Superyacht: Licence to fill (with water...)

Crew of 5. Memo to superyacht owners: hire someone who knows how to drive. Ability to look out of windows desirable

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-SINKS-yards-Greek-beach-running-aground.html

Well, it was the GPS's fault. Anyone knows if you are 49 feet from shore you are good to go.

Greetings,

Oh , that will buff out.
Hollywood

hollywood8118 said:

Oh , that will buff out.
Hollywood

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Oh see, you beat me to it, that was my first thought too.

Some places 49 feet from shore is plenty deep.

psneeld said:

Some places 49 feet from shore is plenty deep.

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Yeah. Not in the Greek Isles.

In some report it was reported they had some issue, and the captain steered around a pack of boats at anchor to intentionally beach it. Nothing official I don't believe, so that guess is as good as any.

Super yacht with a crew of 5?!

bowball said:

Super yacht with a crew of 5?!

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Not traveling with the serice/hospitality/housekeeping group?

While you are at it check out these....

Refit opportunity: Three salvaged yachts damaged by Hurricane Irma join the market

also...all can be found here.

https://www.superyachttimes.com/yacht-news/roundup-of-the-yacht-fires-and-casualties-of-2022

I imagine insurance rates for super yachts will be going up if there is such a thing. Llyods of London?

The motor yacht Belgor has been involved in a chase and capture by the Turkish Coast Guard due to suspicion that the vessel was involved in drug smuggling. Turkish media company Milliyet has reported that the Coast Guard chased the vessel, firing on it and ramming the yacht when those aboard attempted to make an escape.

"There has been a tragic number of yacht casualties so far this year; eight motor yachts caught fire, three sank, two were attacked, and a 50-metre sailing yacht was hit by a rescue vessel. SuperYacht Times has rounded up all the casualties (and near casualties) of 2022."

and this one you will want to see

"The motor yacht Belgor has been involved in a chase and capture by the Turkish Coast Guard due to suspicion that the vessel was involved in drug smuggling. Turkish media company Milliyet has reported that the Coast Guard chased the vessel, firing on it and ramming the yacht when those aboard attempted to make an escape."


This one was just nuts!! How does this happen?

I am finding this trend pretty appalling.
I get it, stuff happens, but this is different. It is a pattern that seems to have changed with disgusting property loss and not insignificant risk to life and limb.
It is consuming some public resources both to rescue and to prevent environmental damage.
So, what gives? I have a bit of a theory born only of conjecture.
After the financial crisis, which was itself a product of financial engineering, the central banks response was to make money widely available at a very low cost. This enabled smart people to do more financial engineering, often without actually producing anything useful. Over the same time period there was also real technological progress which also created many (grotesquely) wealthy folks.
So, we spawned an unprecedented number of really wealthy people with this combination of circumstances during the ensuing 14 years and wealthy people buy very large boats.
The boat industry responded quickly by backing away from building boats like the members here drive and jumped quickly to building these very large and very complex vessels. One could surmise that not all of them made this rapid transition with the requisite expertise and experience.
Add to this that we did not grow the supply of highly qualified, highly experienced, serious humans that could captain and crew these large vessels.
It seems quite likely that we may have created some underqualified vessels being operated by underqualified crew.
One point of view could be, "easy come easy go, who cares? But I am hearing from a qualified professional captain friend that the insurers have had enough. No more policies and I am sure that affects us all to some degree as they attempt to recover some of these catastrophic losses.

Too bad. Sickening actually.

How do these numbers compare to historic numbers? The story leaves you thinking that everyone got drunk and crashed their boats this year, but for all we know this is a perfectly normal year. But I guess that would be a boring story.....


Also, from reading other threads I thought that steel and AL boats were so much "stronger", but I'm seeing a lot of smashed and sunken steel and AL vessels here, so maybe it's not that much different than FRP when you really put it to the test?

twistedtree said:

How do these numbers compare to historic numbers? The story leaves you thinking that everyone got drunk and crashed their boats this year, but for all we know this is a perfectly normal year. But I guess that would be a boring story.....


Also, from reading other threads I thought that steel and AL boats were so much "stronger", but I'm seeing a lot of smashed and sunken steel and AL vessels here, so maybe it's not that much different than FRP when you really put it to the test?

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Material strengths vary so just how force is applied may be the determining factor.... as is abrasion resistance when wallowing on hard surfaces.

I have heard of GRP boats grinding away on coral reefs for days and days and not being holed, yet an iceberg can rip open a steel vessel in minutes.

Like usual.... it does depends.....a large part of it is overall structure/thickness and actual material/allow/resin/cloth.....

I still believe the old adage is a good skipper can be safe in a crappy boat but a bad skipper can sink a great one in the wink of an eye. So materials used only matter in some of the cases anyhow.

