capsize in LI, NY

[jim rosenthal]

3 Dead After Yacht Capsizes Off Long Island
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 5, 2012 at 8:05 AM ET



OYSTER BAY, N.Y. (AP) — A yacht full of fireworks watchers capsized in Long Island Sound on Wednesday night, killing three people and sending 24 others into the water, where many were rescued by fellow boaters, the police said on Thursday.
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The three dead were recovered from the water near Oyster Bay after a long overnight search, said Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lack of the Nassau County police.

“Tragically, three people were killed in this boating accident,” he told reporters. He would not release their ages. Several media outlets reported that children were onboard.

Preliminary causes for the accident “could be a combination of the weather and a wake from another vessel,” Inspector Lack said. He said investigators wouldl be looking at possible overcrowding on the vessel.

He said the first body was found shortly after the 911 call came in at 10:10 p.m. on Wednesday, and the two others were found later inside the yacht.

He said the operation took a long time because “at night in an area like this, it is very dangerous.”

“It was a lot of people in the water,” Inspector Lack said. “Most people were taken aboard other crafts very quickly.”

The National Weather Service said a thunderstorm moved through the area of the boat accident around 10:30 p.m., and winds never exceeded 10-15 miles an hour.

Petty Officer Anthony Kozak of the Coast Guard said the Silverton yacht was submerged.

Some survivors were taken to a yacht club.

Inspector Lack said some but not all of the passengers onboard the 34-foot boat had been wearing life jackets.

“We believe they were out looking at fireworks,” he said.

A boater told Newsday that he saw the yacht turn right and then tip over after it was hit by a wake. “It was like in slow motion,” said the boater, Sammy Balasso of Oyster Bay. “All of a sudden, a lot of bodies were in the water.”

His nephew, Frankie Barbone, 15, of Bayview, said the waves almost came up over the yacht.

Mr. Balasso said he put the spotlight of his 38-foot speedboat on the Silverton and then threw all the life jackets he had with him into the water. He said he rescued 20 people who were later taken to the shore in police boats.

“Everybody was panicking,” Mr. Balasso said. “People were saying things like ‘Why?’”

 

[jim rosenthal]

This sounds like too many people on this boat- as many as 27?

 

[MikeP]

"He said investigators wouldl be looking at possible overcrowding on the vessel."

You think?

The captain should be in jail on some sort of homicide charges.

 

[saltshaker]

What a shame. Does sound like a lot of people for a 34ft boat. Amazing that a wake could capsize a boat that size. The boat that waked them must have been very close and throwing a huge wake. I wonder if there were too many people up on the bridge?

 

[lbkjj]

A terrible tragedy but 27 people on a 34 ft Silverton doesn't make any sense. Silverton makes a 34 ft top heavy, inverted bathtub boat and I suspect that was the style boat. A local yacht dealer stated anything over 10 people would " overburden" the boat.

 

[Avenger]

Especially if they're all standing on one side to watch the fireworks. Very sad.

 

[Pascal]

Very sad indeed

I have to question the NWS about winds never exceeding 10 to 15 MPH... The Seawanhaka YC weather station (were the boat left from) shows a 180 deg wind shift and 25kts gust around the time of the accident!

It s not hard to believe that the gust over open water may have been higher and enough to cause a top heavy boat to turtle...

 

[CTdave]

Pascal
I was right there (see next post). The weather at the time of the accident was perfect. 5-8 kts. wind at the most, clear visibility.
It wasn't until 30 or so minutes into the rescue effort that the heavy squall passed through. It was over in 20 min.

David

 

[CTdave]

We were there last night & watched/heard it all unfold.

Three children were killed, 8, 11 and 12 from what we hear.

