Ethan Allen disaster could have been prevented

From: Bangordailynews.com
By: Capt. Stephen Olson

http://tinyurl.com/95cnd

My best,
Paul Conlin
ALF Secretary

Paul,

This is a VERY interesting article. Thank you for the post.

bobo

It is a very interesting article but I'm glad I wasn't the person(s) who had to put over 7000 pounds of cement sacks on that vessel to conduct the test.

Bob

A very interesting article that I hope changes the law about boat safety to include a Coast Guard certification.

Bert

Most boat accidents are preventable, big and small, in my opinion.

In my line of work there is no such thing as an accident, when it comes to automobiles. We call them crashes and they are always caused by someone's negligence. Speeding, following too closely, lack of attention, poor driving skills, out-driving the capability of your car, equipment failure due to improper maintenance, trying to perform beyond your personal capabilities, etc. contribute to crashes. Sometimes the person who caused the crash doesn't get hit and flees the scene. They are not accidents when there is negligence involved. Somebody caused it and that is negligence.

Most of the above could apply to boats.

:rolleyes: Bob :rolleyes:

Of course some will argue this is a constitutional issue. The 'navigable waters' issue makes it 'interstate commerce' which allows the Federal Government to claim the ability to set standards.

Without a navigable waterway, states have domain -- and should share the blame in this tragic accident that should have been prevented.

Shame on the owners of this company for not knowing (or knowing and operating anyway) of the instability of their passenger-carrying vessel.

Lots of issues in this one. In one of the articles I read in the days after this tragedy, it was indicated that the average passenge weight had been adjusted upwards. If memory serves, it was raised from 110# to 140#. The way they computed the number of passengers for the boat was by weight, not by number of bodies. However, the boat was "grandfathered" under NY laws and didn't have to worry about these changes. One would think that the shipyard that did the mods to the vessel should have known they were messing with the center of gravity and thus the tendency to roll.

It is unbelievable that NY does not require blood tests of the operators in the case of incidents. This should be a no-brainer, IMO. The captain should have insisted on it to prove he was not under any influence.

While it would be great to require the USCG certify all passenger carrying for revenue vessels is this practical? They are stretched pretty thin as it is, and this would add a major additional workload. However, requiring the boats to meet CG standards and the states to conduct the tests is not out of line, And, requiring that the vessel owner pay for the tests is also fair.

Dave - I certainly agree with you on this. Many lives would have been saved if this were the case! It seems that we need Congress to pass some legislation in this regard to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future.

My best,
Paul Conlin
ALF Secretary

Just looking at this boat does not give me a safe feeling. That roof coupled with the shape of the hull makes it appear top heavy. Maybe it wasn't the overall weight but the supposed shift in weight that made it roll over? I really don't know just why there was such a shift. What these people were trying to see. I couldn't help but think of the various lighthouse cruises where the boats are usually turned around completely so that folks taking photos don't all have to move to the same side of the boat.

Some of the early stories said the boat was trying to avoid / steer out of waves caused by a larger vessel passing. If this is the case, and the captain had the boat broadside to the waves (you should take them head on, I believe), it would be very easy to tip the boat, causing people to slide to the low side. The heavy roof causing the high center of gravity would then help make the tilt even worse - pretty much compounding things and keeping the momentum going in the wrong direction.

Of course, this is all bar-room speculation of what might have happened.

Yes Dave I have read the "other boat" story too but don't know if it was ever confirmed? If there was such a boat and it passed on the side away from the captain of the Ethan Allen and it passed closely, perhaps the captain didn't have time to steer into the other boat's wake. And of course yes, that scenario could cause a shift of passengers.

On one of my recent kayaking jaunts up the river a very large yacht was approaching from the opposite direction, really moving. I was returning, heading north. The yacht was heading south as large yachts do this time of year. I positioned myself near a dock and waited. The fool boat didn't slow down a whisker. These guys think they own the river. As I pointed the kayak into the largest wake I'd yet encountered I wondered if this was the one that would swamp me. No way, the little river horse bobbed up and down with no adverse effect, although the wake did cause the kayak to turn slightly.

Just this past weekend there was a drowning in an area lake. First the guy and his friends drink, then decide to go out in a canoe at night with no life preservers. The canoe goes over and another friend in a kayak paddles to shore for help. When he returns with a would be rescuer in a boat and they throw life preservers to the guys hanging onto the overturned canoe, one of the guys tosses the preserver back because it doesn't fit and starts out swimming. Dumbness compounded. I don't think they've found his body yet.

Messing around in boats can be fun but there's no excuse for fools in boats.

Wakes can be very dangerous. Unfortuately, too many boater don't slow down. Hell one of them in a big boat never saw my boat and if I had not moved outside the channel, I would have been toast. (thank goodness I had a good chart)