Gas tanker hit by super-yacht sinks off New Providence | Hacker News Reader

Gas tanker hit by super-yacht sinks off New Providence

tribune242.com

78 pointscolinprince94 comments

I know a sailboat owner who says power boat drivers are assholes. I thought they were just being rude until I locked through a canal with them. Holy shit can those people be stupid. Just throw it in reverse without looking behind me. What could go wrong? Sailboats have a lot less control going backward. Because of the rudder, the motor is often mounted off-center. You can go mostly backward, but straight back involves vectoring, and on a small sailboat the extra passengers throw off your groove, not unlike how you have to brake a little earlier when you have a full car of people versus just yourself.

That said, I was under the impression that big yachts like these actually had a professional at the wheel. The article doesn't seem to make any comment on whether a pilot was on the bridge or the owner. If it wasn't obvious from my first paragraph, I'm suspecting the latter.

might be there's a high degree of venn diagram overlap between assholes and people who have the disposable income to buy a $200,000+ rapidly depreciating, expensive to maintain toy.

Maybe more pronounced, even, as the pricetag gets larger:

The yacht is listed for sale at $51 million.

No argument here.

Pepper on top that I know when I have an expensive toy I don't want other people telling me how to use it.

The bigger problem was how close they come to smaller vehicles, at speed, without a care in the world. When I saw that pro-Trump flotilla running at speed, my first thought was that somebody was going to get swamped. Sure enough, a bunch of little boats sunk that day.

> The bigger problem was how close they come to smaller vehicles, at speed

Which, but for the scale, is exactly what happened here:

> Maritime Management said the 160-foot tanker was traveling on its proper watch en route to Great Stirrup Cay when it was rear-ended by the 207-foot super yacht.

While 160ft seems like a pretty small tanker (some sort of local delivery ship?) a 200+ft yacht seems utterly insane, it's a large floating house. And yet it apparently doesn't even make the "list of motor yachts by length", whose cutoff is 246ft (75m).

Also per that page,

> superyachts range from 37 m (≈120 ft) up to 60 m (≈200 ft), and megayachts are over 60 m

Oh yeah. We have had boats get so close to use where they gave literally splashed us. And this isn't in some confined area, this is in the Raritan bay. They can go anywhere!

Power boaters are assholes.

Pro captains are only for the really really big boats. Some people buy a 50 footer because they can drive it themselves instead of having to pay someone to.

- Sailor

The article claims this boat is over 200'.

Eh, it goes both ways. Plenty of sail boat operators that do not realize when operating under power they are now a power boat, regardless of sails deployed, and must abide by "power boat" rules, which among other things means they no longer have the same default "right of way" considerations (it's more complex, but this is an adequate simplification for this thread). The result of this is often asshole-ish behavior on the part of the sail boat captain.

Does it create a problem that other boats can't tell which rules a motor/sail boat are operating under?

In other driving rule systems, it's important that everyone can predict everyone else's proper behavior.

If a sailboat is moving under power it should be visually obvious that all sails are down, furled, etc.

GP seems to claim that, with sails spread AND motor running, it has to follow power boat rules despite looking the same as when it's just sailing.

The claim is correct. COLREGS are not ambiguous about this.

>The term “sailing vessel” means any vessel under sail provided that propelling machinery, if fitted, is not being used

See pp6-7 (PDF 14-15) https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/navRules/navrules.pdf

However they can be moving under sail AND power simultaneously. It's not uncommon.

Sure -- in which case (motorsailing) they'll still be moving at a fraction of the speed and maneuverability of a regular powerboat. Your arguments about right of way are not just pedantic, they're specious. The ratio of at-fault collisions between sail and powerboats blamed on the former approaches zero.

FTR I've owned and captained boats of both types in New England for over 25 years.

FTR I've owned and captained boats on the Great Lakes, New England, and now in Florida for about 30 years. My experience differs from yours.

