http://www.baltimoresun.com/

I was in this storm today classic tough squall. Sorry to hear about the water taxi. Those people are usually not boaters and tourists having fun.
We went out on my friends 37 foot racer cruiser out of annapolis and BAM squall out of know where and in march yet. Didn't know a microburst could happen in march. (news said microburst and 50 knots) I only saw 30some. Would you believe the freaking furler jumped the line and snagged on the headstay below like a vice....then I said "drop it on deck fuck the furl" then the jib haylard was stuck. So it's blowing 30 with a genoa stuck up. So dropped the main and went downwind with the jib so I could work on it. Ended up cutting it all off and thankfully there was enough left to roll it. Bet we will be sorting that out on the next light wind day in the slip.. bring out the chair and already going aloft this early in the season.
Sad to hear about the losses. We will all be wearing life jackets in water taxi's when they get through with this one.

Thats like putting parachutes on every body that travels on a plane.

They cant blame the it on the fact that poeple were not wearing life jackets.

From the Baltimore Sun Report
"Bond said the Seaport Taxis went out despite a small-craft advisory warning of 20-knot winds because the pontoon boats are designed to handle winds of that speed. The problem, he said, was the much stronger and unexpected gale-force winds that came up later yesterday afternoon."

I would doubt that any pontoon boat is suitable for public service as such, thats just my take from what I read on the style of these boats.

I any case why would you send a boat out in conditions so close to the crafts maximum operations capabity?. Why would the captain who's ultimate responsibilty it is for the safety of all concerned, even considure leaving the dock?

The operators and authorities have a responsibility toward people out on the water, especially towards those that as you say are non boaters and just out for some fun on the water.

IMHO the low fatality count is probably due to the close proximity of both a BCFD fireboat and the naval reserve center that had a landing craft on hand.

We saw 45kt gusts at work yesterday at the head of Delaware Bay; it tends to make the refinery people a bit nervous.

One article mentions they saw the boat actually trying to outrun the squall line as it tried to get back. Also it mentions the boat was a mile from shore, I think towards Fort. McHenery. What the heck is a water taxi doing out a mile and also that far away from the tourist traps? Didn't know they went that far out of the inner harbor.

A witness said the storm was overtaking the ferry, and he thought it would overcome the boat. Then the boat tried to turn back to re-enter the Inner Harbor (it was a mile or so from Fort McHenry, NOT a mile from the shore) and tilted, then capsized. If you have ridden on the Baltimore harbor taxis (as I did just a bit over a year ago) you will remember that the ones that run out to Fort McHenry are the narrow ones - I'd guess no more than 10' beam and probably less, while maybe 35' long. They are powered by Mercury 80 or 90-horse outboards, and (to my thinking) are relatively unstable for catamarans. My two brothers and I had a ball moving from one side of the boat to the other to induce heel; there might have been a total of 12 ppl on board.


PS: bloomberg reports the length at 36 ft.

I saw a computer animation on the news that seemed very believable and they probably got their information from reliable eye-witnesses.

Apparently:

1. Driver decided trip could not be completed, and began to return to nearest shore, possibly to point-of-origin.

2. The water taxi almost capsized when beam-to (wind).

3. Driver turned more directly into wind. On a large wave (perhaps in concert with large gust), the bow was lifted up, exposing her flat floor between the pontoons directly to the wind. At that point, the water taxi was flipped by strong winds and rolled upside down.

4. Upside down, most of its weight and pontoons provided increased upside-down stability, (acting like a keel). It was not turned upright until sometime on Sunday. Almost everything above its deck was gone, especially after being towed while inverted. Evidence was probably destroyed due to towing while inverted. She probably should have been hoisted onto a barge, etc.

This will probably involve efforts toward national legislation to affect public watercraft, particularly pontoon vessels.

I suggest Darwin Awards to :

1. Designer(s) of vessel (perhaps it was a committee).
2. Whoever reviewed and approved such a design.
3. Skipper, for poor decison to leave shore without due caution in weather (apparent lack of adequate weather info), and/or supervisor.

In those same conditions, would any Race Commitee would start a sailboat race??? NO!
Would any sailor attempt to cross that body of water, with that number of folks on board, in any weather? NO!
Would you take that vessel across that body of water with crew of one or two?

Thanks Andrew

What you have said confirms what I had heard. The main part of this seems to be that the operator turned the boat so that the Beam faced the wind. The result is that it flipped.

The Operator is about to face a "Green Table" type inquiry. Lots of luck! There are some quotes attributed to the Lead investigator and his boss. They seem to indicate that the Captain/ Operator appears to be at fault. One of the qoutes compared it to the NYC ferry incident. So I would not be surprised if we see criminal charges.

