MO Duck boat

[bbbass]

How bout this the great lakes.
They have huge water and storms and swells

Great lakes ships that cross the View attachment 481131

Big graveyard!

That Bearing sea is a perfect example of how shallow water increases wave action that BBASS was talking about. It is one of the roughest seas on the planet and also one of the shallowest. We have worked there and my daughter was on a 378 foot cutter there for 2 years.........tough duty.

She told me she was also on a 95 footer and liked that duty too because the crew was smaller and duties were more diverse. BTW, once we landed a helo at North Island Naval Station because the engines were hot from lots of low level flying/hoist-training that picked up a bunch of salt from sea spray... we needed an engine wash, so a guy comes out with the wash cart and we got to chatting... I asked him what his other duties were, he said just manning the wash cart. What? Boring! I would kill myself!!! In Coast Guard aviation there were few of us, we had to cross train and do a bit of everything! I worked on Avionics, but I also helped rebuild the engines, change out the brakes, etc etc. Sheesh. Navy...

 

[11Charlie]

Yes, but how you get out? Since it is enclosed on the sides, you try to get to a door, kick out a window, start a panic? Maybe there is enough alarm in a person to do something, to take SOME kind of action, maybe not. Besides grit, a person has to recognize the situation and the need to act. Not criticizing.

Not to sound harsh but I would find a way to save my kids and myself at all cost. If all was lost, I want no one to say that I didn't go down fighting. I'm guessing the glass is tempered for safety so you can break it. All this is hard to say with out being in the shoes of the people that were on that vessel, but I know that I would do everything I could.

Edit: If the glass is plexi glass then things just became more difficult but not impossible. One could always shoot it out!

 

[EPS]

Passenger and commercial vessels pass rigorous tests before certification including stability. They are tilted to insure they can recover from an extreme breaching wave (called an incline test) and various other attitudes designed to insure stability. I prefer a boat with more beam but these have passed all the required tests for passenger operation. All of these insodents were operator error.........plain and simple. The numbers of people that have ridden on them as opposed to the casualties is a huge ratio. They are so popular that companies started building them from scratch 20 years ago. I don't like being with a lot of people in close quarters (anywhere) so you wouldn't find me on one but when we used them for salvage work, they were quite stable. These are 96" wide and about 31 feet long, as I said earlier, a bit of a canoe but highway vehicles are restricted to 102" wide without overwidth permits. The LARCS are wider, up to 24 feet for my LARC LX. So there are operational limitations on the DUKW, we had to be careful lifting with a crane on the beam but all mechanical systems have limitations that require a trained operator. (How many of us stabbed ourselves with our first pocket knife?) These can feel a little like a cork when operated light, the passenger seats are a little high that could make them a little top heavy compared to carrying heavy freight lower in the hull but those tests have been done and the boats passed. They might be more stable with some ballast low in the hull like any sail boat or typical fishing boats that are best operated with a heavy load. Even huge oil tankers ballast down when traveling unloaded to maintain stability.........but I keep coming back to the fact that they passed the tests that have proven seaworthiness for a hundred years. If the design had a "wet" deck below the passenger seating with appropriate ballast in it would be uneffected by flooding and have superior reserve buoyancy. My large landing craft were built like that but the smaller (56 foot) ones were not they would flood and sink if poorly handled. We had one parked at a Navy pier over night, the dock personnel were monitoring the lines and allowed the bow door to get up under the pier, when the tide came in it shoved the bow down and she flooded. When we went to get her early the next morning, there she was on the bottom still tied up in 40 feet of water. The Navy was very apologetic and picked her up with a crane for us. 10 days and new electronics later she was back in operation. Stuff just happens. Airplanes crash, trucks roll over and people die......it will never change as tragic as it is at the time.

If you go up and look at the picture of the Heather sea and zoom in on it you can see on the sides it has bulge out and there is a rail on top of them.
Those were added when I worked on that boat.
So this is what is really scary.
They made that boat longer when they converted it to a fishing boat from a MUD BOAT.
we fished it for years.but when we would haul up the net on board.the boat would LIST to one side or the other.
So one time we came back from Alaska and unload in Bellingham.
And we took a bunch of gear off and low on fuel .we are coming from Bellingham to Seattle.
And the boat is listening back and forth and a COAST GAURD boat see us and video taped it.
And they do a follow-up and some stability test .
And figure out it needs to be wider witch they should have done when they made it longer.
Lol I remember sometimes we got some bad list .

