Proteksan & Turquoise Superyacht "Yogi" Sinks!

This thread has been stripped of unrelated posts. Please stay on subject.

Press Release from Proteksan:

With all due respect to Captain Buckley's plea for an end to speculation, particularly that which centers on the performance of the crew, Proteksan's statement raises a few questions.

As much as some in the industry will use any means to avoid comments that bring into question the competence of yacht crew, it is difficult to ignore the photographs, and now the inability of the manufacturer to interview those directly involved raises more than a few red flags. Yogi was a charter yacht, it was a commercial vessel and it is a da-ning reflection on Flag, Class, and Port State if the manufacturer's investigators are prohibited from obtaining information at the earliest possible moment.

When an airliner suffers an accident, the manufacturer will have a team of technical and operational experts at the scene within hours to assist the national authorities with their investigation. The crew is immediately subject to the needs of investigators from all involved parties.

It appears that Proteksan has been blocked by other interests in its attempts to interview crew and will not be able to for another week at least. This begs the question, who is getting "lawyered up" and why? Who is preventing the manufacturer from interviewing the only people who know what really happened onboard Yogi?

Without speculating about the technical reasons why the flooding could not be managed in the time available, the photos of the rescue raise more questions. Given that the crew had 7 hours to plan and prepare for rescue, why are 3 crewmembers in a raft while the other 5 are very loosely grouped elsewhere? Why is one crewman precariously clinging to the boat's side?

Was the order to abandon ship given at some point then rescinded after 3 crew boarded a raft? Were the 3 crew "freelancing" and decided for themselves to abandon ship? Did the rescuers request the crew to evacuate to rafts? If so why were only 3 on the raft? Why were the other rafts not launched and prepared for evacuation? Was there what appears to be a breakdown in command that led the crew to take individual actions? Was anyone in command onboard Yogi? Is what we see the desired outcome of drills and onboard training?

Yogi was an ISM boat, where did the system fail this crew? Did the crew fail the system?

There are far more questions remaining about this incident than should exist at this stage.

The way I see it, the raft part of the video is really pointless to discuss here... even if it does involve any crew decisions it was AFTER anything directly related to the shipsaving had been done and after more than 7 hours combating the situation... to contest why they were losely bundled or in the raft is just useless and dumb in my personal and humble opinion... nonetheless, it was extremely clear to me since the first time i watched the video, and is still very clear to me after watching it multiple times that they:
1. were all bundled together to ease retrieval near the bridge.
2. became obvious that getting them from the ship would be extremely dangerous and time consuming (see the rescuer hit himself, etc...)
3. cut in video, presumably a fair amount of time has passed where instructions were given and agreement was obtained between rescuers and rescuees.
4. crew in raft are lifted to helicopter in a much less traumatic way than the rescuer that got smashed into the side of the yacht in the previous attempt...
5. presumably the rest of the crew all were lifted off from the raft in the same way.

Why they werent all in the raft at the same time seems obvious, to reduce the riss with being in the raft as opposed to the larger more stable vessel, while the rescue was in progress... makes sense to me... I really dont get this part of your speculation at all Marmot...??

As to the lawyering up its quite obvious it would happen, and still it doesnt point blame to the crew... In my opinion it is one of the following variations:

Owners lawyers briefing crew extensibly before they can tell their story so that the owner is covered by the insurance.
Insurance and owners lawyers are now together getting the story straight so that they (insurance) can go against the shipyard.

Basically, the crew are agents of the owners and from my understanding the owners lawyers would be the first to be on the scene to "protect" them from basically saying anything stupid (that would void insurance)... Whether this is legitimate and necessary (i.e. wrongdoing by crew), is beyond the point and possibly didnt even happen, it is just the way things get written down and said can be interpreted in different ways. obviously the owners seem to have been smart and lawyered up pretty quickly...

Either that or the authorities are doing something weird (which I think we would have heard by now) such as having put the crew in isolation, interrogating them, etc, which would be really no politically correct I think, but its been known to happen on other types of accidents...

Mr. Marmot, there is no doubt of the boat quality at all, after all it is classed and was operating during last season successfully, the point am with you in, is the investigation but we all know that it is power and politics at the moment. What am against you in, is centering the blame totally on the crew, in all casses and with the most profficient seaman, it takes only one mistke to make a disaster, take Concordia as an example, the captain worked the same ship on the same route for ten years and probably made the manuever we all now deem "stupid" more than hundered time, but it only took one time for the tragedy to occur. So, blaming a professional charter staff working under the management of a reputable charter agent like burgees is just like saying a dumb prejudice note like "It's made in Turkey". Until we know the names, read the resumes and see the faces of the crew, then add that to the trip plan and the chain of events, the crew remains a PROBABLE cause, like another probable cause of (Someone forgot something in the yard which the boat was in the day before).

About the lifeboat, as I remember it was launched after the first attempt by the coast guard and I guess the coast guard might have launched it (Maybe!), the thing that I find puzzling, is why there was no lifeboat preped for abandonship? we know it is better to stay with the boat while it is floating but you never know when starts a rapid sink so while i credit the crew for donning the immersion suits, I don't know why they did not prep a lifeboat, I was not there I can't judge until further input!

Cheers.

