Another Amazing Boat Accident

Boat crash in Burrard Inlet sends four people to hospital

Vancouver, BC, Canada / (CKNW AM) AM980
Virginia McConchie
August 09, 2014 09:17 pm

The power boat crashed into a pillar of the Second Narrows Bridge head-on this afternoon.

“Any time the vessel is in operation it’s just like driving a car, you know, you need to have your eyes on the water ahead of you.”

Constable Chris Nordlund with Coquitlam RCMP says in this case, the driver apparently wasn’t paying attention when the boat crashed around 1:30pm, sending four of the 16 people on-board to hospital with relatively minor injuries.

“Ultimately, the responsibility was for him to be at the helm and operating the vessel in a safe manner. Which appears that it was lacking at this particular incident.”

Nordlund says it could have been much worse.

He says they are looking at recommending charges related to careless operation of a vessel, and failing to ensure the safety of everyone on-board.

Alcohol and speed are not considered factors.

Boat crash in Burrard Inlet sends four people to hospital | (CKNW AM) AM980

Yeah. Wow. That's the scary part, that people pay less attention on the water than on land.

Rambler said:

Yeah. Wow. That's the scary part, that people pay less attention on the water than on land.

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Why? Except for high speed boat racing...most aspects of boating are so much easier for me I'd rather travel by water and NEVER drive again.

For some of us...boating is a slow relaxing sport that can be considered recreation.

Unless you go by other threads that are boiling....

I wonder if he was on AP going under the bridge. There has been a couple crunches here where the mag influence of the steel sent the AP driven boat into structure.

Hey, and we were just talking about Bayliner pilothouses " built bridge tough". Lol

Yes, but is it a trawler?

It's recreation, I don't see how this happened.

ghost said:

Yes, but is it a trawler?. ...

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Definitely doesn't look like a trawler: looks capable of moving faster than hull speed. ... Now if everyone didn't exceed six knots (or even eight knots), just think how much safer we'd all be. An apparent herring fisherman moving at eight knots passing the Coot on our way to Richmond:



(He'd be better served with a bright yellow pilothouse roof rather than his blue one.)

pilothouse king said:

Hey, and we were just talking about Bayliner pilothouses " built bridge tough". Lol

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Well, let's see. I guess that must be about a 4388 now.

Glad no one was killed on this one. With so many more aboard, I'm surprised more of them weren't injured.

It'll buff right out.

If they had kept a watch, they could have just used those huge rocket launcher thingys on the side of the flybridge, excuse me this us a bayliner they call them "command" bridges (or not so under command, irony galore).

Okay, admittedly this is getting rather thick. But honestly, this guy has it and more coming to him. He could have killed someone, very very easily by not keeping his watch. There's momentarily not paying attention which is not great, and then there is hitting a bridge. This is the later.

ghost said:

If they had kept a watch, they could have just used those huge rocket launcher thingys on the side of the flybridge, excuse me this us a bayliner they call them "command" bridges (or not so under command, irony galore).

Okay, admittedly this is getting rather thick. But honestly, this guy has it and more coming to him. He could have killed someone, very very easily by not keeping his watch. There's momentarily not paying attention which is not great, and then there is hitting a bridge. This is the later.

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And you know all the accident causal factors from the one sketchy media article?

If anyone gets all the gory details I would love to hear them. A great way to avoid accidents is to learn from others' mistakes.

Robster_in_edmonds said:

If anyone gets all the gory details I would love to hear them. A great way to avoid accidents is to learn from others' mistakes.

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Details would be nice but judging only from the photograph I'd say keeping the pointy end pointed away from solid objects would be a good start.

My father used to have a 30' cabin cruiser back in the 60's and when taking out guests, would usually face them (in the stern) while driving. He would do this for pretty long periods of time. My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I would lay on the roof talking, and on one trip almost hit the main support of the Jamestown bridge! We had to nudge him several times til he finally turned. Scared the crap out of my wife.

From the article? Nope. The picture by itself was sufficient.