My take is there are certainly more "stories" that hit the news these days about sinking boats because there is soi much more "news" out there and most everyone has a video recorder in their pockets.

Would think these boats would be sufficiently compartmentized with fuel/water serving as a double bottom (as least in places) as to prevent sinking unles there’s major catastrophic damage. Wonder if in an effort to improve aesthetics and decrease expense watertight bulkheads and doors have grown out of favor in designs. One commonly sees a collision bulkhead, watertight at both ends of ER and that’s it. None in the interior.
Wonder what “gps “ means. Does it mean loss of the AP and loss of steering. This occurred to our little thing last week. My understanding is with NMEA 2000 and everything on the backbone failure of one thing can corrupt the function of other things. Our Precision 9 compass failed. This caused the AP pump to drive the rudder to port. Got a screen message “rudder angle >25 degrees. There’s no easy way to turn it off without turning off all electronics. This occurred just before entering our marinas channel which is very narrow. The approach is narrow as well and bordered on both sides by big rocks. We usually turn off the AP( that really means going to standby as there’s no power switch on the device. It’s on anytime the 2000 backbone has power). check the thrusters and reverse before entering the approach. That’s when the rudder went to port. We used the thrusters to line up with wind and current. We were fortunate to get a side tow on a Sunday from the yard. We needed both its big outboards and our thrusters to get into the slip. In retrospect should have just turned off everything connected to the NMEA background and gone in hand steering (assuming hand steering would have returned).
Totally surprised a ship this size didn’t have two totally independent and separate electronics suites. One fails shut power off to it and use the other. That way risk of gps/electronic compass, rudder angle indicator, AP computer or other component’s failure would not crippled steering. Have a A or B toggle at each helm.

twistedtree said:

How do these numbers compare to historic numbers? The story leaves you thinking that everyone got drunk and crashed their boats this year, but for all we know this is a perfectly normal year. But I guess that would be a boring story.....


Also, from reading other threads I thought that steel and AL boats were so much "stronger", but I'm seeing a lot of smashed and sunken steel and AL vessels here, so maybe it's not that much different than FRP when you really put it to the test?

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Google is your friend:

According to the definition (arbitrary) of superyacht by Superyacht Times, sales of super yachts in 2021 increased by 77% in 2021 from 2020 and represented a doubling from 2019.
In terms of losses, one fifth of all super yachts lost at sea from any cause ( fire, collision, grounding, etc) in history have occurred in the last five years.

Hippocampus said:

...snip....

Wonder what “gps “ means. Does it mean loss of the AP and loss of steering. This occurred to our little thing last week. My understanding is with NMEA 2000 and everything on the backbone failure of one thing can corrupt the function of other things. Our Precision 9 compass failed. This caused the AP pump to drive the rudder to port. Got a screen message “rudder angle >25 degrees. There’s no easy way to turn it off without turning off all electronics. This occurred just before entering our marinas channel which is very narrow. The approach is narrow as well and bordered on both sides by big rocks. We usually turn off the AP( that really means going to standby as there’s no power switch on the device. It’s on anytime the 2000 backbone has power). check the thrusters and reverse before entering the approach. That’s when the rudder went to port. We used the thrusters to line up with wind and current. We were fortunate to get a side tow on a Sunday from the yard. We needed both its big outboards and our thrusters to get into the slip. In retrospect should have just turned off everything connected to the NMEA background and gone in hand steering (assuming hand steering would have returned).
Totally surprised a ship this size didn’t have two totally independent and separate electronics suites. One fails shut power off to it and use the other. That way risk of gps/electronic compass, rudder angle indicator, AP computer or other component’s failure would not crippled steering. Have a A or B toggle at each helm.

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That's a pretty scary anecdote. To my way of thinking, if you are unable to gain manual control of helm, throttle/gears within a few seconds then the system design & installation is a complete failure. I'm sure that now you have had an early warning you will get it sorted out. But why oh why was it built the way it was? Absolute stupidity!

Perhaps the same "design philosophy" prevailed for "007" and it wasn't Blofeld or the Russians after all although I am reluctant to doubt RTF's judgement

Hippocampus said:

Wonder what “gps “ means.

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I think it means "my dog ate my homework", or "due to Covid,....".

All the gear and no idea???

