M/T Tropic Breeze Struck by Mega Yacht Utopia IV and Sinks Off the Coast of New Provi

[LittleWing77]

One of the two things that I think significant that came up on interview with the Junior crew who was left alone while the captain was absent:

> At the speed they were travelling, Utopia IV has significant spray arcing off the bow which obscures the view (so much for Mark 1 eyeball). Sounds like they don't/can't actually look out the window and see much. (Of course, that's no excuse, but I would have thought that prudent seamanship would translate to perhaps reducing speed at night so the bow spray would not obscure proper watch-keeping.)

> The bridge lights were malfunctioning so that they remained on - which means whoever was on-watch had no night vision.

Additional side note, when the two boats came free from one another Utopia had water ingress, so as JMH speculated above, Utopia's captain and (still-able) crew were probably first assessing if they were going to sink or not.

There was also an initial report on the day following (by the same YouTuber - Mega Yacht News) that indicated on collision certain crewmembers (and guests?) "were thrown across the cabin", which seems an eminently reasonable consideration: They had gone from 20kts to zero. So there may have been onboard injuries with which the crew was contending. It did say some of Utopia's crew had been injured, but nothing specific has come forward.

Anyway, those are just a couple of my further thoughts. I'm still astonished that in the wide open sea Utopia managed to collide with and sink Tropic Breeze at all.

LW77

[DeValency]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

We'll see, probably, eventually.

This is what Wikipedia says about the owner's (at least as of May 6, 2021) Loren and JR Ridinger, company.

"In a 2017 federal lawsuit, two distributors accused the company of violating the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and California state law. The lawsuit calls Market America a pyramid scheme, noting Market America's claim that "the only way to fail under MarketAmerica’s business model is to quit." The suit claims the company targets Chinese-American immigrants to sell products to friends and relatives in Asia. The lawsuit characterizes Market America's business practice as "racketeering" and says that "while the executives tell distributors they can earn more than $560,000, only those at the top make that kind of money. Ninety percent of sellers do not receive a penny". In April 2019, the California case was transferred to a court in North Carolina and consolidated with another suit.

In 2020, Truth In Advertising started an investigation into Market America. The investigation found that "in the first nine months of 2020, Market America published more than 450 deceptive income claims across its website, blog and social media pages". According to the organization, "As a 28-year veteran of the MLM industry with seasoned lawyers on staff, Market America should not have to be reminded of the rules. And the rules state that using atypical earnings claims to recruit distributors is not only deceptive, it's against FTC law". The investigation resulted in Market America removing approximately 750 marketing claims from various media,"

As they say, the fish always stinks first from the head.

[DeValency]

Originally Posted by LittleWing77

One of the two things that I think significant that came up on interview with the Junior crew who was left alone while the captain was absent:

> At the speed they were travelling, Utopia IV has significant spray arcing off the bow which obscures the view (so much for Mark 1 eyeball). Sounds like they don't/can't actually look out the window and see much. (Of course, that's no excuse, but I would have thought that prudent seamanship would translate to perhaps reducing speed at night so the bow spray would not obscure proper watch-keeping.)

> The bridge lights were malfunctioning so that they remained on - which means whoever was on-watch had no night vision.

Additional side note, when the two boats came free from one another Utopia had water ingress, so as JMH speculated above, Utopia's captain and (still-able) crew were probably first assessing if they were going to sink or not.

There was also an initial report on the day following (by the same YouTuber - Mega Yacht News) that indicated on collision certain crewmembers (and guests?) "were thrown across the cabin", which seems an eminently reasonable consideration: They had gone from 20kts to zero. So there may have been onboard injuries with which the crew was contending. It did say some of Utopia's crew had been injured, but nothing specific has come forward.

Anyway, those are just a couple of my further thoughts. I'm still astonished that in the wide open sea Utopia managed to collide with and sink Tropic Breeze at all.

LW77

Right! Poor seamanship all the way with added criminal neglect as a minimum.

