Cont: The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VI

[Here_to_learn]

[...]As can be seen, in the Frihamnen route, the wreck is 8 nm and 7nm either side of the midway point.

In the Söderarm route it is 10 nm and 11 nm either side of midpoint.

[...]
*Would a would-be saboteur have factored in the Frihamnen route, given it would have reached Sweden already at Söderarm?

As normal, you cannot keep any facts straight.

Frihamnen is the ferry terminal that they were aiming for. There is no "Frihamnen" route - there is a Sandhamn route or a Söderarm route to reach Frihamnen.

You cannot calculate distances just by Lat/Long when you get to the archipelago. You have to lay out the route in a chart and calculate every leg.

But at the end, you still end up with the conclusion I showed earlier - the wreck site is not at a place that can be called a mid-point.

 

[Andy_Ross]

If some military strategist had worked out a precise location to sit at, waiting for a ship to appear at exactly midnight, he would have been disappointed.
. It's not a train on a track.

 

[lobosrul5]

The generosity extends only so far as the errant quickly corrects and says, "Whoops, I meant ___." Since Vixen habitually makes elementary errors, she doesn't get the defense, "C'mon, you all know what I meant." Many times she is literally so wrong that we don't know what she means. So it looks like it's another example of Vixen being so amazingly and obliviously wrong and deciding to pretend nothing happened.

I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

*yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight

 

[GlennB]

I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

*yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight

I'd guess that either she was thinking of the bolt assembly or did indeed mean tonnes and not kgs. Leaning heavily towards the latter.

 

[JayUtah]

I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

It would be easier to be charitable if she'd got the number right. The bow visor weighs neither 15 kilograms nor 15 tonnes.

*yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight

We live in a world where kilograms-force (kgf) is a non-ironic unit. You're fine.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

*yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight

That would actually explain a lot, but surely it would be impossible to maintain such a fundamental mistake so long?

 

[Vixen]

Remind us how far back along its own course the Estonia is believed to have drifted after losing power and before it eventually sank. How does knowing the wreck's location to any arbitrary precision support your conspiracy theory?



Lots of people describe various noises and events which they noticed around 1 o'clock. You're assuming a precise time because you want to claim a deliberate act of sabotage and then support your claim it was sabotage with the non-fact it happened at a precise time. This is perfectly circular reasoning.

As you know, the MV Estonia lost the bow visor at circa 01:02 and was possibly turning slightly Southwestwards. Between then and 01:54, when it came to rest on the seabed, it was listing heavily to starboard and it seems the crew were trying to recify this by turning portside. In any case, it turned back on itself and even crossed a point it had already passed, to lie with its bow minus bow visor facing South East. The bow visor was found about 1,000m away and the vessel backtracked about a mile, or 1,609m.

final route by Username Vixen, on Flickr

It doesn't really change the location of the midway point as that was a range between 15nm to 21nm, so doesn't fall outwith that to any significant degree. There are 1.151 miles to a nautical mile.

 

[Vixen]

Wait, so are you saying that military precision means you can ignore some details, like whether it really is the middle of the voyage?

You've always had an issue with triple-listing the coincidences, to be sure. You pretend that there are three distinct coincidences that suggest precision:

1. The ship went down at midnight
2. The ship went down in the temporal midpoint of its journey.
3. The ship went down halfway along its journey (in terms of distance traveled).

But, of course, no one could possibly have planned for these three distinct requirements. If I decide midnight is important, then it's pure luck whether that's the midpoint of the journey (time or distance). If I decide the temporal midpoint matters, then it's pure luck whether that's midnight (though it MIGHT give a decent probability of being the distance midpoint). And similarly with distance.

As soon as your saboteurs decide that one of these criteria is desirable, then the time and place is fixed[1]. If, as it happens, midnight is also the temporal and distance midpoint of the journey, then by choosing one criterion, they satisfy all three.

So why do you count these as three relevant factoids?

NOTE: I'm not at all saying that any of the above claims are true. I'm merely pointing out that were all three true, two of them would be coincidental, not the result of extra planning or intention.

