Sobering

My condolences to the families.

 

Sad and harsh reminder of the realities of the ocean.

We've had a veritable gold rush of sailing youtubers the last few years, considering the medium they use for videos a surprising low numbers of casualties.

Idea of a fire fits, seems like raft+no emergency call usually seems to follow that trend.

Tragedy either way.

 

Commiserations to those grieving. We can do our best to keep things shipshape, but the environment and large number of variables deem it to be a hazardous undertaking. I would suggest that a number of forum members, myself included, have been close to a similar fate on the odd occasion.

 

A couple of my favourites:

"The sea always figures out what you missed."

"Water always wins."

 

I read, but can't confirm, it has been worked out they were in the ocean at the same time and place as a freighter and the freighter crew was contacted and said they didn't see her.
Terrible, terrible situation.
If somehow the circumstances can be worked out maybe another tragedy can be averted.

 

Another possibility for sure. Know a guy or two hit by bigger boats and ones hit by tug tows. Neither had the chance to make it to a raft as they were moved away from anything that deployed. In both instances epirbs did deploy, ironically that's how one of the offending vessels knew an accident had occurred.

Depending on raft location a fire can take out communication devices and still have time to get to a raft. Know of a couple situations where guys got to rafts in fires but didn't have thebl capacity for mayday.

 

I found the fact that it had a used Leaf battery interesting...

 

Seems like fire is a real danger using salvaged lithium power packages, made worse by salt water and confined spaces on very flammable vessel construction.

 

In the guardian (uk)
British woman and husband found dead after failed Atlantic crossing https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/21/british-woman-and-husband-found-dead-after-failed-atlantic-crossing

 

Strange how people think they can modify to electric at zero cost. There is really no such thing as a zero cost proposition in boats. Everything is a trade off.

They put a lot of solar up which changes wind effects on the boat. They added weight with the battery pack while subtracting the engine. Call it a wash? This surely changed things like righting arms and Gz. I don’t know the matters well enough to other than consider neither did they.

All speculation, but someone with decent data on the vessel might be able to make some good guesses about the effects of the mods.

The vessel bottom is very round. It would not take much for the boat to heel over and the solar to catch a breaking wave or two. The solar installation from their videos appears to be made of rigid panels and stainless rail construction. None of these are light, but they are strong. It is, based on my experience, a very top heavy installation.

 

I don't think speculation is particularly helpful and the people who could give answers lost their lives in the incident,or not long after.It seems unlikely that the remains of the boat could be located or recovered from such a large and deep region,which would fill in the gaps.Out of consideration for their families,I will confine my comments to an expression of condolence for their loss.

 

Understand the sentiment.

However... respectful speculation backed up with well reasoned ideas could potentially be life saving. Managing respect for the dead should not hinder our ability for productive discourse.

With that said I'm open to the rollover option from changed superstructure. My counterpoint would be the lack of triggered saftey devices that would/should have been present and deployed. Have seen a fair whack of very poorly retrofi boats that add all manner of weight up high. Outside of icing, free water from down floading seems to still get more people than superstructure related issues. Have been involved with a couple rollovers (one pretty up and personal) as well as a few fires and even near a large/small vessel strike.

In the rollovers some form of emergency transponder triggered. Either an epirb or an inreach (can think of a boat that had dual epirb failures but the inreach triggered.) Rafts were accessed in about half, usually dependant on how quick the boat went over.

Fires were near other boats, no radio call and no epirb as they burned very quick. But rafts are usually stored in containers or bags in areas outside the fire zone. So a raft found with no distress call or epirb/inreach fits what I've seen in boat burns.

In boat collision sinkings I've not met anyone who made it to a raft let alone a suit or a jacket. Folks usually seem to be found with whatever floated with the wreckage.

Seems like modern electric cars have lots of safeguards to prevent fire. Would be interesting to have a dialog on how those would be helped/hindered when retrofit into a boat.

 

I would normally expect a 42 foot boat to be sailed by a crew of 4-5 people and at times there might be one or two on the coachroof.Their weight is unlikely to be too far from that of the hardware that held the solar panels and I would expect a similar reduction in stability from either,which is to say not a vast amount compared to the typical ballast for that size of boat.

 

In the video, I see not less than 4 discrete panels about 7 feet above the deck. From other views it looks like they added somewhere between 10-14 solar panels plus the framework for them. If we do some maths; we can probably make some ranges of guesses about their impacts on the vessel.

The reason for the speculation is not to disrespect them, but to force others into consideration.

The mass of my rigid solar panels is 53 pounds per panel. Their stainless rail frame system is either 3/4” or 1” rail. I’d say they added a range of 500-1500 pounds of mass at an average height of 6.5 feet above the deck, not VCG; more likely about 1000 pounds. It is a significant change.

Someone smarter than me might be able to do an analysis of what 500,1000,1500 pounds of mass does to the vessel up high. Of course, wind effects are also an issue as the vessel heels; those panels become another sail like structure.

A well known builder who does not deserve to be named in this thread was building an e boat. His system had major fire suppression added to the battery area. The project stopped for financial reasons currently, but fire is certainly not impossible. Maybe I’m a simpleton, but the solar looks excessive to me.

The day they most likely went over or sank might also correlate to a weather event. Was it horribly hot or windy would provide clues.

 

Assuming they were forced to the dinghy; could the life raft have been trapped/tangled by the solar panel array?