How Our Bayesian Coverage Helped Lead the 'Times' To a Damning Conclusion
How Our Bayesian Coverage Helped Lead the 'Times' To a Damning Conclusion
Major News Story Emphasizes Design Issues, Particularly That Darn Mast
In an extraordinary effort, The New York Times has made the case that blame for the Bayesian disaster was not so much crew error—as alleged by the builder—but a massive design flaw that begat other design flaws.
You guessed it: The root of all evil was the boat’s 237-foot aluminum mast.
“The sheer size of the Bayesian’s mast and rigging made the yacht a wind-catcher even with the sails down,” The Times said in an October 30 article written by seven top-knotch reporters.
The New York Times used to be referred to as “The Gray Lady” for its columns of un-illustrated text, but the Bayesian’s story was done in the newspaper’s latest graphical storytelling style, which I have dubbed news noir.
The Times is a pay-to-play news outlet, but because Loose Cannon is a paid subscriber, this link will share the article to all of you as a gift from me. Let me know if that is not the case. It has worked so far.
Loose Cannon was interviewed by three of the authors last month as part of their research. One of them was James Glanz, a Times science reporter and holder of a PhD in Physics.
Not being a naval architect, I referred them to Loose Cannon contributors and experienced ship designers Roger Long and Tad Roberts. Both had written stories about the disaster that were published here. (Links below)
Alas, Loose Cannon was not quoted in the story, although I had volunteered the following non-technical observations:
Experts I've talked to say that Bayesian would have been approved by the U.S. Coast Guard to carry passengers within 20 miles of the coast, despite the fact that she could not recover from a 73-degree angle of heel. And I was talking with a boatbuilder the other day—not about Bayesian. He was saying that boatbuilders are the last virtually unregulated manufacturers. Which I took to mean that they are lightly regulated compared to their peers. Boatbuilders like it that way, he said, and it was often one of the reasons they were attracted to the profession.
In the absence of government scrutiny, the builders of big yachts should expand the standard "Stability Information Booklet" that comes with the boat to go into greater detail than they do now to educate the captains on the limits of a vessel, not just during ordinary conditions but extraordinary as well, as much as imagination will allow.
Whole Lot of ‘Obtaining’ Goin’ On
The Times did make one oblique reference to Loose Cannon, however. The Times story says its reporters “had obtained” the Bayesian Stability booklet. Yes, they obtained it from me in its entirety after Loose Cannon has published part of it for you folks to read.
Loose Cannon had obtained it from a guy in the megayacht industry who thought that making that information public might help prevent the Italian authorities from hanging Bayesian skipper James Cutfield and his crew out to dry.
Roger Long and Tad Roberts were both recipients of the Stability Booklet and used it to make some amazing observations on Facebook and in articles published here. Yesterday, I passed the booklet on to ABC news, which is working on a follow-up to the Times story.
Another booklet recipient was Guillermo Gefaell, a Spanish naval architect, who conducted a granular study of windage on Bayesian, which included the effect of her satellite domes and six pairs of spreaders. Nothing like that had ever been done.
The Times wrote:
Two Spanish naval engineers, Guillermo Gefaell and Juan Manuel López, calculated that the sheer size of the Bayesian’s mast and rigging made the yacht a wind catcher, even with the sails down.
Writing for the Association of Naval and Ocean Engineers of Spain, they used a computer model to calculate what would have happened to the Bayesian if a strong gust of roughly 54 knots, around 62 mph, hit its side. Under those conditions, the Spanish engineers estimated, the Bayesian could lean dynamically and take on nearly a ton of water each second through an engine room vent.
Roberts and Gefaell were quoted in the story, and their assertions, as well as Roger Long's, contributed greatly to The Times conclusions about the role of the mast.
In the introduction to the first Bayesian story published here, my sense of humor had already reached the same conclusion.
The ancients and not-so-ancients would have blamed the Bayesian catastrophe on angry gods or (later) a single, angry god. Apparently, nothing pisses off god more than a super-tall structure, which, like the Tower of Babel, can symbolize human pride and arrogance.
Or, as the Times wrote, referring to the owner and a previous guest aboard:
Mr. Lynch seemed proud that his boat had one of the world’s tallest masts—a little booklet in her cabin even said as much, Ms. VanSickle remembered. Whenever they chugged into a harbor, she said, “people would take photos of it constantly because it was so crazy-looking in comparison to other boats.”
Vertical Center of Gravity
Bayesian was part of a family of sailing superyachts, but all the others had been ketch rigged. Having a single mast created a weight distribution challenge, which required adding ballast as compensation. Usually ballast is centrally located, but in this case, because of the position of the mast on a sloop, the ballast was installed aft.
All that extra weight from a super-tall mast and compensating ballast lowered the waterline and put the engine room vents that much further down, too.
Asked to comment on the story, Roberts had this to say about comparing the sloop and ketch versions in the Perini Navi line:
I spent many hours on the phone talking with one of the authors of that Times story. A lot of it was line by line explanation of the Stability Book. We also spent a lot of time comparing the (Bayesian) book to that of the "other boat." It was absorbing and informative. Compared (on paper) to a ketch-rigged sistership, Bayesian's vertical center of gravity (VCG) is 15 inches higher. That's significant.
I fail to understand how a mast can bring down a ship with no sail, and yet doing serious navigation with 1,000 M2 of canvas
The Times article on the Bayesian sinking is perfectly illustrative of how the mainstream press barrels blindly down the tracks of journalism, believing that a writer does not need an iota of familiarity with or expertise in the subject matter being covered. And, oh yes, does not have any responsibility to even acknowledge the contribution of those who supply the underlying knowledge or analytic acumen that make the piece even minimally intelligible. IMO, one should always make it clear that significant contribution -- meaning more than 5 minutes -- requires at least a line of attribution, if not a two or three line background blurb. Cheers!