That doesn't apply to me as I opened this thread in Current Affairs as the Arikas expedition happened to be a news item and in addition, he set sail in July this year, and Kurm in September.
Do try to differentiate between news, current affairs and anti-vaxxers.
Oh, I'm perfectly capable of making that differentiation. Which is why I know that you are espousing conspiracy theories, and why I believe this thread now resides in the correct section of the forum.
The sad fallback position of conspiracy theories the world over. The CTers believe that they - and only they - are the true illuminati who've cracked the code and figured out what really went down. Everyone else is just lapping up the bogus line that the authorities want them to lap up.
And where the CT is to do with any kind of human disaster, this can often have the additional effect of producing a form of evangelical zeal among those pushing the CT: "Look guys, we're doing you a service, and we're doing an even bigger service to the victims of the disaster! The victims, and the wider public, deserve to know the truth!"
Great. What is their travel time? Or do you somehow think they could be "johny on the spot" instantaneously? Ships somehow operate as speedboats? You die in five minutes in such waters. I wait to hear how it is that you think that any Finnish coast guard wessel could get there faster, Mr. Chekov.
The issue here was that if the EPIRBs were removed or tampered with, then an attempt should have been made to bring that person to justice, or if a technical fault to spell out what that fault was. Fact is, the Estonia was rocked by an event at circa 01:00 yet Radio Helsinki could not get out a Mayday until 01:54 and Sweden operations not successfully contacted until 0202.
Not one Russian vessel came to the rescue, yet had there been a COPSAS-SASART response they could have been quite effective. If a man is drowning every second makes a difference.
At 0129 hrs the ESTONIA's position became known, and after receiving the distress message vessels in the vicinity turned towards the scene of the accident.The MARIELLA was by that time about nine nautical miles away from the ESTONIA. The Silja Europa, which had direct radio contact with the ESTONIA during the distress traffic, assumed control of the distress radio traffic and at 0205 hrs MRCC Turku designated her master as the On-Scene Commander (OSC).
This is all you need to know. The Mariella was nine miles away, and was the CLOSEST VESSEL. Both the Mariella and the Silla Europa had Estonia on their radars until she went under at 01:50.
The buoys were not a factor in this story. Sure, they might have helped a little, but not in any meaningful way.
All that matters was the actions of the captain and crew that night. Period.
There is an excellently presented report by Stockholm University Geology Department, which was presented at the press conference 16.11.2021.
It is well worth a read, with plenty of graphics. It is 98 pages, so I have highlighted some key points for those who do not have the time or inclination to peruse it.
About the bedrock:
And their conclusions:
Credit: Department of Geological Sciences Stockholms universitet SE-106 91 Stockholm www.geo.su.se
EL21-Estonia Report of the MS Estonia shipwreck site survey with RV Electra Martin Jakobsson, Christian Stranne, Rickard Fornander, Matt O’Regan, Anton Wagner and the EL21-Estonia Shipboard Party
This report echoes most of what I wrote early on in the last thread when I looked that the Bathymetry of the area. The fractures in the hull are CLEARY from impact with the granite outcrops. The report says Estonia lies at a downward angle with her midsection on bedrock, and her bow and stern in soft sediment, and the angle means that part of the ship is exposed to corrosive conditions while the other half is protected by depth.
In short: Estonia hit the bottom on her starboard side, striking the granite outcropping causing the gashes in her side, and over the years the uneven support of the hull has caused the wreck to bend. The expedition recorded strong currents at the wreck site, and Estonia rests at the top of a box canyon which leads into a deeper canyon which means it is subject to dramatic current shifts and upwelling year-round.
Spoiler Alert: That wreck will eventually roll down into the box canyon and put itself out of reach of salvage teams within thirty years [this is my personal observation]
While interesting as far as marine archeology goes, this whole thing has been a farce.
Not one Russian vessel came to the rescue, yet had there been a COPSAS-SASART response they could have been quite effective. If a man is drowning every second makes a difference.
That is not how EPIRBs and the sat system works, as has been explained to you before.
Any emergency message from an EPIRP is forwarded to the MRCC that is responsible for that area. The MRCC then decides on the response.
There is no automatic broadcast to any ships, be it Russian or not. So the Estonia EPIRBS broadcasting would not have changed anything in this regard.
There were many ships with rescue capabilities for stormy waters that were not sent to the place, due to the distance needed to be traveled, and the time it would take for them to reach relevant area. For example the Swedish Sea Rescue Society had great rescue ships, but way to slow. In fact a new class of rescue boats was created as a response to the Estonia disaster, the Rausing-class.
There is an excellently presented report by Stockholm University Geology Department, which was presented at the press conference 16.11.2021.
It is well worth a read, with plenty of graphics. It is 98 pages, so I have highlighted some key points for those who do not have the time or inclination to peruse it.
