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This is Superyacht News. On the move, stay connected abroad. Get your SY EIM today. Hi all, welcome back to the channel. So, we've got an update on the uh Motach Launchpad/wingman Mark Zuckerberg yachts incident in Alaska. We've actually got a statement from the cruise line. We asked them straight away for a statement. We've just heard back from them. I'm going to read that shortly. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Launchpad and Wingman were in the vicinity of an initial distress call uh followed up by an emergency call by the US Coast Guard and they apparently ignored all of these calls. Now, a lot of people online have got opinions shockingly. Um we've we've gone over the whole details in the
previous videos. What I will say is initially um the vessel did call did make a distress call. Now, it's possible that the that launchpad and the wingman were out of range of that initial call because it was given on VHF, right? Um so, it's only got a short distance um range VHF. Um so, it's possible they didn't get the initial one, but then once the Coast Guard responded to it, they put out a pan or an emergency call. Um and uh and then they didn't hear that either, and the cruise ship heard it. So, by this time, they were obviously in range. The cruise ship came to the assistance of that yacht. Now, we've all, as we've already discussed in the previous videos, it was deemed to not be a distress at that
point. Now, the excuse given by um by the PR guy who I have a feeling has no experience at see and may have just come up with that uh on his own that comment um he said that they were listening on a different channel. And we've just we've refuted that in the previous video. said it's a lame excuse because all vessels, especially ones that are at sea, you know, if they were tied up somewhere, fair enough, there might not have been anybody on the bridge, but when they're underway, there's at least two radios, VHF radios on the bridge. Sometimes there are three. There's MF MFHF radios and airband radios. There's all the tech on there that you need. Um, if they put out something on VHF, there's no excuse for not hearing that because everybody
listens to it. You can also, as a few people mentioned in the comments, you can actually set your radio to scan for multiple channels. So you can have a double channels or even every channel. It can scan for any broadcast that are being made. So there's no excuse really for not hearing a channel 16 distress call. Um anyway, we've got the statement from the cruise line. It's actually from a PR group called the Lookout PR group. We sent it to the cruise line and they responded. So it's probably been forwarded to these guys. Also, apparently the statement apparently corrects some of the stories that we've seen where they said that the cruise ship towed the boat to Faragot Bay. I'll
read it for you anyway. It says, "Uncrews Adventures Wilderness Legacy rendered assistance to a 20ft boat with two women and a child on board around 10:30 p.m. on August the 3rd, 2026 after hearing the US Coast Guard call for assistance. The small craft was transiting from Juno to Petersburg when they became low on fuel. Uncrew Uncrews Adventures um crew diverted from their course to fuel the boat and had them follow the wilderness legacy along with a deployed skiff four to five miles into Farragot Bay where a crew helped them safely anchor their vessel. The next day the ship's captain Sha Mans contacted them and received word they had made it to Petersburg. So in the previous in the original video we mentioned a different
captain. I believe he was on board also, but this chap was at the helm at the time of that incident. The only thing they say about Launchpad is say we can confirm that Launchpad was nearby. That's the only thing that they've said. Like I said, that statement seems to correct others that said that the cruise ship towed that smaller vessel. It would be kind of unusual uh for a cruise ship to tow a smaller vessel like that. So, they said that the um small boat followed them to that bay. Um so, that's interesting, isn't it? They didn't give an awful lot. They didn't mention didn't go into any depth. It's very politically correct answer you know which is fine fair enough. So that's the that's
the official statement from the cruise line. Um obviously we need to applaud that cruise line for doing the right thing obviously uh you know because it's obviously put puts them late you know if they've got um a schedule to keep on and now they've diverted so they're all late but I'm sure everybody involved was happy that they went to the assistance of those people. This is marine traffic. You see the time there? It says uh 5:30. It says 5:30 UTC. This is 24:00. So that's 5:30 in the morning on the 4th. That would have been 9:30 p.m. local time. This is when the vessel issues its distress call. 9:32 p.m. So we can see the distance from launchpad
to the site where this boat was approximately. It's about 10 miles. So they would have been in range of that VHF transmission that the boat gave out at 9:32. They called a distress at 9:32. Right? You can see here Wilderness Legacy is here and Wingman is here. They would all have been in range. It's about 15 miles away. If we pass if we go up half an hour, we go to uh Whoops. If we go to uh 6:00, this is when the Coast Guard determined that it wasn't a distress call. This is when uh the Wilderness Legacy responded and they said they arrived at 10:58 p.m. So that would have been uh 6:58 UTC time. So if we go to 658 now, interestingly, not long after the initial distress call was given, launchpad stops.
