Police in the Bahamas arrest husband of US woman who was aboard boat

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m00f@reddit

Yeah, there was nothing about that story that made any sense.

* People don't just disappear in the water instantly, especially since he claimed the engine stopped, she couldnt' be far

* The fact that he made an excuse for why the engine stopped

* It wouldn't have taken 8 hours to get to shore

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mwax321@reddit

https://loosecannon.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-a-murder-motive-to

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I’ve been on my kayak when the wind kicks up to 18 MPH and was blown very quickly away from where I was paddling in the direction of the wind. I’ve seen floating debris stay mostly still while I was instantly pushed very quickly to the lee side. You’re also told not to abandon your vessel to enact a rescue, and without a key, what is he supposed to do?

He may be guilty, I don’t know. But 30 knot winds in an 8 foot boat, in the dark, is disastrous. And if you’ve never dealt with a MOB situation, you likely underestimate the difficulty of this.

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mwax321@reddit

Yeah fair point. And I knew this couple indirectly. Hell, my friends had dinner with them a month before this happened.

The media report of them yelling and being abusive: to my knowledge nobody's ever witnessed that. Not saying that it can't happen behind closed doors. But... Yeah nobody's seen what the daughter is accusing. At least that's what I heard.

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Dog-Faced-Bot@reddit

Without commenting on the case, about which I know nothing, this exact thing happens fairly frequently in the Bahamas.

The Bahamas consists of a series of very shallow banks (the "bahia mar" or "shallow sea") bordered by abyssal deeps. The amount of water that flows from one to the other as the tide changes is astonishing. The currents in the cuts are impossible to swim against and they can take a strong, sober adult miles away before anyone can respond. It's very common for people who fall in to be swept away and either never found, or found dead far away.

Add in darkness, alcohol, and no PFD and things get instantly much worse.

If the person who fell out was driving, they may well have had the safety lanyard wrapped around a wrist or neck and their departure from the dink would kill the engine instantly.

Moving an RIB without an engine is near impossible even if you have oars, and most people don't. You go where the wind takes you and it can easily take hours or days to reach shore, depending where you are.

It sounds like there may have been a strong East wind, which would make the particular trip they were on very rough. I know that area very well.

The dink is just bouncing over the waves and slamming down every few seconds. If you hit a wave train wrong or a rogue wave (which is just a wave that is higher than normal by a certain amount, so if the waves are 3ft, it could be 5-6ft) it can bounce you and all your stuff out of a dink in a heartbeat.

So it's totally plausible. Again, no idea what happened in this particular case.

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Electrical_Cut8610@reddit

I don’t have an opinion either way about what possibly happened. But people are also forgetting that places like the Bahamas will do everything they can to minimize risk of tourism decline. It’s way better for Bahamas PR to say “See it’s the husband, not an accident! Please keep spending money on boats, it’s totally safe!” If it turns out it was an accident, by then the PR nightmare is over and they got to push out their narrative to control the PR when it matters most.

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Worth-Perception2565@reddit

Confused. Are you saying accidents are bad pr but murderous Americans are going to play well?

People drown. Pools are the number one killer of little kids.

I think they won’t lose sleep over a true accident (which I don’t think it was)

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Worth-Perception2565@reddit

It wasn’t a rib. It was a small fiberglass dinghy. Elbow Cay has slight currents. The water is 20’ deep everywhere there.

It was an electric motor that probably pushes 2 people at 5 knots max. Someone falls over, they are 20’ away.

No way this was an accident.

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Inevitable_Brush5800@reddit

The wind was blowing 34 MPH at the time of the incident. This is verified by local weather reports and historical weather data.

Does this change your thinking at all?

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ambww4@reddit

Press pic of the couple showed them in a rib.

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Dog-Faced-Bot@reddit

Another post said the wind was 28kts. Nasty if true.

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SNoB__@reddit

The parts that didn't make sense were where he said he was and where he went for help.

