Oooooooooooops

I spent much of my working life working with Naval Architects on the design of yachts of this size and bigger and was often surprised that their designs met stability requirements at all. My own responsibility was related to structural integrity and not stability and performance but I was often tasked to meet requirements regarding weight and centre of mass relative to designs that were sometimes impossible to achieve. Very often designs are based on a previous class of vessel of known spec and "evolve". Very often deck levels are added and interior layout can change which all add to top hamper. NA's seeking higher cruising speeds will not wish to increase beam so yachts become less stable than their earlier sister ships. Add to this the fact that while main engines are probably in place at launch, lots of other stuff is added afterward so that vessels are launched in a light and sometimes unstable condition until this equipment is added. This looks like a case where they have just gone too far adding top hamper on a narrow unballasted hull which is dangerously unstable at launch. I would like to see the calculations of the angle of vanishing stability on this one. It even looks wrong!
 
Something went wrong with one or both of those launching dollies. The bow one looked like it was well overloaded in other pics.

Once it started to tilt it was probably the right decision to keep going as fast as possible to get it in the water.

However just as it goes over it does look like it is afloat and in that case I think it should have recovered upright if ballasted correctly.
 
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