Seriously OUCH!!!!

[charleville]

A mate just sent me these pix from North Qld.

The bloke who owns this boat was approaching Mackay harbour entrance at around 35 kts. He pulled back the throttles, but only one came off with a result it veered straight up onto the rocks. At high tide they pulled it off and took it inside the harbour wall where it now rests comfortably on the bottom, underwater.

That has to be the second good reason that I have heard for not having twin motors. (Not that I know anything about such things.)

[finga]

Oh no!!!
Charter boat...what charter boat??

[charleville]

More pix ...

[charleville]

One more.

The real shame is that we are probably all paying for this through our insurance...

[FNQCairns]

What is the sound of fibreglass tearing:) Now that is a project boat a bloke could get his teeth into!

Guess if he eased back on the throttles like a conditioned boater would he may have got away with it??

Operator error.

Great pics

cheers fnq

[fishingrod]

Where is BM (B@y5ide M@r1ne)
This can be a re-furb project for him ?

None of the twin engined boats i have driven (up to 30 feet leg and shaft) have ever veered off course on one motor, but at 35 knots is a differnt story i guess if the bow dug down? Note that ive never driven a boat that size.

Its all about safe distances etc etc, you need travel at a safe speed/distance to avoid a collision. Even if a throttle jammed im sure the engine could have been shut down? I know a high speed shutdown can damage a motor but it might save the crash.

Accidents happen. Im not blaming the skipper. Just considering the sceniaro in hindsight.

[davez104]

Apparently he was doing 18 knots when he hit the wall. More damage was done to the boat while trying to get it off the rocks in rough conditions. Not sure on exactly what happened, but was electrical problems resulting in no throttle control, couldn't even shut the engines off according to the paper. Not sure if the steering was affected, but you would think at the first sign of trouble like that you would point her nose back out to sea. Would like to hear the full story before passing any judgement though.

Dave.

[wessel]

if that size boat is a displacement hulle then it must be running some serious engines to be able to do 35 knts.
Even at that speed the thing should not do what is claimed to have happened. The insurer will be asking a couple of very personal in nature type of questions on this one I am sure.

Pity the bloke who was driving it at the time....... That had to hurt big time

Wessel

[GBC]

Agree with Davez,

Wouldn't like to pass judgement yet. She looks modern enough to be joystick controlled.

I was lucky enough to not be onboard the MV Cape Grafton ($AUD 20 million Govt Ship) when she casually steamed aground at Dent Island.:P

The upshot was that a 20 cent fuse blew and the bridge lost control of everything at 12 kts, with not enough time to initiate emergency drills.

She's now owned by P&O and is called MV Southern Supporter.

[Getout]

Do you reckon the airbags went off?

[Dirtysanchez]

Don't know about airbags, but his underpants would have !!

Or is that what you meant by airbags ? :D :D :P

[3Vs]

Courtesy of Club Marine

On Friday a 50ft luxury multimillion dollar motor cruiser ploughed onto the rocks at Mackay Harbour on the North Queensland Coast. In scenes reminiscent of a high budget action film, the huge vessel powered at speed up the rocky outside north wall of the harbour entrance.

Local fisherman Paul McMahon said ‘it made a thunderous boom when it went up the rocks. It looked just like an action movie. It was crazy.’

Police said that the cause of the crash appears to have been mechanical or electronic failure.

The vessel ‘Eropaks’ had just been returned to the water that afternoon after work in a local shipyard.

Early reports indicate that the electronic controls on the boat may have failed as the boat was about to enter Mackay Harbour on Friday afternoon.

John Kraft from Mackay Port Authority explained what happened after the boat hit the rocks.

‘One of the duty port officers rang me and told me that a vessel had gone aground…We put our normal marine incident plan into place. We contacted Vessel Traffic Services and the Harbour Master…’

‘Cranes were brought in to support the stern of the vessel and the rescue team did what they could to stabilize the vessel.’

The late model Dynacraft was insured for $1.8 million with insurer Club Marine.

Phil Johnson, Club Marine’s National Claims Manager, confirmed that one of their assessors quickly arrived at the incident site. ‘Our assessor was on the spot within minutes of it happening.’