Also, the issue of spray, in part, is the stupid vertical bow design. For ages, bows are designed in a certain way for a reason, but looks like the Utopia designer came out of Vogue… It is not that they needed to extend the waterline to the maximum possible to gain a higher hull speed… Maybe the necessary repairs now can fix this issue too… - Actually, in this case, Utopia’s damage at the waterline was also a result of this design, as well as the fatal damage to the poor tanker.

And lastly, indeed a genius capability of the Utopia crew, hitting bow to stern while they had few thousand free miles on port and starboard to play at.

And here is another example from July 2021. A high speeding center console with a drunk operator at 3AM, hitting a fixed harbor marker…

https://youtu.be/E2a_O0eXNIk

[DeValency]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Just as a side note, the autopilot question is a red herring, because on these larger vessels they are almost always on autopilot even if someone is standing right there 'steering'. One of the superyachts I captained (the 45m/148ft) didn't even have a conventional 'steering wheel' in the first place. So apart from docking or anchoring it was rare to actually physically 'steer' the boat when underway.

Steering tends to be done by changing course on the autopilot or the 'power steering' in one way or another. It's not really an issue. In fact at speed I preferred to be on autopilot so that more attention could be paid to actual 'watchkeeping' instead of 'helming' which can sometimes cause a bit of a 'deer in the headlights' loss of concentration. More like a commercial aircraft, the pilot isn't actually holding the stick the whole time during the flight - but they are still actively 'piloting' and navigating the plane.

On the question of time scales I did a very rough calculation based on the below AIS track that I posted earlier.

It seems to me that they had run something like 16nm towards the north from when they last altered course after leaving the west end of New Providence, to when the collision occured.

The reports of their speed seem to vary from 20kn to 28kn.

At 20kn boatspeed 16nm would take 48mins.

At 28kn boatspeed 16nm would take 34mins.

(and just to throw in an example from the fast motoryachts that I captained - At 40kn boatspeed a 1nm CPA (common on a coast like the French Riviera, where the other boat might also be coming towards you at 30kn+ too) would take about 1min30s - things happen really fast)

Then let's say 10-15mins to get setttled on this new course from New Providence, acquire the various radar targets via arpa, brief the watchkeeper, etc (could be more than 10-15mins too) - they might actually already have travelled 5-6-7nm in that time.

All of sudden it's actually not that long until the collision, especially if they were travelling at 28kn.

All food for thought.

(but not for excuses - clearly they messed up regardless)

All good questions, all basically not that relevant to the core cause of the case:

1. Sailors offshore also mainly use the autopilot, so that they can focus on navigation, alarms, radar, AIS, radio, human visualization etc…. And their speed is by far lower.

2. The vessel operation had to be adjusted to all the conditions, including weather, technical limitations, human issues - apparently, nothing has been taken into consideration, not for the last 10 minutes and we can clearly say that also not for the last 30 minutes, hours, days and weeks if not longer. There is a reason why such accidents happen

Will be interesting to see what the investigation results will show.

[flightlead404]

[QUOTE=jmh2002;3544229]

In my experience stern lights are sometimes poorly visible.

/QUOTE]

A light segue, but I've noticed on many cruisers that the dinghy suspended from its davits partially or even completely obscures the stern light.

I noticed it on my own boat after the sun went down passing Ft. Lauderdale to Miami. Definitely made it on my "fix this asap" list.

[jeanathon]

That video "report" is absolute rubbish and should be deleted. Facts from anonymous sources are merely conjecture that the video maker wanted to say to get more clicks. Not only that the actual facts of when, how deep, and where were misreported in that "report".

[DeValency]

[QUOTE=flightlead404;3548989]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

In my experience stern lights are sometimes poorly visible.

/QUOTE]

A light segue, but I've noticed on many cruisers that the dinghy suspended from its davits partially or even completely obscures the stern light.

I noticed it on my own boat after the sun went down passing Ft. Lauderdale to Miami. Definitely made it on my "fix this asap" list.