Hippocampus said:

Would think these boats would be sufficiently compartmentized with fuel/water serving as a double bottom (as least in places) as to prevent sinking unles there’s major catastrophic damage. Wonder if in an effort to improve aesthetics and decrease expense watertight bulkheads and doors have grown out of favor in designs. One commonly sees a collision bulkhead, watertight at both ends of ER and that’s it. None in the interior.
Wonder what “gps “ means. Does it mean loss of the AP and loss of steering. This occurred to our little thing last week. My understanding is with NMEA 2000 and everything on the backbone failure of one thing can corrupt the function of other things. Our Precision 9 compass failed. This caused the AP pump to drive the rudder to port. Got a screen message “rudder angle >25 degrees. There’s no easy way to turn it off without turning off all electronics. This occurred just before entering our marinas channel which is very narrow. The approach is narrow as well and bordered on both sides by big rocks. We usually turn off the AP( that really means going to standby as there’s no power switch on the device. It’s on anytime the 2000 backbone has power). check the thrusters and reverse before entering the approach. That’s when the rudder went to port. We used the thrusters to line up with wind and current. We were fortunate to get a side tow on a Sunday from the yard. We needed both its big outboards and our thrusters to get into the slip. In retrospect should have just turned off everything connected to the NMEA background and gone in hand steering (assuming hand steering would have returned).
Totally surprised a ship this size didn’t have two totally independent and separate electronics suites. One fails shut power off to it and use the other. That way risk of gps/electronic compass, rudder angle indicator, AP computer or other component’s failure would not crippled steering. Have a A or B toggle at each helm.

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And this is why I refuse to have networked and integrated systems on my boat

Everything stand alone
Easily replaced without affecting other devices
Turned off and back to manual in a nanosecond

Be like Admiral Adama

“That's a pretty scary anecdote. To my way of thinking, if you are unable to gain manual control of helm, throttle/gears within a few seconds then the system design & installation is a complete “
From talking with my electronics tech this state of affairs is universal to any brand using NMEA 2000 which at this point is all brands a small boat owner might use.

I’ve had troubles with 0183 over the years but nothing like this. Last boat had three stations. Cockpit, hard dodger, and nav station. Lost the hard dodger MFD. That one was used anytime it was cold or wet or very windy. Could change the master so the rest worked but needed to physically disconnect power to the bad unit losing AP control at that steering position. My understanding is now there is no master in 2000. Also with 0183 I had multiple ways to steer the boat. Hand on direct rod linkage, AP from 3 stations, wind vane (Hydrovane) which also accepted a small independent AP tiller pilot, and emergency tiller. With hydraulics in the current boat there’s no emergency tiller. Being a motorboat there’s no wind vane. The Hydrovane accepted a tiller if the main rudder failed or was torn away. A truly belt and suspenders set up. We looked at multiple trawlers before buying this one. None had adequate redundancy. Even the Nordhavns would need a separate arm off the rudder post with a separate AP unattached to the network or hydraulics for me to achieve real redundancy imho.

We’ve always have had either a laptop or more recently a IPad running navigation next to the helm. If something like this ever happens again will shut off power to the nav suite and use the IPad. Will have no depth, radar or AIS on the iPad. So will be dependent on what the chart says and have MarineTraffic with its sometimes long delay for AIS. But at least I’d be able to hand steer.

Simi that’s a very viable alternative but difficult to achieve with current, readily available options to the small boat cruiser. Dealers want to sell you a system with a NMEA 2000 backbone. It’s what they have and know how to install and service. It’s more user friendly when it works.
If I was again going to do blue water in either power or sail would attempt to achieve redundancy by two totally independent systems. Two backbones, two of everything from speed, depth, AIS, radar and especially AP. Furthermore would have some convenient way to steer not dependent or integrated in any fashion to the main hydraulic steering. Think charts and gps the easiest to replicate. Chart on the MFD is the least important. Any screen and a hockey puck gps would serve if no gps in that screen. . Think the fortunate folks here still doing blue water should try to investigate why the event cited in the OP occurred and exam if they are similarly at risk. Us small boat coastal folks should exam how we can turn off our electronics suite as quickly as possible and have everyone on the boat knowing how to do it.
We had no hurt so no foul. But it was light winds and near slack. We truly lucked out and kudos to NEB. Our routine to use and confirm function of hand steering, thrusters and transmission saved us and the boat. Strongly recommend doing that well before entering a narrow channel or anytime slow speed hand steering will be required. We do the same routine before leaving. Be it from a dock (before lines are thrown), a mooring or running the windlass. That routine as saved us more than once.

What precludes anyone, millionaires included, from hiring dock rats to run their boats? Nothing!

Insurance companies. Also the captain would lose his job.

I’ve been in a different country and needed the boat moved. Interim captain had to be vetted and cleared by my insurance company. Have friends who are long term captains. They are extremely careful about who is running the boat. Anything happens just like in the Navy they’re responsible deemed responsible by the owner as they get to choose who gets to run the boat. Even if they are asleep or not on the boat they’re held responsible. Owners can fire anyone but captains usually do the hiring. They also limit the opportunity for future employment in that career.

Hippo, someone is feeding you a bunch of malarky!

