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Had to happen. Duc, overturned Phila PA

8K views 47 replies 14 participants last post by  deniseO30 
#1 ·
#32 ·
The issue may come down to the tug not having sufficient crew to maintain the appropriate watch. The union has been fighting for increased crew for some time.
I have also read that first sighting was a 400ft by the duck boat crew, but the barge or duck boat would have been in clear sight of each other at least 2 1/2 miles down river as the barge made the turn under the Walt Witman Bridge.
 
#33 ·
I've come through that area a few times now.. it is not somewhere you want to be with all the ships, barges,dredges, huge anchorages with gigantic ships at rest, tugs crisscrossing all over the place, and even helicopters buzzing you (homeland security) Also is the river itself being churned up into all kinds conflicting waves and current. Loosing engine power would be bad news for anyone there.

The few times I've watched the ducs on the ramp and in the water it looks like they have very little freeboard. Also, 37 people weigh well over 2 tons. So I still think even with power they have little chance of handling adverse condtions that are very common on that stretch of water. (just my opinion, based on very little knowledge of the actual construction of the craft) Maybe the actual original ducs were built different?
 
#34 ·
Denise, I've been on the DUCs, not the one in Philly but the same company. They're quite sufficient for the waters they operate in, quite enough freeboard, and there are active bilge pumps running in them. (Much better than the ones in our boats, yes.)

Nothing will survive a direct hit by a barge, so the seaworthiness of the DUCs isn't an issue here.

And everyone here SHOULD be aware that even if the commercial vessel is keeping a proper watch, any ship, any tug+barge, has a HUGE blind spot immediately in front of their bow. They may not be able to see anything for 1/4-1/2 mile directly under their bow, and that's one reason so many commercial captains get ballistically PO'd at racers who cut inside that dead spot, routinely, figuring there's plenty of seam room. THERE ISN'T, THE GUYS CAN"T SEE SQUAT UNDER THE BOW.

So given where the DUC was, you can expect a disaster. The only real questions are:
1-Was the tug keeping a proper bridge watch, that might have seen the DUC enter the danger zone? (Probably not, since the tug did't sound 5x on the horn.)
2-Was the tug keeping a proper radio watch, to receive the mayday calls from the DUC? If the DUC made them? Again, probably not.
3-Could either party have taken any action to avoid the collision? On the tug's side, probably not because of limited manueverability, UNLESS a proper watch would have had adequate time to respond.
On the DUCs side...There may be full liability. The DUC driver may have drifted into the channel by fast current, OR he may have been trying to cut ahead of the barge when he lost power. Two very different results.

But the range of options, the range of possible mistakes, is fairly small and I'd expect the court of inquiry is going to get ot the bottom of this one quickly. If the tug skipper takes and sticks to the fifth amendment...that will point to not keeping a proper watch, and that will damn him.

Give it six months, we'll see.
 
#35 ·
This bears repeating...

And everyone here SHOULD be aware that even if the commercial vessel is keeping a proper watch, any ship, any tug+barge, has a HUGE blind spot immediately in front of their bow. They may not be able to see anything for 1/4-1/2 mile directly under their bow, and that's one reason so many commercial captains get ballistically PO'd at racers who cut inside that dead spot, routinely, figuring there's plenty of seam room. THERE ISN'T, THE GUYS CAN"T SEE SQUAT UNDER THE BOW.
 
#36 ·
The duck enters and exits the river directly in the dredged shipping channel, and the tour is mostly within the channel. The river is a heavily used commercial port with traffic NJ to PA bulkhead, and the commercial traffic is increasing as the Port Authority does an excellent job of increasing the port as an attractive commercial destination.
This is also a tidal river with a lot of pleasure craft both power and sail, and is the home waters of the Liberty Sailing School.
Apart from the few excessive power boat wakes, minor compared to the barge wakes, most craft follow the rules of the road diligently. To do otherwise will very quickly create scary situations, from which most boaters will learn what not to do.

This incident will more than likely resolve around watch keeping and communication by both vessels.
 
#37 ·
Well, this is predictable, especially in Philadelphia:

Lawsuits Coming in Fatal Duck Boat Accident « KYW Newsradio 1060

I realize that there were serious mistakes made that led to this fatal accident, and therefore there must be liability. But for some reason, the thought of a team of briefcase-toting Philadelphia/NYC lawyers traveling to a tiny town in Hungary to "get to know the family" sounds an awful lot like high-tech long-distance ambulance chasing. I hope these poor families realize that the attorneys will deduct "out of pocket costs" (over and above their fees) from the winnings, and first-class globetrotting by these guys will likely take a big chunk (all?) out of their winnings. And none of this will bring back their loved ones.

