch, the British magnate who had organized the boat trip, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and the ship's cook, Recaldo Thomas.

Lawyer Morvillo and his wife died of suffocation by drowning and at the moment, pending laboratory tests, there are no other causes linked to death.

Ok, so labratory tests still need to come in...

---

First, I strongly doubt any sort of a waterspout or downdraft type event... 

Ok, I've been reading that they now believe it to have been a Downburst, rather than a waterspout.

From: https://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/tra...gate-98886

Italian prosecutors said they believed that a downburst had hit the ship, contradicting early reports of a tornado or waterspout. In a downburst, air shoots down from the base of the cloud producing wind speeds of more than 100 mph (160km/h) before spreading out unpredictably on hitting the surface.

Thunderstorms are reasonably common in Europe during the late summer and widespread low pressure in August is thought to have increased the severity of the storms.

The International Centre for Waterspout Research confirmed 18 waterspouts off the coast of Italy on 19 August.

Unusually warm seas may also have increased the severity of the storms, with the Mediterranean hitting a record high sea temperature of 28.9° on 15 August.

Also, a slight correction to one of my earlier posts:

It appears the Bayesian didn't have a true "Black Box", but an AIS transponder, equipped with GPS. So, all they can get from that are the movements of the ship before the equipment went dead.

So, from an Australian news source, I found this description of the ships last moments...

An AIS tracking system sends information from onboard boats to coastal stations, alerting officials to movement and distress.

As part of a probe into just how the luxury 184ft yacht toppled and plunged to the bottom of the sea, killing seven people, cops are analysing the data.

It revealed that at 3.50am on Monday the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere reports.

Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.

After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.

By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.

  

[FlyingClayDisk]

An AIS tracking system sends information from onboard boats to coastal stations, alerting officials to movement and distress.

As part of a probe into just how the luxury 184ft yacht toppled and plunged to the bottom of the sea, killing seven people, cops are analysing the data.

It revealed that at 3.50am on Monday the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere reports.

Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.

After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.

By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.

So, there's another 9 minutes on top of the 16 minutes for passengers to escape.  A vessel shaking "violently" enough to pull the anchor free is a pretty notable event, and not something which would go unnoticed.  Yet, everyone was seemingly happily asleep in their cabins???  I don't think so.  Flooding in the engine room is going to set off multiple alarms all over the boat.  What, no one heard any of these alarms?

358 meters of drift is nearly a quarter of a mile.  The crew would have been alerted to this, if by nothing else the Anchor Drag alarm would have been going off, which would have mobilized the entire crew (if they were worth even one shit). An anchor drag alarm will go off if the boat moves more than 50 meters.  This boat drifted 7x times that number.

There's just WAY too many things wrong with this whole story!

edit - The Bayesian weighed 543 tons.  Even with a 1,000 mile per hour wind (which is impossible in nature), a 543 ton vessel doesn't drift a quarter of a mile in a matter of seconds.  That much mass takes a while to get moving.  Plus, given the vessel was at anchor, the winds would have initially turned the vessel into the wind, thus only the cross-section of the bow would have been exposed to the winds (i.e. the most streamlined portion of the vessel).  Even after the vessel broke free from it's anchorage, it still would have been dragging anchor on the bottom, further slowing its drift.  And, if the anchor somehow broke free from the vessel altogether, then something was seriously defective in the vessel itself or the anchor assembly.  (I've hung up an anchor in a man-made reef one time (made of tires chained together) and damn near ripped the bow section of the boat out trying to free it.  Wound up having to use the stern cleats, and even then I couldn't get it free, so had to cut the line and abandon the anchor).  Anchors don't just magically come free from a vessel once set.  Dragging anchor is common, but again, the anchor is still there dragging across the bottom.

And despite all this maelstrom, beyond anything known to man...NO other vessels in the area were affected?  C'mon!!

Somebody wanted these people dead.

[guyfriday]

So, there's another 9 minutes on top of the 16 minutes for passengers to escape.  A vessel shaking "violently" enough to pull the anchor free is a pretty notable event, and not something which would go unnoticed.  Yet, everyone was seemingly happily asleep in their cabins???  I don't think so.  Flooding in the engine room is going to set off multiple alarms all over the boat.  What, no one heard any of these alarms?

358 meters of drift is nearly a quarter of a mile.  The crew would have been alerted to this, if by nothing else the Anchor Drag alarm would have been going off, which would have mobilized the entire crew (if they were worth even one shit). An anchor drag alarm will go off if the boat moves more than 50 meters.  This boat drifted 7x times that number.

There's just WAY too many things wrong with this whole story!

