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.
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"
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
> 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.
https://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2024/08/27/former-bayesia...
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.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7233792... (no account needed)
Changing the name of a vessel is bad luck. That's all I need to know.
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)
and then you say "the 1st best day is when you sell it"
rug pull
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.
But yeah, most "enthusiast" mods are a waste of money and make the vehicle worse.
The term is luffing for anyone who wants to look further into these things (as I do/did).
I'm curious about how it went for you?
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 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.
Dead Comment
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)>
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.
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.
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.