I am really starting to get sick and tired of all the excessive news coverage of this, especially in comparison to (for example) a boat full of refugees sinking. The latter is invariably far more tragic, yet tends to garner far less attention.
As somebody who has spent decades on boats I find this news particularly interesting because of the apparent suddenness and violence of the storm. I’m used to hurricanes that take days or weeks to form and move into the area, not waterspouts powerful enough to capsize a 180 foot long, 400+ gross ton super yacht with virtually no warning… It’s virtually unheard of.
Okay, that's fair. If the news articles were focusing on that aspect, as someone who would like to spend time on boats in the future, I probably wouldn't be complaining about it.
That said, it sounds like they left a bunch of hatches between the waterline and the gunwale open (possibly including a tender "garage" at the stern!) despite the fact that they should have known from the forecast that a storm was coming, so I'm not sure it's that interesting. I get the impression that it only "capsized" in the sense that it filled up with water and tipped over when it sloshed to one side, not that it was rolled over by waves. I don't think the waterspout actually was powerful enough to legitimately capsize the boat, but instead merely caused some moderate waves that washed into the open hatches.
The wealthy passengers shouldn't have depended on the crew to rescue them; that's socialism. They should just pull themselves out of the water by their bootstraps.
Loss of human life aside, this is a slightly absurd situation.
"The boat sank because it took on water," Costantino said.
You don’t say! How could this have happened?
One theory is that soaring temperatures in the area caused passengers and crew to leave windows and doors open, which would have allowed water to fill the ship quickly during the storm.
On super yachts there’s large hatches to get tenders (dinghy) in and out like a garage. Some also have swim platform hatches. If any left open that’s really bad. The videos below also has a comment from someone who’s been in boats by the same company that says there’s a design flaw / feature with a different set of doors that are not for tenders but people (like patio doors) that could slide open when the boat helmed (rocked) in the water spout.
There’s a video of a large sailing yacht (45m, compared to Bayesian which was 56m IIRC) in New Zealand getting rocked over almost 90 deg in the linked videos as well, that really shows what’s possible in the power of a storm. That boat isn’t believed to have a lifting / folding keel, though, and righted itself right away.
Also, the mast of Bayesian was much taller than it should be for bragging rights essentially, which makes for more windage to push the boat over.
"It went down, not in one minute as some scientists have said. It went down in 16 minutes," Costantino told the Financial Times. "You can see it from the charts, from the [Automatic Identification System] tracking chart."
Business Insider could not independently verify his statement.
The yacht maker offered no proof, so we'll have to wait and see if it's yet another rich person lying.
Speaking of rich people lying, Mike Lynch and his VP of finance, Stephen Chamberlain, were accused of using fraud to overvalue their company before selling it to HP, who wanted $5b in damages.
They were acquitted last month. Chamberlain was killed by a car while jogging, two days before Lynch's yacht went down.
He’s referring to the AIS tracking system and how long until it stopped broadcasting after the boat whipped around due to the storm. You can look up the AIS and see it yourself too. Both this boat and the one anchored next to it whip around drastically the same time then the Bayesian stoops transmitting, likely because the transmitter is now under water. This video has a timelapse of the AIS https://youtu.be/yF5UduROOFY
There’s security camera footage that shows the yacht anchored in relatively calm water. Within about 3 minutes it turns into an incredibly violent storm. Most of the yacht is obscured by the storm but you can still see the mast light through most of it. Then suddenly the mast light is no longer there…