Correction:
In the video I showed Outremer’s post stating Luna Bay 2 sank due to saildrive damage. The owners have since clarified that the actual cause of the flooding was never identified.

To be fair, Outremer may have jumped to what seemed like the most obvious conclusion — the saildrive is a known weak point if you strike something in the water. But as the crew made clear, they never found the source of the water ingress. Other possibilities — including structural damage elsewhere, or even water intrusion through the daggerboard cases. No one knows exactly where.

One incredible detail: Luna Bay 2 didn’t actually disappear beneath the waves. She drifted for two months, covering 1,434 nautical miles at about 1 knot, before eventually wrecking on the island of Nassau in the Cook Islands at the end of July.

I'm a 63-year-old commercial fisherman we have a saying in the commercial fishing industry in New Jersey the only reliable bilge pump is 3 terrified men and a 5-gallon bucket

I had the flood alarm go off 200miles offshore, I had bought every plug for every thru-hull. As I pulled up the floor from front to back, it was all dry and couldn't figure out where it was coming from until I was told they heard something on the stern. When I pulled the back floor, the entire shaft was missing. I never planned for that to ever happen....Pulled a rag and a screw driver and jammed it in there. We fully stopped the ingress and got to port just fine, ran like that for like 10 days before we could get to a proper port, just kept an eye on it. Water coming in at 3am can be scary, just need to focus on solving the problem and not panicking.

My guess is the post Covid van life crowd that also flowed in as an uptick in new sailers ?

As someone else already observed, all five boats were catamarans. I find this fact even more startling, and in need of explanation, than the number of sinkings.

“Assume the next problem is the one you didn’t expect.” This is really good advice for sailing and life in general.

I think a hand pumped desalinator and water containers should be included in every life raft as a lack of drinking water is a major problem in surviving at sea. Extra flares is a good idea. So often people use flares and vessels are too far away or are not searching the seas for life rafts from ship wrecks. Satellite emergency signals like EPIRBs, Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, have made emergency rescues highly successful. Distance and weather are still major factors and the raft that looks big in a workshop is very small when thousands of miles out at sea.

Watching the video on our Lagoon when the beeping in the video started, but both my wife and I right away looked over at our nav table to see what was beeping before I hit pause and figured out it was in the video and not us.

Wow! So many sinkings are shocking.
We had a Viking life raft we'd bought new in the USA like you, and after about 35K nautical miles, when we had it serviced in NZ, the certified technician found not one but TWO HOLES that could have drowned us had we had a similar UFO strike. They replaced it with a new one but it was chilling to think we had sailed twice across the Atlantic and all the way across the Pacific relying on a faulty life raft!

Hi from Denmark 🇩🇰 home of the Viking company.
As a truck driver I’ve transported a lot of liferafts to and from ships going through the Danish waters.
At Viking they inflate the rafts by their own power. The technicians told me that they have NEVER had a raft in that couldn’t inflate itself no matter how old it was.
Have you considered checking out a forward looking sonar? Look ahead and get warned before you hit something in the water.
Love your videos! Hav a nice journey 👍
Anders, Denmark

Having spent 15 years cruising the South Pacific we've seen many casualties due to inexperience and lightly built production boats. Sailing has gotten very popular with people thinking they can buy a boat and head offshore as push button sailors without learning lessons handed down for hundreds of years.

At all times you have to remember SOD5 Law, "If the worst thing possible can happen, it will, but only at the worst possible time." About that life raft, how much would you pay to have a serviceable life raft if your boat has sunk up to the deck? Exactly, you would give your life savings and then some! Very long story but briefly, I know a glider pilot who was killed because he objected to paying $30/year to get it repacked. Another glider took his tail off, he got out, but his parachute didn't open.

I cruised on a 47’ Vagabond ketch with my family in the Sea of Cortez for many years. Then, in 2000-2002, we took a two-year voyage from the Sea of Cortez to Panama, through the canal and off to northern South America, the Caribbean, Florida and back to the Sea of Cortez.  We had such primitive electronics compared to what you have on your helm.  We had paper charts, old black and white weather faxes, a black and white Garmin GPS (handheld), an even older Magellan GPS that died on 01/01/2000 when the millennium started, a radar (the old kind), and SSB and VHF radios (cell and Sat phones were unheard of among average cruisers).  It’s such a different animal from modern cruising.

My dad lost the rudder on an Oyster 48 on a calm day 2 days out from Tonga. We still don't know if they were hit by a whale or debris. They were helped by a French yacht that towed them into Tonga and then they were stuck for months getting a replacement shipped out and got lots of local help getting the new rudder in place. That was about 20 years ago.

Nous avons connu cette famille du  Luna Bay2  la marina au Panama. Cela nous a fait beaucoup de peine d'apprendre ce naufrage au large des Marquises. J'ai eu Charlène au téléphone le lendemain du naufrage.. heureusement sain et sauf toute la petite famille.. ils ont été intégralement remboursé par l'assurance. Nous sommes actuellement à Raiatea et demain nous partons à Bora-Bora. Au plaisir de se rencontrer

Another great episode guys... we purchased a liferaft second hand from Tignish in PEI canada and hoped we would never use it but on the night if June 30th we had a series of things happen while night sailing that washed us onto the reef at east plana cays in the bahamas... we lost our boat and everything in it... we are now back home starting from scratch...but watching this episode makes me happy that even tho our raft was second hand it worked and was game changer... we were rescued but the USCG and taken to Inagua safe and sound.... all the best tonyou guys and me and my family wish you fair winds and following seas... 💪 sailingfamilymischief

Epic content! I sailed to Tahiti from Hawaii in the early 90s. It was one of the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. This is on my bucket list. Thank you for reigniting the flame. 😎🤙🏽🍒🙌🏽🙏🏽☝🏽

You use four digital maps. They rely on a GPS system that an "unfriendly" state can disrupt or manipulate at any time. This happens in the Baltic Sea and other regions near Russia. Everyone must relearn how to use paper maps.
Nice video, I started to dream.

Good points about sail drives. At sea anything can fail so I work on the principle of making things fail safe not fail dangerously. In the case of a saildrive assume the seal will fail then ensure that would not sink the boat. No pump will cope with a hole the size of a saildrive so the answer is to contain the flooding with a bulkhead. Does not have to be full height but must be above the healed waterline. It also does not have to totally stop the water just slow it down enough for the pumps to cope.

We used pur life raft 3 months ago as we awaited rescue in the southern Bahamas. The accident and outcome could have been very different if it wasn't for our liferaft. Thanks for sharing this info with the sailing community x from fellow Canadians