Is there a CA SWITRS-analogue for boat incidents? I'd like to just do the stats myself, if available.

No idea for the US. In the maritime industry the US likes to be the odd one out. The US coast guard likely have something all on their own.

Looking globally at larger vessels, which would be like the ones in the article here, you have IMO GISIS Incidents[0]. Quite the awful application to use and scrape. Trying to get ship particulars I got limited after 100-200 vessels.

For Europe you have EMCIP [1]. More info, a bit better interface. Horrible format to do anything with.

Otherwise you have commercial data providers which tend to both contain incidents, vessels and pretty much everything about the maritime industry. Examples are Clarksons Fleet Register [2] and IHS Markit [3].

I may or may not have written a thesis a while back touching this kind of data.

[0]: IMO GISIS https://gisis.imo.org/Public/Default.aspx

[1]: EMCIP https://portal.emsa.europa.eu/web/emcip

[2]: Clarksons Fleet Register https://www.clarksons.net/wfr/

[3]: IHS Markit https://ihsmarkit.com/products/sea-web-maritime-reference.ht...

Terrific comment. Much appreciated.

Then it should display a downward pointed cone as a daytime signal and regular power vessel lanterns in the dark.

Big power boats go where they go. They may or may not even be looking in the direction they're moving.

It can be problematic, yes. If two vessels are approaching each other on a collision course, one is generally considered the give-way vessel, and the other is the stand-on vessel. As the names imply, one is supposed to alter course to avoid a collision, and the other is supposed to maintain course (eg: specifically NOT alter course) so that the other vessel can adjust accordingly.

Without getting overly complicated here, there is a whole structure to it, and it generally comes down to a combination of the locations of the vessels relative to each other (if another vessel is in a zone that roughly correlates to and area from straight-ahead/noon to 4 o'clock on YOUR boat then YOU are the give-way vessle) with precedence to the vessel with the least amount of maneuverability. The maneuverability bit is not granular like "your boat is smaller than mine and more easily steered" but more like "your boat is a tanker or a barge and maneuverability is measured in miles, not meters". So, a sailboat under wind power exclusively is less maneuverable than a power boat, but more maneuverable than a freighter. However sailboaters often seem to interpret this as "if my sails are up all other boats MUST give-way me to me", which is definitely incorrect.

My instructor told me that the size is what matters often in real life. He was sailing a 45 foot yacht from Europe to South America (ARC race) and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean they were very close to hitting a huge tanker. They were with sails at night, but the tanker was not willing to change course for such a small boat so around 50m before the impact the sailing boat changes course. All the time they were on the radio talking with the captain of the tanker, but they could not persuade him to change course. And for them this is a race so they always wanted to follow the optimal course, therefore they were reluctant to change their course

Instead of arguing, they should have used that time to make a slight adjustment. Their hubris caused them to make a last-minute change which wasted significantly more time. Races of any type are almost always subject to external factors.

He may simply not be able to change course. An oil tanker at speed plots its course radii in miles, whole ones. Those things don't turn on a dime and as a pleasure boat (sailing in a race is entertainment) claiming priority over such a huge commercial vessel is just plain arrogance.

A sailboat under power with sails up should fly an inverted black cone (“steaming cone”, “motoring cone”). There’s rules for lighting at night, too.

I wouldn’t know how often sailboats adhere to these rules.

Depends on enforcement. We tend to hoist ours when getting to Germany because both the police and coast guard actually care and will fine you in typical German fashion. Otherwise, pretty much never.

A 200+ foot superyacht is not going to be owner-operated.

I would sincerely hope so, but some of these guys are enfants terribles, of an order unto themselves. They can ruin your life just for fun. You going to tell a billionaire not to drive his boat, while underway? I think you’re going to port and then refusing to get back on the boat, at best.