That fact that the chef was the only member of the crew that died is really leaving credence to the idea that some of the passengers were either drugged or flat out poisoned. The more that comes out the more this appears to be a hit.

[FlyingClayDisk]

When the shit hits the fan, twenty five minutes is a really, really, long time!

[l0st]

I've held off saying anything up until now.  Ironically enough, I've been on a ship myself for the past 2 weeks!  LOL!  Anyway...

So a couple things here.

First, I strongly doubt any sort of a waterspout or downdraft type event.  I've been through the edge of a waterspout once in Florida in a 30' foot sportfish.  It was violent beyond imagination!  I've also been through microbursts while flying.  Neither of these was intentional, and both were violent almost beyond description.  In the waterspout incident, we were in the Gulf of Mexico about 15 miles off shore.  We saw the squall line percolate up and headed for shore.  Within minutes the squall line hit us and it was a complete white/blackout with rain; you couldn't see 10 feet.  All of a sudden we saw the rain start going sideways, and then upward diagonally.  I swung hard to port and pushed the throttles to the console.  The waterspout was so powerful it cleared out an area of rain around it like a tunnel up through the rain cloud.  We narrowly missed it, probably by 70 or 80 feet.  Even as it was, it ripped every piece of canvas off the boat and violently ripped anything not securely fastened down off the deck and hurled it in the water.  Fortunately none of us got thrown off (there were 3 of us).  It tore the plexiglass windshield clean off the center console!  Ripped the glued down cork off the console where the main compass was. 

I've watched the video on the first page.  There is canvas covering boats and furniture all over the deck.  None of it even lifted up.  That boat was NOT hit by a waterspout.  It just wasn't.  It may have encountered some sort of a rogue wave, but it wasn't a waterspout.  Neither was it a microburst, as they do the same thing but almost in reverse.  They are an intense sustained gust of wind (usually in excess of hurricane speeds (70+ knots)) directly downward (vertical).  When they hit the surface they blow horizontally across the surface (picture a hose spraying directly down against a concrete driveway, same basic idea).  Winds of that force would have ripped every shred of fabric and sent anything not attached to the deck (like bolted down, not just tied) flying in all directions.    I saw none of this in the video.  I see wind and rain in the video, but nothing severe enough to sink a vessel of that size.

Okay, next thing...vessels of that size just don't sink that fast; they just don't.  Leave every single hatch and water-tight door open, doesn't matter; they won't sink that fast.  There are too many spaces which trap air.  The vessel may heel over, or even capsize, but it's not going to sink...no unless it has a hole in it big enough to drive a tractor trailer through, and even then I doubt it would sink that fast.  Something ain't right.  I've seen yachts literally break in half and they still take longer than 16 minutes to sink.  Again, something ain't right.

When you add all these factors together, and couple them with the fact that nearby yachts were untouched and, I'm sorry, but I don't believe a single word of the published version of the events.  Not a word.

Now, I don't have a theory about what really happened, but I darn sure do have an opinion about the version of the events being circulated to date, and that is there is a lot more to this story than is being told.  I can completely believe the vessel went down stern first, and even believe that it half-submerged, BUT the events which led up to this happening would have been not only terrifying but also have given plenty of notice to all passengers that something was seriously wrong.

One other thing I find strangely missing from the story.  Vessels of this length, under charter, are required to carry life rafts equalling 150% of the maximum capacity of the boat.  On this boat, this requirement would have meant multiple life rafts.  Life rafts are mounted on deck in such a way that they automatically inflate when they become bouyant in water (there are also other things which will auto-inflate them, often things like the EPIRB going bouyant).  Why were none of these deployed?  This is something you can't even fuck up if you tried...it's all automatic.  UNLESS, of course, someone prevented them from deploying, but this would be a conscious event.

Bottom line...there's way more to this story than is being told.  This vessel absolutely needs to be re-floated immediately and investigated thoroughly for what really happened, because the real story isn't even close to being told yet.  It's only in 200 feet of water, so it's a slam dunk to re-float and any competent salvage company could do it in a single day.  Now that the bodies are off, there is no reason not to re-float it...like NOW!  (before the evidence gets further damaged).

I completely agree with you. FWIW, I've been on a similarly sized yacht (although not a sailing yacht) called the Braveheart. Crew were very attentive and would have been on top of something like this immediately. There would have been warning that such a storm was coming in or on the horizon and the crew should have been ensuring that everything was secured at that time with an "all hands" call. You also have to keep in mind that these vessels are designed to float - even upside down.

