Random musings

[InvincibleCakeEater]

I wish it were that easy.

Check the GDT to see what I thought about the storm. I was just going to be mad if it knocked out my feed of the game.

During the summer, we're under a damn near perpetual TStorm watch. It wasn't the "storm." It barely rained here and there was light lightning, mainly cloud to cloud. The winds just suddenly hit. Way out in front of the "storm." I live 2 miles from where it went down. My neighbor works on the Showboat, and I said by to her after it blew through, and we had no idea.

There's a lot of [expletive] that went wrong.
1 - The Ducks are made of steel and cruise at roughly the speed of a bass boat using their trolling motor.
2 - The wind hit WAY before the storm itself.
3 - The driver (captain) had no clue what to do. If you've seen the video, the Duck that made it out didn't even tell the people to put on life jackets.
4 - Their general pre-trip safety protocol is worse than a hungover flight attendant.

[lukethedrifter]

The weather people say the storm didn’t ‘come out of nowhere’.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallsh ... ssion=true

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

It's pointless to speculate because, well, the Captain survived and there are multiple videos. The NTSB seems to be very excellent at intelligently and dutifully combing through all the details to produce a meaningful report that explains what happened and how to prevent it, so no need to speculate since all this will come to light.

That said, I can't help but do it and watching that video was gut-wrenching so its been at the front of my mind all day. A couple things jumped out immediately. The biggest issue, I'd guess, is I don't think anyone ever realized the danger until it was too late. There's a video from the boat that made it back where people are just kind of sitting in the boat like it's a normal day which is possibly (probably) what was happening on the one that sank as well. To be honest, I'm not even sure if the crew knew they were in danger which is really on the company to make sure they have trained people. Like I said in the GDT, there's a presumption, probably incorrectly, that the duck boats have well trained crew that can keep the passengers safe. Had they known they were in danger, they'd have likely done things differently, namely:

It looked like the boat that sank was taking the waves incorrectly. I've never taken a class on how to drive a boat in rough waves and I'm not sure what is taught so take this with a grain of salt, but I've never liked going dead into waves on even light boats in calm conditions. It's just uncomfortable. When there's chop and a boat goes noes first and perpindicular into the waves, the back is being lifted up by a wave which pushes the nose down. About the time the nose is coming down, the next wave hits the nose. Some (many?) people think the frequencies of the waves syncing up with lengths of larger boats in the Bermuda Triangle is what has caused a great deal of the unexplained disappearances and there's been physical models run in wave pools that bear this out. The waves don't have to be huge, but it just takes a couple where the back is lifted, the nose is pushed down, and then another wave hits right as the nose is tilted down to completely submarine a vessel. Unfortunately, it looks like that is what happened on more than one occasion to the duck boat. It's clear they submarined a few waves and that was all it took. Adding the water to the boat just made it sit lower and made it more likely that was going to happen again...which it did until it sank.

I've always been a fan of going at angles through waves. Whatever is comfortable so the boat has time to get back on plane before going through the next wave. Again, no idea if that is what is taught, but it's common sense to me.

Speaking of being on plane, going through waves like that you'd want to make sure the nose was up to 1) prevent submarining a wave and 2) comfort. Obviously those duck boats don't plane out or get going incredibly fast and there is I doubt any trim available to push the nose up/down. I think they're just straight shafts with a prop, so they didn't have the ability to try to raise their nose up. But, still, with 30 people on board, sitting everyone as far back as possible would have pushed the nose up in the air. It didn't look like they had done that.

Also, the boat that sank looked like it was heading into deeper water and away from shore which, in bad conditions just seems counter intuitive especially for an amphibious vessel! Keep it close to shore if possible. I mean, you don't have to drive up on the bank, but I imagine you can stay 50 yards if not feet off the edge and then in the event of an emergency just head in.

