brian-armstrong 6 minutes ago

> Outside the boat, Sarah, Hissora and the others who had jumped off eventually found the two life rafts, which had deployed after the sinking. As they clambered on board, they saw the boat's captain and a number of other crew members were already there.

> "There should be some supplies in here," Sarah remembers one of the other guests saying. All the people we spoke to recall a safety briefing mentioning that the life rafts had food and water in them - but they did not, the BBC were told.

> "We found a torch, but again it didn't have any batteries. We didn't have any water or any food," Sarah says. "There were flares, but they had already been used."

> Sarah also says of the three blankets on board the raft, one had been taken by the captain for himself, leaving one for the rest of the crew and another for the guests. "We ripped it up and huddled together," says Sarah.

Absolutely disgraceful behavior from the captain here. This is not a person who should be entrusted with a houseplant, let alone the wellbeing of any number of people on board that vessel.

throeurir 11 minutes ago

> But Lucianna is critical of the fact the Egyptian navy had to rely on volunteers. "We waited 35 hours. I don't understand how there are no divers on the Egyptian military boats."

Why should divers risk their life to save anyone?! The boat was unstable, going inside would be dangerous! Some people are adrenaline junkies, and will volunteer for such thing, but you can not expect professionals to do that!

rurban 2 hours ago

Furniture moving to one side on the top deck sounds most plausible to me.

rwmj 2 hours ago

If I remember it right, Mythbusters did the "sinking boat will pull you under" and found it was a myth?

  • jazzyjackson 2 hours ago

    they busted it with a 9 ton boat but now I’m unconvinced because they did demonstrate the effect with a large weight dropping straight down in a pool, so what effect was that?! They were testing Titanic myths and didn’t touch on the fact that Titanic famously dropped like a stone!

    https://youtu.be/rvU_dkKdZ0U

MichaelZuo 4 hours ago

How could 3 adults, even lying perfectly still, not use up all the oxygen in that air pocket within 35 hours?

I thought human beings needed several cubic meters of fresh oxygen (at 1 atm) per hour…

  • jazzyjackson 2 hours ago

    You got me wondering and I thought maybe there was some kind of gas diffusion where carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean water instead of building up in the enclosed space, and finding the most closely related stack exchange question I think I’m satisfied with this answer:

    probably that four-foot bubble communicated with a larger volume or air under the hull of the boat - and that's the most reasonable explanation of this miraculous survival.

    When picturing it we might assume the rest of the boat is flooded and this pocket of air is all that remained but that may not be the case.

    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67970/surviving-...

    • gunian 2 hours ago

      Mr Nimbus gave them gills to save them and wiped their memory :)

      • sellmesoap 39 minutes ago

        Mr nimbus also controls the police!

  • _hyn3 4 hours ago

    Not at 1atm. The air was pressurized.

    • russell_h 2 hours ago

      It doesn’t sound to me like the boat actually sank. In the article it mentioned that they heard the rescue helicopter from within. Wouldn’t that imply that the pressure inside would be one atmosphere? Am I thinking about the physics of this wrong?

      • duskwuff 2 hours ago

        Sound does carry remarkably well through water - but you're right. The ship capsized, but the hull held enough air that it stayed afloat.

      • BurningFrog 2 hours ago

        It was floating upside down.

        There is a picture towards the end of the story.

    • nwellinghoff 2 hours ago

      How is that? It was at surface pressure and then rolled over.

      • K0balt 2 hours ago

        If the booyancy of the trapped air was a significant factor in the boat not sinking, then the air would have been at pressures over 1atm.

        Put a barometer in an empty, upside-down cup. Force the upside down cup 1/2 way down into the water, trapping the air inside.

        The barometer will be at the sea pressure of the bottom of the cup.