I mean, if they were having trouble trimming the ship, wouldn't they have known they were in trouble with enough advance warming to send out a Mayday?
I'm a completely landlubber, whose only experience on the water is in the bath tub, so please don't become impatient if I sound "off the wall", it's just that I'm wondering why it seems no one knew they were going down with enough lead time to send out a distress signal.
What happened to that ferry probably happened very quickly. I know when the ferry sank in Haifa harbor that night, it happened in a flash, based on what guys I knew who were in the boat said. One instant they were in the boat and the next they were in the water - it was that quick. That happens a lot at sea - the ocean is very unforgiving.
It's really not possible to know what happened until an investigation is concluded. And chances are that the Egyptians will probably conduct it themselves to reach a predetermined conclusion that fits a political agenda, and will only selectively release whatever information furthers that agenda. IOW, we probably will never know what really happened.