Lastly, I think all the people that made it out of the boat survived. There was another ship (the branson belle I think) that was right there and collected the people that got out before it sank. It's just sad that so few people got out/so many people went down with the ship. The rule of thumb is stay with the boat until you absolutely can't, so there's that. But, I've always thought that was stupid and I'm not alone. People are incredibly capable of surviving in water, even rough seas in the middle of an ocean with little more than a lifejacket for days on end. Sure, it would be terrifying to abandon ship into 4' waves in the middle of a storm especially with a 2 year old to care for. But, it's not necessarily all that dangerous especially on a popular lake with shoreline relatively close in any direction (not to mention other boats in the area). I tend to think the reason more people didn't get out earlier is due to the boiling frog scenario. You all know the story, frog is put in normal temp water and the water is brought to a boil and the frog never jumps out because it doesn't recognize the danger. If the passengers trusted the crew (which they inherently did otherwise they wouldn't have been on the boat in the first place) and the crew is not abandoning the ship (I'm assuming) at what point do you say ta hell with them, I'm jumping out. It's a difficult question to answer and takes a lot of 1) pre-thought out reasoning and 2) brass to do. I've spend a day going over scenarios and still don't know when the right time would have been. These poor people only had a few minutes.

All that said, it's a tragedy and hopefully something positive can come from this. I hesitate to say ban duck boats or whatever, even though I did in the GDT. Overall, they're probably not incredibly more dangerous than any other form of transportation or recreational boat. But, sheesh, this probably won't be the last mass casualty event on one of these things with the way they are constructed.

I'd venture a guess that if the canopy was not in place and everyone had a life jacket on, no lives would have been lost. I'm confident the NTSB report will echo that as well. This whole thing really has me rattled.

[lukethedrifter]

I watched the Coast Guard attempt to pull a flotilla of art hippie boats across the main channel of the Mississippi 8 or 10 years ago. What a near catastrophe that was. They were taking water across the bow before the mission was aborted.
Anyway, it seems that not all of us can see a looming catastrophe only realizing once in the middle of it.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Exactly, it's easy to point fingers and what not after the fact, but in the moment, it would be incredibly difficult to say, nope, i'm out and jump into the water.

My worst experience on a boat was crossing the Tennessee River channel at Kentucky Lake back in the early 90s. My parents had just bought a houseboat. It was about 40' x maybe 12' or so and powered by like a 350 or something. Went about 7 miles an hour tops and had zero maneuverability. Because we didn't know any better, we thought it was a good day to go across the channel and anchor overnight in a cove which turned out to be incredibly incorrect. The wind was out of the south iirc and the channel ran north/south. The chop was running longitudinally with the channel which meant crossing it with waves coming from the side and they were not nothing. Probably about 3-4'. My dad wasn't much of a seaman at this point either and thought it was more important to secure all the stuff that was getting tossed around in the hull than drive the boat...which meant I had to do it. After taking a few waves over the side, I figured out we could go upsteam with the waves then turn and come back downstream against the waves. Of course, going upstream with a boat that goes 7 mph on a good day meant not making much ground and then trying to maneuver this monstrosity of a floating dock to take the waves correctly was even tougher all while in a navigable channel. Regardless, after an hour and a half or so we successfully crossed the 2 mile channel. Still, taking those waves at first made me poop my pants.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Also, regarding weather forecasting, it will be interesting to see what the ntsb has to say about this as well as what the crew was aware of prior to going out. Regardless of when warnings were issued, any Tom dick or Harry with a cell phone knew a storm was coming.

Is it the crews responsibility to look at radar and weather forecasts and assess risks? In this case it seems obvious but most of the time it’s not so cut and dried.

[Smith Corks One]

It's pointless to speculate because, well, the Captain survived

I read from multiple sources that he did not.

[lukethedrifter]

It's pointless to speculate because, well, the Captain survived

I read from multiple sources that he did not.

There were 2 crew. Captain survived. Driver did not. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-miss ... SKBN1KB007

Per same article, Capt told the passengers not to don life jackets.

[Smith Corks One]

It's pointless to speculate because, well, the Captain survived

I read from multiple sources that he did not.

There were 2 crew. Captain survived. Driver did not. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-miss ... SKBN1KB007

Per same article, Capt told the passengers not to don life jackets.

My mistake. I guess I read "Driver" and assumed that meant "Captain."

[Joe Shlabotnik]

It's pointless to speculate because, well, the Captain survived

I read from multiple sources that he did not.

There were 2 crew. Captain survived. Driver did not. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-miss ... SKBN1KB007

Per same article, Capt told the passengers not to don life jackets.

Which might have been correct given what we've heard about these duck boats with canopies. Either way, they appear to be disasters just waiting to happen.