REPORT: DROWNING OFF O'DAY

Well, it looks like the sheriff's report on the June drowning off Cinger is finally available.... someone posted a link to it yesterday in our earlier post. (Thanks!) Here's the link:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=53085929967739185235

The report answers many questions but also raises some new ones. This is what we got out of it (you may want to read it yourself):

Michaela Rabas is partly responsible for the death of Mohammed Bagabir, but it was mostly his own fault. It seems he was a hard partier and/or loose cannon--he had been punched in the face a week before the fateful cruise (breaking his nose), had a 4 inch special stogie in his backpack, apparently hit his head hard on the boat before going swimming, and was still eager to jump into cold water. But he was apparently a decent swimmer.

As for the former VC, several things jump out that are alarming:

1. 60 degrees is very cold water. We always hear about 55, but that's because anything below 55 is deadly. And the air was only 72. And Bagabir was from Saudi Arabia! The only way I'd go into 60 deg water is if I were drunk or stoned. In light of the big joint found in Bagabir's backpack (see p. 21) and the THC in his bloodstream (see p. 50), it seems it might have been the latter.

2. Michaela apparently put the boat into irons for swimming. That's a piss poor idea (unless you're on a tech) because it will immediately start to drift away. On the other hand, if Rabas came hove-to as another witness suggests, she obviously didn't do it right. In any case, the fact that she stopped the boat shows that she was aware people wanted to go swimming in cold, wavy water--and approved. Well, ya know, some people have bad judgment even when they're not drunk or stoned.

3. On p. 14 it says "Michaela had put the sail up and was running the boat by herself" but on p. 30 it says "Rabas said she also dropped her sail during the man overboard procedure." If she was sailing the boat by herself, it sounds like maybe they didn't have a headsail up (the report isn't explicit as to which sail was lowered). It would be great if someone with firsthand knowledge could clarify this for us.

4. According to witnesses, Michaela fracked the MOB maneuver and then started yelling for other people to jump into the water to try to swim over and save Bagabir. That's a cardinal no-no because then you have at least two people overboard, in cold water, and someone who's panicking can easily endanger a potential rescuer unless that person is an expert swimmer.

Of course, the tragic death is also partly Union Director Mark Guthier's fault for his endless stream of bad ideas and other screw-ups. The new alcohol policy, for instance. Note that apparently no one on board Cinger--in particular Michaela or Bagabir--was drunk. Yet people were behaving like stunt men anyway. If mature adults were allowed to have a beer on board a keelboat, maybe Bagabir wouldn't have felt compelled to light up beforehand and then do crazy stuff. One also has to wonder how the two pitchers consumed by several of the guests on the Terrace right before the cruise--a result of not being allowed to bring any alcohol on board--affected things.

Guthier's draconian alcohol policy is not only strangling the social side of the club but is causing people to do screwy things in response. More on this in our next post.