Im so good at this, I can divine the following.
- approached a solid object with too much speed.
- failed to take sufficient precautions for the conditions
- failed to take sufficient actions for the threat at hand.

Running a boat may not be easy, but in many ways it is simple.

ghost said:

From the article? Nope. The picture by itself was sufficient.

Im so good at this, I can divine the following.
- approached a solid object with too much speed.
- failed to take sufficient precautions for the conditions
- failed to take sufficient actions for the threat at hand.

Running a boat may not be easy, but in many ways it is simple.

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Must be divine because while all may be true, they aren't necessarily root causal factors.

Operator error.....nuff said

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

Operator error.....nuff said

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most likely..I always like to see if there's some mitigating circumstances before I place a stigma on someone....

At 1:30 on August 9 the current at 2nd Narrows was running at 3 knots. This means lots of swirls and eddys at that location. Lives have been lost in the past at 2nd Narrows as less than prudent boaters move through. With 16 people on board, the vessel on AP and about 14 knots of speed the swirls could easily move him 100 feet off course in a few seconds.

Been through there many times and seen the hazards when the current is running.

psneeld said:

Must be divine because while all may be true, they aren't necessarily root causal factors.

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I think you just like to argue. I would say those are the most root causal issues, everything else is just a trigger and task loading.

I also spent too much of my life in activities that carried a big penalty when you got things wrong. I learned early on that "there is more at stake than getting your feelings hurt". So lest you think I neither feel bad or have empathy for the victims here, I do. But its more important that we not protect someone's feelings or try to somehow make this more difficult than it is. Never rob the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

It's a simple set of principles that makes the difference between us being safe and eventually running afoul. There is no need to complicate it.

We used to run drills. The participants would wind up in all manner of charlie foxtrot situations. All that was required was waiting for someone to find a reason to momentarily step away from simple principles, then you added one trigger event. Next thing you know, human nature makes quick/bad decisions in an environment of task loading and you have a runaway failure. The POINT is to admit it immediately, take apart the situation and understand how to not make those simple fundamental mistakes in the first place. The worst situations always started from a simple innocuous trigger. That is also part of the point in learning how important discipline can be.

The other learning is that we don't get lazy and leave thes analysis up to somebody else. We are to actively take part in every debriefing, explore each situation, especially those that were not our own, take it apart, criticize it, explore the options and mentally prepare for our options and how to recognize them. You don't get that from blindly reading someone else's analysis, and you don't get that if your worried about somebody getting their feelings hurt.

It's not about hurt feelings and we have NO IDEA why his speed was high (there might be a reason).

No one EVER takes all the precautions necessary and if one was missed/skipped...the root cause is WHY?...

Speed and not paying attention could be because of a passenger injury prior to the collision.

Didn't react accordingly isn't a cause necessarily... but be caused by what caused 1 and 2 ....and could continue to cause 3 or what Sunchaser posted...3 may have been unrecoverable too quickly for the average boater.

Argue? Nah...discuss what I know and don't...I leave the "don't know" for others and will just wait for the facts.

If you try to debrief and learn from bad assumptions...you only continue off into never never land.....

Now if you want to make the resultant accident into a case study and make up a bunch of parameters...then go for it because everyone guessing at what happened is already 1/2 way there.

I think I found the reason why the boat crashed.....

"Constable Chris Nordlund with Coquitlam RCMP says in this case, the driver apparently wasn’t paying attention when the boat crashed around 1:30pm, sending four of the 16 people on-board to hospital with relatively minor injuries."

Sixteen people? Operator inattention? Drinking?

Hmmmmmmm.

GFC said:

I think I found the reason why the boat crashed.....

"Constable Chris Nordlund with Coquitlam RCMP says in this case, the driver apparently wasn’t paying attention when the boat crashed around 1:30pm, sending four of the 16 people on-board to hospital with relatively minor injuries."

Sixteen people? Operator inattention? Drinking?

Hmmmmmmm.