Hi,

There is a whisper that the insurance is the big issue.

I am afraid we will never see the real truth of this , it will turn into another Robert Maxwell type yachting mystery before we know it.

I will certainly be paying extra attention to any CV's I see where this vessel is listed as a previous ride.

I'm looking for new friends, please send your CVs if you want to be my friend and join me for a drink... especially if you've been on a yacht called Yogi circa Feb 2012... LOL...

K1W1, I havent even heard the whispers, but even whisperless to me it is fairly obvious that insurance would be the big issue... One way or the other, insurance is the one that will have a hot bomb on their hand... They will either pay out a lot and be out of money for that amount, or they will fight the owner on some basis (possibly really expensive and still lose even more), or they will pay and go after the yard (who may in turn have their insurance), etc, etc... In one way or another, insurance is the dominator here... Its quite clear why they would be creating a blanket... whether the blanket is between the owner/crew and the boats insurance, and between the owner/crew/insurance and the yard, there is a blanket, and there is an insurance company on one side of the blanket, and a claim somewhere in the middle...

I think that some details will end up emerging, I hope they do for the sakes of preventing future occurrences. I also hope any sort of justice, if necessary, is served (even if it is just absolving innocent parties such as the crew or shipyard if they are deemed non-culpable)...

Like many other marine incidents, it will take 15 years at least for an indipendant investigation for a tv documentary that gives a bit of the real events and facts.

I do believe that any professional crew that will be permenant on a ship should be sent to a training and testing facility even if they just finished training or survived a disaster, that is how I play ball.

Cheers.

I personally believe that insurance is a fraud on its own! Those underwriters are advocates to the devil!

Cheers.

Did you forget to put a smiley after that statement?

I have no experience with the particular Yard, but can you give an example of your experience please? just implying doesnt cut it even in a forum...

No need for a smiley, it was a serious statement. I can't bash anyone just to please my ego! The yard has many boats on the water, and to say anything about Yogi without a proof is an insult to the yard, architect, class surveyors, etc. and this is a mistake that alone can cause sinking, so I will refrain from it and stay floating.

Big Cheers to ya!

Because a boat has a folder of current class certificates and has completed a "successful season" of charters is absolutely no indication of the condition of the vessel or the competence of its crew.

That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with the builder, class surveyor, architect, or anyone's ego.

Whats the point? and where is the evidence that the yard is questionable?

Said like a boss! slammm dunk! kudos

Well, just say when you don't want to just charge at people!! YOU were fighting from the very begining about the class and certification crap to rule our anything about a build problem and throw all the blame on the crew, I was always saying that ALL are factors that can't be used against anyone unless we get to know what really happened. Having a class certification and a good history under active operation gives the boat the benefit of good doubt, so it does to the builder, crew, management company, etc.

Admin Edit: Remark removed.

Till then, Cheers until bottoms dry!

Was that really necessary. REALLY???

ANY further aggressive remarks will be immediately removed by our moderators, including the exert above. If you, or ANYONE, makes another remark of this nature, then memberships are being removed and IP's are being banned. This includes senior members too!

You could be right on this. As I see it, there appears to be three possibilities currently.

1. There was a design error or fault that contributed to the sinking.

2. Human error or failure to follow procedures that caused the sinking.

3. Deliberate scuttling for insurance purposes.

There will be plenty of lawyers and insurance claim adjusters working this case.

Hi carelm, I think that even if there was 1 or 2, on its own it would probably not cause the sinking... i.e. I would tend to believe that it was more of a chain of events that led to catastrophic failure...

Also, it is perhaps quite possible that the troubles started a while before the mayday call... Something catastrophic did happen that enough water entered the vessel to take it down, nonetheless it may have started and even been noticed as a small issue many hours before... perhaps even dismissed, or perhaps addressed but not to its full necessity or maybe it was masked, yada, yada... basically I think that the yacht didnt fail miserably from one moment to the next (7hrs from mayday to sinking is an indication, basically it took 7 hours after the vessel was deemed in grave danger for it to sucumb, so it didnt "just fail")... Further, there isnt any obvious and decisive sign of crew wrongdoing at this point, so it isnt possible to deem this human error...

key operative frase imo.... "chain of events"...

Please refrain from posting in such as way as to imply that I made any statement that brought into question the quality of the yard or its products.

Quite the opposite is true as should be easily understood by reading my statement:

"That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with the builder, class surveyor, architect, or anyone's ego."

According to the last available AIS graph, she was anchored for few hours between 20:30Hours on the 15th and 05:10Hours on the 16th, then had a heading of 201degrees at 05:17hours on the 16th doing 8.6knts. After that went stealth (Even though not running with owner or guests and in friendly waters). Could that be a part of the chain or just they pre-planned resting? I am saying so just to favor considering all aspects because the mayday call went off after almost 19 hours of setting sail.

Cheers.

I noticed you didn't address possibility 3. No doubt looking at it from strictly an accident reconstruction point of view, a chain of events will be operative. My line of thinking is that no one wants to be holding a $100M or so bag (my estimate of the yacht). The shipbuilders' insurance/lawyer team will likely press for human error while the owners' counterparts will likely press for design error/fault. A "chain of events" conclusion may include both or some other cause as well.