I believe the cause of this Accident was strictly human error from a complete disregards on the part of the captain to maintain 'right mindfulnes,not having an active and watchful mind for the safety of his 4200 passengers. As reported in the media the captain 3 times before had passed very close to the Island to be in reception of another captain friend's house, sort of wave and blow the whistle number for a 'hit' with a friend. Normally nothing wrong with networking with friends, but in this case it was reported the skipper was eyeballing it, not even using the radar or CPA calculations or GPS plotting. Navigation has become so easy with GPS compared to my education/experience with engine room telegraph/double the angle on the bow for CPA, etc, that the question here is what distracted the 'safety mind frame ' of the captain to be so flippent with the safety of 4200 passengers. Was it the unregestered Hungrian call-girls passengers? or what? Captain Peter Buemi. CaptPJBuemi@Gmail.com

Please correct the direction from "Starboard" 180 turn to "PORT" 180 turn, in my previous comment. Thanks

I believe that the alision was catastrophic, but not serious. If the damaged vessel, after having lost part of its waterplane area resulting in a reduced KM and hence a reduced righting arm, had not initiated a starboard 180 turn to make for the nearby port,it would have just settled into the deep water at the predicted and allowable list. The lifeboats would then have launched easily. However, the CC's hard turn heeled it outboard beyond it's recovery righting moment and it consequently continued to roll to the starboard. Fortunately, the water depth was shallow and the CC went simply aground, exposing her damaged port side.

Kevin; fair enough about the concern about the quality of piloting skills, I think that's in the hands of the Italian courts though. There are those who will look at CC's allision and ask (much like the Twin Towers after 911) why didn't her underwater side shell have enough strength (or a wing tanks) to resist the raking gash at 15 knots? Once the side shell was ripped open and she was beam onto the seas/current (that carried her dead-ship down on the island) why did she flood so comprehensively and rapidly that they lost propulsion only moments after the damage occurred? That this casualty occurred does mean that it will enter the statistics from which the current probablistic damage stability is derived - under SOLAS Ch II-1 Part B-1 Regulation 8.3.2 she should have been designed to withstand a damage length of 87 meters with 3.5 meter penetration. I thinks folks are also going to look askance at the effect of the progressive flooding with respect to the list CC had on her when they finally tried to launch her life boats and rafts. There the aesthetic damns the designers, somewhat. Her 'wedding cake' superstructure atop her modest underwater body would tend to indicate that even if they had the power to ballast her to correct the list; she probably didn't have the tank capacity to do so. After her battleship turn to reduce headway induced the initial list, without power I don't see how she could have corrected, even without the possible complication of the live load of passengers milling about. Beyond those points, the 2006 SOLAS amendments were intended to require (return to port regulations in force from 2010) propulsion redundancy. Just one of the many things likely to be looked at in a thorough forensic review of this casualty.