45 meter Benetti yacht Domani floundering

Video out there online of 45-meter "Domani" floundering 45 miles off of Greys Harbor WA. in heavy sea unable to close its stern door. Couldn't link the video. Coast Guard is on scene but doesn't look good for the vessel.

Well that's good news. The color video that I viewed was directly into the stern beach club area with tons of ocean water aboard and mucho free surface area sloshing back and forth with the rolling motion of the vessel. Aft engine room and Benetti's infamous lack of water tight bulkhead penetrations made me think that this wouldn't end well for the vessel. Better videos are out there and will be forthcoming.

Properly functioning proximity alarms and electrical lock outs make it practically impossible to be underway with main engines with a shell door open but designers and manufacturers are never at fault when crew are in the mix. A quality manufacturer will have a manually hand operated hydraulic back up system for emergency closing and secondary top emergency locking pin or pins. Picking points or small pad eyes on the shell door for emergency rigging going to the aft deck warping winches seems like a no brainer but nope, it will interfere with those sexy Italian design lines...

Under tow by USCG. All good. You never see this on the east coast! West coast USCG must be a different breed or there's zero commercial towing on the west coast.

There is a stairwell from the aft deck down to the beach club and on this Benetti model there is actually an access tunnel running full length from the fwd engine room bulkhead to the bow thruster compartment. As far as how this shell door setup is installed? Basic hydraulic power pack located locally and manually operated with a valve block driving rams for lifting and lowering & locking pins on the perimeter flanges. Proximity sensors controlling the valve block when door is seated, and pins are locked. Some shell doors use inflatable gaskets while others used fixed. Some have wells beneath with sensors and pumps to de- water and catch / contain leaks (and they all leak a bit, even Lurssen and Feadship). Most if not all shell door manufacturers are required to have class approved emergency manual backup systems, manually powered hydraulic hand pump and manual unloader valves to isolate portions of the system if needed. Deck and engineering depts practice these emergency procedures for shell doors to familiarize themselves in case of primary power pack failure or in case of a dead ship situations. The last Feadship that I was Chief engineer on (Iroquois) had multiple fail safes for the aft stern beach club shell door and if I was given the order to start the mains and the deckies left the shell door open the engines would be locked out and multiple alarms and lights would sound in the ER, ECR and bridge. If you drill down on Cramm Hydraulics website or Navim Hydraulics or Akkerboom, you'll find block diagrams for their electro/ hydraulic shell doors with a much more thorough description on the innerworkings.

Alongside and secure. Now the damage assessments begin.