Boat sinks ... Simon Cowell rescues 9

At the Southampton Boat Show there was a 120' Sunseeker M/Y with a large garage hatch at the stern. The brand new yacht had launched it's tenders, so was light at the stern, and was tied along side.

Water was washing in over the swim platform and into the garage at what I thought was an alarming rate. Around 4 or 5 inches of water was sloshing around, this is on a calm day while at the dock.

St. Tropez can get quite rough in the afternoon, on a busy weekend at 'going home' time there is a lot of wash from careless skippers. I'm suprised more of these bath-tub dayboats don't get swamped.

The incident with SOFIA 3 happened while the yacht was anchored at the Baie de Canebiers. Around "going home time", the water can indeed get very choppy and rough as the Baie is parallel to the Golfe where all the yachts are passing.

Once upon a time...most tenders and toys were stored on the "upper-decks"...?! They were reasonably safe "up there" from rough seas too.

But for many years now, yacht designers have increasingly insisted on storing tenders and toys lower-down in "the hull", launched and recovered using technically-complex electro-hydraulic cranes / water-tight doors etc. (but also prone to increased failure during operations).

What surprises me is that the builders (and surveyors / class authorities etc.) incorporating these various designers' tender storage and launching designs apparently do so without much consideration...

One might obviously assume that the aft "tender" storage space on a modern motor yacht of 30-45m would be completely water-tight in the sense that any water ingress into this compartment would not pose any risk of subsequent flooding to say, the main E/R or other compartments (it would be easy to say ensure that any door communicating from the E/R to the aft tender storage compartment - a common arrangement, should be kept "SHUT" when the transom is open...), yeah, like that would be possible in reality?!

What is beyond any discussion is that these "internal" tender-storage spaces, 'beach clubs or whatever" should be considered liable to unexpected and sudden / complete flooding vis-a-vis vessel stability in normal use etc.

The yacht builders / designers should have incorporated all this into the initial design / newbuilding. No excuses allowed IMHO.

A friend of mine took these pictures. He had spoken to the recovery yard and was told no serious damages were done.

The question is how are these megayachts going down so easily. Is it a lack of proper crew training? Engineering disasters or what? This yacht is in shallow water that appears to have been relatively calm.

A greek owner of many yachts that I've dealt with a long time and trust, told me that on Yogi, the doors flung open and possibly fell off, or would not shut, the yacht had been in the yard for warranty repairs forever and HE feels it was insurance related, and that the crew left the engine room watertight bulkhead open......so garage filled, flooded engine room, end of story. He said he got the story from a good friend in that area..... But the design of the transom doors was ill-engineered and allowed the sea to break them open rendering no way to secure them shut, the crew had the engine room watertight door open allowing the engine room to flood, and the way the *NEW* to the boat crew handled it after that fact sealed the deal (which he also thought was extremely strange).

Disclaimer: this is just what I was told and heresay.

I'd like to see the numbers to see %age wise if they are really "going down so easily"....

From what we can see here there is absolutely nothing that we can extract right now that would make these two accidents mentioned (Yogi / Sofia 3) "the same" or even in the same group....

Yogi had something weird and unexpected happen, which according to your source, which you yourself say is heresay and has absolutely no proof...while this one apparently had an open aft door in conditions which were not compatible with such. Not all yachts with transom or other hull openings have issues... many yachts without such openings also have issue so i dont really see much use for speculating......but this is just my opinion

PS: in the case of sofia it wasnt a plage style back, it was a regular aft garage opening... Perhaps it was speced to be opened, cargo put in/out and then immediately closed and this wasnt observed in time?

My source is from the area, in the business, and has a good understanding of the situation directly from people somewhat involved in it. Since I heard it from him and not directly from his source, nor do I want to disclose my source, I put the heresay disclaimer to cover my behind.

Anyways, I have worked on several yachts over 95' that did not have automatic pumps at all, they had 1 very large bilge pump that had a main pumping manifold and you opened the valve for the compartment you wanted to pump from. They did have another 1 or 2 emergency pumps, but again these were manually turned on and off by the engineer. This is pretty common on a lot of large yachts designed to have a fulltime crew/engineer on board.....I've seen it on commercial shrimp boats as well. I guess the theory is if the boat has several water-tight compartments/bulkheads, even if one filled to the waterline it wouldn't sink the boat and you'd just pump it out.......

Hi,

You will find that it is more than theory, it is in the rules that any decent boat is built to.

Look up Damage Stability and Intact Stability for yachts if you are interested in the facts.

As for YOGI, everyone seems to know someone with the scoop on this one.. Funny thing is all scoops have same end result but a wide variety of initial causes.

I don't know if the whole truth will ever come out.

Capt J, that may well be the case for some boats... badly executed (IMO), and boats I personally wouldnt go near as an owner...

Having design and built a boat abt 10 yrs ago, and now in the market for a 40-45m for the past few years i am very active in research and in looking at all sort of products (and I research extremely heavily...). I assure you I have seen a lot of what you mention, but have you been on a Baglietto? Codecasa? ISA? etc? Esp these recent ones (aka last 10yrs)? These are extremely well built and engineered machines, built to the same specs as any other top yard in the world (failiures may always exist, either by design flaw or human error, or machine error - just like on Boeing Airplaines.........), but things ARE NOT as simple as you seem to indicate in some of your posts...