Bad news, it sounds like your friend is the asshole and didn’t realize he had to behave with power boat rules when under motor power regardless of how incompetent he is operating it under power.

you missed the part where the power boats are reversing themselves into the poster's friend's boat, which is careless navigation/boat handling in a lock and canal type environment.

I didn’t miss it. I’m doubting the veracity though given the generally entitled nature of sailboat operators under motor power.

Have you ever been through a lock? It’s a lot of sitting still in moving water, trying not to huff small engine fumes. “Under power” is a stretch.

It doesn’t matter how slow. A sailboat only has the right away when using its sails. Navigating around docks by motor, regardless of sped, makes it a power boat.

> not unlike how you have to brake a little earlier when you have a full car of people versus just yourself

If you’re noticing the increase in stopping distance due to three more bodies in your car you should probably brake sooner and drive at slightly more reasonable speeds.

I know they’re getting heavier all the time, but an empty car used to weigh 2500 lbs and four adults are a 30% of that. More if you’ve got shopping in the trunk as well. Of course the adults are getting heavier too…

In about 20 years of sailing I think I've seen just-about everything. Most recreational power boat owners have no clue what they are doing. I had took classes for about two years, all the way to celestial navigation and various boat handling classes. After a while you understand that you can't assume anyone is going to do what the rules say, so you sail defensively and give as much space as you can.

I once had a 30+ foot power boat head straight for me while I was on a kayak within the harbor. This was all at slow speed. The guy just didn't care and likely had no clue that I had the right of way. I got the harbor master involved. I had it all on video. They came down very hard on them. They actually told him that, at the extreme, they could bring him up on attempted murder or assault charges. It was that bad.

The yacht - https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/utopia-iv/

Appears to be for sale and for rent, the owner is an American behind "Market America" MLM outlet and shop.com.

And they even report the crash story right next to the sales price... I sincerely hope that this isn't a perverse attempt at improving SEO through scandal like that fake airplane crash video from yesterday.

Certified cra$h proof.

And just like when the same thing that happened off of San Diego and killed a few people... nothing will happen to the negligent crew of the yacht. Fuck the environment!

At least nobody died this time.

It's actually kind of insane how negligent super-yacht crews are. I've had a number of close calls sailing in the summer around the Hudson / in the ocean right outside of Manhattan. Many crews also have no clue how to handle currents or operate a vessel in close proximity.

Never had issues with huge tankers, police boats etc - but I can count a handful of times super yacht (a boat longer than 40m) captains have been drunk, high or just absent when a vessel is in motion.

Asking as a non-boater: does the Coast Guard take seriously allegations of such seamanship?

Basically I'm curious if sea captains are held to similar standards as airplane pilots, or if poor boat piloting is only penalized when actual mishaps occur.

They take drinking really seriously, it's way easier to get a DUI on a boat than a car.

Most of my experience has been in the Boston Harbor, which depending on who you talk to is more dangerous than the hudson, but in my experience most of what they dislike on the hudson is erratic lateral movement. Basically, you're not supposed to meander or transit laterally unless you're a sailboat or a ferry. Police boats / coast guard will approach vessels quickly if it looks like they aren't aware of these rules.

That said, maritime rules are pretty vague. Basically, boats going one direction stay to the right, the opposing direction stays to the left. Situational awareness is important to avoid other slower / faster / larger vessels. "Share the road y'all" is the most succinct way to explain boating in a nutshell haha.

> boats going one direction stay to the right, the opposing direction stays to the left.

Wouldn’t that put them head-on? If a southbound boat stays to the right (west side) of a channel and an opposite direction boat stays left (also west side), that seems worse than everyone staying right.

Everyone stays to the right

Well put, this is way easier to follow than what I wrote ;)

You're flipping the frame of reference for each case which is what makes it confusing. Staring up or down a waterway, opposing traffic are on opposite sides (left or right). From each boats perspective, they are on the right side.

If you have a captains license, it is not good if people complain about you. They do investigate.

