Call them hull whisperers: How investigators will solve the Jose Fernandez boat crash

Oct. 01--Fancy gadgets and minute measurements might ultimately tell us how Miami Marlins star Jose Fernandez died in a horrific boating accident.

Clues might seem scant. Boating accidents don't leave skid marks on the pavement like car crashes. Security cameras rarely document the incident. The debris doesn't sit on the road; it floats out to sea.

That's when marine reconstruction experts begin their work.

Call them the hull whisperers. They labor for months on behalf of mourning families, insurance companies, vessel manufacturers and the general public.

A shredded bow, dented metal and broken lights are among the clues they rely on to re-create what went wrong.

"Witness marks" is what Robert K. Taylor calls them. He's a principal engineer and co-owner of Design Research Engineering in Novi, Mich. Taylor estimated he has analyzed over 1,000 maritime incidents and testified in about 100 trials.

"The metal and fiberglass doesn't have a bias," Taylor said. "We call all those marks 'witness marks' because they are solid evidence and may have more integrity than a witness."

Witness marks in a vessel's hull may lead an investigator to a scrape pattern along a boat bottom, and then to the propellers and mechanical equipment, and "often will allow us to determine speed and orientation," Taylor said.

Taylor's colleagues in the business also use sophisticated technology for reconstructing crashes. A laser scanner makes millions of measurements and documents the damage in a very precise manner, enabling investigators to know the location of the first point of contact in a collision and the direction the boater was coming from, Taylor said.

A boat's GPS, used by many recreational boaters, can be an invaluable record of a vessel's positions and speed during a trip.

"Speed is a key factor to know in a fatal boat crash," Taylor said. "Depending upon how they're set up to record data, GPS can act like a black box on an airplane. We go after downloading that, and it has to be done in a specific way to not damage or corrupt the data that is on there."

Fernandez, a 24-year-old beloved All Star pitcher, died Sept. 25 when his boat Kaught Looking crashed on the rocks of the north jetty at Government Cut, just south of Miami Beach.

Also killed were Eduardo Rivero, 25, a salesman with Carnival Cruise Lines, and Emilio Macias, 27, whose LinkedIn page says he was a registered representative with Wells Fargo Advisors.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is the primary investigative agency for boating accidents in Florida waters. It has said that Fernandez was the owner of the 32-foot SeaVee center console boat, but it has not been determined who was piloting it.

A Coast Guard patrol found the wreckage before dawn that Sunday. The pleasure craft lay upside down, its twin engines in the water. The bow, with its light blue hull shredded on the left side, pointed toward the sky.

The vessel was towed that day to an FWC facility for storage and examination. Beyond that, the FWC has said little, and it has backtracked on many of its early statements.

A spokesman initially said that someone other than Fernandez owned the boat and that the agency had stopped the vessel in the past for safety violations. He also said there was no indication that alcohol or drugs was involved.

An FWC accident report later said that it was unknown whether alcohol was a factor, and officials said the results of toxicology tests on the three victims may take weeks or months. The agency also said there was no record of any of them being cited.

Meanwhile, the investigation continues -- at the crash scene and around town. Fernandez had docked his boat that night at American Social Bar & Kitchen on the Miami River. What happened after that is unclear.

Police and accident reconstruction authorities will rely heavily on autopsy findings, including evidence of where and how victims' bodies were injured, and blood and alcohol test results, said James Getz, a private investigating consultant of recreational boat collisions.

Investigators also will consider where blood stains and tissue appear on a vessel. The remains would be tested for DNA to help determine where crash victims were on a boat and who may have been driving.

"There is always physical evidence," said Getz, a retired captain with the Illinois Conservation Police. "You just have to know what to look for and how to interpret it. You're taking the physical evidence and working your way backwards."

A former instructor for the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators, Getz said he has taught hundreds of marine police officers about investigating maritime accidents, including officers in Florida.

Most boating accidents are caused by operator error, Getz said. "Is the operator familiar with the waterway? Are they going at a safe speed so they can see the object in front of them? Did lights from land make a breakwater not visible to them?"

Getz and Taylor would only speak about marine accident investigations in general terms and declined to discuss the Fernandez crash.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has asked the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assess the safety of the jetty where Fernandez's boat crashed. In a letter to those groups on Wednesday, he said the jetty has been described as being submerged during high tide and difficult to see at night.

Rubio also said he is a boater and has "experienced firsthand the challenges this jetty can present to others trying to navigate around it."

The Coast Guard said it conducted a Waterways Analysis and Management Survey in late 2015 with input from the public, local marinas and the commercial vessel community for how to improve the safety and navigation of the waterway.

It found the existing navigational aids -- red and green buoys that notify boaters what direction to take when traveling through the inlet -- were sufficient.

The Coast Guard said those buoy lights were inspected by the patrol crew that found the wreckage and by another crew that checked them again the day after the crash. They were operating properly and were in their correct positions.

The two jetties at Government Cut are maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and are not lighted. There are channel markers that boaters drive between, and the jetties bracket those markers.

No commercial vessels have crashed on the jetties in the past five years, the Coast Guard said.

In the same time period, the FWC said, there have been 20 incidents with recreational boaters and those on personal watercraft near the inlet, in the sea nearby and on the Intracoastal Waterway. Only two of the 20 involved jetty collisions.

Thirteen of those incidents -- ranging from falls from personal watercraft to fires to collisions or striking underwater objects -- were blamed on operator inattention, no proper lookout, excessive speed and improper anchoring.

Congested waters and machinery failure also were causes.

The two jetty crashes, in 2010 and 2012, were briefly described in records obtained by the Sun Sentinel.

A boat was traveling north along the shore on the ocean side of Fisher Island at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 30, 2010. It misjudged how far east the Government Cut jetties extended and struck the north jetty. No injuries were reported, and the primary cause was determined to be "no proper look-out."

In the second incident, a vessel was heading west at 5 a.m. Feb. 15, 2012, into the inlet and collided with the north side of the jetty and ran aground. Three people were aboard, and no one was hurt. "Operator inattention" was the primary cause, the FWC found.

The Coast Guard in Miami said Thursday that it is aware of Rubio's request for a new safety assessment, which was sent to its Washington headquarters. Any action will depend on the headquarters' response to the senator.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not reply to a request for comment.

[email protected], 954-356-4233 or Twitter @LindaTrischitta

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