It takes 6 days for a container ship to transit from Jacksonville to San Juan, with a number of ships making regular runs. Crooked Island is about 3/4 of the way there, give or take, so they probably set sail Saturday or Sunday. The distress call came at 07:30 on Thursday morning, with the ship reporting that it was about 35 miles off Crooked Island.
The storm was upgraded to Hurricane status at 08:00 Wednesday morning, and had not been predicted to impact the Bahamas at all until Tuesday afternoon when the projected track became more SW. It developed from a tropical storm to a class 4 hurricane in less than 2 days. Hindsight is 20 20, but based on the weather status Saturday, or even Sunday, their choice at the time does not sound all that unreasonable to me. Sunday morning there was a tropical depression forming near Bermuda, but it was not expected to strengthen much in the next 48 hours. These guys were headed south east, and may have already left port by the time the tropical depression was reported, but in any case they must have figured on being to far south to matter if it did develop in to something big. They were wrong. By the time the weather forecast had the storm big and coming their way, they had nowhere else to go. The storm closed in behind them as they headed south, east of Bahamas Bank. The link is to a storm time table, published this morning in the Nassau Guardian. It makes interesting reading. Did not sound that dangerous to start with, and did not follow the usual path. The Islands of the Bahamas, and the Bahamas government, were largely caught off guard too. Storm timetable: http://www.thenassauguardian.com/news/59635 Steve Thomas ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Coleman via CnC-List To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Cc: Bill Coleman Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 17:49 Subject: Stus-List Darwins List Who in their right mind would take a Container Ship, of all things, into a known, sitting Cat 4 Hurricane? Container ship hit by Hurricane Joaquin lost, Coast Guard searching http://weatherplus.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2015/10/02/container-ship-hit-by-hurricane-joaquin-lost-coast-guard-searching/ Bill Coleman C&C 39 Erie, PA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Email address: CnC-List@cnc-list.com To change your list preferences, including unsubscribing -- go to the bottom of page at: http://cnc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/cnc-list_cnc-list.com
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