SY Oriental Siren - Sad News

[maria munn]

I can't believe that this has happened again .... but thank goodness that everyone is safe and that the Royal Malaysian Air Force could help.

Surely, something has to be learnt from this? 3 boats from the same company ....

I still can't forget being so scared whilst leading a trip last January in Raja Ampat during a bad storm. We were only 10 minutes from safety at Kri Island and Mioskon, but for some reason the decision was made to sail to Batanta some 4 hours away through the night with no signal. 4 hours was a long time, and I am still waiting for an answer from that ....

I can't imagine what these guests were feeling .... but thank the Lord that everyone is safe and on their way home .... That is the important thing ...

 

[gee13]

This was due to bad weather from what I read. Apart from that its a testament to how good the emergency management is at the Siren Fleet as no one was hurt and everyone was safely transferred. Its rather unfortunate, and has happened to other boats from other companies of course. A long crossing to the Spratlys is always frought with danger.

 

[The Wolf]

This was due to bad weather from what I read. Apart from that its a testament to how good the emergency management is at the Siren Fleet as no one was hurt and everyone was safely transferred. Its rather unfortunate, and has happened to other boats from other companies of course. A long crossing to the Spratlys is always frought with danger.

1. Any crossing across any ocean during especially bad weather is silly especially in most liveaboards.
2. It isn't all that long a trip from Labuan to the Spartlys. It just depends on what kind of boat or ship you choose to use for the trip.
3. Nobody seems to be bringing up the issue of why they even bothered going out to sea when it was very obvious the weather conditions were poor and warnings were issued by the authorities. As I stated earlier, they were VERY VERY lucky to be as close as they were to Layang Layang. Anyone out here on the West Coast of Borneo would tell you it was a stupid idea to head out to see at this point in time as the gale force winds and bad weather has been really bad the past 10 days and still is even today.

This should be a lesson in respecting the South China Sea and not so much on the management and evacuation of the passengers and staff. They were either going to get rescued or not and did. But nobody seems to be questioning the rational of the captain in proceeding on when he should have turned back once the weather turned...before they started taking on water.

---------- Post added ----------

Dear Scubaboarders.

The boat's owner and Mark of Worldwide Dive and Sail have now arrived in Labuan but are unable to reach Layang Layang as such we do not have a further report at this time about the status of the yacht. Further updates will be forthcoming, in the meantime our team in Thailand is contact guests who were due to travel on the yacht in the coming weeks.

,
Best wishes from the Siren Fleet team

The reason the owners can't reach Layang-Layang now is because nobody is silly enough to be going out to sea with the weather conditions being what they are in the first place. And if you wanted to get to Layang-Layang, you hop on a flight from Kinabalu and not Labuan anyways, that is, if they are flying this week.

 

[gee13]

1. Any crossing across any ocean during especially bad weather is silly especially in most liveaboards.
2. It isn't all that long a trip from Labuan to the Spartlys. It just depends on what kind of boat or ship you choose to use for the trip.
3. Nobody seems to be bringing up the issue of why they even bothered going out to sea when it was very obvious the weather conditions were poor and warnings were issued by the authorities. As I stated earlier, they were VERY VERY lucky to be as close as they were to Layang Layang. Anyone out here on the West Coast of Borneo would tell you it was a stupid idea to head out to see at this point in time as the gale force winds and bad weather has been really bad the past 10 days and still is even today.

Maybe its relative point but I consider 300km crossing to be not a short one...its a good long overnight trip in a boat like the Oriental Siren with a max speed of only 10 knots... Perhaps to some 500km is still short...for an army speedboat perhaps... its just semantics I guess.

 

[The Wolf]

Maybe its relative point but I consider 300km crossing to be not a short one...its a good long overnight trip in a boat like the Oriental Siren with a max speed of only 10 knots... Perhaps to some 500km is still short...for an army speedboat perhaps... its just semantics I guess.

Which brings us back to my point..why go out and carry on going with such a terrible storm and gale force winds? That's the point I was trying to make....

