Boat sinks at Cala Viñas, Mallorca

Deleted User said:
2 things to say in response to that. AFAIK the Ferretti 550 was an update of the Ferretti 53/530. The F53/530 had straight shafts, not V drives and I suspect the F550 was the same. Actually the engine access on my F53 was not bad although the top of the engines were close to the deckhead. Second, all Ferrettis I've ever seen have a changeover valve fitted to the main seacocks which allow the engines to suck water from the bilges rather through the seacock. Those valves were quite accessible on my 53 although quite stiff to operate.




Thx mike -the 2nd vid # 19 Shows E room hatch open .
Where is that valve ,the change over one ,you reffer to ? if its near or attached to the strainers ? -guessing ?
How would you envisage the personal onboard , operating them if they are under that grey pannal , which may have floated off .
Obviously we do not know how often any valve or seacock has been exercised .
How visable are the seals ? -
It does not really matter on the g box configuration if V drives ,then seals look diff to view or if shaft ,there's a Geny on the Stb side sat on top !

If its a 550 ?
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Deleted User said:
2 things to say in response to that. AFAIK the Ferretti 550 was an update of the Ferretti 53/530. The F53/530 had straight shafts, not V drives and I suspect the F550 was the same. Actually the engine access on my F53 was not bad although the top of the engines were close to the deckhead. Second, all Ferrettis I've ever seen have a changeover valve fitted to the main seacocks which allow the engines to suck water from the bilges rather through the seacock. Those valves were quite accessible on my 53 although quite stiff to operate.

So in the case of this Ferretti, either the skipper didn't know about this facility or the flooding had been so severe it had cut the engines before anybody had the chance to change the valves over
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The second video has a links to a news article in the Mallorca Magazin with more info on the incident. The skipper explains that both engines had stopped after which they trew the anchor and left ashore by jet ski to get help!? Only when returning they noted that the boat wast taking water. The following events then led to the sinking... Like Deleted User commented above, Ferrettis are well equipped to prevent this from happening. In addition to several bilage pumps and the possibility to use the engine intakes as emergency pumps there is a substantial compressor fed high water alarm horn that cannot go un noted. Even if the boat had Deap Sea seals failing, there should be plenty of time to tighten the emergency clips that these seals have. Like in many disaters many things has to go wrong at the same time for this kind of thing to happen. Really a pity for the crew and the nice boat.
 
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Where is that valve ,the change over one ,you reffer to ? if its near or attached to the strainers ?
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Here is a picture of what it looks like on my current Ferretti. The set up was similar on my previous 2 Ferrettis. The valves are located on the seacocks which, at least on the Ferrettis I've owned, were located between the engines and easily accessed. You can't actually see the seacocks in the photo but you can see the 2 levers in the middle which operate them and which are open in the picture. You can see the 2 pick ups for bilge water on the left hand side which in the picture have their valves closed (obviously). To pump water from the bilges with the engines you close the seacock valve and open the pick up valve. Also in the picture is a wander hose for an electric bilge pump which can be used to pump out small amounts of water from the bilge and and another plastic hose which is the pick up for the manual bilge pump. All round a pretty good set up and I'd be surprised if the set up on the sunk Ferretti was much different

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Whitelighter said:
Seralia has the change over calves you describe, right at the bottom of the ER steps
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J check you can actually operate them. On my current boat they were so stiff that I had a bit of pipe made up to give more leverage on them
 
baylabayla3288 said:
The second video has a links to a news article in the Mallorca Magazin with more info on the incident. The skipper explains that both engines had stopped after which they trew the anchor and brought the kids to safety by jetski!? Only when returning they noted that the boat wast taking water.
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Blimey. Didn't anyone bother to look in the engine bay to check why both engines had stopped before abandoning the boat?
 
Don't Ferretti exhausts exhausts exit under the waterline? A failed exhaust clamp could cause this. Also a massive failure of a deep sea seal could let in enough water. I still can't understand why so many Italian manufacturers still fit deep sea seals when there are much better systems available.
 