That’s always very true and worth attention. Not that the tanker had her dink hanging over her stern

In this sad case, even if the tanker had a whole lighthouse built above her aft deck, Utopia crew wouldn’t notice it.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by flightlead404

A light segue, but I've noticed on many cruisers that the dinghy suspended from its davits partially or even completely obscures the stern light.

I noticed it on my own boat after the sun went down passing Ft. Lauderdale to Miami. Definitely made it on my "fix this asap" list.

Had the same problem on my boat. Options were to get taller davits or move the light. Although I would like higher, stronger davits it was a lot faster, cheaper and easier to just mount a new stern light on top of the existing davits.

[jtsailjt]

I think the stern light on all of our boats is next to useless at sea. They really aren’t that bright and are usually only about 3’-4’ above the water so in any kind of sea state they are only intermittently visible from behind even without a dinghy hanging just behind it. Anytime I have a boat approaching from behind at night that I’m not in communication with via radio or AIS I turn on my spreader lights which illuminate the mainsail, much harder for them to miss than a point of light that’s being obscured by a wave every few seconds. Traveling up and down the east coast at night I’ve noticed that almost always the lights I see first on the numerous fishing boats encountered are not their nav lights, but instead are the much brighter and higher lights they use to illuminate their decks. Nav lights are useful in calm conditions or for discerning angles of a nearby boat but especially on small boats like ours they aren’t very useful in restricted visibility or from far away, especially in typical offshore sea conditions.

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by gamayun

Gosh, has not anyone here passing judgement ever rear-ended another car on the highway? Until vehicles and vessels are built autonomously, humans will always make these mistakes. Crewed or solo ...mega yacht to military and everything in between.

It takes a lot more work to rear end someone on the sea., where there are many lanes to chose from.

Even at 20 knots, the Mega Yacht would have had 30 minutes to alter course by 10 degrees after picking up a stern light at six miles with a closing speed of 12 knots.

If the tanker had bothered to fix their broken AIS, the Mega Yacht would have an hour to go and find the captain.

[Don C L]

Still... 2 radars, a freighter ahead... I think the deck hand who was at the helm, who I do not fault at all, may not be telling the whole truth yet.

This discussion makes me think I'd like an AIS with a special megayacht proximity alarm.

[wsmurdoch]

Although in the photo I posted previously Utopia IV carried a Marshall Islands flag, she was apparently recently re-flagged in the USA.
https://hauteliving.com/2020/12/the-...harter/692671/

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Still... 2 radars, a freighter ahead... I think the deck hand who was at the helm, who I do not fault at all, may not be telling the whole truth yet.



This discussion makes me think I'd like an AIS with a special megayacht proximity alarm.

Why do you say you do not fault the helmsman who obviously wasn’t looking where he was going? Others may also be at fault but it seems to me that he’s first on the list.

[LittleWing77]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Still... 2 radars, a freighter ahead... I think the deck hand who was at the helm, who I do not fault at all, may not be telling the whole truth yet.

This discussion makes me think I'd like an AIS with a special megayacht proximity alarm.

Originally Posted by jtsailjt

Why do you say you do not fault the helmsman who obviously wasn’t looking where he was going? Others may also be at fault but it seems to me that he’s first on the list.

JtSailjt,

You're joining the discussion rather late.

Please read the whole thread and you'll understand what Don meant.

Don,

I snorted coffee out my nose on your "AIS with a special megayacht proximity" alarm.

LittleWing77

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by jtsailjt

Why do you say you do not fault the helmsman who obviously wasn’t looking where he was going? Others may also be at fault but it seems to me that he’s first on the list.

Hi jt, given what is presented in the news reports here, the captain turned over the helm of a boat doing 20 knots, with poor visibility, both inside and out, to someone who was not qualified. That is entirely on the captain in my book, though I am sure that person who was at the helm is panicked his life is over now.

And LW, having been nearly run over by a yacht doing 20 knots, in broad daylight, 2 miles from a harbor entrance, with NO ONE visible at the helm, my suggestion was only half in jest.