1stDeuce
Gold Member
I believe you'll find that getting enough water in the bilge of a duck boat to snuff out the engine by submerging the distributor or air intake with 30 people on board would only happen after buoyancy is lost and the boat is already headed under... The bilge pumps on these boats are engine driven, and capable of moving massive amounts of water when they're working properly...
Duck boats are often operated on land with the the "hood" slightly open to vent the engine compartment, which is in front of the driver. Watching the video, it's obvious that every time the nose goes under, the boat gets lower in the water... I wonder if this one had the hood left open while they were on the water...
As larger waves come over the nose, the open hood would act like a water scoop. Probably not much concern with one or two waves, but add that water to any leaking seals, and then keep dumping water in through the hood, and you can probably overwhelm the bilge pump pretty quickly...
The lower the nose gets, the more water comes in... It appears to finally quit running just as the camera goes off it and the person recording says it's going under, which makes sense, since the nose at that point is no longer emerging from the water.
What baffles me is that there was obviously water coming in while they were underway. A bilge alarm sounds because the bilge pump isn't keeping up. Having enough water to set off the alarm in a boat with limited freeboard is always cause for action, and yet they're still well off shore minutes after the alarms have sounded.
That makes no sense to me, as both ducks were obviously experiencing conditions bad enough to cause me concern just watching. I have to imagine it felt even worse inside the boat, especially with water lapping up the the outside of the windows and spilling in... Seems like the captain would have made for shore immediately after the first alarm, with conditions as they were. I know hindsight is everything, but my philosophy is that any port will do in a storm. Get. Off. The. Water.
I suppose we'll never know what really went on, but it is certain that mistakes were made, and not necessarily just by the captain. Sending the boat out in the first place to race the weather was not smart... The captain not recognizing that the boat needed to get off the water quickly, not getting people into life jackets and not getting the side windows popped quickly all contributed to this tragedy...
It's a terrible shame that so many lives were lost, but hindsight won't bring them back. We can only learn from these mistakes and avoid repeating them in the future. Hopefully the investigation will eventually reveal what exactly went wrong with this boat that seemingly wasn't a problem for the other boat. Hopefully we can be sure not to make that mistake again...
Duck boats are often operated on land with the the "hood" slightly open to vent the engine compartment, which is in front of the driver. Watching the video, it's obvious that every time the nose goes under, the boat gets lower in the water... I wonder if this one had the hood left open while they were on the water...
As larger waves come over the nose, the open hood would act like a water scoop. Probably not much concern with one or two waves, but add that water to any leaking seals, and then keep dumping water in through the hood, and you can probably overwhelm the bilge pump pretty quickly...
The lower the nose gets, the more water comes in... It appears to finally quit running just as the camera goes off it and the person recording says it's going under, which makes sense, since the nose at that point is no longer emerging from the water.
What baffles me is that there was obviously water coming in while they were underway. A bilge alarm sounds because the bilge pump isn't keeping up. Having enough water to set off the alarm in a boat with limited freeboard is always cause for action, and yet they're still well off shore minutes after the alarms have sounded.
That makes no sense to me, as both ducks were obviously experiencing conditions bad enough to cause me concern just watching. I have to imagine it felt even worse inside the boat, especially with water lapping up the the outside of the windows and spilling in... Seems like the captain would have made for shore immediately after the first alarm, with conditions as they were. I know hindsight is everything, but my philosophy is that any port will do in a storm. Get. Off. The. Water.
I suppose we'll never know what really went on, but it is certain that mistakes were made, and not necessarily just by the captain. Sending the boat out in the first place to race the weather was not smart... The captain not recognizing that the boat needed to get off the water quickly, not getting people into life jackets and not getting the side windows popped quickly all contributed to this tragedy...
It's a terrible shame that so many lives were lost, but hindsight won't bring them back. We can only learn from these mistakes and avoid repeating them in the future. Hopefully the investigation will eventually reveal what exactly went wrong with this boat that seemingly wasn't a problem for the other boat. Hopefully we can be sure not to make that mistake again...
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