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Gas tanker hit by super-yacht sinks off New Providence
- rhexs 5y agoWhat kind of insurance policy a super yacht owner would have will cover something like this?
- adventured 5y agoDepends on the owner. If you're Larry Ellison rich, you'll place those types of assets under an operating corporation meant just for the purpose of managing eg your yachts and attempt to have it step in front of liability risk so they can't very easily go after Ellison's other $109 billion in personal wealth. That corporation will carry very substantial insurance policies for just such risks. It's obviously incredibly expensive to own & operate a super yacht.
- nerdponx 5y agoThis is frustrating because even a massive payout to insurance still doesn't cover the environmental externalities. There should be a different set of government-imposed penalties for environmental damage resulting from negligence, essentially a probabilistic Pigouvian tax.
- throwawayboise 5y agoHow much money, paid to whom, would negate the environmental damage caused by this accident?
- wilde 5y agoIt’s a good question. One answer could be “enough money to act as a deterrent” and “who cares, the govt I guess”. EDIT: Could also do the student debt thing and have the fines pierce corporate veils and not be dismissible in bankruptcy.
- rurp 5y agoWell nothing can negate an incident like this, but a lot can be done to mitigate the damage and disincentive this happening in the future. The government that has jurisdiction should heavily fine the person(s) responsible and direct the money towards the victims in the tanker and for environmental cleanup.
- willcipriano 5y agoI suspect that additional incentives wouldn't have changed anyone's behavior here. Nobody involved wanted to crash.
- nerdponx 5y agoOf course not. But the owner of the yacht and/or possibly the person who the owner hired to manage the yacht deemed that the expected loss due to their negligence wasn't big enough to warrant being not-negligent. Adding punitive "environmental fines" might tip the balance.
- sp332 5y agoAnd how much will their premiums go up after an accident in which they were at fault?
- jmalicki 5y agoCan't speak to insurance, but fwiw the M/T tropical breeze has DWT of 750 [1], whereas Wikipedia considers 30,000 DWT to be on the smaller end [2], so this is likely a much smaller tanker than one would envision when one first reads the headline, and likely costs notably less than the $51 million asking price of the yacht [3], as Wikipedia says a 32,000 DWT tanker (40x the size of the one here) runs for about $43 million. 1. https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/TROPIC-BREEZE-IMO-8906315-MMSI-312815000 https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/TROPIC-BREEZE-IMO-89063... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Vessel_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Vessel_pricing 3. https://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-market-intelligence/brokerage-sales-news/rossinavi-motor-yacht-utopia-iv-for-sale https://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-market-intelligence/...
- brendoelfrendo 5y agoWhen they said gas tanker instead of oil tanker, I assumed that this was a local fuel delivery boat, not an international shipping tanker. I guess the article doesn't make that clear, though. Maybe it's something that the audience in the Bahamas would be more familiar with so they didn't feel the need to explain further.
- Animats 5y agoMarine Traffic has some pictures of the Tropic Breeze.[1] Pictures of a large oil tanker in the Jamaican Observer[2] are unrelated. The Tropic Breeze looked like a work boat with a big liquid natural gas tank on deck. Destination was Great Stirrup Cay, a 200+ acre island owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines and used as a stopping point for their cruise ships. The cruise line has a resort there. Not yet clear if the collision happened in open ocean or maneuvering near an island. [1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/shipid:377797/ships https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/shipid:3777... [2] https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Bahamian_authorities_probing_collision_at_sea_resulting_in_gas_tanker_sinking https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Bahamian_authorit...
- bburrito 5y agoAnd just like when the same thing that happened off of San Diego and killed a few people... nothing will happen to the negligent crew of the yacht. Fuck the environment! At least nobody died this time.
- 71a54xd 5y agoIt's actually kind of insane how negligent super-yacht crews are. I've had a number of close calls sailing in the summer around the Hudson / in the ocean right outside of Manhattan. Many crews also have no clue how to handle currents or operate a vessel in close proximity. Never had issues with huge tankers, police boats etc - but I can count a handful of times super yacht (a boat longer than 40m) captains have been drunk, high or just absent when a vessel is in motion.
- CoastalCoder 5y agoAsking as a non-boater: does the Coast Guard take seriously allegations of such seamanship? Basically I'm curious if sea captains are held to similar standards as airplane pilots, or if poor boat piloting is only penalized when actual mishaps occur.
- 71a54xd 5y agoThey take drinking really seriously, it's way easier to get a DUI on a boat than a car. Most of my experience has been in the Boston Harbor, which depending on who you talk to is more dangerous than the hudson, but in my experience most of what they dislike on the hudson is erratic lateral movement. Basically, you're not supposed to meander or transit laterally unless you're a sailboat or a ferry. Police boats / coast guard will approach vessels quickly if it looks like they aren't aware of these rules. That said, maritime rules are pretty vague. Basically, boats going one direction stay to the right, the opposing direction stays to the left. Situational awareness is important to avoid other slower / faster / larger vessels. "Share the road y'all" is the most succinct way to explain boating in a nutshell haha.
- 5y ago
- irthomasthomas 5y agoA 160ft tanker is rear-ended by a 200ft pleasure yacht, promptly sinks 2,000 feet, beyond hope of recovery, and its cargo of gas evaporates. I wonder how much that tanker and cargo was insured for?
