> Outside the boat, Sarah, Hissora and the others who had jumped off eventually found the two life rafts, which had deployed after the sinking. As they clambered on board, they saw the boat's captain and a number of other crew members were already there.
> "There should be some supplies in here," Sarah remembers one of the other guests saying. All the people we spoke to recall a safety briefing mentioning that the life rafts had food and water in them - but they did not, the BBC were told.
> "We found a torch, but again it didn't have any batteries. We didn't have any water or any food," Sarah says. "There were flares, but they had already been used."
> Sarah also says of the three blankets on board the raft, one had been taken by the captain for himself, leaving one for the rest of the crew and another for the guests. "We ripped it up and huddled together," says Sarah.
Absolutely disgraceful behavior from the captain here. This is not a person who should be entrusted with a houseplant, let alone the wellbeing of any number of people on board that vessel.
Sadly, absolutely nothing and no one in Egypt can be trusted. It is even worse that the former Soviet Bloc where I grew up, and where you always had to divide your expectations of competence, functionality, compliance etc. by, say, three. (Nowadays, two.)
This story is still better than it could be - I would expect the life rafts to be completely unmaintained and to sink immediately. Perhaps they were sturdy enough to survive years of neglect.
You can expect that the investigation will be an exercise in bureaucratic hush-up, too. If losing face is worse than death, death is the preferred outcome. Especially if it is someone else's death.
The Red Sea is beautiful, but caveat emptor. Ironically, Saudi Arabia may outcompete Egypt soon when it comes to seaside tourism. Saudis are a lot more competent when it comes to providing Western levels of service, and the current prince is ditching Islamic limitations real fast.
In Egypt, when you are in a position of power - for instance, captain, CEO, president - you aren’t actually responsible for anything. It’s more of a sinecure, where you are there to be honoured and pampered by your underlings.
This seems to be a universal law there - any time I’ve done business there’s been some lavish lunch with the CEO while he talks about his horses, and then negotiations with Farid from accounts.
So… the captain in this case is just abiding by Egyptian customs. He is, in his and his crew’s estimation, the most important person on the boat, and is to be protected at all costs.
If you've ever been to that country, or any similar country, you would notice that real professional competence across whole society is scarce, and most tourism industry is just barely faking it in terms of security and professionalism. Or to put it in different words - don't do extreme sports there, safety net is very thin.
Deadly diving accidents are common there too, mostly due to lack of professionalism of instructors, either locals or for some reason russians.
they busted it with a 9 ton boat but now I’m unconvinced because they did demonstrate the effect with a large weight dropping straight down in a pool, so what effect was that?! They were testing Titanic myths and didn’t touch on the fact that Titanic famously dropped like a stone!
After several hours trapped in the air pocket, the dive guide, Youssef, wanted to try to swim through the boat, but Lucianna and Christophe persuaded him not to. "Stay with us because they are going to come to get our bodies, so they will find us," Lucianna recalls telling him.
An odd decision, I would have thought he was a good diver, so presumeably also a decent free diver, knew the boat well, could alert rescuers to the trapped people, and would not use up oxygen when gone from the bubble.
Being an advanced scuba diver is absolutely no indication of one’s ability to freedive. You Absolutly can not compare the two besides both taking place underwater.
On top of that, even if this guide was a Divemaster which is far from guaranteed given the other safety failings from this company, being an advanced Divemaster does not equate to one’s ability to cave dive. Survivors state the lack of lighting in the boat and so I’m assuming he would have had to navigate the boat in complete dark under water. So while not exactly cave diving, it’s equatable. An activity that’s insanely dangerous to anyone, even Divemasters that don’t have cavern or cave experience.
There’s a reason there’s a grim reaper sign at the entrance of caves in popular dive locations.
You got me wondering and I thought maybe there was some kind of gas diffusion where carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean water instead of building up in the enclosed space, and finding the most closely related stack exchange question I think I’m satisfied with this answer:
probably that four-foot bubble communicated with a larger volume or air under the hull of the boat - and that's the most reasonable explanation of this miraculous survival.
When picturing it we might assume the rest of the boat is flooded and this pocket of air is all that remained but that may not be the case.
It might be enough. Google says a human needs 300-550 liters of oxygen a day. That equals to about 6.8-12.4 cubic meters of air for the 3 of them for 36 hours.
The space does seem like it could be large enough to hold that much air, especially if it's compressed a little.
In this case, the boat was floating, albeit upside down. So the volume of air trapped must have been sufficient to keep a 44 metre boat afloat; i.e. not a trivial amount.
So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not a diver or free-diver. I've done a lot of diving and a little bit of free-diving.
