Boating "disasters"

[lakelandterrier]

I'd say this can be interpreted in 2 ways - either what are greatest RISKS that may lead to disaster, or what are the greatest ACTUAL disasters which I'd define as leading to greatest losss of life and / or environmental impact.

I's say the greatest risks are through fire / explosion, collision and water ingress (ultimately leading to sinking)- each of these may have a number of causes, incompetance, lack of training, not following SSOW / procedures etc..

If we're talking actual loss of life then war losses e.g MV Wilhem Gustav, Yamanto, HMS Hood and others rank highly, but there are large losses on civilain vessels too - Doria Paz, SS Kianga, RMS Titanic etc....mainly through the risk factors above.

On envirnotemtnal disasters there are the Gulf of Mexic oil spill, Torrey Cannyon, Exxon Vladez, Ivory Coast toxic waste etc..

Is this a case of TV doing an over simplified over-hyped shallow, poorly reasearched piece playing to "popular views" or using "good footage"? No, TV producers wouldn't do that would they?

[RIB-Teccie]

I went out in a prototype 50 Knot Landing Craft 20 years ago. Back them it was a 750k boat, with twin 500hp Cats and Hamilton Jets. Going across the bay at full pelt I noticed two Salmon net buoys and decided to go in between them. The fishers had strung a gill net between the buoys. I saw it at the last second and threw the craft full to Starboard and put the buckets in astern ( which you could do with this boat). Only thing was I was broadside to the weather and the craft left the water sideways and heeled over. I saw the water fast approaching and knew I'd binned it. Suddenly it lurched violently and came up the way it went in, so violently it threw the fuel caps off and covered me in diesel. A colleague came alongside in another craft and asked what the hell happened. Do I showed Him and his crew the net. The all said they wouldn't have seen it and suddenly all the well done's started to be said. Never Again...

[Cookee]

Originally Posted by RIB-Teccie

I went out in a prototype 50 Knot Landing Craft 20 years ago. Back them it was a 750k boat, with twin 500hp Cats and Hamilton Jets. Going across the bay at full pelt I noticed two Salmon net buoys and decided to go in between them. The fishers had strung a gill net between the buoys. I saw it at the last second and threw the craft full to Starboard and put the buckets in astern ( which you could do with this boat). Only thing was I was broadside to the weather and the craft left the water sideways and heeled over. I saw the water fast approaching and knew I'd binned it. Suddenly it lurched violently and came up the way it went in, so violently it threw the fuel caps off and covered me in diesel. A colleague came alongside in another craft and asked what the hell happened. Do I showed Him and his crew the net. The all said they wouldn't have seen it and suddenly all the well done's started to be said. Never Again...

With jet drives if you had reduced the throttle to tick over wouldn't the boat just have glided over the net? I can't imagine it would have harmed the boat in any case? Certainly a better bet than binning the boat?

[RIB-Teccie]

This craft was set up a bit differently, no gearboxes and the shafts permanently coupled, the buckets were linked to the throttle and couldn't be adjusted, the worked more like the traditional F,N,R. The jets would have taken the net in. The full thinking and reacting time at this speed and boat lengths gave me 0.43 seconds. Whatever decision you make at that speed and distance may prove incorrect. Wrecked net, impellers & engines would have been the wrong decision in a post mortem, it was a lose lose. But my colleague (another instructor) in the lower outboard rib would never have seen it either. It was one of those things that worked out OK. 50 - 70 Knots is a bit different from 30 - 35 which is your average rib these days.