Earning your living in any type of Marine operations is enjoyable. But the results of bad judgement are very severe.

1. The operator went out in Borderline Conditions
2. When faced with a Squall did the operator break out the lifejackets?
3. When the winds hit why was the beam turned to the wind? The best course of action would have been Stern to wind. I know that sounds strange but if bow to wind it is easy for a pontoon boat to get blown to the side and not able to recover. The stern steers the boat and it is easy to keep a straight track when running with the wind and waves.

Another question is going to be the operators experience and Qualifications. I don't know what Qualifications someone must have to operate a pontoon boat with passengers. A Basic CG Captains license ? But experience is going to come into question. The "I've been in Boating for 30 years" gets shot down real quick. The marine types in the Transportation Department have seen what happened to the FAA and don't take crap anymore. If they find any fault they will attack those who caused the problem.

As for the organization that ran these pontoon boats I think the experience is over and the lawsuits and Govt inquiry are about to begin.

Hodor-

I was watching you morons sailing out there from my backyard on Saturday.

39 degree water - Severe thunderstorm watch - Cold front coming - unstable air and shitty breeze to boot.

Darwinism at its finest - stay at the dock or quit bitchin' about the consequences of late winter sailing in Annapolis

Glad you made it back safe - you should have seen all the boats racing in 20 mins after the squall passed - A lot of pissed off wives down below and cold wet skippers driving into Back Creek

one thing that crossed my mind is that had the passengers been wearing PFDs, there might have been MORE fatalities. That thing flipped over faster than Paris Hilton on a Motly Crue tour bus. think about it, some people got out by swimming out from under the thing. they might have been so boyant, that they would be plastered agenst the floor under water...just a thought

Loser,

Thanks for the kind words. We had rader, etc and an able boat so all was fine. The furler did present a gear problem but we got it taken care of within 3 min. I never said we were in danger and it was actually fun. We planed for it, had good foul weather gear on, handed out jackets, recorded our positon before, stayed away from a leeshore and got out of the harbor before it hit. There were many other keelboats of the same size out there and we were fine. biggest gust we saw was 29 knots and that was also the largest gust recoreded at thomas point data at the time of storm.

You need some sort of CG Captains license to operate those things, but I think the most important thing to take away is that those boats have no palce being near Ft. McHenry. The inner harbor, perhaps down to Canton and the Museum of Industry, but once you pass Ft. McHenry the water opens up very quickly and even on days w/o squalls, you can see 2-3ft waves which would pound one of those pontoon boats pretty hard.

I have a friend whoe worked on those, and, I agree with his assesment: Regardless, its a damn tragedy. 3/4 of the people on the boat were tourists.

Oh, btw, its all over CNN International, BBC and the Guardian. It made big new over here in Europe...

That small craft advisory was posted from Friday around 1630. I sailed right past that spot Friday afternoon and motored back a little later in the evening. Winds were less than 4 knots the whole time. NWS was just being overly cautious, and leaving a warning like that posted for over 24 hours when the first 8 are light and variable isn't a good way to get people to pay attention.

The Baltimore Sun has an article today talking about the use of pontoon boats, pointing out that Boston and other areas have stopped using them. But Baltimore's harbor, extending out to Ft. McHenry, really is a more shetlered area. That was a freak gust of wind travelling along the front (not a microburst). Also, it sounds like had they taken it bow-on, instead of trying to run to shore, they would have been less likely to flip.

Would a traditional powerboat have been better? Probably, but what if everyone had been standing on the portside watching the fort as they motored back towards the harbor (these are tourists, remember). The boat turns to port to run for shore, and the 50+ knot gust his them broadside, with them already listing to port b/c of the imbalance. Would a monohull have been pushed over enough to take on enough water to sink? Or to capsize completely? Either way, the capsized pontoon boat provided a platform for some of the people to rest on while the Naval Reserve and the Coast Guard got in to action.

All that said, yes, those damn pontoon boat water taxis just look like they're designed to be more stable inverted. Twenty knots of wind, loaded to capacity (the first interviews were with people turned away from that boat), maybe they should have stopped operations out at the Fort.

Weatherbug apparently issued a thunderstorm warning around 1515. NWS wasn't able to give a warning until 1605, seven or eight minutes too late. They've been negotiating with WeatherBug for a while to get access to their data. Hopefully this'll speed things up.

If anyone's interested in real-time Baltimore/Patapsco River weather (and 24 hour historical data) www.digiwx-baltimore.com is located about 200 yards from where the taxi capsized, out at the end of a pier.