Kategorie: News
Details of the sinking of the liveaboard vessel Sea Story
We conducted an extensive interview with three of the survivors of the Sea Story accident on November 25. Lisa, Danilo and Matthias were all on the stricken ship and each of them reports from their own perspective. Also in the conversation is our accident expert Jan-Philipp Lauer, who will address the technical aspects of the accident and the possible causes based on the descriptions of Lisa, Danilo and Matthias.
The former guests report on the details of the travel booking (listen to the interview), check-in, safety briefing and what they noticed when the ship was introduced. A well-made PowerPoint presentation represented the main part of the safety briefing; but overall it was very theoretical. Neither the real situation, mounting and handling of the life rafts nor the personal safety equipment such as a life jacket were discussed. These were then found in the cabins, but they were not well maintained, the batteries for the integrated lamps were missing. In retrospect, the introduction to the ship's safety issues was quite patchy.
On the night of the accident, there was heavy rolling motion on the ship. Danilo reported that he went from the upper deck to his cabin during the night and that there were already strong sideways movements of the ship. Sometimes it was so strong that he could only hold on with force on the way down. In the middle of the night the accident happened - quote Danilo: “... at some point I woke up; I was lying on the right side of the cabin, Matthias was lying on the left side then the boat just tipped over within a few seconds and Matthias just slammed into the wall right in front of me."Quote Mathias: "On the right side, the boat tipped over and then I didn't even fall out of bed but I really landed right on the wall and was already at a 90° angle, so I didn't even and then somewhere - but it catapulted me out of bed so that I was lying directly 90° on the other side of the wall. It didn't announce itself somehow or something, it just happened...”
What followed this terrible experience was the self-rescue that sounds like a horror story. Two passengers who were able to save themselves from the capsized ship. Excerpt from the interview: “…air comes in from somewhere – but after an hour or so of struggling to survive, I realized that we wouldn't get out of here. Water is coming in from below and it's getting more and more. We don't have much air left and then I noticed that there was a draft coming from somewhere. Hearing a ‘little breeze’... ”
A long night at sea followed and finally the rescue of the surviving passengers.
The interview lasts almost two hours, but shows you in great detail the passengers' experience. The follow-up of the disaster in Egypt and the way the authorities “wanted to put the disaster in the right perspective with the survivors” is another experience that no one wants to have after such an experience.
Listen to the interview – the full version is available on our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kphd4PPaBAc
Further information:
Original News Text (November 2024)