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bga93@reddit

I don’t boat at night cuz its basically impossible to see anything outside of a full-ish moon. A kill switch or mob switch could explain some of the other stuff but it feels unlikely

Strange things happen on the water, this was before Christmas on the gulf side

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Inevitable_Brush5800@reddit

30 knot winds? Dark. Shallow seas? Underpowered motor? Small dinghy? Whether it adds up or not doesn’t matter because unless you find her, you can’t prove he murdered her. It’s that simple. No amount of circumstantial evidence short of a written plan will convince me that he did considering the conditions of that night.

I wouldn’t elect to end two lives unless I was absolutely certain of what happened (reasonable doubt) and there is reasonable doubt in this situation.

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Plastic_Table_8232@reddit

It’s unprecedented if it’s factual.

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antizana@reddit

who doesn’t have a handheld on a dink

Realistically most cruisers

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Plastic_Table_8232@reddit

That seems negligent but people seem less reliant on radios / vhf / SSB and more on cell phones / satellite internet than ever before.

I’ve been stranded on a boat I unwittingly went for a ride on. Owner didn’t have a working radio and we don’t have cell service.

We had to drift for a while before we got cell signal.

Needless to say I learned not to assume anything about the condition of other peoples boats.

I now always carry my handheld, plb, and pfd when I go on someone else’s boat.

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antizana@reddit

People get complacent. Emergency gear in the dinghy gets lost/stolen/broken and not immediately replaced. Especially if you’re in a place where they don’t sell boat stuff. Then when you have a problem you discover your only source of help, communication, light AND navigation is your phone with 5% battery.

People put a lot of thought into their boat’s emergency gear and not much into their dinghy’s.

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Plastic_Table_8232@reddit

I have a greater fear of something going pear shaped in the dink. I’ve got electric start so we have a battery on the dink with a charger plug for the phone / VHF. What it really comes down to is if it’s going to charge. It loves to reject charging and say the port is wet. My dink is air floor with an air keel and is 13’. It rows for crap and I’m not getting any younger.

I have a small collection of handheld waterproof VHF’s. I try to keep one on each PFD for everyone onboard. Going in the water you can communicate with the boat.

We are full time PFD boat and it carries over the the dink. Inflatables are comfortable enough no reason not to wear one.

Diving made me a more cautious and methodical mariner. In tech diving the saying is 3 is 2, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. Basically if you don’t have a spare of critical equipment you shouldn’t consider yourself prepared.

I know we all assume risk when leaving the dock and at some point you just have to go but normalization of deviance is very real and it’s easy to get lazy with safety standards. For me it’s all about creating good habits and routines that keep is safe without much thought or consideration once they are part of your routine.

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hottenniscoach@reddit

Did you keep a charger in your Dinghy or do you bring it with you every time you get on and off of it? My radio battery doesn’t hold up very long without hitting a charger once in a while.

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Plastic_Table_8232@reddit

I keep my handheld on my pfd and charge it when I’m off watch in my birth along with my phone.

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Westar-35@reddit

If I’m being honest, it sounds like you really need to sort that out.. At a minimum I keep a handheld in the same spot as the kill cord, so every time I hit the dink the handheld is with me. Then it’s just a matter of choosing the right handheld and battery combination to give acceptable life.

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hottenniscoach@reddit

Nothing to sort out. My radio hits the cradle every day. I don’t always throw it in the dink, though, if I’m being honest. I don’t know many of that do.

It’s unreal that standard horizon hasn’t figured out a way to provide a USB-C charged battery.

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unpluggedcord@reddit

There not a single sailor who's leaving their main boat onto a dingy without a cell phone.....

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Western-Stock-1023@reddit

I KNEW IT!!! I knew it as soon as I read the original article. I’ve been a sailor/cruiser for about 10 years now and the whole thing was super suspicious. I’ll bed she was dead before she was in the water.

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YT__@reddit

His story:

She fell in water with the keys.... She swam towards shore????

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Salty-Conference8119@reddit

My beloved wife.

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Inevitable_Brush5800@reddit

Wind was blowing 34 MPH, in 8 feet of water, on an 8 foot dinghy with an electric motor, and it was dark.

The dinghy would be blown to the Lee very, very quickly, much quicker than the person in the water. And don’t leave your boat to rescue someone or you’re both more likely to die.

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Mackey_Corp@reddit

Honestly with the way the media works this day an age even if this guy is innocent they’re gonna hang it on him and he will be tried in the court of public opinion long before he ever sees a courtroom. It’s sad that even if he didn’t do it he’s probably gonna spend the rest of his life in prison.

