15 survivors and 7 still missing so far. The billionaire owner of the big-ass boat is one of the missing.
Lots of info on the yacht:
The link just spins.
Found it on CNN.
The video at CNN was disappointing. It was just the aftermath. Is there any video of the actual tornado?
I read the link. Altho’ badly written and hard to parse. It did have some interesting tales of survivors.
Why in heck did a woman have a 1yo on a luxury yacht?
Bad decision, right there.
CNN says that it hit around 5 am, so it was probably dark. And stormy.
I’m actually surprised that a tornado described as a waterspout could take out a yacht. Having lived in Florida, my impression of waterspouts is that they tend to be pretty small and do little damage.
Not really, I don’t see any inherent danger in having small kids or babies on board a yacht. These kinds of accidents rarely happen.
Too soon.
Once is too many in that lady’s life.
Probably wasn’t expecting to be hit by a freak tornado.
A 184-foot yacht is basically a ship. It’s not like taking a baby aboard a rowboat.
I was saddened to see that it was a beautiful sailboat as I’m quite fond of sailboats, but reading further, it also had much larger twin diesel engines than one would expect on a sailboat. In fact the size of the engines would be appropriate for a motor yacht of that tonnage, and the 57,000 litre capacity of the fuel tanks suggest that it was probably mostly used as a motor yacht.
Kinda don’t know too much about these things.
I assume a vacation on a luxury yacht would be a nice adult Party boat.
It’s not like a Disney cruise.
Kids just seem outta place.
To me.
Luckily the Mother and child survived.
I would never had put myself or child in that place.
To each their own, I suppose.
The article mentions that the yacht owner was co-founder of Autonomy Corporation. That company was purchased by Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for about $12 billion but within a year, HP wrote down most of that. HP claimed the company was overvalued; the company’s former leadership claimed that HP mismanaged it or that HP knowingly overpaid.
Nice to know that the company’s former CEO is still rich despite the billions lost.
They usually are but, once in a while – thing is “waterspout” also covers any tornado which touches down on land then moves offshore and is still quite dangerous. This appears to have been the latter.
Not all rich people buy yachts for partying and debauchery.
Some of them buy yachts to travel with their spouses and children.
Sort of like an RV, but with servants waiting on you hand and foot.
What’s the point of even being a billionaire if you’re not going to spend on partying and debauchery?
A waterspout isn’t likely to do much damage to, say, a concrete building.
A yacht isn’t a concrete building.
My friend’s cousin was captain on one such yacht for quite a few years. No debauchery; at least, none that he was willing to talk about, just lots of money being spent on decadence.
I wonder if it’s just coincidence that HP also purchased the once-great minicomputer company Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) after it had shed most of its value and pretty much all of its potential, not least because by then all the good engineers had left.
“Was” rich. Currently dead. Not confirmed, but at this point it’s hard to see how any of those still missing could have survived.
The risks are higher for most of us when we take a child with us in the car…
This is true.
But some things beg to be a problem. I attract problems like a magnet. Avoidance is my best defense.
Not that I’d ever own or be invited to vacay on a yacht, I think I’ll decline.
Big ol’oceans full of big ol’water, sharks, stingrays, jellyfish and other terrible things. Not even considering the weather up top. Nope. I’ll be home. Send me a postcard.
You shoulda been with me and my buddy when I bought my first sailboat, and spent a week sailing it from the southern end of Georgian Bay, around the tip of the peninsula and then down Lake Huron to my home port. The trip was all the more adventuresome because all I knew about sailing was from a sailing course I had just taken. My buddy knew nothing at all.
I don’t know what part of our fun trip you would have enjoyed most (though yes, it really was fun, in the end). Maybe the part where we were crossing Georgian Bay, out of sight of all land, and fog came in and the wind died and the engine wouldn’t start. Or maybe the part where we anchored in a secluded bay away from the cluster of other boats at the other end, and discovered why all the other boats were at that end when a strong wind came up in the middle of the night. The reason was that the bottom in that part of the bay was soft mud, and the anchor wouldn’t hold. We started drifting toward the other boats, pushed by the wind, anchor dragging in the mud, until a collision seemed inevitable.
Which do you think you would have preferred? Becalmed and lost in fog, or about to collide with half a dozen other boats? 
Eeeek. You adventuresome folk kill me.
I live vicariously through everyone else’s fun. I revel in it.