For a fun time on the Hudson, when the UN is in session, watch how many small/medium powerboats aren't paying attention to news and USCG notices before heading out.

They try to go full speed down the west side of Roosevelt Island and are always stopped and turned back by a pair of NYPD small gunboats.

https://homeport.uscg.mil/Lists/Content/Attachments/1924/CGA...

Especially when idiotic protesters wade out into the hudson to try to "block shipping lanes" or "protest police" in February. Basically a death wish.

"Turned back"? Maybe they should be impounded. (Or just sunk?) That might get their attention.

Much as the NYPD might have a reputation for being trigger happy, it's probably a good thing they don't arbitrarily open fire with the pintle mounted M2 or M249 on the front of those gunboats.

What do you sail in the area? I'm a member of KYC.

I'm a member at one of the community sailing docs on the west-side highway. I work in tech not finance, so unfortunately I still can't afford a boat of my own :(

That's ok! Having your own boat can be a nightmare sometimes. You gotta love it.

Is there something to be angry about here?

Rich, negligent assholes?

Maybe? Someone driving a super-yacht was incredibly negligent, running another ship hard enough to sink it (!), then letting someone else rescue the crew of the ship they sank (!!). By doing so, they caused the release of a bunch of gasoline, aviation gas, and LPG at the bottom of the ocean, with the attendant environmental issues.

Yes, there might be things to be angry about in that...

I’m with you on most of your points, but do we know it was negligent? Isn’t it normal to wait for an investigation before jumping to conclusions?

I think the vessel owner and crew are getting an unfair wrap because of money. If it’s true this is good news, as someone can pay for the cleanup.

>“Maritime Management has expressed its sincere gratitude to Bahamian authorities for their support and assistance throughout this incident and are particularly grateful to the crew of the M/Y Mara who responded to the Tropic Breeze's distress call and rescued all seven crew members on board the sinking tanker,” the company said.

So... the yacht hit a tanker, and then didn't help when it sank? Effectively a hit-and-run?

If accurate, I hope they get hit hard for this. That's absurd.

The yacht probably had it's own problems after the impact. The tanker wasn't that much smaller than it was.

I suppose. It is odd that it and those onboard are almost totally unmentioned though. If the tanker crew needed rescue and another boat took care of it, seems like either the yacht chose not to help... or was both unable to help and didn't need to be helped? I'm not seeing how the latter is feasible, unless they were sinking but repaired it enough to limp back to dock later or something.

Though since they're totally unmentioned, I guess they could have even sunk too, and the people could have been onboard the rescue ship or a different unmentioned one. But that'd be weird too. Or is that kind of omission normal in an event at sea like this, showing exclusively one side's troubles? It does feel fairly formulaic / technical.

The way I see it, the people on the yacht did not want to talk to the media. This was probably wise of them.

Would you expect them to stick around with all the drugs on board?

"The crew ... have been rescued and safely returned to a company-owned facility" is such a strange-sounding sentence. I'm glad they were returned, though.

A missing comma after "rescued" perhaps? With it, it would mean "they returned", rather than "they have been returned".

A 160ft tanker is rear-ended by a 200ft pleasure yacht, promptly sinks 2,000 feet, beyond hope of recovery, and its cargo of gas evaporates.

I wonder how much that tanker and cargo was insured for?

I wonder how much the yacht was insured for.

Lots of lawsuits incoming.

Where is "New Providence"?

The Bahamas, it's the island where Nassau is located. The article mentions that "Bahamian authorities have been notified."

Thanks, I didn't see that. I looked around the newpaper's website and couldn't find a clear indication of their location.

It's subtle, but 242 is the country calling code for the Bahamas. I don't know why, but it comes up often in the culture.

bahamas

What kind of insurance policy a super yacht owner would have will cover something like this?

Depends on the owner. If you're Larry Ellison rich, you'll place those types of assets under an operating corporation meant just for the purpose of managing eg your yachts and attempt to have it step in front of liability risk so they can't very easily go after Ellison's other $109 billion in personal wealth. That corporation will carry very substantial insurance policies for just such risks. It's obviously incredibly expensive to own & operate a super yacht.

