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The problem was the people at the top who assigned two apparent idiots to pilot a boat never confirmed they knew anything about seamanship. It turns out they knew as much about seamanship as a blowfish knows about pinocle [that's a card game].
A pair of clueless MTA boaters wrecked a perfectly good 20-foot schooner. Believe it or not, the name of the boat was Perfect Storm. Really.
“I cannot fathom how MTA management would allow these unqualified employees to set sail in the first place,” Pokorny said in a statement. “Clearly this lack of oversight is ultimately responsible for turning the Perfect Storm into a total wreck.”
The IG’s office opted not to penalize anyone for the incident because the boat had passed through “multiple managers” over two decades, Pokorny said, and they were all equally incompetent so why point fingers?
“We were at a loss as to who specifically to recommend be held accountable,” the report said. “The proverbial buck stopped with no one when it came to this boat.”
New York City Transit Authority officials opted not to replace Perfect Storm, which was the city bus and subway agency’s only watercraft because when it comes to buses and subway trains, you never know when you might need a boat. Maybe they should have had a jet fighter.
“Thankfully, no one was injured during this incident,” MTA spokesman Michael "Popeye" Cortez said in a statement. “NYC Transit’s expertise is in trains, buses and paratransit vehicles, not boats. Therefore, NYC Transit has no plans to replace this boat or purchase any other boats in the future."
A pair of clueless MTA boaters wrecked a perfectly good 20-foot schooner. Believe it or not, the name of the boat was Perfect Storm. Really.
The wind came up and the water became choppy. The pair was sort of sailing off the coast of Coney Island, in Brooklyn when they decided to abandoned ship as they feared for their lives.
Imagine the embarrassment of sailing off the coast of an amusement park and drowning near the "Hit the Freak" game or by Nathan's Famous hot dog stand. So they left the Perfect Storm to deal with the problem of the weather on its own as they scrambled away to safety. But before they abandoned ship, they called for a rescue team.
However, due to the choppy water and the wind, the rescue team decided not to salvage the ship until the next morning after they had their coffee. By then, Perfect Storm had "crashed into the rocky shoreline and capsized," the MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny said Monday.
An IG investigation into the sinking uncovered “an untenable situation on multiple levels” in which there were no rules to deal with the event whereby the 20-year-old schooner was sailing with a crew of two who lacked training, experience and, in one man's case, the ability to swim.
As our alleged President Biden would say, "no joke."
“I cannot fathom how MTA management would allow these unqualified employees to set sail in the first place,” Pokorny said in a statement. “Clearly this lack of oversight is ultimately responsible for turning the Perfect Storm into a total wreck.”
As it turned out, the investigation revealed the assigned "captain" of Perfect Storm had only piloted one boat in his entire life before taking Perfect Storm out to monitor repairs near Roosevelt Island [across from Manhattan] and be available for search and rescue.
Unsurprisingly however, neither the "captain" nor his "first mate" knew the first thing about search and rescue because they had no appropriate training in that area of expertise. Their entire reason for being on that boat was to make a little overtime pay.
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The so-called "captain's" supervisors said he professed lots of boating experience from his childhood in Jamaica. Evidently, he never experienced the death of a boat's motor on open water near an amusement park.
Once the motor died, so too did the workings for the mechanical anchor.
As Perfect Storm drifted close to the rocky shore by Kingsborough Community College, [Go, Fightin' Sea Creatures!] the two-man crew abandoned ship. When the tow company arrived, the weather wasn't nice and they decided to wait until morning. By then, it was too late and Perfect Storm became prey to a perfect clusterfrack of weather and ineptness.
The IG’s office opted not to penalize anyone for the incident because the boat had passed through “multiple managers” over two decades, Pokorny said, and they were all equally incompetent so why point fingers?
“We were at a loss as to who specifically to recommend be held accountable,” the report said. “The proverbial buck stopped with no one when it came to this boat.”
New York City Transit Authority officials opted not to replace Perfect Storm, which was the city bus and subway agency’s only watercraft because when it comes to buses and subway trains, you never know when you might need a boat. Maybe they should have had a jet fighter.
“Thankfully, no one was injured during this incident,” MTA spokesman Michael "Popeye" Cortez said in a statement. “NYC Transit’s expertise is in trains, buses and paratransit vehicles, not boats. Therefore, NYC Transit has no plans to replace this boat or purchase any other boats in the future."
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