The first boat on the scene called for help & gave his exact lat/lon. As he was calling for help in a very clear and professional voice, the Nassau County police asked how many people were in the water. " A lot, 15 or 20, we need help immediately".
Nassau marine patrol kept asking for a landmark or bouy & said the lat/lon didnt help them. This killed a good 10 minutes until my friend who was on the scene finally set off his epirb & said "here is the exact location" as he sent up four flares.
The USCG had the lat/lon & were en route but were 12 minutes out,

Sea tow was quickly on scene & hats off to the operator who upon getting there, immediately called the USCG & said "the boat is going down and there are possibly people still inside. I have a tank on & am going in the water now". He was in the water in seconds & spend easily an hour searching.
My friend who had night vision circled the area, scanning for victims.
We hear that the boat was newly purchased & that there were 27 people on board. Tragic mistake. It happened just after the fireworks concluded & I assume that they got into someone's wake & with the overloaded bridge, the boat just rolled.

What an awful night for these families.

 

[lbkjj]

The boat is reported to be a 1984 model. Silverton made both a 34 ft convertible and a 34 ft double cabin model in 1984. It was "new" to the owner.

 

[jim rosenthal]

I vividly recall having TEN people on my 37 foot Egg Harbor many years ago in Baltimore Harbor for July Fourth fireworks, over by Fort McHenry. Several were kids. Of course they all went to one side when the display began; I had to put the adults on the other side of the bridge to even up the weight and list. And that was only ten people, on a boat that I suspect is heavier than a 34 Silverton. I can't imagine what 27 people on a boat that small would feel like; I am surprised it wasn't swamped at the dock. (and yes, they all had PFDs, on the trip I took them out years ago)

No doubt there will be an investigation, possibly charges, a trial, a punishment. All of that is in a sense beside the point. Children assume that adults know what they are doing; they are taught to obey adults and follow their directions. When the adults DON'T know what they are doing (and loading 27 people onto a boat that size defines not knowing what you are doing) there is hell to pay. And in this particular instance, the hell is defined as causing the deaths of three children, and losing your children. The NYTimes item states that this was a family group- more than likely someone or more than one person is agonizing over the decisions that they made that caused the deaths of children related to them. And all of it is too late. A bit of caution in advance would have avoided the entire tragedy- it's so sad, all of it.

 

[Avenger]

Thank you for sharing that account CTdave. I can't imagine the horror of going out to enjoy holiday festivities and causing the deaths of anyone, especially children. If I was Cap'n Chaos there I'd probably be putting a gun in my mouth right about now.

Here's a link to a halfway decent news report and video:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/at_least_two_missing_after_boat_vZ91m0w6XHfkPCFREweIaP/1

 

[hyperfishing]

Hopefully the idiots at Nassau marine patrol who did not know what lat/lon is are immediately fired.

 

[Avenger]

They probably know what it is, they just don't know how to program it into the GPS on the million dollar boat my taxes paid for.

 

[jim rosenthal]

Yeah, I read that, too. They didn't know lat-lon? They are an emergency marine patrol?

 

[saltshaker]

All of this is so tragic and given that it was a new boat for the captain/owner, he probably was unaware of the dangers of having so many on board. Sounds like a terrible case of ignorance and poor decisions. My heart goes out to all involved.

 

[jim rosenthal]

The cabin cruiser that capsized off Long Island on the Fourth of July, killing three children, was not necessarily overloaded, even though it was carrying 27 people, a lawyer for its owner said Friday.
Related

A Packed Boat, a Celebration, a Deadly Turn (July 6, 2012)

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The lawyer, James Mercante, who is representing the owner, Kevin M. Treanor, said that at least 10 of the 27 passengers were children and that no calculation of the group’s total weight had been made to help determine whether the boat might have rolled over because it was too crowded. He said the combined wakes of passing boats could have been big enough to topple Mr. Treanor’s boat even if it had been carrying a lighter load.

“They were out there for hours before, during and after the fireworks and there was no incident, no problem; the vessel handled fine,” Mr. Mercante said after talking with Mr. Treanor and the Nassau County police investigating the accident. “You get two or three big boats when they’re together, you get a wake becoming six to eight feet. Any boat could get rolled over with a trough like that.”

