That overturned boats looks mighty small to be carrying 11 people ... 28 feet long?
Posted on 09/10/2022 1:57:16 PM PDT by texas booster
Five people died Saturday in New Zealand after the small charter boat they were aboard capsized, authorities say, in what may have been a collision with a whale. Another six people aboard the boat were rescued.
Police said the 8.5-meter (28-foot) boat overturned near the South Island town of Kaikoura. Police said they were continuing to investigate the cause of the accident.
Kaikoura Police Sergeant Matt Boyce described it as a devastating and unprecedented event.
“Our thoughts are with everyone involved, including the victims and their families, their local communities, and emergency services personnel,” Boyce said.
He said police divers had recovered the bodies of all those who had died. He said all six survivors were assessed to be in stable condition at a local health center, with one transferred to a hospital in the city of Christchurch as a precaution.
Kaikoura Mayor Craig Mackle told The Associated Press that the water was dead calm at the time of the accident and the assumption was that a whale had surfaced from beneath the boat.
He said there were some sperm whales in the area and also some humpback whales traveling through.
He said locals had helped with the rescue efforts throughout the day but the mood in the town was “somber” because the water was so cold, and they feared for the outcome of anybody who had fallen overboard.
Mackle said he’d thought in the past about the possibility of a boat and whale colliding, given the number of whales that frequent the region.
“It always plays on your mind that it could happen,” he said, adding that he hadn’t heard about any previous such accidents.
(Excerpt) Read more at voanews.com ...
Police said they were still notifying the relatives of those who died and couldn't yet publicly name the victims.
Vanessa Chapman told Stuff she and a group of friends had watched the rescue efforts unfold from Goose Bay, near Kaikoura. She said that when she arrived at a lookout spot, she could see a person sitting atop an overturned boat waving their arms.
She said two rescue helicopters and a third local helicopter were circling before two divers jumped out. She told Stuff that the person atop the boat was rescued, and a second person appeared to have been pulled from the water.
Kaikoura is a popular whale-watching destination. The seafloor drops away precipitously from the coast, making for deep waters close to the shore. A number of businesses offer boat trips or helicopter rides so tourists can see whales, dolphins and other sea creatures up close.
That overturned boats looks mighty small to be carrying 11 people ... 28 feet long?
Maybe they were being ferried ship to shore? Other than that...yikes.
That definitely looks small for that number.
Weren’t they all wearing life vests?
I went whale watching in San Diego Bay a number of years ago.
One HUGE whale breach that got us all soaked - and then a Navy Submarine surfaced right NEXT to our boat; equally as unnerving!
I really don’t like open water. :(
Prayers up for the victims and survivors. Those rescued will have quite the tale to tell...
I guess he hasn't read Melville.
I thought that, too-I’ve never heard of a fishing charter booking 11 people for a boat that small-most specify no more than 6-7b people-and why was a charter boat-of any size out there running around where there had been several whales sighted in the 1st place? Sounds like a dumb thing to do...
I remember a tuna boat going straight down in the ocean. The theory was that a submarine got caught in the netting. No idea which country.
Ditto on the prayers. :-(
My wife also doesn’t much like being in a small boat on open water. But, for her it’s more being on deep vs. shallow water. I keep telling her that over 6’ (she’s petite) it won’t matter much except to the recovery crew. That’ll get me an angry glare!
Richard Hill from Cods and Crays fish and chip shop said he has worked with the skipper on the boat before.
"He's a very safe man, there's no way he'd take any risks.
"So there's just got to be something sort of a freak of nature, I would have thought. A very sad day for Kaikōura really, just a shock."
Hill said the community of 2000 is reeling.
Mackle said the boat had a group of women aged over 50 on board, and that there were calm seas with no waves.
Video on social media shows the boat flipped upside down, with passengers sitting on top.
Trying to find a picture that is not behind a paywall.
Survivors on the boat before rescue.
That is a really small boat to my eyes.
I guess that being in a harbor provides a sense of safety.
“That overturned boats looks mighty small to be carrying 11 people ... 28 feet long?”
Yes it does. But I am on the Texas coast and regularly see boats going out with way too many onboard.
The boat that was capsized is towed to shore.
Here is the charter boat that capsized. It is bigger than it looked when upside down ...
Looks to be about the same size that our group of ~10 people took out into the Portland ME harbor to pull up lobster traps and oyster trays.
I am NOT showing this thread to my family ...
Seven deaths from the same cause? This is New Zealand so I think that’s enough to declare a 30 day lockdown to prevent whale related deaths.
We went to Martha’s Vineyard for our 40th anniversary trip. Saw the old harbor at Edgartown and some of the places that claimed to be where “Melville wrote part of Moby Dick”.
Did not make it to Nantucket but I thought that it was funny to hear the locals complain about Nantucket as being the place “that only the really rich can afford”.
If this were the ‘70s, a disaster movie would already be in production. Whales are p!ssed off. They’re determined to rid the seas of humanity in WHALE! Coming soon to a theater near you.
No, whale watching doesn’t put the same amount of money into the politicians’ PACs.
No 30 day lockdowns or mandatory updated proof of sentience cards for the tourists.
I was hoping this was the idiots from”Whale Wars”
I kept watching the series just to see the next idiotic thing they would do.
Prayers for these people’s families.
A few decades ago, a cousin of a close friend was moving a large expensive sailboat from the East Coast (NYC area? the NE in any case) to Bermuda. Cousin was a very experienced, capable ocean sailboat captain.
In the middle of the night, the boat hit something mid ocean and went down fairly fast. Cousin barely had time to wake up, get into a lifeboat and hit an emergency beacon. He was picked up in mid ocean.
The cousin’s theory was either a semi-submerged floating container (think full of Styrofoam packing), or a submarine.
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