And these guys suggest that the duck boats should have had positive flotation? I suspect that many things were done wrong in this unfortunate incident, but violating the laws of Physics was not one of them.

Lawsuits Coming in Fatal Duck Boat Accident
7/16/2010
12:59pm

The families of the two Hungarian tourists who were killed in last week's duck boat collision are preparing to file lawsuits in connection with the tragedy.

KYW's John McDevitt reports that a Philadelphia lawyer who previously represented victims of the fatal Pier 34 and Tropicana garage collapses is heading to Hungary to assist the families.

Attorney Robert Mongeluzzi (above) and his partner will be joining co-counsel Peter Ronai of a New York firm in the small Hungarian town of 300 where the victims - 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner and 20-year-old Szabolcs Prem - lived, to meet their families and find out more about them and their lives.

Mongeluzzi says once that is done, a suit will be filed:

"We will be suing K-Sea Transportation - they were piloting the tug and barge that ran over the duck boat. We will be suing the duck boat company - they should not have had a breakdown, and they should have had an air horn that worked. And they should have had a vessel with buoyancy."...
 
#38 ·
Rhythm
I agree in general with your views of the bottom of the food chain lawyer, but we do need them every now and again to fight for victims rights and prevent future victims.

After the Tropicana parking lot collapse during construction, engineering inspections are now performed before formwork and temporary supports are remove.

After the Pier 34 collapse, the City of Philadlephia now requires more frequent engineering inspections and reports to the city for all the piers.

Maybe after this incident the tug-barge crews on watch will be increased from 2 to 3 so that a crew member will be on the barge, and stricter controls for commercial passenger craft in the shipping channel.

Sometimes it takes the potential for a major financial hit to change the way things are done.
 
#39 ·
Obviously I agree with all of this. I just have a cynical view toward lawyers - admittedly too cynical in this case. But I realize that in the end, the costs of this trip to Hungary will be paid by the victims, since it will be taken out as out-of-pocket costs. So I just hope that they don't go hopping over there unnecessarily.

BTW, we saw your boat in its slip on the way in yesterday evening. We're headed out again tonight - the breezes out on the river make the heat a little more tolerable. Is your motor working better?
 
#40 ·
Cleaned the carb, cleaned and greased the linkages, reset the idle. The outboard starts after second pull and runs well. But it has tendency to jump out of reverse at he wrong time.
Not a problem if I time my return to the slip at slack or flood tide. At ebb I will be coming into the slip at more than 2 to 4 knots.

Unfortunatley for my sailing but good for my wallet, work has picked-up so less time on water. I will be able to afford installing a new inboard this winter.

Back to topic, I have been on both ends of the pointy stick when it come to lawyers, but I am glad I had one fighting for me. Just hope the crew of both vessels don't get made the scape-goat for company policy, and have good lawyers.
 
#41 ·
After trying, and failing, to move to the Schuylkill River, the Duck Boats will return to Delaware River in a couple of days. They are shortening their time in the water, putting a permanent lookout on the pier where they enter, and must have a high speed rescue/tow boat available. All of this is because they will still enter the water right into a busy shipping channel (no way to avoid that on the Philly side of the river), which is a very sub-optimal situation:


I'll have to wait to see what their full route is, but this article says they will stay within 100 feet of shore - which means they'll be right in the shipping channel the whole time. It seems to me it would be much safer to just proceed across the channel as quickly as possible (upon clearance from their lookout), and head down the river outside the channel.
 
#43 ·
#44 ·
Oh, one other thing:

"The Coast Guard changed its rules to require ducks to stay within 300 feet of the Philadelphia shore, instead of 1,000 feet. Sumwalt said that change kept the ducks from moving to the relative safety of the Camden shore; instead, they had to stay in the shipping channel..."

This was exactly my point in my April 19 post - just look at the chart I showed. It seems obvious that it would have been safer to quickly cross the narrow channel than to stay in it for their entire tour south along the Penns Landing area. I had noticed that issue a couple years ago when I did the tour with my son's 6th grade class.

As I said in that message, their new rule since restarting operations in April is that they need to stay within 100 feet of shore. I'm not sure if "shore" is defined as the end of the boat ramp, or the end of the Race Street "Pier" (which is actually a seawall filled in with dirt, so it could be considered "shore"). If the former, that would be safer because they would not even get to the channel, but there's absolutely nothing that any tourist would want to see there. It's like launching a boat on a trailer ramp and not even getting out of the fairway.

