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From: Jeffrey Folino (no email)
Date: Tue Oct 04 2005 - 23:51:15 EDT
Mike Wrote-
> A few observations. I can not see how any of these 3 accidents has
> any rational excuse. The lake accident may be a case of overloading,
> which I am highly suspicious of.
This evening's news and today's papers (Albany Times Union) contain some
interesting observations. The Ethan Allen is a 1960's era boat that was
originally designed without a hard top or side windows. These were added in
recent years ( I believe in the 1990's).
Tonight's news on CBS station WRGB had an exclusive interview with the first
person to call 911. She observed the capsizing and reports that this boat
was obviously unstable. She also commented that there was no "large wake"
from another boat. Nor were there any weather or water conditions that
obviously contributed to the accident. In her opinion, it was a case where
the boat was loaded beyond a safe weight for it's design.
The NTSB spokesperson stated that they are going to take advantage of the
fact that there is a sister ship to the Ethan Allen owned by the same cruise
company. They will be utilizing her to run handling tests tomorrow with
equivalent weight as was loaded on Sunday. Additionally they will be
performing an incline test.
They also plan to put the Ethan Allen back into the water to check her hull
integrity to see if there were any leaks that may have contributed to the
accident.
What follows are solely my opinions-
The design weight used at the time of the classification for 50 people is
150 pounds per person. It is unlikely that 48 senior citizens would have
been close to that average.
The modifications to add the hardtop and sides were not in the original
design, and there may have not been enough ballast added to compensate for
the additional weight up top. I don't believe it is know whether on not a
naval architect reviewed the design changes at this time.
The area where the boat was turning has a very large mansion on a rather
tall hill that the tour boat drivers like to point out to the passengers. I
suspect, and again, it is only my opinion, that the passengers were all on
one side of the boat attempting to get a better view. As the boat has a
hard top, they would have had to move to one side of the boat to get a look
at it.
The passengers that were on board may not have had the agility or sense of
balance to react to the boat's listing by moving back to the other side of
the boat, or the speed at which things went from stable to capsized may have
happened too fast for anyone to react to.
All in all, a very tragic accident that we will remember for a long time.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims and the
survivors.
Jeff Folino
Latham, NY
QEIII- Clayton, NY
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