I would never, not a million years, try and free-dive out of a boat, especially a large and unfamiliar boat that had sunk. It's almost certain death to try and do so.
1) No Breath: First of all, the average person can roughly hold their breath a minute or lets be generous and say one and a half minutes. Well, that's in perfect comfortable conditions in a nice warm, safe, room. Now you're in cold water, you're in shock because your boat sank, and you're in the dark, you're likely highly anxious or panicking, you can now hold your breath 30-45 seconds if doing no work at all. If you're actively swimming for your life you probably last for 20-30 seconds IF THAT.
2) Getting Lost: Dive boats can be quite large, full of random objects, and if you've been diving on a boat for a few days only, there is little chance you are going to be able to navigate through the boat in the dark in good conditions, now imagine the boat is filled with water, completely dark and upside down. You are panicked and disoriented, if you somehow manage to find an exit it's almost entirely down to dumb luck.
3) Depth (and potential DCS). You have no idea what depth the boat has sunk to. So let's say it's at 50m, it takes a long time to surface from 50m and if it's already taken you 1 minute to get out of the boat, you're fucked again. Not to mention any DCS you may suffer if you've been breathing compressed air down at 50m for very long!
Maybe there are some combination of factors which would make this a good idea, like, very small boat with very obvious exits, warm water in the tropics, shallow water and its daytime so there is light to see by, and you're also a champion free-diver and regularly do 7-9 minute breath holds. Sure in these cases you might just swim out.
But if you're a normal person trying to swim out of a boat in the dark, upside-down, in unknown depths, cold water, random detritus floating everywhere, just stay put!
Freediving inside an enclosed space is known as “angling for a Darwin Award”.
Doing it in a shipwreck is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do. You won’t have the normal cues of up and down, won’t have any sort of decent lighting, and all the while your body wants to panic due to CO2.
Then, they’d been breathing compressed air. If they reached the surface they’d get the bends, and depending on depth that could kill them or cause serious damage.
Most SCUBA divers don't train freediving, next time at the pool see how far you can dive on one breath. Then imagine being panicked, in the dark, in a ship you don't know that well, in the machine room you've never been in before, where now everything is upside down and at an angle, filled with water and all kinds of stuff floating around.
> But Lucianna is critical of the fact the Egyptian navy had to rely on volunteers. "We waited 35 hours. I don't understand how there are no divers on the Egyptian military boats."
Why should divers risk their life to save anyone?! The boat was unstable, going inside would be dangerous! Some people are adrenaline junkies, and will volunteer for such thing, but you can not expect professionals to do that!
Some people are just wired differently. It's the difference between the person who will get out of their own car and help someone push theirs or the person who will intercede when someone is being assaulted instead of walking past. It's not adrenaline, it's the need to help. Luckily for others, some of us have this flaw.
Why would the military navy or coast guard risk their lives to save some tourists from a sinking boat, when they could professionally watch from a distance through binoculars? /s
[+] [-] brian-armstrong|1 year ago|reply
> "There should be some supplies in here," Sarah remembers one of the other guests saying. All the people we spoke to recall a safety briefing mentioning that the life rafts had food and water in them - but they did not, the BBC were told.
> "We found a torch, but again it didn't have any batteries. We didn't have any water or any food," Sarah says. "There were flares, but they had already been used."
> Sarah also says of the three blankets on board the raft, one had been taken by the captain for himself, leaving one for the rest of the crew and another for the guests. "We ripped it up and huddled together," says Sarah.
Absolutely disgraceful behavior from the captain here. This is not a person who should be entrusted with a houseplant, let alone the wellbeing of any number of people on board that vessel.
[+] [-] inglor_cz|1 year ago|reply
This story is still better than it could be - I would expect the life rafts to be completely unmaintained and to sink immediately. Perhaps they were sturdy enough to survive years of neglect.
You can expect that the investigation will be an exercise in bureaucratic hush-up, too. If losing face is worse than death, death is the preferred outcome. Especially if it is someone else's death.
The Red Sea is beautiful, but caveat emptor. Ironically, Saudi Arabia may outcompete Egypt soon when it comes to seaside tourism. Saudis are a lot more competent when it comes to providing Western levels of service, and the current prince is ditching Islamic limitations real fast.
[+] [-] madaxe_again|1 year ago|reply
This seems to be a universal law there - any time I’ve done business there’s been some lavish lunch with the CEO while he talks about his horses, and then negotiations with Farid from accounts.
So… the captain in this case is just abiding by Egyptian customs. He is, in his and his crew’s estimation, the most important person on the boat, and is to be protected at all costs.
