Another Boat Tragedy

[pmgthailand]

Yet another tragic loss of life on the seas. This will just keep happening and just keep getting swept under the carpet for fear of loss of tourist baht, not for the actual safety of passenger. These boats are not safe and not maintained to a very high standard. There is such a thing called a stability category, which in essence calculates how far a boat will heel over before capsizing and depending on what the angle of vanishing stability is then the boat is given a classification of how far offshore it is allowed to operate and how many persons, if it is a commercial vessel carrying passengers then this very important. I have noticed here in Phuket that most of these type of vessels have 3 decks, with mostly seating on the top deck is unstable. If you put 40 persons averaging 75kg each, then you have approx; 3 tons of weight very high up on a boat with very little freeboard then all you have to do is turn sharply or take a wave broadside and as soon as it heels over all the weight up top will cause it to capsize, it is simple physics. Most of these boats are like this, seating areas on the top deck with air con units is a recipe for disaster. The dive boat that sank last year with the loss of 12 lives on the way back from the Similans last year looked totally unstable. Picture on the front of the PG clearly showed that, the owners said that it was newly built, but if it was designed and built unstable, then its age has nothing to do with it.

YOU CANNOT PUT HEAVY WEIGHT UP HIGH ON ANY BOAT OR IT WILL CAPSIZE!!!

[Farma]

pmg do you have a news link to a story on the latest tragedy or are you referring to the 2007 article you just responded to in the news clippings?

[stevenl]

Yet another tragic loss of life on the seas.

What does this refer to please?

[ScubaBuddha]

Yes, reference please. I haven't heard of any such tragedy and I have been out on boats in Phuket all this week. Yesterday was a bit dicey but today was nice.

And just for accuracies sake, 7 people died on the live-a-board you mentioned, not 12.

[katabeachbum]

Comparing CE class A or B, with significant wave height of 7 meters stability requirements is a bit od for Phuket boats going out in 1-2 meters waves.

OP seems to be posting a huge amount of negative posts about Phuket, without wanting to back them up by facts.

[LivinginKata]

The open post refers to an incident that occurred almost 3 years ago.

The topic is

Any further discussion should continue there.

To save any confusion that this is a new event, this topic has been closed.