On 04/13, the Seacor Power, a 129ft Jack Up Boat/Lift Boat with 18 people on board capsized in severe weather, 07 miles south of Port Fourchon, LA. The vessel left port approximately 90 minutes before the strongest NWS weather warning. The Mayday call went out at 16:30, and by all accounts of those who heard it, it was terrifying. The vessels are not designed to transit in the conditions it found itself in.

Salvage Ops have now begun. https://www.katc.com/news/covering-louisiana/images-salvage-operation-begins-on-seacor-power

Inclement weather severely hampered rescue efforts the first few days.

*04/15 Update* Divers are finally expected to reach the strickened vessel today. Praying they find survivors.
*04/16 Update* A second Crew Member found deceased in the water outside the vessel. Still no word on what entry teams are finding. Crews planned on using access points to make entry today. From earlier accounts, on the night of the capsizing, three crew members were on the hull, outside of the vessel. One went missing and the two others retreated back inside. Details still remain scarce, even though NOLA.COM has quite the list of articles on the story.
*4/16 PM Update. Divers have located two more bodies inside the engine room. This brings known fatalities to 4.
*04/19 AM Update. Reports of a 5th body recovered from the Gulf.
*04/19 PM Update. The Coast Guard has announced that at sunset, the case will enter Suspended Status, Pending Further Development. The CG utilized about every resource it had, plus state assets, plus a ton of Good Samaritans. In all the offical search patters covered 9,200 Sq Miles, which is a little bit smaller then the state of New Hampshire.
*04/21 AM Update. Another crew member found deceased from inside the vessel.
*05/05 AM - Salvage Operations Begin. First task will be to lighter/Offload the up to 40,000 gallons of fuel oil on board.

Rescue assets involved in the search:

   The pre-commissioned Coast Guard Cutter Glen Harris crew
   Coast Guard Cutter Amberjack crew
   Coast Guard Cutter Moray crew
   Coast Guard Cutter Benjamin Dailey crew
   Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew
   Coast Guard Station Grand Isle 45-foot RB-M boatcrews
   Coast Guard Station New Orleans 45-foot RB-M boatcrews
   Coast Guard Air Station Corpus Christi HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplane crews
   Two Coast Guard Aviation Training Center MobileHC-144 Ocean Sentry airplanes crews
   Two Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater HC-130 Hercules airplane crews
   Two Coast Guard Aviation Training Center Mobile MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters
   Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries crews
   Port Fourchon Harbor Patrol
   Port Fourchon Sherriff’s Department
   Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office
   One commercial air medical service crew
   Donjon Marine commercial divers



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Fox8Live

A significant weather event, a rare "Wake Low" occurred, leading to hurricane like conditions, with wind speeds in excess of 80kts and created a 2 ft surge in nearby Grand Isle.

NWS Twitter Radar at the time.


I will say, BZ to the crew of the CGC Glenn Harris, which is still in pre-commissioning. She got underway and rescued two survivors before even being fully commissioned.

For those wondering what a Lift Boat is:

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Times Picayune

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Divers On Scene 04/15 - NOLA.COM Article

NOLA.COM Article

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That video is a bag of used assholes.

Right?  I don't know what the fuck he was doing with that camera.  


There was a brief glimpse or two of the jack boat upside down though.

Not great, but gave an idea of the on scene weather and pretty sure ole boy wasn't a professional videographer and was getting his ass handed to him.

Amazing camera work. Probably the best I have ever seen. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

I have this crazy fear of the open water and a need read about it all the time. Hope the best during a capsizing in the open water but man, the sea is so unforgiving...and also fucking huge

I'm about 30 minutes north in Cut Off and the weather has be pretty gnarly all day.

This isn't going to have a happy ending.

Never heard of a jack boat before.  What are they used for... besides jacking?

I never even knew those were a thing. Looks terribly unstable but I guess they must work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liftboat

Oil and Gas industry, shallow water stuff. They've always looked unstable, but this is the first time I've heard of one turning over.

My wife used to have to go on those to run a soil lab back before she quit the O&G racket. On more than one occasion the lift boat she was last on suffered a catastrophic failure or accident on the rotation after she got home. Always scared the shit out of me, being that you couldn't contact outside of email which was usually only "up" for a very small portion of the day. Fuck those boats and the cheap fucks that run them.

They're incredibly unseaworthy. I think anything over like a 3-4' wave and they have to jack up and wait out the surf.

Thanks!

I fish around them a lot when they work on the oil rigs in state waters.   How the hell they stay upright is something I always wondered about.

Updated OP and adding WDSU article

https://www.wdsu.com/article/coast-guard-responds-to-capsized-boat-near-grand-isle/36112873

Edited ~ medicmandan

Damn, that's too long out for the 13.

