Today's Headlines: Boat turns into a Banana.

2:16 This is incredible. Now you see it, now you don't.
One Australia, "We Will Miss You"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU0j0r_cqvk

One occasionally reads stories about sail boats that disappear completely without a trace or even a mayday call. This is how it happens. Imagine if the crew was largely asleep?

#3 What crew with any sense is sleeping while sailing???

#4 A pirate crew.. obviously.

I'm just curious...and I know damn all about sailing, but the chase boats, why not have the "hoops" that the military use to recover people from the water?

#4. What crew with any sense is sleeping while sailing??
Sigh. I said if the crew was largely asleep. A skeleton crew / watch at night is relatively normal thing weather etc permitting. Crash, fracture and sink happened so fast, imagine trying to get out from below decks? That was my only point. No time to evacuate.

Here is the story from the 1995 America's Cup Race...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1006309/index.htm

#3 this is a *racing* boat; if you'd go down below you'd notice that it's literally *empty* - these things aren't even painted on the inside, and there are no bunks, no tables, nothing at all. There is absolutely zero chance anybody aboard would be asleep. Also, because this is a racing boat, it is operating on the absolute limits of technology -- in this case, even beyond -- which is why it simply breaks apart like it does.

Regular yachts, on the contrary, would not suffer a catastrophic failure like this. They would not sink in 2½ minutes. Even if a part of the crew would be comfortably asleep in their cabins, there'd be time enough to wake everybody and evacuate. Unless they'd be run over by a container ship, or something ridiculously unreasonable like that. Disappearing ships can happen, but they are slow-sinking vessels that are out of radio range from anything else.

TL;DR: This is *not* how it happens.

#4 many boat races take days or even weeks to complete. There's often a round-robin schedule of sleeping and working. But this is America's Cup, the races don't take that long so obviously nobody would be sleeping.

#6 those navy hoops are really cool, but they only work because the pickup is going fast in reasonably calm seas for one thing, and even more importantly the swimmers are trained for that, wearing floatation devices, and aren't scattered around in danger of being run over. Navy pickup is *planned and trained* while this was ... not planned and clearly not trained either.

#9 torbengb. Congrats you are the king of the pedantic twats. Of course in most races no one is sleeping or presumably below decks although round the world races - yes, the crew does sleep. >There's often a round-robin schedule of sleeping and working. Exactly and then even a high tech boat could crumple in the right collision conditions. I posted a generic statement about boats sinking quickly and amazement and how fast a boat, albeit a high tech one, can disappear. Nothing more although that alone seems to warrant negative reactions. I do not get that. Pleasure, non racing, civilian boats do disappear without a trace. Engineers have hypothesized that collisions with semi-submerged containers that have been lost off cargo ships can tear a keel out and do much the same thing. Crews can get caught off guard and they are lost without a trace. These are rare events, agreed, but the idea that a boat and go from the surface to a submersible so quickly is remarkable. My great uncle, an experienced sailor, was lost at sea presumably in a scenario like this. Good sailor, heaps of transatlantic experience, good crew, no big storms, gone without a trace.

#1 ha ha ha, indeed

#9 bla bla bla

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