I'm happy to see that you now have gotten around to the report, that I linked to and quoted from directly during and after the press conference. Next time do read the report and watch the press conference before you start commenting on the contents.
The Russian 'research' ship the Leonid Byshkoff was there. We know because Turku MRCC had to warn them as they were headed straight to the rocks at Utö.
The youtube clips begins with the Mayday messages and Thörnroos describes jumping out of bed and getting dressed quickly. He asks deputy where Estonia was and he is directed towards abeam of Mariella, with Europa just ahead. So presumably he had some signals then to know where Estonia was, unless it was in some kind of chart, as these three passenger ferries often arrived in Stockholm together, one after the other.
Then the clip fades from their being nine kilometres away on progressing towards her and now they are about four to five km away and that is when he becomes visibly surprised he cannot see Estonia on the radar, but he could see Europa and Isabelle.
How can you watch the clip again, and still get it wrong? It's not 9 km. It's 9 miles (meaning Nautical Miles). That is how distances are given on a ship.
Of course you verify coordinates. A complete MAYDAY message should contain the position of the ship in peril. The Estonia message did not. On the radar plot you have an echo, but there was no automatic identification of the target at the time. (Thanks to AIS, today we have automatic target identification). So even though the personell on the bridge had an assumption on the identification of the echoes, they did the try to verify coordinates.
Also, from the radar you don't get automatic coordinates of a target, you get bearing and distance from your own position. Then you need to plot this to get Lat/Long.
Yes, just because the ships in the vicinity had Estonia on their radar screens, it does not mean that MRCC had it. Radar efficiency decreases with distance, especially in bad weather and Radio Helsinki is not MRCC, Helsinki Radio is MRSC. Not also that it is "Helsinki Radio". "Radio Helsinki" is a FM broadcast radio station.
Of course he wouldn't use the term 'blackout' (he is a Swedish-speaking Finn who lives in the Ålands); that was my shorthand to sum up his problems making contact with Estonia and MRCC Turku on that night.
1. VHF ch16 in the area of the disaster worked.
2. VHF from M/S Estonia did not directly reach MRCC, possibly due to staff on Estonia using handheld VHF transmitters with low power. They wouldn't be expected to reach far, due to their 5W power and small antennas.
3. MF from ship to shore was not responded to, for an unclear reason.
4. Cell phone NMT worked from ship to shore.
Let's now revisit your post that initiated this discussion:
There was definitely a mysterious communications blackout surrounding the Estonia. If you look at this interview in in 2008 with Captain Jan-Tore Thörnroos, then Captain of the MS Mariella - which was just nine kilometres away so there should not have been a problem with Channel 16, but there was - he also highlights problems with the radar. Mariella had just had a new system fitted, running parallel with the old yet Thörnroos could not get an image (cf MRCC Turku who had the sonar image of Mariella, Europa and Isabelle, but could not capture Estonia, except later very momentarily, an image almost off screen where she was later found to have been located).
1. Thörnroos say nothing about "a mysterious communications blackout". That is your interpretation, and as can bee seen above incorrect.
2. Thörnroos does not highlight any problems with the radar. It's the other way around - the radar worked fine, but he did not initially think that the M/S Estonia had sunk, so he started looking for radar trouble.
3. And again, MRCC does not use SONAR. However, on their RADAR they could see ESTONA when the changed the range.
Old posts are still visible, we can see how you were wrong then, and that what you claim is not supported by Captain Thörnroos.
Effective? How soon they forget. We have done this already.
Do you not remember any of the previous times when we discussed how long it could take for COPAS-SARSAT to triangulate the position of an EPIRB? Was it seconds? No. It could take a couple of hours. By that time, rescue ships were already on the scene thanks to the mayday calls.
Any potential rescuer who was still waiting for a 406MHz beacon to be located was not going to be any help, even if the beacons had been activated, because all the information they could have provided was already known before the ship sank and they floated free.
1) Koivisto is presented as expert in the field of EPIRBs, and to have been appointed to advise the JAIC, and the JAIC reporting that the EPIRBs did not operate because they were not activated and that they were in full working order.
2) Vixen has a newspaper report of Koivisto at a press conference saying the EPIRBs were not switched on as they should have been, and somewhere in the chain of Chinese whispers from Koivisto to the journalist to the translator to Vixen to us this becomes interpreted as some form of transport lock switch which disables the EPIRB and needs to be activated before the ship sails.
But where is this mystery switch? The report does not describe it. The manufacturer's 2006 service manual does not describe it. There's no good reason I can think of for its existence and very good reason not to have it in the design at all.