I also strongly doubt a waterspout by looking at the video. I will, however, disagree about it being a microburst. I think this can't be entirely ruled out. However, I personally don't think a single microburst could sink a ship of this size. The rogue wave theory crossed my mind, but we don't see that in the video, and for a ship this size, it would need to be a pretty damn large wave.

Totally on board about there needing to be a giant hole somewhere for the ship to sink this quickly. And I also agree, definitely tractor trailer sized like perhaps a bomb went off. I'm still not clear on the design of the rear of this ship with the supposed flip down deck. I don't know if that's still open to the outside when its deployed or not. I would think there would be water-tight doors immediately behind that deck that would remain closed at all times when the deck is in use. I would assume with modern tech that these doors would very likely close automatically if water is detected.

Absent some other hole in the hull, there would have been nowhere for the air to escape, and the yacht would have remained floating if capsized. It appears that this ship was specifically designed for this scenario as well.

I don't believe the official story either, not to mention that the story keeps changing.

[ArMaP]

Ok, so labratory tests still need to come in...

In real life things take time, it's not like in CSI, where they have instant results for tests that take days.

[l0st]

Ok, perhaps something is getting lost in translation in the various news feeds.

Here, from our National Associated Press Agency (ANSA) which I found last night...

Ok, so labratory tests still need to come in...

---

Ok, I've been reading that they now believe it to have been a Downburst, rather than a waterspout.

From: https://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/tra...gate-98886

Also, a slight correction to one of my earlier posts:

It appears the Bayesian didn't have a true "Black Box", but an AIS transponder, equipped with GPS. So, all they can get from that are the movements of the ship before the equipment went dead.

So, from an Australian news source, I found this description of the ships last moments...

  

Well, I don't know why, but replying with a quote isn't showing all the quoted comments and info, at least in the edit window.

Anyways... don't you think its strange they're claiming "no evidence" of any physical issues with the bodies found aside from drowning. How does one get tossed from bed in a capsized yacht at 4am without sustaining any injuries?

[guyfriday]

Well, I don't know why, but replying with a quote isn't showing all the quoted comments and info, at least in the edit window.

Anyways... don't you think its strange they're claiming "no evidence" of any physical issues with the bodies found aside from drowning. How does one get tossed from bed in a capsized yacht at 4am without sustaining any injuries?

Not to mention that point that was made about the furniture getting tossed around. How would a person know the difference between getting hit over the head and a loose chair getting flung around. Also remember the people were sound asleep while the boat shook around for 9 minutes and then flopped on its side and took 16 minutes to sink. Those people soundly slept during all that and only died due to drowning. 

This story is fishier than the boat now.

[ArMaP]

So, there's another 9 minutes on top of the 16 minutes for passengers to escape.

No, those 9 minutes are part of the 16 minutes (according to the AIS system).

I found a site (in Italian) that has the timeline.

Gli ultimi 16 minuti del Bayesian, la mappa del naufragio

3:50 am: the waterspout and the swinging sailing ship
In the AIS track, the critical time arrives at 3:50 am on the night between Sunday and Monday. The storm is powerful, the wind rises impetuously, the Bayesian begins to sway dangerously. The tracking system shows an area that graphically resembles a child's scribble on a sheet of paper: it is the sailing ship that moves back and forth, then sideways, then forward again and back again.

3:59 am: the anchor has now given way
Those signs scribbled on the sheet of paper say that the yacht was like a dog on a chain, tied to the anchor and unable to escape from danger. But after a few minutes "you can see that there is no anchor left to hold", interprets an investigating source.

The anchor no longer holds, the boat is free but is not in a condition to stand up to the wind that forces it to follow its path. At 3:59 a significant change of direction, again dictated by the wind.

4:00 am, the blackout: the yacht is already taking on water
It is likely that at this point the sailing vessel begins to take on so much water that it becomes unmanageable; it is now at the mercy of the storm and in blackout, a sign that the water has reached the generator area or the engine room.

4:05 am: the Bayesian sinks
From here to the end there are another 6 minutes. At 4:03 a new slight change to the route, at 4:05 the Bayesian disappears, after having "leeched" a total of 358 meters.

A few moments later (and it is 4:06 am) its "EPIRB", a sort of GPS that acts as an emergency device, automatically sends the alarm for the sinking to the "Cospas Sarsat" satellite station in Bari, managed by the Coast Guard.

---

Not to mention that point that was made about the furniture getting tossed around. How would a person know the difference between getting hit over the head and a loose chair getting flung around.

The energy used is different, a loose chair does not keep the movement before hitting because it doesn't have enough energy, when hitting someone on purpose with something (even a chair), the energy used is bigger and the movement of the chair is done in a way to make it go through the head.

I'm sure an experienced doctor would know the difference.