So there we go. There's there's uh 659 UTC. This is when Wilderness Legacy, the statement says that they responded and they arrived on scene. Now Launchpad has stopped. It's interesting, isn't it, that they stopped just after that distress call was given. Why did they stop? Could it be they heard the distress and they came to a halt, thinking that they were going to go into a distress rescue and then while they were thinking about it or whatever, they realized it wasn't a distress. But it's interesting just right around the time that the uh distress call was heard, Launchpad stopped in her tracks after she was doing 10 knots. Did she stop to prepare to do it to respond to the
distress or did she stop because she didn't want to get any closer to the boat that was calling for the distress? That's a question I don't think we'll ever get the answer to. If we play it from here in fast time, we'll see what happens then. Wingman goes right by and then Wilderness Legacy goes into Farragut Bay to take the boat to safety. And then soon after she leaves, you see Launchpad gets underway and continues on her original journey. And look how close Launchpad is to the place where the distress call was from. She's very, very close, isn't she? But for some reason, like I said, we'll ne we'll never know. I doubt unless some crew member um in a few months time gets
fired decides to blow the whistle but we'll never know but that's very close and I just makes me wonder why they stopped now lots of comments some of them are good comments which I'm going to go into some of them are ridiculous comments as always uh now uh we mentioned in our previous video that it was initially distressed the coast guard deemed not to be distressed. So they issued a pan call or an urgency call which is the official term for a pan. PAN stands for possibly assistance needed or something words to that effect. Don't you know there'll be lots of people going oh that's not what it stands for this but um it's something to do like that possibly assistance needed something like that.
Now uh a lot well there was quite a few comments saying pan is a distress it's not a distress uh itu regulations I'll put them on screen 2024 edition volume 1 chapter 7 distress and safety communications article 33 urgency signal consists of the word pan the urgency signal indicates that the calling station has a very urgent message to transmit concerning the safety of a ship aircraft or other vehicle or the safety of a person the urgency signal shall be shall have priority over all other communications except distress. All stations which hear it shall take care not to interfere with the transmission of the message which follows the urgency signal which is pan. So yeah it's not a distress. So the people who
saying it is you're you're not you're wrong. Now another one is um this is just an incidental. Pan is an aviation term. I saw a lot of people saying that uh aviation uses nautical phrases. That's why they fly in knots and not in miles per hour or kilometers per hour. They use knots because it's you know it's a reference to um you know latitude and longitude. It's a measurement of latitude and longitude. You know it's used for m it's ideal for aircraft because they're flying over time zones and things like that. And that's why they use nautical terminology. Um, now one of the biggest comment, one of the biggest things that I said that created the most comments
was about I was trying to think of why nobody on board filmed this boat being having this assistance by this cruise ship. It's full of passengers. Usually you would see a thousand videos online and there was there doesn't seem to be any that we can find anyway. And I said maybe it was because it was late at night. It was something that I thought of whilst filming. It just came out and I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe that's the reason it was late at night. Apparently, every other person commented that in Alaska at this time of year, at that time of night, it's not dark and they would have been able to film. I mean, it will be dark, but it's just not fully dark. Like, I said, it'd be pitch black
or something like that. It was just a throwaway comment. Like, this guy says, "One second's research on Google would have saved you the embarrassment of claiming nobody could see because it was dark in Alaska at 10 p.m. Now everyone knows you don't know what happens above the Arctic Circle in Northern Hemisphere summer. um to that guy. FYI, Farragut Bay is not north of the Arctic Circle. I'll put a map on screen here. You can see it's clearly below that. It's so it's nowhere near it. So, um also a lot of people saying that um you know this part of Alaska is much further north than the UK and therefore um you should know that it's darker, right? But in actual fact, it's not. If I zoom out on if I show you on this map here, this is
