Duck Boat Accident

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moloch16

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Seeing what happened to that duck boat in Missouri makes me not want to rip any foam out of my boats. Looks like the poop hit the fan quick without time to take action. I fish a smaller lake and feel pretty good about getting to shore within minutes, but I have gone out in the calm morning, and by the afternoon coming back and crossing the main lake to get to the ramp, things have gotten a bit sketchy but I keep going: "have to get back, got things to do" is usually what I'm thinking, maybe making a poor decision at the time :shock:

Scary.
 
I don't know about the duck boats but many commercial vessels do not have foam flotation. I will say this,
I have seen those duck boats in person up close and they are marginal boats and marginal vehicles, doing neither well.
I was at the dell's when some friends went on one of them, I waited at a bar.
Tim
 
Gross negligence by the captain and the owners of the company. They will be broke for the rest of their lives and maybe in prison.

Duck boats are not seaworthy. Never should have left the dock. If they did leave they should have turned around. A tragedy that never should have happened.
On another boat site a guy posted the requirements for being a duck boat captain. Not much needed to apply. It shows.

We think these kinds of accidents occur in other countries.
 
ppine said:
Gross negligence by the captain and the owners of the company. They will be broke for the rest of their lives and maybe in prison.

Duck boats are not seaworthy. Never should have left the dock. If they did leave they should have turned around. A tragedy that never should have happened.
On another boat site a guy posted the requirements for being a duck boat captain. Not much needed to apply. It shows.

We think these kinds of accidents occur in other countries.

Lots of assumptions made here. Duck boat captain could have years of boating experience. Thunderstorms happen all summer, who knew this one would have 60+ mph winds with it? We like to think we are smarter than this, but it can happen to the best of us.
 
We don't know if storms with high winds were in the forecast, it looks like the captain did a pretty good job keeping the bow into it but once it started hitting him on the beam it was over. People having put on life vests prior to abandoning ship may have contributed to the death tool, being unable to get off the boat.

They didn't appear to be far from shore and there was another boat out there too, very sad situation for sure. We need all the details before we can judge them completely. I don't know what the capacity of a Duck boat is but they used to carry troops, so I'm thinking 30 or so isn't out of the question under the right circumstances.
 
From the news I am hearing, the captain was not driving/operating the boat at the time. He was on board but one of the hired crew was operating the boat. It looks to me that they were trying to keep the bow heading into the waves. Once they were swamped a couple times and the engine quit they would have had no way to keep it on that heading and it maybe rolled over after getting turned sideways. I was wondering if being an amphibious vehicle the weight of the undercarriage for the wheels might have had an impact on its ability to stay afloat in those conditions?
 
In order to be a duck boat captain you need a high school diploma and little else. On the job training.
Thunderstorms and strong winds were forecast all day.
Not wearing PFDs is much more of a problem than wearing them.
No one should get a free pass on this one.
Criminal negligence.
 
And now there's news of nine members of one family perishing in this "accident".
That company's out of business, or will be soon.

Roger
 
I haven’t taken a look in a while, but for a long time the Duck Boats in the DC area were the original WWII vintage ones.

Then I was in Boston for a wedding and the duck boats I saw were new builds. Broadly similar, but not ancient, and were USCG inspected IIRC.

I just checked and in Boston, at least, you have to have a CDL/Bus license, a tour guide license, and a USCG Captain’s license. Part of getting a captain’s license is time at sea, so that’s probably the “on the job training” referred to. But I don’t think you would not be allowed to have sole command without a qualification.

I guess standards vary though. A real pity. I’m sure we’ll find out more as time goes on.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
This "tech" is 75 years old, life vests could have made the people stick to the roof of the "vessel" once it went under, making it harder to escape.

It's bad all around, weather reports had strong winds in the forecast, no way they should have been underway.

Very sad day indeed.
 
We were on a family vacation last fall that took us through Boston. The number of these Duck Boats we saw while riding around that city is incredible. This is apparently a much bigger tourist business than I would have thought.

The senseless loss is truly tragic.
 