This is frustrating because even a massive payout to insurance still doesn't cover the environmental externalities.

There should be a different set of government-imposed penalties for environmental damage resulting from negligence, essentially a probabilistic Pigouvian tax.

How much money, paid to whom, would negate the environmental damage caused by this accident?

It’s a good question. One answer could be “enough money to act as a deterrent” and “who cares, the govt I guess”.

EDIT: Could also do the student debt thing and have the fines pierce corporate veils and not be dismissible in bankruptcy.

Well nothing can negate an incident like this, but a lot can be done to mitigate the damage and disincentive this happening in the future. The government that has jurisdiction should heavily fine the person(s) responsible and direct the money towards the victims in the tanker and for environmental cleanup.

I suspect that additional incentives wouldn't have changed anyone's behavior here. Nobody involved wanted to crash.

Of course not. But the owner of the yacht and/or possibly the person who the owner hired to manage the yacht deemed that the expected loss due to their negligence wasn't big enough to warrant being not-negligent. Adding punitive "environmental fines" might tip the balance.

And how much will their premiums go up after an accident in which they were at fault?

Can't speak to insurance, but fwiw the M/T tropical breeze has DWT of 750 [1], whereas Wikipedia considers 30,000 DWT to be on the smaller end [2], so this is likely a much smaller tanker than one would envision when one first reads the headline, and likely costs notably less than the $51 million asking price of the yacht [3], as Wikipedia says a 32,000 DWT tanker (40x the size of the one here) runs for about $43 million.

1. https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/TROPIC-BREEZE-IMO-89063... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Vessel_pricing 3. https://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-market-intelligence/...

When they said gas tanker instead of oil tanker, I assumed that this was a local fuel delivery boat, not an international shipping tanker. I guess the article doesn't make that clear, though. Maybe it's something that the audience in the Bahamas would be more familiar with so they didn't feel the need to explain further.

Marine Traffic has some pictures of the Tropic Breeze.[1] Pictures of a large oil tanker in the Jamaican Observer[2] are unrelated. The Tropic Breeze looked like a work boat with a big liquid natural gas tank on deck. Destination was Great Stirrup Cay, a 200+ acre island owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines and used as a stopping point for their cruise ships. The cruise line has a resort there.

Not yet clear if the collision happened in open ocean or maneuvering near an island.

[1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/shipid:3777...

[2] https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Bahamian_authorit...

Forgive the stupid question: is there no collision avoidance system on large ships?

Technically, there are many. The two primary being radar and watch-standers. Both rely on the crew paying attention.

The marine equivalent of ADS-B is called AIS. But it just warns, it does not (and should not) steer the ship.

You could maybe pull that off on a small boat, but collision avoidance on large vessels can mean planning a long time ahead. You pretty much need a human.

The largest vessels need 30 minutes to come to a full stop. Just turning is obviously easier, but it's still... slow and a huge arc.

The higher the inertia and momentum - the easier it is to predict routing conflict. A system could warn at -30 min, alarm at -25 and steer + slow down if nobody acknowledges the alarm.

The issue is alarm fatigue. Couple this with the regular result of a collision avoidance situation being to go at most ~0.5 NM behind. You also have issue with corners where the vectors will intersect. There are projects to start trying to share waypoints through something similar to AIS which may help reducing the number of alarms to something workable.

Look here for a nice example of chaos (or anywhere around Europe for that matter):

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:2.9/center...

That looks crowded indeed, and I was thinking about the use case of absent crew (as on the yacht) in relatively uncongested seas.

Still, if ships where to broadcast their planned route every minute they could even handshake/agree a conflict avoidance strategy, like planes do. It still feel like an easier problem that implementing a self-driving car.

This feels like a metaphor for something

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