Typhoon Maysak: Ship Lost at Sea

Tragic circumstances, a ship carrying almost 6,000 head of cattle has sunk while sailing through typhoon Maysak off the coast of Japan. The ship was on the way to China from New Zealand. Here's a picture of the vessel:

This ship doesn't look like it would be comfortable to be on board during a typhoon. It does look top heavy. Reports are the ship capsized and that does sound right.

Pure speculation: what would have caused the ship to capsize? Well, as anyone who has experienced a typhoon will soon tell you, water absolutely buckets down. In this storm I'm guessing a lot of that precipitation was coming in sideways. Note the upper decks are open. If enough water was coming down, so much it couldn't drain away quickly enough, together with the weight of the livestock and their water supplies, the ship would become top heavy, unstable, and any large wave side-on would tip it over.

Bad news I know and no consolation to the family of those on board. This looks to have been poor seamanship, the captain should have tried to avoid the weather, but once in it he should look to reduce the amount of time he was sailing side-on to the wind. He needed to be sailing the boat directly into the wind. Maybe his lack of knowledge about how much water you can take on in a typhoon was a factor.

Only one survivor thus far, let's hope the Japanese Coast Guard find more.