Thx Mike -great explanation and even better engineering .
So to work as intended one needs a decent alarm system to give personal time to get down and effect the change over , as suggested by some one above .
Assuming the personnel know what to do ?
Seems like it was too late -engines stopped - probably due to excess flooding .
Engines can be on a F 460 ---- VP 480,s 7 L - looks like plenty of room above and below .

I,am thinking seacock failure -age fatigue etc or larger water pipe .

Just as an aside -I had my main engine seacocks and all the black water pipes replaced when it was out last early May ( 2003 modal ) and I just thought it was about time .Don,t know if there is a time line maintenance regime on this sort of thing ?
 
Portofino said:
Engines can be on a F 460 ---- VP 480,s 7 L - looks like plenty of room above and below .
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Most 460s had D9 575hp, one of the few Ferretti's with Volvo to say the truth. A couple if not only one was made with Tamd 75 (480hp) think it was only a couple of the early hulls 2004.

460 is Ferretti best sold model at 120 units delivered in a four year production run, just a bit more then the 53/530 which also sold over a 100 in a nine year production run.
 
Portofino said:
Thx Mike -great explanation and even better engineering .
So to work as intended one needs a decent alarm system to give personal time to get down and effect the change over , as suggested by some one above .
Assuming the personnel know what to do ?
Seems like it was too late -engines stopped - probably due to excess flooding .
Engines can be on a F 460 ---- VP 480,s 7 L - looks like plenty of room above and below .

I,am thinking seacock failure -age fatigue etc or larger water pipe .

Just as an aside -I had my main engine seacocks and all the black water pipes replaced when it was out last early May ( 2003 modal ) and I just thought it was about time .Don,t know if there is a time line maintenance regime on this sort of thing ?
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I had a ruptured raw water pipe on my Phantom 38 with TAMD 63s. At the same time the er bilage pump was jammed by debris, luckily the alarm worked. What followed was a quick engine shut down and closing of the seacock. We got rid of the excess water by using the manually operated emergency pump.
 
aquatom said:
Don't Ferretti exhausts exhausts exit under the waterline? A failed exhaust clamp could cause this. Also a massive failure of a deep sea seal could let in enough water. I still can't understand why so many Italian manufacturers still fit deep sea seals when there are much better systems available.
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Yup Ferretti exhausts do exit below the waterline but the final part of the exhaust before it exits the hull is all in moulded grp so the first clamp in the system is well above the waterline. But yes Deep Sea Seals are a pile of shit. I had a major leak from one of them on my last Ferretti and it was bloody scary. When I examined it afterwards, I was really shocked by how poor a design it was; in fact I replaced both seals with Tides Marine seals at the first opportunity. Maybe Ferretti saw the light on this because on my latest Ferretti, the shaft seals are PSS which is a far superior design to Deep Sea Seals IMHO
 
A shame they didn't notice the ingress of water before they went ashore to get 'mechanical' help. Had they called the rescue services immediately they would have put pumps on board and probably saved the vessel from sinking with time to spare. It's amazing what a powerful six inch pump can cope with. Presume she will be recovered within a few days.
 
I was taught that in a big leak situation to hacksaw the raw water pipe by the strainer and stick it in the bottom of the boat with the engine running to suck out the bulk of the water. Would that work in reality?
 
kashurst said:
I was taught that in a big leak situation to hacksaw the raw water pipe by the strainer and stick it in the bottom of the boat with the engine running to suck out the bulk of the water. Would that work in reality?
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Read somewhere that a big marine diesel will need / use it's wieght in water every three minutes to keep cool .
So if a L of fresh weighs Kg , sea less dense just by a bit so for the sake of man maths @ operating rpm -that shows how many L it's needs to keep cool .
Guess you could play around with the rpm,s -balance flood and rpm ---- and get under way to safety ?

But in above case sounds like engines flooded before they could rig anything up ?
 
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