Click here
for a satellite pic of the area. You can see the Duck's boat ramp between the pier and the bridge.
 
#45 ·
Last year I stayed for a time in a condo on the pier just below the Maritime museum and the square-rigger "Moshulu" (condo is where you see "Chart House" on the ariel view link in above post). The downbound ships passed *really close* to the end of that pier, say about 150 feet.

So the issue isn't staying out of the traffic because that may be impossible--it's lookout, lookout, lookout. And cell phones, computers (other than live e-chart ones) texting, twitting, are all incompatible with "standing a watch".

"Every vessel shat at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate.."

So please, hang up and friggin' navigate. the stakes are too high.
 
#46 · (Edited)
When near a shipping lane or other heavy traffic area a few minutes laps in a visual watch can end your life.



This was last Sunday midday. I was sailing down river under main only, 5kn breeze not enough for good headsail control with boat wakes, between the shipping lane and the PA bulkhead up river from the Commodore Barry Bridge.

A container ship with tugs came up river under the bridge, about a minute later I could see that it was a Banacol ship and I had just passed the Banacol terminal on the PA side.

Black smoke from one of the tugs suggested they had commenced to move the ship toward the PA bulkead. It was obvious I was close to the area they needed for the turn.

Dropped my outboard back in the water (in while sailing gives me maybe 1/4 kn drag), started and began my turn away from them and down river. By this time I was directly between the ship and the PA bulkhead just down river from the Banacol dock.

More black smoke from the tug. I suspect but don't know for sure, they had planned to exit the shipping lane down river from the facility, but changed to exit up river from the facility to avoid my slow moving sail boat.

The ship and tug exited the shipping lane up river from Green E1, I moved out into the shipping lane and motored up river. The ship and tugs used the entire width between shipping lane and bulkhead to turn and come alongside the PA bulkhead.

Then I exited the shipping lane as a Mearsk ship round the bend down river from Little Tinicum Island.

The ship and tugs maintained a good watch, I was under motor as soon as I could see that they would leave the shipping lane in my direction.

But could'a, would'a, should'a, gave them a call on 13 or 16 to let them know what my plan was.
 
#47 · (Edited)
I had a similar thing happen a couple of weeks ago. I was motoring toward southwest past Ft. Mifflin just upriver from 3F, outside the channel but approaching a bulkhead on the Philly side. A large tanker was stationary in the anchorage area across the channel near Riverwinds, but he was pointed toward the Philly side with a tug behind him. I paused for a few seconds to see if he was doing anything, but both visual observation and AIS told me he wasn't moving. So I proceeded past as quickly as I could motor. After I was past the AIS showed them speeding up, and they moved toward the dock and ultimately tied up there. I should have been more aggressive about making radio contact, especially since I knew the tug's name (its name was obscured by the tanker, but AIS showed me the name). If I knew that's where he was heading I would have gladly steered behind them. But for all I knew, the tug could have been intending to back away from the boat and I would have been in the way if I steered behind him.

Yesterday we were tacking downriver against the current in the same area. One of those big white Del Monte freighters was heading downriver in the channel. I ran out of room and had to tack toward the channel. Having resolved to be more assertive with the radio, I wanted to contact the guy to let him know that I saw him and would stay out of his way by coming about before I reached the channel. But instead of sending a general call to him, I selected his vessel on the AIS list and attempted to place a DSC call to him on Ch13. However, he did not acknowledge the call. In the minutes that I waited for him to acknowledge I was almost to the point where I wanted to tack anyway, so I gave up on calling him and just came about to get out of his way.

By the way, for those who think the lack of acknowledgment might have been a bad antenna connection, that's always possible, but I have placed DSC test calls to boats before (nonverbal digital tests), with about 50% success at getting an acknowledgement. My owners manual says that the failures were likely boats whose radios were not configured to automatically acknowledge test calls.

Despite the frustration of not getting a DSC call answered, I am absolutely thrilled with the new AIS radio. I get really clear data on what boats are coming my way (long before I can make visual ID). Often these are boats that are "sneaking up behind me." More importantly, I get very good predictions of how much time I have to get out of their way (the chartplotter program shows me 5 minute vectors for my boat and theirs), and can make decisions with much more confidence that I will avoid a collision.
 
#48 ·
ON this day one year ago was the mishap.. The local news was all over the issue once again. EVERY, report completely downplayed the Duck "captain's" actions. The frigging idiot dropped anchor and text his girlfriend! In an active shipping channel! Sorry, I just don't feel that because the tug and barge are WAY BIGGER that they should bear the blame alone.
 
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