HCB 53 Suenos Chaseboat On The Rocks In St. Barths

YF members are from all over this world.
Sharing news and videos helps keep us focused on an interested segment of what we want to learn more about.

Then comments and explanations between these world wide brothers and sisters.
Example; Brother Pascal explained he used to live close to those rocks above and offered a lil insight.
Brother Ken added a comment about MAIB investigations.

Sometimes our speculations of an event are rite on.
Sometimes not (way off) but still enlightening and entertaining.
But here on YF, It's not boring as talking heads get on a computer or TV screen.

Just some thoughts from the swamps

Brother Norseman use to fly scheduled trips in and out of St. Barth’s and witnessed a few airplane crashes, but no boats on the rocks back then.

This one is a classic

https://youtube.com/shorts/A36svM_ikU0?si=Xh8O0j1zBIX8Uakx

Oh No, Oh No, No, No,,,

That’s an Aztec. I often used to exit the runway at the turnoff….

Yup, I did too, flew Aztecs in there, B and C models based in St. Thomas.
Also flew a C -402 with a Robertson STOL kit to St. Barths, better suited than the Aztec.

Good old days 1985, lived on a sailboat in St. Thomas and got my first USCG 6-pack license at the time. The plan was to take crews from the Norwegian Cruise ships on day trips to get away from work, @ $50 per head I could have made a good living, but insurance was an issue and too much tangled up with flying and changing jobs and islands, then wife’s..

Thread creep as usual, but interesting memories from St. Barths, beautiful island, crazy airport..

Mine was a C with Metco tips which while not a STOL kit, lowered the stall speed a few kts. I used to have Paul’s chief mechanic do my annuals on week ends, he said it was so much better maintained that Virgin Air..

PM sent..

This has shown up on a couple sites as being from the official Loon Patreon account. Says that the injuries weren't/aren't as bad as reported.

There are a couple Reddit discussions with some information and (mostly) speculation and discussion. Some of it seems to confirm turmoil, e.g. the chef who was just rotated on board now posts to Instagram as being in Alabama.

I don't do Instagram, but I might sign up to try to confirm the Reddit posts that say that the other rotational chef, Nina, left the party early to fly home. She's the only reason I know anything about Loon, I've liked watching her cooking on a yacht videos for a few years.

I'm not sure links to Reddit are ok, but if you google r/motoryachtloon and look at the thread "Oops" that's the discussion I've been looking in on every couple days.

Not as bad as reported injuries. What The Heck does that mean?
Nobody died or was maimed?
Or they can be rebuilt like the $6M guy and forget all about this?
Stupid comment.
Still a stupid and embarrassing event.

Their still working? Thought they sold and folded afterwords.

Well, They are on-line.
Good for them.

The Reddit thread "Ooops" has been deleted by a moderator there. The last time I looked at it, there were a few posts claiming that it was well-known in the industry that the Captain had taken money from crew members and from guests. The moderator message says there were multiple posts along those lines that led to the deletion.

The chef (Dean) who had just rotated on board for Caribbean season has confirmed that he's left Loon:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DETJ5EgPt9D/?img_index=15

I think crewing and working on Loon is very difficult, and harder then other jobs because of the very active YouTube channel.
While crewing, captaining, is hard on its own (double it with charters) putting a pretty face for a camera is not easy.

Now saying all this, I think leaving because of the accident is wrong, declaring it on social media is twice wrong.
As we say in the Mediterranean, the dirty clothes are best cleaned at home, and you see who the real captains and sailors are when the going gets tough.

I like the Loon channel and I preferred to the SuperYacht Captain (IMO) when he did something similar couple years ago, with the understanding that it is a marketing tool, which in recent times lost some of its authenticity.

It is unfortunate that this Yacht Charter business always gets the opposite of PR; Below Deck just shows the drama scripted and over-tuned, while Loon showed it as heaven on earth....

I think the post from Chef Dean was generic enough to be no problem. For people that have a social media presence, it's pretty much expected that there will be some sort of update for everything they do.

Speaking of updates...

• All the videos have been removed from the Loon Youtube channel
• Loon shows on AIS as being at Safe Harbor Rybovitch in Palm Beach
  
• Someone created a new Reddit specifically for talking about this incident and Capt. Paul and how bad he is. There are a couple posts said to be from crew (former crew) but I don't know how to check if they really are.
• There are a couple posts from the eSysman guy asking for crew to contact him, so he's looking for more information.

As part of his latest video, the eSysman guy spends 4 1/2 minutes saying the same stuff that's in my first 3 points, plus reading the posts you can find on Reddit.

Now The Triton has an article about the crash:

https://www.**************/2025/01/six-injured-after-motor-yacht-loon-tender-accident/

It's a good summary, but it doesn't mention that a few Instagram posts by (former) crew have identified the captain as being the driver at the time.

That superyacht Youtube guy has a video titled "The driver was..." which I haven't watched but I'm sure it just refers to the same Instagram posts.

Don’t waste your time…. He had nothing new to say except the boat is still on the rocks and hasn’t been moved.

I can’t imagine anyone shooting videos in front of that awful wallpaper… gee… even a white sheet would be better!