(Latest news and predictions (my) about the sunken tourist submarine)
Sindbad was one of two Mobimar Tourist Submarines which was in service in Hurghada/Egypt. Mobimar is a Turku/Finland based Shipyard which built tourist submarines (fourteen active) which are in use and dived more than millions of passangers (company announces more than 240.000 tourists annually) since 1987 in Canaria Islands, South Korea, USA, Italy, China and Egypt.
As of my knowledge, Mobimar submarines have designs with positive buoyancy. It means they can dive only while their vertical thrusters are ON and pushing them down continuously. So if anything goes wrong with thrusters, like an electric error etc, it surfaces due to its positive bouyancy without any further action. On the submarine, all thrusters are externally mounted so there is no pressure hull penetrations for shaft sealings which could cause a leak. The largest openings are the hatch and acrylic windows. Which possibly “may” cause an error due to lack of maintenance.
Mobimar Mark V has a Nominal Diving Depth of 57m, has three versions 35, 50 and 65 (refers for the passanger capacities) and lengths of 13.8m, 17.4m and 21m.
As the Russian Consulate announced, all passengers onboard the bathyscaph was from Russia and personnel of the company “Библио Глобус” Library Global. 45 passengers was on board including 15 children.
Cause of the accident still is unclear. Some news suggested it happened while moored on the peer almost a mile away from the shore (see image attached) during boarding of the passengers, sunk as the hatch was open. Some says it crashed to coral resiff during the dive which damaged the vessel (probably the windows)
Sindbad organized daily tours around corals in a depth of 22m which is well below the rated depth of 57m of the submarine. So an issue of fatigue or so on the pressure hull which caused a structural collapse of the pressure hull is unlikely.
Mobimar is known as they were ready to sell all their knowledge on tourist submarine manufacturing and has a representative in Gulf Cooperation Council. Most probably the accident was due to a lack of maintenance issue (if it was not a sabotage for possible high value Russian targets inside)
Latest news I could achieve was from Russian Media:
Появились подробности аварии яхты «Синдбад» с российскими туристами в Египте
https://lnkd.in/dVcwV25i