I disagree with all the comments about life jackets being dangerous and "sticking people to the roof."
I am betting that the family that lost 9 members probably did not know how to swim or were very poor at it. Life jackets would have given them a chance.
The roof is where the air is.
I run rivers and no one gets in my boats without a life jacket.
The fact that duck boat captain and the driver did not make people put on life jackets is a criminal act in my opinion.
My life has been saved by PFDs more than once.
 
ppine said:
I disagree with all the comments about life jackets being dangerous and "sticking people to the roof."
I am betting that the family that lost 9 members probably did not know how to swim or were very poor at it. Life jackets would have given them a chance.
The roof is where the air is.
I run rivers and no one gets in my boats without a life jacket.
The fact that duck boat captain and the driver did not make people put on life jackets is a criminal act in my opinion.
My life has been saved by PFDs more than once.
There is no question that me and my family would have been wearing a LV, that said it has been reported in past accidents that the very LV that are meant to save you contributed to many deaths back in 1999.

It is more of a canopy then a roof as I understand it, there are plastic windows which most likely closed to help keep water out, once the cabin was flooded it would be difficult to knock those plastic windows out, the minimal amount of air trapped in the canopy would soon be used up by 31 scared to death passengers that may not have even known how to swim, let alone save their children. Trapped, is trapped, it's one of the reasons military jet fighter pilots undergo training to escape from submerged aircraft.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article215219170.html
 
This is a boat forum. Some people, and many boaters seem to think PFDs are for children, old people or poor swimmers.

We lose people at Lake Tahoe every year because they don't wear lifejackets. Last year a U Nevada footballer player from Hawaii drowned on a paddle board. He was 230 pounds and a waterman back home. The cold water killed him. We had a sheriff's deputy drown on duty with several people watching at Lake Tahoe. The guy fininshed his shift, stepped out of his patrol boat into a tender and went over the side. He inhaled some water and drowned in 8 feet of water with people watching. It goes on like this. When I go to Seattle I can watch cute girls in bathing suits paddling out into Puget Sound on paddleboards and half of them have no lifejackets with them. The summer water temperature is 55 degrees.

If you are in a situation where a lifejacket is in your way, maybe 1% of the time you can take it off. On rivers a reversal wave with vertical convection means you have to swim out the bottom.

So the "captain" decided to go anyway with severe storm warnings since noon. The "captain" was not at the wheel. The "captain" never gave the order to put on lifejackets. The story about lifejackets being detrimental was probably started by the owner of the boat company.

Any outdoors person worth their salt carries a pocket knife. After a life with horses and small boats, I carry a Benchmade folder that is easily opened with one hand. Half the blade is serated to cut lines, reins, halter leads and definitely plastic windows in a duck boat.
 
ppine said:
This is a boat forum. Some people, and many boaters seem to think PFDs are for children, old people or poor swimmers.

The story about lifejackets being detrimental was probably started by the owner of the boat company.

Any outdoors person worth their salt carries a pocket knife. After a life with horses and small boats, I carry a Benchmade folder that is easily opened with one hand. Half the blade is serated to cut lines, reins, halter leads and definitely plastic windows in a duck boat.
I suggest you re read if you ever read the link to start with.

It clearly states who said what with regard to the life jackets. and the story line starts out with Federal agency (NTSB)

Where you bring up "outdoors person worth their salt" comes from I have no clue. Are you suggesting that every one of these passengers should be carrying a knife, you do understand there was young children and even an infant on board this vessel right? Very few people are "outdoorsman" these days. Even I who grew up in and around the woods do not carry a knife on my person 350 days of the year.

I'm glad you would have survived, much as I feel I'd have done if onboard, most people are not prepared or mentally equipped for this type of situation, I'm fairly sure none of them were boaters.
 
I never would have gotten on that boat.
If 10% of the people on the boat had pocket knives and everyone wore lifejackets then 17 people would not have lost their lives.
The idea that some Federal official thinks wearing PFDs is a bad idea is as shocking as the decision to take a duck boat out in high winds.
The "water part of the trip" was totally optional. They just go back to the same road where they started.

It upsets me when so many people drown every year. Too many people still don't get PFDs and they don't dress for immersion.
 
Lots of Monday morning quarterbacking isn't much help, but I think when the investigation is over they are going to look at the weight capacity for a duck boat. Imagine 30 humans on that little boat ? It might have been ok for 30 GI's that weighed 150 lbs each.... Modern humans are more like 250...... It's seems obvious from the clips I saw that the boat was grossly overloaded. Add to that the hard canopy with 30 big people trying to escape and you have a death trap... with or without life jackets on...
 
The fact that people on a boat forum can't agree that PFDs are always a good idea is shocking to me.
 

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