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original post...for what it's worth...said alcohol DID NOT seem to be a factor...not sure if that changed.

psneeld said:

original post...for what it's worth...said alcohol DID NOT seem to be a factor...not sure if that changed.

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Also said speed was not a factor but that seems to get thrown in there too. Easier just to assume I guess.

GFC said:

I think I found the reason why the boat crashed.....

"Constable Chris Nordlund with Coquitlam RCMP says in this case, the driver apparently wasn’t paying attention when the boat crashed around 1:30pm, sending four of the 16 people on-board to hospital with relatively minor injuries."

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Yeah me too!! Judging by the uninjured members of his crew. . I would say it was totally caused by distraction!! I know where I would be looking!!

BDofMSP said:

Also said speed was not a factor but that seems to get thrown in there too. Easier just to assume I guess.

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BDofMSP said:

Also said speed was not a factor but that seems to get thrown in there too. Easier just to assume I guess.

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Actually, double slow trawler speed is beneficial when traversing currents and eddys when your vessels rudders (58 Meridian) are sized for a normal design cruise speed of 14 to 18 knots.

I've traversed the same area at 25 knots in stronger currents and barely felt a nudge.

This incident has garnered more TF attention than it has in Vancouver where stupid boat tricks, warm sunny days and party time are not uncommon. Except for today's rain, another ten great weather days await us in lower BC as the last days of summer bring out fascinating distress calls.

An update

Yacht crashes into CN second narrows rail bridge - News - North Shore News


A yacht owner has been ticketed and several people have been treated in hospital after crashing into the CN rail bridge at the Second Narrows.
Vancouver Police Department and Coquitlam RCMP's marine patrol units as well as the Canadian Coast Guard all responded just after 1:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon when a distress call went out over the radio. According to Coquitlam RCMP, who are investigating the case, the 58-foot Meridian yacht was headed east through the second narrows when it went off course and plowed into the south concrete piling.
The collision was hard enough to knock all 15 passengers on board off their feet, with four of them requiring treatment at Lions Gate Hospital, according to Cpl. Jamie Chung, Coquitlam RCMP spokesperson. One of the passengers suffered a broken arm in the fall.
According to Port Metro Vancouver, the movable rail bridge has since been inspected and is back in operation.
The captain and owner of the boat has been ticketed under the Canada Shipping Act, Chung said. He was away from the helm and relying on his autopilot at the time of the crash, according to Grant Drummond, a boating consultant and dealer who was on the Cates Park dock and spoke to the passengers when the Coast Guard and VPD brought the injured in.
"I talked to the wife. She was pretty beside herself, obviously. No one wants to be in a situation like that," Drummond said. "For us as advocates and members of the marine industry, it's a sad thing to see."
Rather than being at the controls, the owner was allegedly on the deck with his guests, most of them girls in their teens who were celebrating a birthday party, Drummond said. By the time he made it to the wheel, it was too late.
The extreme currents that flow through the Second Narrows are strong enough to pull even large yachts off course if they are simply relying on autopilot, Drummond said.
"When the tide is ripping hard - and it was a huge tide that day - what happens is you get hugely turbulent waters. You get big whirlpools and it's a very hazardous, small little stretch of water as the water gets funneled though that bottleneck," he said. "It's a miracle, just a miracle, that no one was killed and no one went overboard because that front end is just totally mangled."
Those same currents would prove even more treacherous for someone in the water, he added.
"If one of those girls had gone overboard, you probably wouldn't have seen her again. She'd be gone. That current can suck a giant tree under and spit it out 50 feet down stream or up stream," he said.
The boat was named Hakuna Matata - a phrase meaning "No worries" as referenced in Disney's The Lion King.
It would have been worth about $700,000, but Drummond suspects it is now a write-off.

© North Shore News

nmuir said:

...Rather than being at the controls, the owner was allegedly on the deck with his guests, most of them girls in their teens who were celebrating a birthday party...

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nmuir said:

"I talked to the wife. She was pretty beside herself, obviously.

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This has gone from bad to worse!

Sunchaser for the win!