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Worth-Perception2565@reddit

Is there footage of her ever driving the dinghy? This guy doesn’t seem like the type not to drive.

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thetalkingcure@reddit

that’s not how jury selection works

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LameBMX@reddit

it dont matter. just like big science news that hasn't been rigorously peer reviewed. the debunk and the not guilty will just be a footnote on the news. a LOT of that is on us of course, the clickbait gets the views. we dont blast the change like we do the original headline.

anyways. this stuff follows people and the acquittal doesnt.

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PirateRob007@reddit

Let's not pretend no one in the real world has ever had a biased jury.

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Plastic_Table_8232@reddit

Crazy the contrast between the ideal teachings of the justice system we were taught in school to what it is in practice.

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LaDreadPirateRoberta@reddit

Same. I was shocked by how many people wanted to tell me I knew nothing about boats or currents in a mainstem sub, though.

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Inevitable_Brush5800@reddit

They didn’t charge him with anything. He’s just arrested.

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The_Noatec@reddit

Me too! When you start hearing the story in Dateline voices, you know it's about to be an episode.

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InterlinkCommerce@reddit

Why would you tether your cut-off if you are not alone on the boat, that is a no no, when with someone never tether your cut-off.....

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drdacl@reddit

Dang I thought it was the Sailing Zatara dude. Same vibes

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Worth-Perception2565@reddit

Hang on. In a Facebook post, he said “she was swimming towards the sailboat”.

This makes zero sense if they were near the Abaco Inn.

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Worth-Perception2565@reddit

It depends where the wind was coming from. Maybe they were in the Lee of the island. If it was an onshore breeze (and from the anchorage, there would be lots of land nearby, a 30 knot breeze would have blown anyone to shore in about ten minutes.

Note: she was a strong swimmer and he threw a life jacket to her. Anyone could get to a life jacket in an emergency.

If she was in the water from an accident, and conscious, with a life jacket within 10 feet, no way she’s not still alive.

Why does he “paddle” to marsh harbor?

Where is the cell phone they took photos with? If he was going to the anchorage, there must have been other boats there. Why not ask for help?
In fact, if she fell in between hopetown and the anchorage, she almost certainly would have been blown to shore or blown towards the boats at the moorings.

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taketimeout0@reddit

A real life, Death in Paradise, story!

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bodyreddit@reddit

The husband had been arrested. Good to know there are people on sail boats who choose to make jokes when a person has lost their life, whether through accident or foul play. May the winds not find you.

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RikkiLostMyNumber@reddit

oof, that's uncalled for friendo

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Catbird_jenkins@reddit

They have an Instagram page, The sailing Hookers

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MacGrubersMiata@reddit

I met them sitting at Snappas bar in Marsh Harbour 3 weeks ago and they gave me their sailing card. We chatted about our sailing YouTube channels, and I spoke with her about using 360 cameras and how fun editing was. Seemed happy and nice.

Not too sure how to feel about this one.

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mpup55@reddit

Growing up sailing in south Florida the term "Gulfstream divorce" was heard once in a while. Two people go out for a sail, one comes back.

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FrostnJack@reddit

Bad Monkey!

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MongolianCluster@reddit

That's pretty dark.

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Inner_Importance8943@reddit

My wife is really into true crime but hates sailing. Do you think this story might be something we can do together

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FrostnJack@reddit

Makes for a juicy writer’s prompt.

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Optimistic-Stacy@reddit

I laughed out loud at this! Same here!

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TheWildCard63@reddit

FEMICIDE!!!!

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Pretend_College_8446@reddit

Definitely something fishy about this, especially him calling the kill switch “the keys” … whatever. BUT they were most certainly drunk, cold fronts in the Bahamas can whip up the water pretty good, and fiberglass dinghies aren’t awfully stable. I’m suspicious, but this isn’t a slam dunk by any means. I feel bad for the woman’s family.

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mwax321@reddit

Pretty sure that's the news. One article even talked about losing gps tracking. Like... What? It's a tiny dinghy... There's no gps.

The news outlets didn't fact check anything they just published.

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