[+] [-] jajko|1 year ago|reply
Deadly diving accidents are common there too, mostly due to lack of professionalism of instructors, either locals or for some reason russians.
[+] [-] shellfishgene|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] interroboink|1 year ago|reply
video of his rescue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um1ym9u8XaA
Randomly, the next year, he rescued his friend when their car goes off a bridge into water. He later became a diver!
[+] [-] triyambakam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|1 year ago|reply
https://youtu.be/rvU_dkKdZ0U
[+] [-] p_j_w|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shellfishgene|1 year ago|reply
An odd decision, I would have thought he was a good diver, so presumeably also a decent free diver, knew the boat well, could alert rescuers to the trapped people, and would not use up oxygen when gone from the bubble.
[+] [-] dev-ns8|1 year ago|reply
On top of that, even if this guide was a Divemaster which is far from guaranteed given the other safety failings from this company, being an advanced Divemaster does not equate to one’s ability to cave dive. Survivors state the lack of lighting in the boat and so I’m assuming he would have had to navigate the boat in complete dark under water. So while not exactly cave diving, it’s equatable. An activity that’s insanely dangerous to anyone, even Divemasters that don’t have cavern or cave experience.
There’s a reason there’s a grim reaper sign at the entrance of caves in popular dive locations.
[+] [-] relistan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rurban|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shellfishgene|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|1 year ago|reply
I thought human beings needed several cubic meters of fresh oxygen (at 1 atm) per hour…
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|1 year ago|reply
probably that four-foot bubble communicated with a larger volume or air under the hull of the boat - and that's the most reasonable explanation of this miraculous survival.
When picturing it we might assume the rest of the boat is flooded and this pocket of air is all that remained but that may not be the case.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67970/surviving-...
[+] [-] Aerroon|1 year ago|reply
The space does seem like it could be large enough to hold that much air, especially if it's compressed a little.
[+] [-] _hyn3|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pcrh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] saberience|1 year ago|reply
I would never, not a million years, try and free-dive out of a boat, especially a large and unfamiliar boat that had sunk. It's almost certain death to try and do so.
1) No Breath: First of all, the average person can roughly hold their breath a minute or lets be generous and say one and a half minutes. Well, that's in perfect comfortable conditions in a nice warm, safe, room. Now you're in cold water, you're in shock because your boat sank, and you're in the dark, you're likely highly anxious or panicking, you can now hold your breath 30-45 seconds if doing no work at all. If you're actively swimming for your life you probably last for 20-30 seconds IF THAT.
2) Getting Lost: Dive boats can be quite large, full of random objects, and if you've been diving on a boat for a few days only, there is little chance you are going to be able to navigate through the boat in the dark in good conditions, now imagine the boat is filled with water, completely dark and upside down. You are panicked and disoriented, if you somehow manage to find an exit it's almost entirely down to dumb luck.
3) Depth (and potential DCS). You have no idea what depth the boat has sunk to. So let's say it's at 50m, it takes a long time to surface from 50m and if it's already taken you 1 minute to get out of the boat, you're fucked again. Not to mention any DCS you may suffer if you've been breathing compressed air down at 50m for very long!
Maybe there are some combination of factors which would make this a good idea, like, very small boat with very obvious exits, warm water in the tropics, shallow water and its daytime so there is light to see by, and you're also a champion free-diver and regularly do 7-9 minute breath holds. Sure in these cases you might just swim out.
But if you're a normal person trying to swim out of a boat in the dark, upside-down, in unknown depths, cold water, random detritus floating everywhere, just stay put!
[+] [-] Filligree|1 year ago|reply
Doing it in a shipwreck is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do. You won’t have the normal cues of up and down, won’t have any sort of decent lighting, and all the while your body wants to panic due to CO2.
Then, they’d been breathing compressed air. If they reached the surface they’d get the bends, and depending on depth that could kill them or cause serious damage.
[+] [-] shellfishgene|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jajko|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throeurir|1 year ago|reply
Why should divers risk their life to save anyone?! The boat was unstable, going inside would be dangerous! Some people are adrenaline junkies, and will volunteer for such thing, but you can not expect professionals to do that!
[+] [-] batch12|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|1 year ago|reply
“Seems kind of dangerous. I’m a professional, I won’t go there, let’s wait for amateur volunteers to show up.”
[+] [-] albumen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wbl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] itsoktocry|1 year ago|reply
Yeah, why should anyone do anything to help anyone else unless it's in their self-interest!
No wonder we live in such a low-trust society...
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] petre|1 year ago|reply
Maybe because it's part of their job drscription?