Searchers find keel that caused A&M sailboat tragedy
June 20, 2008, 9:01PM Searchers find keel that caused A&M sailboat tragedy
By MIKE TOLSON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
The keel that fell off a Texas A&M University sailboat last week and led to the drowning death of one of its six crew members has been located in 113 feet of water about 32 miles off the coast near Freeport.
Contrary to early predictions, in which A&M officials said the chance of a successful recovery might be as low as 10 percent, marine salvage experts needed little time to find the keel using underwater acoustic devices late Wednesday. Divers were sent Thursday to inspect and photograph the keel where it lay partially buried in 4 feet of mud. U.S. Coast Guard investigators also went to the scene.
The salvage company was expected to raise the keel and bring it back to Galveston today.
The 5,000-pound fin-and-bulb keel separated from the hull of the 38-foot Cynthia Woods late June 6, about 10 hours after the start of a race from Galveston to Mexico. Water flooded into the boat and flipped it over, tossing the crew into the Gulf of Mexico where five of them floated for 26 hours until rescue. The sixth, 53-year-old safety officer Roger Stone, did not make it out of the boat after helping two students escape the cabin.
Investigators hope the keel will contain clues about why it fell off. They will be looking especially at the condition of the bolts used to secure it to the hull. One of the first questions to be answered, experts say, is whether the bolts failed or the hull and structure were damaged and could no longer support the keel attachment.
The Cynthia Woods had experienced several grounding incidents, with the most recent in March 2007 leading to significant keel damage and repairs. No specialists were brought in to inspect the damage, and no annual surveys of the boat were done, said officials at A&M-Galveston, home to the boat.
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No specialists were brought in to inspect the damage, and no annual
surveys of the boat were done, said officials at A&M-Galveston,
home to the boat.
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Mechanics and maintainance ain’t the forte of lots of academia.
I’m not a boater, but this sure makes it sound like they tempted fate.