I’m not a particularly seafaring person. I grew up inland, hundreds of miles away from the ocean. The sea is not in my blood, but even I know that there are extremely necessary written and unwritten rules to sea travel. One of the biggest rules is: when a nearby vessel sends a distress call, you better direct your boat to help. The Coast Guard can’t always get there in time, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of recent examples where civilian or commercial boats answered a distress call and provided aid to people on another vessel. Well, last week, a small skiff sent out a distress call off the Alaskan coast. A small cruise ship got to the skiff and provided help. But there was a catch: Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht was much closer to the skiff, and Zuckerberg’s yacht did absolutely nothing.

A small cruise ship operating in Southeast Alaska made an unexpected detour on Monday night to help a 21-foot skiff that ran out of fuel between Petersburg and Juneau. Michael Love, a software developer from New York City, was a passenger aboard the cruise ship and described the event on social media.

What got his attention the most wasn’t the rescue itself — it was when the captain announced that the yacht of billionaire Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg was closer and hadn’t answered the radio call for help.

“There was near unanimous booing when the captain announced this,” he said in a post on the social media network Bluesky. Vessel tracking services in the area back up that account — they show the $300 million, 387-foot yacht Launchpad slowing to a halt outside Farragut Bay as the UnCruise Adventures ship Wilderness Legacy steams around and past the Launchpad, stops at the apparent site of the skiff, then tows it into sheltered Farragut Bay. Through a Bluesky message, Love said it was nice to be on a boat that was engaging with its surroundings in a positive way.

“Frankly, if I was Mark Zuckerberg I would be absolutely ecstatic at a chance to do something helpful for someone in need and maybe get some good PR out of it,” he said.

Social media accounts responding to Love’s account accused the yacht’s crew of violating international agreements that mandate aid from the nearest ship to one in distress. According to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Marine Exchange of Alaska, which monitors ship traffic in Alaska, there was no distress call — just a general request for assistance.

Coast Guard Public Affairs Specialist Shannon Shepard said by email that the Coast Guard heard the call for help just after 9:30 p.m. Monday night. “At approximately 9:56 p.m., the Coast Guard determined they were not in distress and issued a marine assistance request broadcast on their behalf,” she said. John Hollingsworth is the chief operations officer of the Marine Exchange, which is based in Juneau and repeated the broadcast.

“We did assist the Coast Guard with callouts on our radio and (were) able to hail the Wilderness Legacy who ended up rendering assistance,” he said. “From my experience, I know that situations like this contain myriad details for the vessels involved, so the AIS (tracking) snippet you obtained only reveals one of those details,” he said by email. “I do know that Wilderness Legacy is an UnCruise vessel and is very familiar with Alaska waters, so that may have contributed to them rendering assistance quickly.”

No information was available Friday about who may have been aboard the Launchpad on Monday evening. The Launchpad has been in Southeast Alaska for much of the summer.

[From Alaska Beacon]

“Vessel tracking services in the area back up that account — they show the $300 million, 387-foot yacht Launchpad slowing to a halt outside Farragut Bay as the UnCruise Adventures ship Wilderness Legacy steams around and past the Launchpad.” WTF?? Not only did Zuckerberg’s Launchpad not help the vessel, they came to a stop and watched as a cruise ship passed them to provide assistance to the distressed skiff? And yes, I see the part about the skiff not sending out a distress signal but rather a request for assistance. I don’t care – the Launchpad still should have come to the skiff’s aid. These billionaires and their big, dumb toys – imagine sitting on your $300 million yacht and refusing to provide aid to another vessel.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.