I sail a 1962 Block Island 40[1] with a retractable bronze centerboard. Granted, it's no mega yacht, but it has an aluminum mast that is at the thinnest 3/16" because at the time people didn't understand the material and were afraid of it. The main boom is a solid wood tree trunk that takes 3 of us to rig every year. Its solid fiberglass hull is 2" thick at the keel, tapering to about 1" at the toe rail, with solid fiberglass decks tapering from about 1" at the rail to about 3/8" where they meet the cabin top. In other words, this is a heavy, overbuilt, brick shithouse of a boat. But it's designed well and has enough ballast to be safe with the board retracted.

The fact that the keel was up is no excuse at all.

Adjacently, one glaring omission from the Times' coverage was reports of those gigantic cabin windows shattering. I wish they'd addressed that. I didn't know about the unseaworthy vents, but just looking at the pictures it seemed obvious that if you put that boat on its ear in any kind of weather you'd break those windows and sink.

I've had my boat with the rail 2' under water in 6'+ choppy Buzzards Bay conditions gusting over 30kt and it was a hoot. When I imagine a floating hotel like the craft in the article in a similar situation, that's probably a fatality. I wouldn't be able to sleep onboard a boat like that.

EDIT: There are also numerous examples in the historical record of whaling ships, clipper ships, war ships, merchant ships, and the like getting knocked down in storms and besides maybe crew being washed overboard and busted rigging getting through it relatively unscathed. It's absolutely inexcusable and shameful in the year 2024 for this to happen.

[1] https://www.practical-sailor.com/sailboat-reviews/block-isla...