It would be like fitting an airbag disable switch in a car. They do let you turn off the one for the passenger seat, but for a specific safety reason of carrying a rear-facing baby seat, and it's only that one airbag which can be disabled, and it needs the key to do it, and it warns you you've done it so you don't forget. It's a big deal. Vixen's phantom switch doesn't even merit a comment in any documentation. It's make-believe. It's not real.
You originally said that they "claimed an outcome" and when it's pointed out to you that anyone with basic reading skills can see that they're specifically adding qualifiers like "likely" and "not a firm conclusion".
So when that's pointed out to you you simply shrug and say that those qualifiers are just an "after-thought".
How do you read the minds of whoever wrote that and know why they used the language they did? "Context is all"
It's like earlier in this thread when I asked how what made you think the crew had on their persons their mobile phones throughout the ordeal, from abandoning ship, to getting onto lifeboats, to being rescued, to being taken to hospital, etc. and your answer was that it was "common knowledge".
Seriously, can't you do better than that? How do you know that stating in plain English that they are not offering a "firm conclusion" actually is stating a firm conclusion and that the words saying otherwise are just an "after-thought"? This is pathetic.
Context is all as can be evidenced in some posters here believing that the JAIC report is vindicated by the preliminary work.
Even though Backstrand said (the obvious) that the hard rock bed could have caused some of the damage to the hull but that it was not a conclusion a lot of people seem to think that was the same thing as a conclusion.
As of the time of the accident, from logs, the Leonid Bykoff was near Hanko as noted by the coast guard station - the Coast Guard being 18nm East of Hanko. The coast guard logs show Leonid Bykoff was at position 59 degrees 46' P [longitude] 23 degrees 45' l [latitude], heading 265 degrees (from Vyberg/Viipuri to Pori, which is just to the northwest of Turku and Rauma). The Estonia wreck is at 59°22′0″N 21°41′0″E, about 40km south of Utö, or 21.6 nautical miles. It was quite near the scene, less than 65 nm as of 0122.
»Time 0122 Phoned to operations centre [MVAK] regarding an unidentified target in position 59 degrees 46' P [longitude] 23 degrees 45' l [latitude], heading 265 degrees.«
»Time 0132 Enquired the position of Valpas [patrol boat?], it was east of Porkkala.«
»Time 0135 Tried several times to get contact via VHF-16 without result. The heading of the target still straight to Segelskär. AP [abbreviation of aluepäällikkö = district chief] is informed about the situation.«
»Time 0205 I tried to get in radio contact via VHF-1 without result. The reserves have been awakened.«
»Time 0225 RV-124 left the quay. As master Illman and as crew Englund and Lehtinen.«
»Time 0256 The target (cargo) turned in position 59 degrees 45'4 P, 23 degrees 31',31 to the south.«
»Time 0257 Achieved radio contact via VHF-16 with the vessel "Leonid Bykov" from St. Petersburg, on voyage from Vyborg to Pori. The name of the master Juri Chikov. According to the master the explanation for the odd heading was that the helm man did not know the position and did not understand English.«
»Time 0310 Commanded RV-124 to return.«
»Time 0344 "Leonid Bykov" left the territorial waters in position 59 degrees 41',8 P 23 degrees 29',5 l.«
One thing of note: whilst the Russians denied there had been any Russian vessels within the region at the time, Sweden has never issued a denial that any of its submarines were in the area.
One thing of note: whilst the Russians denied there had been any Russian vessels within the region at the time, Sweden has never issued a denial that any of its submarines were in the area.
Just as, for example, it's not of note that the US has never issued a denial that any of its classified focussed-ultrasonic-beam attack vessels were in the area that night.
As of the time of the accident, from logs, the Leonid Bykoff was near Hanko as noted by the coast guard station - the Coast Guard being 18nm East of Hanko. The coast guard logs show Leonid Bykoff was at position 59 degrees 46' P [longitude] 23 degrees 45' l [latitude], heading 265 degrees (from Vyberg/Viipuri to Pori, which is just to the northwest of Turku and Rauma). The Estonia wreck is at 59°22′0″N 21°41′0″E, about 40km south of Utö, or 21.6 nautical miles. It was quite near the scene, less than 65 nm as of 0122.
One thing of note: whilst the Russians denied there had been any Russian vessels within the region at the time, Sweden has never issued a denial that any of its submarines were in the area.
As of the time of the accident, from logs, the Leonid Bykoff was near Hanko as noted by the coast guard station - the Coast Guard being 18nm East of Hanko. The coast guard logs show Leonid Bykoff was at position 59 degrees 46' P [longitude] 23 degrees 45' l [latitude], heading 265 degrees (from Vyberg/Viipuri to Pori, which is just to the northwest of Turku and Rauma). The Estonia wreck is at 59°22′0″N 21°41′0″E, about 40km south of Utö, or 21.6 nautical miles. It was quite near the scene, less than 65 nm as of 0122.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