Mr. Mercante’s defense was the first from a representative of the extended family that organized an outing to watch a fireworks display near Oyster Bay. The trip home after the show ended in disaster when the boat flipped suddenly, dumping 24 people into the water and trapping 3 children in the submerged cabin.

The victims were Mr. Treanor’s 11-year-old daughter, Harlie; his 12-year-old nephew, David Aureliano; and Victoria Gaines, the 8-year-old daughter of family friends. Mr. Treanor’s brother-in-law, Salvatore Aureliano, was steering the boat through a flotilla leaving the show when a wake hit it broadside and pushed it over, according to Mr. Treanor’s brother, Michael.

Veteran boaters and boating safety experts immediately pointed to the number of passengers as the likely cause of the capsizing. But the Nassau police said they were still trying to figure out what went wrong.

Officer James Imperiale of the Nassau police said the investigation could result in criminal charges.

A spokesman for the county district attorney’s office would say only that prosecutors were monitoring the investigation and working with the police and the Coast Guard.

Brian Griffin, a criminal defense lawyer in Garden City and a former Nassau County prosecutor, said the police appeared to be “taking a hard look” at the case. But he added that to file a charge of criminally negligent homicide, prosecutors would have to show that the boat’s operator did not recognize the risk he was taking and did something to exacerbate it, like driving the boat at a dangerous speed.

“In the state of New York, what you need is not just a failure to perceive the risks, which arguably is there by loading a boat like that, but some seriously blameworthy conduct on the part of the operator,” Mr. Griffin said.

Mr. Mercante, who was hired by Mr. Treanor’s insurance company, said no member of the family had hired a criminal lawyer. There are no federal regulations on capacity for a boat like the one that sank, a 34-foot Silverton named the Kandi Won. (The Coast Guard had identified the boat as the Candy 1 on Thursday. But Russell Brown, the father of a previous owner, said it was named after his daughter-in-law, whose nickname is Kandi.)

Mr. Brown, who owned the same model boat, said he would never have put more than eight passengers on it, but added that the Silverton, like most private boats over 26 feet, did not have a plate that stated its maximum capacity. Only smaller craft and commercial passengers boats are required to display those numbers, the Coast Guard said.

Boating-safety organizations like the United States Power Squadrons have a rule of thumb for figuring out how many passengers a boat can handle: multiply the boat’s length by its width and divide by 15. For a boat like the Kandi Won, that calculation yields a capacity of 27.

Mr. Treanor’s lawyer said there was no simple equation for determining how many passengers were too many.

“You can get two 34-foot boats and one could be bottom-heavy, one boat could be top-heavy,” he said. “One could have one engine, one could have two engines. It’s very difficult to say a 34-foot boat, you can only have this amount of people on, because of the different designs of boats.”

 

[madhatter1]

No way I would put 27 people on my boat (34x12/15=27.2). I use my life jacket count to limit overloading. I honestly do not care who gets upset about staying behind when we head out to see the fireworks. I explain this to all early in they day so no excuses. So sad about the kids.

Overloaded or not the wake thing is a big factor since the forth is one of the three "amateur" days each year. A 50' boat half planed off makes a massive wake. I was in the Gulf approaching the bridge to the ICW running 6-7 mph with several other boats right in front of me. A 35-38' or so express was going to pass 1/2 on plane as we went under the bridge. I could have peeled off and waited since I was last but the guy in front of me had high riggers and was committed to the center of the channel. I throttled up to 1/2 plane as he got close to give him some steering issues and it slowed him down. Someone on the boat with the riggers shouted thanks.

 

[hyperfishing]

That calculation is nutz! Or, that formula might be used to explain the number of people on boats coming to Florida from Cuba in the dead of night. <gg>

 

[jim rosenthal]

Rule of thumb? Based on what? I've never heard of such a rule of thumb. Does anyone else know of this? sounds like BS to me.

Common sense and experience ought to play the chief role in deciding how many people you can carry on your boat, not arithmetic rules of thumb. If indeed they exist. Funny how this putative rule came out with the same # as the number of people on the Kandi Won.