Posted on 10/03/2015 5:58:29 PM PDT by cll
NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) -- The U.S. Coast Guard has located a life ring from a cargo ship that lost power and communications during Hurricane Joaquin and is now the subject of an intense search in the southeastern Bahamas.
Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss says the life ring was 120 miles northeast of Crooked Island. That's about 70 miles northeast of the last known position of the El Faro before it lost contact with authorities with 33 people on board.
Doss says the crew of a C-130 airplane spotted the life ring Saturday and a helicopter crew confirmed it was from the El Faro. It has not been retrieved.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Yes...
Once a ships center of gravity exceeds a point that the center of lift (buoyancy)reaches a certain number of degrees the ship will roll on its back and the game is over. In normal conditions as a ship rolls the center of buoyancy acts as a stabilizing force and trys to right the ship. Once a critical number of degrees of list is exceeded it is no longer a stabilizing force and in fact without exception flip the ship and quickly. As the ship flips it becomes more and more unstable. It is quick. That ship now rest on the bottom of the ocean.
Pray for their crew, their odds are not good. Their are multiple ELTs (Emergency Locator Transmitters) on the vessel, life boats and in their life rafts. None are beeping, thus it is assured they are down.
Yes, we should and I do.
Very quickly = in one or two seconds - been there done that.
Yikes, just a couple seconds?
A couple of seconds is a long count - in my case, the time was running 30 feet from the starboard rail, over the keel, and diving into the water - lickedy split, as fast as one could possibly run. Or as someone who watched 120’ boat capsize taking 4 with it, “It was gone before I could count ...”
Official updates from the shipping company: http://elfaroincident.com/
There were 294 vehicles on the lower level. If they shifted that wouldn’t that affect the list ?
From First Coast News:
“El Faro has 391 containers topside and 294 cars, trucks and trailers below deck. The Coast Guard said that cargo makes the listing problems worse at sea.”
Absolutely no chance to launch the lifeboats or even get to the liferafts. As you said, these ships sink in seconds.
The Edmund Fitzgerald would be such an example.
The EF was on the Great Lakes, not the Atlantic - but the acrtion and result is the same.
Correct. I worked on Great Lakes freighters in the 1970’s and witnessed first hand very bad storms on the Great Lakes.
The captains I sailed with would have found a safe anchorage
rather than find the pounding waves of Lake Superior.
I read this ship left Florida on Tuesday of last week and sailed right into a hurricane they had to know about.
There is something not right in this story.
According to what I’ve heard, the New Jersey company OKed the trip, but left the final decision in the Capt’s hands - stating that they believed the ship and crew were more than capable of plowing through. But then they did not allow for propulsion loss in that heavy sea state. Nor did the Capt.
Once long ago there was a large run of early reds and I needed the money badly. However there was also a strong westerly gale which would drive the fish against Whidbey Island western beach. Easy picking and a lot of guys made some serious money that night. I, on the other hand, after untying and heading out, had second thoughts about something I had seen in the engine compartment while changing the oil filter.
There was time, so I turned back and tied up in my slip just as the wind hit 50 knots. Fine, if you were already out in it, but not so fine bucking into it to get there.
Open the engine compartment and looking around, my eye was caught by the salt water intake valve. As I checked it, the hose above the valve broke - I closed the valve immediately. Had I been in the storm, a strong wave could well have broken the hose while I was on deck setting the gear, and before I could even get to the radio to call for help the battery would have been shorted out.
Who knows but the Capt could have3 been under enormous financial pressure, as I was ... pressure from his superiors in NJ and just went with it. Perhaps: down in the engine room, the transmission gear case, having cracked some time back, leaked the last of its oil and froze, leaving the ship without propulsion ... No crew skills can recover a top heavy ship, shipping water into the #3 hold with out ship’s power to keep the pumps while heaving around in a very heavy sea and wind state.
The company has flown family members of the crew to Florida.
The boyfriend of one of my students was on the ship-she was
flown down to Florida sometime withing the past day or so.
So sorry to hear.
Latest update. Additional items found at sea: http://www.wmtw.com/news/reports-4-mainers-on-board-cargo-ship-lost-at-sea/35639464
Thank you. Unless a miracle has happened, I fear the ship has sunk with all hands.
I had a summer job once in my high school years, and one time we got caught in a real bad storm in the Atlantic, about 2 days out from Gibraltar. The waves crashing over the bow smashed open a hatch to a storage hold where we stored all our paint and it filled with water. There was paint everywhere... what a huge mess.... took us weeks to clean that up.
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