What appears to be the specific model.
https://seacormarine.com/vessel/265-class-seacor-power/

Micro burst or whatever. Winds greater than 75mph is the report I got early this morning. Coast guard now asking for any and all help. More than one boat when I first read it last night.

Well that's helpful...

Those things look like death on a stick.  Knowing the shallow gulf a bit, they are not getting those jacks on solid footing.   Must be some way they do it safely.

I worked on jack-up barges in the late 70's early 80's as a Doodlebugger.  Have seen one roll and sink before, that was at the entrance to Vermillion Bay, probably '79 or '80 and the skipper possibly ran a leg down or didn't bring it all the way up nd caught the pontoon on an oyster reef.  Peeled the hull open like a sardine can.  They were surprisingly stable even with those 75' tall legs probably due to their broad flat hull although they had a very shallow draft.

We would ride out weather by jacking above the swells but didn't necessarily jack out of the water just because the seas were running 3 footers, hell some channels out to the Gulf would see 6 to 8 foot swells at the mouth of the jetty when the wind/seas were running just right. A rough ride but doable.

Prayers out for the missing and their families

I'm surprised they were out in that weather.  I've worked deep water in the Gulf as well as jackups overseas but never would I have wanted to get on one of those boats.

Reports state that the vessel left Fourchon around noon and called mayday about 16:30. So they were underway when the storm hit, which hit with greater intensity then anyone expected.

It sounds like at some point they started taking on water and capsizised.

Wish they would have delayed departure.

I know you sad like me that the Peach Tree Bakery closed

That's a big boat 265ft, I wonder if they tried to jack up out the water and somthing went wonky.

@LArifleMAN

you saw this too I am sure? Brians Bartholemy's boat

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Did that fishing boat rip the pilings out of the ground?!?!

There are a couple recent ones according to the wiki:

Ram XVIII

On November 18, 2018, the Ram XVIII overturned at a location in the Gulf of Mexico about 15 miles south-southeast of Grand Isle, LA. Five crew members and 10 offshore workers abandoned ship and were rescued. Three personnel suffered minor injuries, and the accident released an estimated 1000 gallons of hydraulic oil into the Gulf waters. The boat was declared a total loss at an estimated cost of $1.14 million.

The Ram XVIII was a 215 foot liftboat, built in 2015 and owned by Aries Marine Corporation in Lafayette, Louisiana. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident was an industry failure of not providing liftboat operators with enough information about composition of the seafloor. The port leg of the liftboat became unstable, leading to collapse, but it remains unclear whether the sea floor washed away, the leg settled quickly in a "punch-through," or the edge of the nearest can hole collapsed. Can holes are the footprints of previous boat or drilling rig placement.[9]
Seacor Power

On April 13th, 2021, Coast Guard responded to 4:30 p.m. notifications of a distressed 129-foot commercial lift vessel 8 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, USA. They arrived at the scene of the capsized vessel and along with good Samaritan vessels, began rescue operations. [10]

sure did...that boat has an under appreciated deck hand making tie offs

Well looking at the pictures the legs are still up.  Despite our tech, sometimes bad things happen at sea.

Looks like 265 is the class (depth?), it’s a 129’ boat. Still big.

Kevin Gilton has no idea how a fucking camera works. I'm not even sure he knew he WAS recording.

my bad I am retarded


here she is right side up




https://seacormarine.com/vessel/265-class-seacor-power/

They do look like they would be easy to tip over in rough seas.

It took me a bit to find out what it was because I'd never heard of such a thing before this thread.  It sure looks top heavy.

Smashed assholes?  To celebrate GLADD?

As an engineer, I'm trying to figure out how you could made that more top-heavy. Maybe add several tons of lead weights at the top of the jack poles.

Seriously, that's a terrible design and incredibly dangerous.

I’ve worked off of lots of lift boats and yes they suck as boats. We used them for their cranes and living quarters when doing construction or well work on smaller unmanned production platforms on the shallow shelf in the GOM.

it's really only dangerous if you are not jacked up, or jacked up then the sea floor shifts, or if somthing hits your, or if you catch fire.

They are ideal for destroying all the artificial reefs that the platforms made and are taken out due to the fucked up idle iron policy Obama came up with that asshole

Wasn't until I started hanging out with sailors that I realized how common fatalities at sea were still. Happens way more than I imagined.

Also learned a few things about VD and the human bodys incredible abilities to process ethanol, but that's a different thread.

It blew up super quick.  An anchored ship reported 80kt sustained for 30+ minutes with gusts to 117

I’m guessing they can add a shit ton of ballast into the hull

Ch16 was a nightmare last night.  Lots of Coast Guard and good sams on site doing as much as they can.  Don't expect a positive outcome.