Some yards which were only smaller yards building smaller boats (40-60, then up to 80, then 100, etc) in the size range you usually seem to concentrate on most comments are mostly the culprit for missing critical equipment when you go up in size... (A while back - there was a comment, i believe it was from you, that mentioned that most things on a 80ft and a 40m are quite similar in systems - i didnt want to enter the argument as it was already quite heated, but i disagree vehemently from personal experience... owning an 80ft and being extremely involved directly with its spec, build and operation together with our full-time crew - yes we have a fulltime crew of 2 off season, 4 on season, no charter, I and the capt/engineer are on top of everything...) Anyways, this is all to say that in this particular case i think it may have been a bit of crew mistake, or just bad timing...

You can research for full specs on many of these boats and see how automated they are, how many alarms and automatic pumps they have - obviously with manual BACKUPS, etc... its not built like a commercial shrimp boat...sorry to call this one out...

Yachts over a certain size have water-tight bulkheads that are sealed to above the waterline in order to meet class rules and for safety. Many of the compartments are also almost always bone dry and have no way of water entering the compartment unless there was a puncture in the hull Many of these yachts DO NOT have your typical Rule bilge pump and float switch. Many of these let's say 50M+ yachts are built like a ship and they have piping from each compartment to a common manifold, typically in the Engine room, and you open the valve and turn the pump on to drain water from whichever compartment you use. Many commercial ships are the same way, they don't have automatic pumps in each compartment, they have an engineer that manually activates the pumping. Yachts of this nature usually and almost always do have a high water alarm for each compartment and newer ones a computerized monitoring system. I've seen this on a Feadship, a Delta, a custom 97' long range motoryacht......etc....etc.....

Fuel is usually the same exact way, you have a day tank, but to transfer you have to manually open valves for the supply tank you want to use, and turn the pump on, and monitor it so you don't overfill the day tanks.


When I was talking about Shrimp boats, I was talking about the newer steel 100'+ shrimp boats, not a 1950's shrimp boat built out of wood in someone's backyard.

Anyways, regarding this thread, what is really bothering me is so many manufacturers are building these garages, so close to the waterline, and they're not water-tight compartments. Considering the size of the gaping hole in the transom when the door is open, they should be sealed from the engine room, even if you had a ladder going to a deck hatch, and then another deck hatch and ladder on the otherside of the bulkhead for engine room access. A garage 1' above the water, should not flood and sink a yacht over 100', to me, it sounds like a really really bad idea and there should be some class rules to regulate engineering issues in the design.

Yes, you're right CaptJ, obviously their not using rule pumps eheh that would be funny even (although i wouldnt be surprised if some non-classed vessels from "adventurer yards" do that)... bagliettos and others are likely using large gianneschi ac pumps...but thats just what i've seen... And most kick in automatically as well as manually, even when some manifolds are involved there is usually a dual mechanism...

As for the watertight doors above the waterline, that was the case on Sofia 3... But as the account says, she took 3 large waves in sequence to the open garage... I didnt hear that her engineroom flooded? but if that is so it was a major crew failure to leave the door open... All 35m+ yachts I've been on that have such garages or plages DO HAVE watertight doors to the other areas (such as inner rooms and/or engine room), and in many cases the garage itself is also either "fully wet" or will be watertight...

I assume that this garage was not capable of being flooded, and was flooded due to a freak accident... I assume the pumps (probably with external aid) did their job (although whether their would have righted the boat on their own is a mystery), but there is no evidence the entire yacht flooded... *case in point... i'm not talking about yogi or others*...

Wasnt there a similar accident posted here a while back where a yacht somewhere in some beach in france/italy/or greece had a similar fate? Open tender garage, large waves in short succession hit her, garage flooded taking the stern down... pumped water out, and back she came? (some damage to be expected)...

PS: shouldnt we change the thread to "Simon Cowell's crew rescues 9"?

No,no. It should read "Simon Cowell is an irritating, self-opinionated, cloth-eared, talentless tit.
Professional crew saves 9".

Hehehehe, I TOTALLY agree.

As a yacht owner he did direct (or at least give the ok) the crew to go and do it though (the crew wouldnt just sail away with the owners party onboard or on a beach)... on his dime... so as arrogant or irritating and talent-less, he thankfully didn't turn a blind eye!

I have sent and encouraged my crew to take out our yacht on more than one occasion to aid in rescue efforts - it is a no-brainer of a question for anyone except a f-ing selfish pr#@#

tit

I wish I was as talentless as he is so I could sit back counting my 200 million pound fortune and sail around the Med with a crew of nine even if the yacht was chartered.

Plus his shows have given the chance to many young people to make their own fortunes, yes he makes it off them but where would they be without him.

Every Svengali needs a Trilby and vice-versa. Suck them in, spit them out.

A bit like pre-owned Broward buyers.

?

Sounds like you know as much about Broward owners as you know about Cowell.

A proffesional crew would probably aid in rescue situations without the owner's "permission"....?