 

[EPS]

This happens a lot or it used to happen a lot these fishing boats go into dry dock do a bunch of work move stuff around add this or that and don't do test.
Then go out to sea and sink.
Anybody who knows anything about the fishing or crabing boats knows the story of the A BOATS.
for those that don't you can look it up and there is a book about it.called LOST AT SEA A AMERICAN TRAGEDY.
on feb 14 1983 two boats left to crab in Alaska .
The AMERICUS .AND THE ALTAIR .
THEY BOTH SUNK AND 14 GUYS DIED .
All from ANACORTES WA .

 

[Tony617]

We cruised several times back in March 2012 and March 2013 and we hit really rough seas in the Gulf of Mexico both times. The stabilizers do a pretty good of side to side stabilization but do not to a great job plowing into the waves head on.

 

[bbbass]

Not to sound harsh but I would find a way to save my kids and myself at all cost. If all was lost, I want no one to say that I didn't go down fighting. I'm guessing the glass is tempered for safety so you can break it. All this is hard to say with out being in the shoes of the people that were on that vessel, but I know that I would do everything I could.

Edit: If the glass is plexi glass then things just became more difficult but not impossible. One could always shoot it out!

Yeah, as far as I know, it's plexi glass.

I understand what you are saying, that you would do everything you could, but it's still coming across with a tone of blame. Maybe they deserve it, maybe not... it's hard to know if the passengers recognized the threat. Easier for us to throw stones. Hey, schlitt happens to good people. (But hardly ever to bad folks, IMO) I don't mind criticizing the crew, but innocents... yeah, that's harsh IMO. I've rescued enough folks to know the diff between things that happen despite good prep and skills, and dumbazzes who go out in 12' dingies in high wind, chop, burning sun, etc, with no shirt and a case of beer. Never had a tear for the latter. As a rescuer, I've had a lot of experience with both.

 

[11Charlie]

Yeah, as far as I know, it's plexi glass.

I understand what you are saying, that you would do everything you could, but it's still coming across with a tone of blame. Maybe they deserve it, maybe not... it's hard to know if the passengers recognized the threat. Easier for us to throw stones. Hey, schlitt happens to good people. (But hardly ever to bad folks, IMO) I don't mind criticizing the crew, but innocents... yeah, that's harsh IMO. I've rescued enough folks to know the diff between things that happen despite good prep and skills, and dumbazzes who go out in 12' dingies in high wind, chop, burning sun, etc, with no shirt and a case of beer. Never had a tear for the latter. As a rescuer, I've had a lot of experience with both.

I'm not trying to blame anyone brother. I'm just trying to say that my survival instinct might be stronger than some that were on the boat.

 

[Certaindeaf]

I'm not trying to blame anyone brother. I'm just trying to say that my survival instinct might be stronger than some that were on the boat.

My survival instinct is so strong I would have spontaneously evolved a narwhal tusk and gigantic lungs.
so I got that going on

 

[11Charlie]

My survival instinct is so strong I would have spontaneously evolved a narwhal tusk and gigantic lungs.
so I got that going on

 

[bbbass]

I'm not trying to blame anyone brother. I'm just trying to say that my survival instinct might be stronger than some that were on the boat.

Copy that.

 

[bbbass]

And then there's this: Doomed duck boat's designer had no engineering training, court documents reveal

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from the info provided. More important to me than lack of certification is that prior to purchase a hired inspector reported a bunch of "design flaws" to the the buyer of the duck boats. However, I do know that everyone that works on aircraft is required to have the proper license... Argo, is it the same for commercial watercraft?

 

[Argonaut]

100,000,000 law suit filed (surprise-Surprise) there are no requirements on marine craft like Aircraft maintainers. There are some certification societies, one is the ABS, the ones I belong to are the society of marine engineers and the society of marine surveyors. The system relies more on USCG inspections than certifications of workers with a few exceptions. There are trained engineers within the USCG that have oversite of vessels but most have some sort of general engineering degree with practical apprenticeship in the marine world. Most requirements for vessels are written in the federal government CFR manuals that also include aircraft requirements in a different section.