[1] It's fixed insofar as they haven't someone on board available to alter the schedule or path. Of course, the storm put some uncertainty into everything but when midnight occurs.

The temporal thing is not really correct because the vessel has to travel different speeds depending where it is on the journey. For example, it has a whole four and a half hours factored in to navigate the archipelago and is only allowed to do 14kn, IIRC. Yet it could start from Tallinn at full speed of 19kn.

The vessel was due to depart Tallinn at 19:00 and arrive at Söderam at 05:00, local time. It actually left at 19:15. In an eleven-hour journey, that meant the temporal midpoint was 00:30. Between 01:00 and 01:48 when it went off the radar and 01:54 when it hit the bottom, and Stockholm MRCC finally getting the Mayday at 01:58 after a communications blackout, it is hard to call all of this a coincidence.

 

[Agatha]

Please don't allow your frustrations to tip you across the line into incivility.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha

 

[Vixen]

As soon as a ship starts to maneuver in heavy weather, this whole plan would be stuffed.

As Capt. Makela said, it was a normal blustery September storm, wind speed 18 m/s. Around here it often goes up to 24 m/s and that is when a storm warning goes out.

 

[Vixen]

Yes, his observation is considered evidence.



No one concluded that, least of all Sillaste.



You seem to be able to paint only in large strokes and primary colors.

You want us to accept a witness inference as evidence. That's not how it's done. As to whether a witness observation is reliable, that's been the subject of lengthy discussion that you've demonstrated you're not qualified or competent to have. Witness observation is evidence, and all evidence is subject to a separate assessment of reliability.

It might be evidence but it can hardly be a conclusion the very same morning.

 

[Mojo]

You don't seem to understand that the JAIC never looked into any of this. Now you might think what the testimony of surviving eyewitnesses, other than the crew (and one of these turned out to be a criminal drug smuggler), is worthless.

Can you quote the eyewitness accounts of a collision, please?

 

[Vixen]

I've noticed a lot of conspiracy rhetoric relies on identifying these kinds of alleged coincidences, citing them as evidence of conspiratorial intent. But mostly it seems to be just another color of the connect-the-dots reasoning that conspiracy theories use, as opposed to parsimony and consilience in actual investigation. The more cleverly they can show you they've connected the dots, the more insightful they can pretend to be.

A good example of this is the alleged parallels between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. Quite a lot of that list is just pure non-factual bunk. Some of the rest is based on strained interpretations. And the legitimate coincidences that remain are meaningless. But the existence of the list of "coincidences" represents the fervor by which conspiracy theorists hunt for them and consider them somehow revealing.

It is a good job I don't believe in 'coincidence' or 'conspiracy theory'.

 

[Vixen]

If some military strategist had worked out a precise location to sit at, waiting for a ship to appear at exactly midnight, he would have been disappointed.
. It's not a train on a track.

Er, suppose he is ON the ship?

 

[Vixen]

I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

*yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight

With the casing it weighs 55 tonnes.

 

[Mojo]

It is a good job I don't believe in 'coincidence' or 'conspiracy theory'.

Begging the question.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

It is a good job I don't believe in 'coincidence' or 'conspiracy theory'.

Yet you push conspiracy theories regularly, the more outlandish the better.

Unless you want to finally admit that the ship wasn't hit by a submarine, and that nuclear waste cannot have melted the bow visor locks?

 

[Mojo]

With the casing it weighs 55 tonnes.

Can you describe this "casing" that was provided for the visor, say what it's purpose was, and explain why it weighed over 3,500 times as much as you claimed the visor itself weighed?

 

[GlennB]

With the casing it weighs 55 tonnes.

Then which part do you consider to be "the visor", an item or assembly that only weighs 15 kg?

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Like the old Cary Grant movie South by West West.

Vixen what approximate heading do you think the Estonia was on when it got into trouble? My recollection is approximately west northwest. Do you agree? And how would a wind blowing from the west southwest have 'helped it along'?

I mean, I know just a tiny bit about sailing and in that context one compass point can certainly be the difference between dead still and a significant amount of their speed potential.

Not sure how that works past steam and iron, though.