Faragot Bay. If I zoom out and you look at the if you put a straight line from there to the UK, you can see that it's actually not much further north than the UK, it's actually on par with it. In actual fact, in the UK, it doesn't get dark here until um about 9:30, 10:00 at night at the moment. So, yeah, I should have known that, but I didn't because I didn't think it through. So, there you go. Um and also, a lot of people saying I've clearly never been to Alaska. I've actually been to Alaska many times. I've spent whole seasons there on cruise ships. was a long time ago, but I've been there. I've been to uh you know, Juno and Ketchacan and all those places. And this was going back to 2010, maybe 2012, something like
that. But I've spent a lot of time in Alaska. All right, guys. We'll move on to next story. Now, we've got some video footage here. I'll play it for you now, and then I'll talk on the other side. This is what happens when two boats are under autopilot and no one's on watch, which means someone should be watching the boat where it's going. This is what happens. Oo, You can see right through. So, the video footage was sent into us. Uh, he said this happened in Troge, which is in Croatia. Um, this is where Royal Romance was docked for a long time, by the way. But anyway, apparently two yacht, I don't know, two vessels,
one of them, this yacht, were both on autopilot without anybody on lookout and they crashed into each other. You can see that the hole the bow of the other vessel appears to have cracked a hole in this yacht. We don't have any other details about this. Unfortunately, when I tried to reply to the person who sent it, I couldn't get through. So, if you are watching, please be sure to get in touch and let us know if you've got any more details because we couldn't find anything online about that incident. Um, so we'll move on to our next one. Now, this was sent into us by one of our subscribers. We did this story maybe last year or the year before, maybe 2024, a chief executive officer of a
steel manufacturer, um, his name was Derek Wacob, and he owned a superyacht, which he doesn't own anymore. I think he's in prison right now. Um anyway, he has pled guilty uh to um he's plead guilty to a $66 million fraud scheme and we've got some stuff here from the Department of Justice. Uh and it says basically the backstory is that he allegedly obtained well not allegedly now is it he obtained money by promising lucrative um business opportunities to purchase steel at a discount for quick resale with guaranteed profits. Instead, he took the money uh and to finance an extravagant personal lifestyle, including expensive cars, private jets, two helicopters, not one but two, a
yacht, and a million-doll racing boat. Uh he allegedly stole money from close friends to keep the failing company afloat. Oh, anyway, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, announced the guilty plea of Derek Wakob for orchestrating a multi-year scheme to defraud individual investors, a bank, an investment firm, and at least two steelpipe distributors for at least $66 million. Uh he plead guilty to one count of wire fraud. Uh that count, one count of wire fraud, carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison. So yeah, he's not going to be getting on any yachts anytime soon, is he? I got one more thing before I go, guys. In a previous video, I think it was last week, we talked about the French
government or people within the French government putting through a paper to try to ban superyachts over 50 meters. And one of the things I said in that video was that um people if they did if they went through with it and banned them that the people will just take their yachts to Monaco instead. I think there's some confusion about Monaco with a lot of people. Monaco is a principality. It's not part of France. It's the land of Monaco is in the same land area as France, but it's not part of France. It's separate. And as such, they have their own um area. They have a channel of uh of um of waterway, so vessels can get to and from Monaco
without entering French waters. I'll show you on this chart here, and it shows you very clearly this channel that on either side of that, that's French waters. on the starboard side or on the right side should I say um that is Menon that area there just before Italy and on the left side that is the south of France and Kotzor etc. So Monaco's flatbanging right in the middle and they have that channel where a vessel could go through there without getting you know getting stuck getting into French waters where they'd be waiting for them with the navy I guess. All right guys I'll leave that I'll leave it there. If you've got any information for us please be sure to send us at the email address in the ticket. Uh, if you've got videos or
photos, please be sure to use the we transfer link. Please don't email them to us because it's very difficult. Uh, most of them come through. We have to delete them because they come through too small. Um, also check us out on Patreon at patreon.com/isysman. Lots of videos on there. Lots of back uh behind the scenes stuff and backtories of our trips. We're going on a trip again soon to uh Italy and Monaco for the Monaco Yacht Show. So yeah, check us out on patreon.com/sismman. All right, guys. Thanks very much for watching and I'll catch up with you soon. Bye-bye. Get an exclusive 15% discount on sale data plans. Use the code eisman at checkout.