- mcguire 5y agoI wonder how much the yacht was insured for. Lots of lawsuits incoming.
- eps 5y agoThe yacht - https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/utopia-iv/ https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/utopia-iv/ Appears to be for sale and for rent, the owner is an American behind "Market America" MLM outlet and shop.com.
- fxtentacle 5y agoAnd they even report the crash story right next to the sales price... I sincerely hope that this isn't a perverse attempt at improving SEO through scandal like that fake airplane crash video from yesterday.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoCertified cra$h proof.
- CoastalCoder 5y agoWhere is "New Providence"?
- brendoelfrendo 5y agoThe Bahamas, it's the island where Nassau is located. The article mentions that "Bahamian authorities have been notified."
- CoastalCoder 5y agoThanks, I didn't see that. I looked around the newpaper's website and couldn't find a clear indication of their location.
- NBJack 5y agoIt's subtle, but 242 is the country calling code for the Bahamas. I don't know why, but it comes up often in the culture.
- walrus01 5y agobahamas
- hinkley 5y agoI know a sailboat owner who says power boat drivers are assholes. I thought they were just being rude until I locked through a canal with them. Holy shit can those people be stupid. Just throw it in reverse without looking behind me. What could go wrong? Sailboats have a lot less control going backward. Because of the rudder, the motor is often mounted off-center. You can go mostly backward, but straight back involves vectoring, and on a small sailboat the extra passengers throw off your groove, not unlike how you have to brake a little earlier when you have a full car of people versus just yourself. That said, I was under the impression that big yachts like these actually had a professional at the wheel. The article doesn't seem to make any comment on whether a pilot was on the bridge or the owner. If it wasn't obvious from my first paragraph, I'm suspecting the latter.
- kortilla 5y agoBad news, it sounds like your friend is the asshole and didn’t realize he had to behave with power boat rules when under motor power regardless of how incompetent he is operating it under power.
- walrus01 5y agoyou missed the part where the power boats are reversing themselves into the poster's friend's boat, which is careless navigation/boat handling in a lock and canal type environment.
- kortilla 5y agoI didn’t miss it. I’m doubting the veracity though given the generally entitled nature of sailboat operators under motor power.
- hinkley 5y agoHave you ever been through a lock? It’s a lot of sitting still in moving water, trying not to huff small engine fumes. “Under power” is a stretch.
- yawnxyz 5y ago"The crew ... have been rescued and safely returned to a company-owned facility" is such a strange-sounding sentence. I'm glad they were returned, though.
- scoot 5y agoA missing comma after "rescued" perhaps? With it, it would mean "they returned", rather than "they have been returned".
- Groxx 5y ago>“Maritime Management has expressed its sincere gratitude to Bahamian authorities for their support and assistance throughout this incident and are particularly grateful to the crew of the M/Y Mara who responded to the Tropic Breeze's distress call and rescued all seven crew members on board the sinking tanker,” the company said. So... the yacht hit a tanker, and then didn't help when it sank? Effectively a hit-and-run? If accurate, I hope they get hit hard for this. That's absurd.
- Tuna-Fish 5y agoThe yacht probably had it's own problems after the impact. The tanker wasn't that much smaller than it was.
- Groxx 5y agoI suppose. It is odd that it and those onboard are almost totally unmentioned though. If the tanker crew needed rescue and another boat took care of it, seems like either the yacht chose not to help... or was both unable to help and didn't need to be helped? I'm not seeing how the latter is feasible, unless they were sinking but repaired it enough to limp back to dock later or something. Though since they're totally unmentioned, I guess they could have even sunk too, and the people could have been onboard the rescue ship or a different unmentioned one. But that'd be weird too. Or is that kind of omission normal in an event at sea like this, showing exclusively one side's troubles? It does feel fairly formulaic / technical.
- Tuna-Fish 5y agoThe way I see it, the people on the yacht did not want to talk to the media. This was probably wise of them.
- rasz 5y agoWould you expect them to stick around with all the drugs on board?
- goodpoint 5y agoForgive the stupid question: is there no collision avoidance system on large ships?
- TelixBBS 5y ago
- mcguire 5y agoTechnically, there are many. The two primary being radar and watch-standers. Both rely on the crew paying attention.
- cesarb 5y agoThe marine equivalent of ADS-B is called AIS. But it just warns, it does not (and should not) steer the ship.
- chmod775 5y agoYou could maybe pull that off on a small boat, but collision avoidance on large vessels can mean planning a long time ahead. You pretty much need a human. The largest vessels need 30 minutes to come to a full stop. Just turning is obviously easier, but it's still... slow and a huge arc.
- goodpoint 5y agoThe higher the inertia and momentum - the easier it is to predict routing conflict. A system could warn at -30 min, alarm at -25 and steer + slow down if nobody acknowledges the alarm.
- Gwypaas 5y agoThe issue is alarm fatigue. Couple this with the regular result of a collision avoidance situation being to go at most ~0.5 NM behind. You also have issue with corners where the vectors will intersect. There are projects to start trying to share waypoints through something similar to AIS which may help reducing the number of alarms to something workable. Look here for a nice example of chaos (or anywhere around Europe for that matter): https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:2.9/centery:51.9/zoom:8 https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:2.9/center...
- Krisjohn 5y agoThis feels like a metaphor for something