 

[gee13]

Yes thats a fair point, but you also said the crossing is not a long one (pt 2)

Anyway yes it would be curious to find out why the decision was made in the event of the bad weather forecast.. I hear this time of year is the better time seasonwise for layang2..was this a fairly 'untypical' occurence

 

[Zippsy]

But the weather was already bad, but made worse by some freakish weather the past 10 days or so...crazy winds and extremely dangerous conditions to be going out to sea at this period in time. There was hot weather whilst they were docked in Labuan for a couple of days but the day they decided to head out was really just a bad bad time to be going out to sea.

Are you saying that the weather was bad in Labuan for 10 days before the 6 June departure?? I can not speak to Labuan but the seas between Kota Kinabalu (only 70 miles / 115km up the coast) and Layang Layang as well as around the south Spratlys was ideal until at least 1 June. The White Manta did the crossing back to KK then and the seas were very calm.

 

[The Wolf]

Yes thats a fair point, but you also said the crossing is not a long one (pt 2)

Anyway yes it would be curious to find out why the decision was made in the event of the bad weather forecast.. I hear this time of year is the better time seasonwise for layang2..was this a fairly 'untypical' occurence

Honestly, the weather is so screwed up these day's out here (i have noticed the wet/dry seasons are not consistent anymore since 2004), it's hard to tell when the good seasons are anymore.

I don't think we have had an actual dry season/dry spell for anything longer than 2-3 weeks at the most this year....but yes, it was freakish weather last week though it had been hot and dry in Labuan though it was pissing with rain and strong winds in sabah and sarawak..winds were essentially blowing much of the storms away from the island the week the liveaboard docked in Labuan..things did change though I am not sure where the weather front came from that they got caught in and which also hit Labuan hard.

The winds were gale force type..

---------- Post added ----------

Are you saying that the weather was bad in Labuan for 10 days before the 6 June departure?? I can not speak to Labuan but the seas between Kota Kinabalu (only 70 miles / 115km up the coast) and Layang Layang as well as around the south Spratlys was ideal until at least 1 June. The White Manta did the crossing back to KK then and the seas were very calm.

The weather in Sabah was god awful after the harvest festival. Labuan didn't get hit with any of the storms sabah/sarawak until after tuesday, 5th June...big storm hit Labuan/Sabah on the night of the 6th along with that gale force wind conditions I talked about.

 

[Searcaigh]

One of my friends who lives in Brazil has two US friends who were on this trip and has sent me an e-mail with a long letter written by one of them that has been sent to "Undercurrent"

I am not going to post this letter because I don't own it, but after reading it, it is obvious they should not have sailed at all. The previous days check dives were a series of disasters with poor crew abilities to put the divers on a wreck from the smaller tenders.

During the abandon ship procedures the emergency rafts inflated upside down and it took some time to right them.

Both rafts were separated and one reached Layang Layang before the other with some of the survivors pleading for the navy, who were more interested in seeing their passports, to go and find the other boat. By the time the navy started to sail out, the second lot of survivors arrived, nobody was rescued by the navy despite what the press say.

Personally I have never done liveaboard trips for more than 4 days in Thailand and here in UAE up to Musandam, although I previously worked on a DSV back in the 80s spending a month at a time at sea and experienced one major storm in the Irish Sea when a fishing boat sank and we were involved in the SAR to recover survivors. The DSV I worked on though was large vessel but it was still a scary experience.

I think that the liveaboard sector of industry is going suffer because of this recent disaster, thank God everyone survived, but it could have been very different.

 

[jklassy]

Having been on one of the Siren boats out of Komodo, I know how poorly they handle a crisis and how they allow inexperienced divers to dive in conditions that not even experienced divers should be in. I am absolutely not at all surprised that they've sunk two boats in the last six months. All divers should ask themselves how 'tragedy' strikes one company twice in such a short period of time, but perhaps never to other companies!

---------- Post added ----------

WWDS is by far the most disorganized company I have ever had the misfortune of diving with. Anyone who thinks this is anything but a preventable tragedy is gravely mistaken. It is only a matter of time before their "bad luck" kills someone.