The Club Marine assessor, Maritime Safety and the Port Authority had a difficult decision to make. The assessor knew that if they brought in larger cranes and other equipment they may be able to lift the boat off the sea wall, thus saving his company a potential seven figure sum. With the boat recovered more or less intact, the claim would be reduced from total loss to salvage and repair costs.

But there were other considerations weighing on his mind. With the flood tide and the 20 knot winds on their way, there was a good chance that the large boat would break apart if it remained on the rocks. This could cause substantial environmental damage through spilled oil, diesel and debris. There was also a risk that the boat could become a navigation hazard to other ships.

‘We collectively decided it was a safer and better option to bring it around the corner and let it settle on the bottom instead of smashing to pieces’ explained John Kraft.

‘So they brought a tug in to tow it around the corner, inside the harbour. Where they let it sink.’

The boat is now resting on the harbour bottom, safely out of the way of other shipping.

Club Marine’s Phil Johnson said that the total cost of the salvage operation had been estimated at $200,000. He said that he was pleased with the decision to sink the boat rather than risk environmental damage.

‘It costs us a lot of money but also saves the environment with the pollution and clean up if it had of been left on the rocks.’

‘We didn’t want to block the Port of Mackay. It’s a busy shipping port with ships departing and arriving all the time. We were aware that we couldn’t put the port under any extra strain. That was another priority in the operation.’

Phil Johnson is now in the process of organising a salvage operation. ‘As the boat’s currently sunk in Mackay Harbour and we have to salvage the rest of it later this week. We’re co-ordinating that at the present moment. We’ll bring it to the surface later this week….It’s a large boat, so it’s a fairly large operation…’

Club Marine spokesperson Andrew Powell said that the company was extremely pleased with how the incident was handled.

‘Club Marine is the largest leisure marine insurer. So it is able to provide this level of prompt and professional assistance following a major incident at sea, with a network of over 850 assessors, salvors, repairers, naval architects and other professional on stand by 24/7 to respond to our call.’

Once salvage operations have been completed investigators will be able to provide further information on the cause of the accident.

For more information on Club Marine www.clubmarine.com.au (http://www.clubmarine.com.au/)

[Spaniard_King]

I would be seriously crying if they said were gunna sink her around the corner for ya

Garry

[Grand_Marlin]

Interesting ... they dont want to damage the environment ... so they sink it anyway ... oils and diesel included I assume :o

[Roughasguts]

Yeah you would of thought they could have beached her instead.
Dragged her up the beach a bit with tractors and what ever, put a security guard in place and save all the motors, fixtures and fittings, electronics,

Then again she was probably better off on the rocks, might have been a bad call to sink her.

[juju]

For a start you got to feel for the poor battler that owns it.....the idea of sinking is interesting, what about teh fuel onboard???...turned a little repair job into a big one......likely to turn up on e-bay...

[dogsbody]

hmmmmm i don't believe you can berth there. ouch thats enough to bring a tear to the eye.

Poor bastard well maybe not so poor.

Dave.

[bootyinblue]

Looks like just a flesh wound to me......

No mechanic at all, but I sunk a 12foot tinnie with 6hp on the back not long ago. Took the motor for a service, and first thing the mechanic did was throw it back in a tank of water. His answer when I asked why, 'Rust wont form under water'

Maybe that would have something to do with the mechanicals, but I presume the downside is you could right off all the electricals if they hadnt already done so.

[chuss]

you think you would've worked out that the throttle/steering, etc wasn't working say when you were within 100m of the rocks...

I don't know about anyone else, but something suss perhaps here...

[Brumby]

I suspect someone is putting a positive spin on a bit of a stuff up! I doubt that they deliberately sunk her, probably just couldn't keep ahead of the water pouring in and down she went. That said I think it was still a good call to get her off the wall, a couple of days of good size seas and she would be toast anyway, grinding on the rocks.

I wonder whether it was someone from the yard at the helm? Imagine having to make that call.....

[Heath]

I would be seriously crying if they said were gunna sink her around the corner for ya

Garry
Don't think there'd be too much to cry about if you could afford a 1.8mill boat in the first place :P

[Getout]

Boys! She's a 50 footer! Half a dozen prime movers and a kilometre of chain wouldn't move that sucker up the beach.