My NAV is NMEA 2000 Furuno AP and MFD, with some 0183 inputs as well. But it would take about 2 seconds for me to reach up and put the AP on Standby to get full manual control of the helm. Or about 5 seconds to reach down to the switchpanel to turn off the AP breaker, and also get full manual control of the helm. And I have an emergency hand tiller from the cockpit via a deck fitting into the lazarette should the issue be hydraulic ram or line failure. This is on a 40 yo boat, but the Furuno stuff is just 10 yo.

If the Furuno AP fails and I have a 3-4 minutes available then I can go to the lazarette and swap a 3 pin plug over to then have the old WH Autopilot drive the hydraulic pump. None of it is rocket science or needing two of everything. And anything less than what I describe is a crap design.

On one of the Below Decks shows it was said that due to all the new super yachts that it was becoming difficult to get qualified crew. Could be part of the problem.

Hippocampus said:

We’ve always have had either a laptop or more recently a IPad running navigation next to the helm. If something like this ever happens again will shut off power to the nav suite and use the IPad. Will have no depth, radar or AIS on the iPad. So will be dependent on what the chart says and have MarineTraffic with its sometimes long delay for AIS. But at least I’d be able to hand steer.

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Failures always seem to happen at the worst moment!

I have three 8 circuit blade fuse boxes powered by 3 switches on breaker panel. Breakers are merely switches. 1 at bridge (MFD, Radar, AIS) 1 at helm (MFD, Depth, Radio, backbone) and 1 in closet (Autopilot). Also have ethernet switches at each location.

I therefor have capability of turning 1 switch to turn off Autopilot and pump and still have complete nav capabilities. Simply rewire your whole boat and voila.

(complete suite of instruments and I still like the ipad)

We had the AP in standby. In spite of that the AP pump drove the rudder to port. There is no power button on the AP screen to turn it off. There’s three breakers. Two down at the nav station. One marked “sub panel” it controls the sub panel up at the pilot house. On that sub panel the usual are listed-lights, horn, windlass, radar, instruments,fans, defrosters etc.. Second one at the nav station is listed as “instruments”. It controls MFDs and the backbone (although there’s also breakers at the sub panel for all instruments-depth, AIS,
radar etc.). However the AP pump, computer and compass have no individual breakers. They are powered anytime the backbone has power.
I was up on the flybridge. It’s where I alway am during close quarters maneuvering. It has the best sight lines. There are no breakers up there. No panels. Just the MFD, another screen for depth or any one parameter you may wish to see, screen for engine parameters, and screen with knob for the AP. Same as at the pilot house helm. You can turn off the engine, MFD, small screen I use for depth, thrusters (they have separate controls ) but that’s it. All those things have power buttons on them. You cannot individually turn off the AP. It has no power button up there nor at the pilot house. To rapidly turn off the AP (especially the pump) one needs to turn off the backbone. To do that one needs to climb down from the flybridge, enter the salon, go down another set of stairs to get to the nav station and turn off the backbone. Anytime the backbone is powered so is the AP. It remains powered when in standby. The whole event occurred with the AP in standby. Prior APs on 0183 could be turned off without turning off the system. The cable connections for the AP components also include power. There is not a separate cable or wire for power from what I can see and what I’ve been told. Will ask if it’s possible to divide out power from those cables and include a switch or fused breaker. Doesn’t look like it would be easily done.

The precision 9 compass that failed was under warranty. With tech who installed the system installed a replacement. Went out with him on Thursday last to swing compass and calibrate. The replacement failed. A -1-3degree error at due south but a +35-36 degree error at due north. Still had limited functionality. You could set it on a course and it would hold to it although shown compass heading didn’t match reality. It couldn’t do “go to”.
Now awaiting a second replacement. When that shows with ask if there’s any way to turn off power to all AP components leaving everything else up. However think the precision 9 compass is not only used for the AP but also for heading and course for the MFD.

Spoke with tech and with simrad. Both say only by shutting off backbone can the precision 9 power be turned off. Turning off breaker for AP at sub panel will shut off AP computer and AP pump motor. AP will then say “no AP computer” and be disabled. Both say they do not understand why the rudder was driven to port and manual steering lost with the AP in standby. Tech says remotely possible precision 9 failure corrupted the system hence intact elements didn’t work although not broken. Pragmatically if this happens again will need to go to pilot house and flick AP breaker there or nav station and flick instruments breaker(that would shut down everything. Can’t do anything from the flybridge.
New one hopefully comes in Wednesday. We shall see……..

Comodave said:

On one of the Below Decks shows it was said that due to all the new super yachts that it was becoming difficult to get qualified crew. Could be part of the problem.

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We have reached some sort of zenith here, if quoting Below Deck as a source for anything. Just saying.