[Roughasguts]

Get out a bull dozer would do it easy.

2 dozers, and a 1/2 kilometre of chain, drive those side by side and you can do some serious tree clearing.

[jimbo59]

Don't they have a heavy travel lift up there?

[Roughasguts]

Kinda reminds me of the big boat that ended up at Kirabilli, on the rocks in Sydney harbour a whille ago.

They floated that off, and had a big barge at the ready.

No engine or electrical failure with that one though.

[Armo]

that'll buff right out !!

[Fish Guts]

what a balls up. driving too fast for the unexpected ?

[krazyfisher]

A couple of other things they were going FAST lost power no control at all!!!
they tried airbags to seal the holes but they moved and started to go down.
they had pumps trying to pump out water as they were moving it.

[Swamp]

Just a point

The boat is pointing out from the harbour

He was doing that speed in a 6 knot zone, in an area frequented by lots of small boats

[SnapHead101]

As I live in Mackay , just to clear up a few issues

1.) The vessel is outside the harbour and entering not leaving. Where she lies there is no speed restriction

2.) The is a heavy lift approx 300 metres further on and there is a beach approx 200 metres from where the boat is where it could be dragged up.

3.) The breakwater gets really nasty in anything over 10 knots of wind. This weekend it's nasty up here (I've been down in NSW and got back today) and blowing over 20 knots. Any boat left there in 20 knots would be gone in under 30 mins as the waves really stack up. I've been in recreational boats for over 25 years and this entrance scares the cr*p out of me.


However Mackay is a small town even more so on the boating side. I'll try find the "real deal" and let the group know.

[Lovey80]

They couldnt provide extra buoyancy via 2 large boats secured either side and towed it to a dry dock??? I recently did this to an Army boat that was on the bottom of a river(much smaller operation i agree. Got it up high enough to get the gunwhales out of the water so i could pump out the water. still buoyancy principles are the same. The poor digger that failed to put the bungs in before parking it in a keyway nearly died when i told him he'd sunk a 660k boat.

[SnapHead101]

I have spoken to a few locals re this incident. The vessel was on a test run having had recent work done to it. There controls between engine and helm were all fly by wire , ie electronic. The controls failed approx 300 metres from the breakwater and the boat would not respond from the helm. The mechanic testing the vessel ran back to the engines and managed to shut one down where upon the vessel veered to starboard and struck the breakwater. Had the vessel continued on it's set course it would have entered a marina full of boats in another 300 odd metres.
Interestingly the owner of this vessel had a previous large and expensive boat burn out at the reef several years ago !!
Apparently this current vessel was underinsured although I can't confirm this!
The vessel is still on the bottom near the breakwater as attempts to lift it with a crane failed.
I'm very very very glad I didn't get Mercury engines with fly by wire controls on my boat !!!!:)

[Wazzup01]

Anyone good with gelcoat???

[snapperm8]

geeze the boat didnt look to big from the first few pics then i saw the other ones, no1 could be to happy with that effort atleast they got a new fishing spot =)


cheers dave

[Roughasguts]

So how come these big fly by wire boats, don't have a big red emergency stop button on them.

[Noelm]

geees it seems that it would be extremely bad luck to have both the controls and the steering fail at the same time, not saying that it could not happen, but seems unlikely!

[Argle]

i wonder what the "work" being done was? "Ill just take this big girl out for a quick spin and check that new throttle and steering control unit we installed":-X :-X :-X
I wonder did they pump all the fuel and oil out prior to sinking?

Cheers
Scott

[chris_s]

Got a couple of salvage pics from this incident to add to the collection.

[charleville]

Got a couple of salvage pics from this incident to add to the collection.


Don't these pics just break your heart?! :'(

[bay_firey]

That first pic really gives a perspective as to the size of the boat.

And the whole in it

[disorderly]

Got a couple of salvage pics from this incident to add to the collection.

You call that a salvage?

[charleville]

You call that a salvage?

That has been puzzling me as well. Surely something could have been done to keep her afloat. The cost of rewiring and refitting things that will be affected by submersion must be enormous.:-/