A tragic situation on board the Atlantia boat in Hvar saw an Italian family poisoned by carbon monoxide, with 57-year-old Eugenio Vinci passing away on board the boat and the boat's owner and captain arrested, facing eight years behind bars. 

As Slobodna Dalmacija/Ivica Markovic writes on the 17th of August, 2019, the Intensive Care Unit for Children at KBC Split has been taking care of the treatment and recovery of a five-year-old Italian boy and his nine-year-old sister, who were both poisoned with carbon monoxide on board the Atlantia boat on Hvar a few days ago.

As has been learned unofficially, but from very reliable sources, the nine-year-old girl, although still sedated, has been showing some encouraging neurological reflexes when tested, which allows a cautious level of optimism that there may be no major neurological deficit when the girl is awakened from her artificially induced coma. That, however, won't be known until she is woken up.

Of course, as can unfortunately often the case with medicine, two plus two may not necessarily always equal four, therefore when it comes to her neurological condition, no one can say with 100 percent certainty how well she will be when she wakes up. But the first information about her neurological reflexes is more than satisfactory for now. She appears to be doing better than her younger brother, who is also in a coma.

As for her five-year-old brother, according to unofficial information, he shows weaker neurological reflexes, which could tragically be be due to major changes which have taken place in his brain, but also due to the very deep sedation he is being kept under currently.

Owing to the above, and the fact that the young boy's reflex tests have delivered less satisfactory results than those of his older sister, there is growing fear of a possible neurological deficit being obvious from the moment when he is brought back out of his coma and regains his consciousness.

We will continue to provide updates to this utterly horrendous situation which occurred on Hvar as and when we know more.

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August 16, 2019 - As more details emerge about the fatal monoxide poisoning on a Croatian charter boat, more questions need to be asked about industry regulation. 

It started out as a story about an alleged bad plate of mussels which led to the death of one Italian tourist and poisoned five others, two of whom (children) remain in intensive care.

The official investigation on the cause of death and illness quickly shifted the focus away from the restaurant and onto MY Atlantia, the charter boat the Italian group had chartered for almost 12,000 euro for a week of sailing around Dalmatia. It appears that the cause of death and illness was carbon monoxide poisoning due to an improperly installed generator on August 8, from which deadly fumes leaked into the boat's cabins. The owner, a 23-year-old from Omis and the Atlantia's 27-year-old captain, have been arrested. 

Omis is in shock at the tragedy, and various people I spoke to talked of a very ordinary, hard-working family, whose only son bought Atlantia at the beginning of the year for this, his first season. And while it is natural that the focus will be on the events leading up to this tragedy, questions are already being raised not only about how such a thing could happen, but how likely it is that other such tragedies could occur. The Atlantia tragedy has focused attention on this issue, but various industry insiders have contacted me to say how they are sadly not surprised that something like this has happened, as regulation and controls are not what they perhaps should be. 

I wrote an article last night called Hvar Tragedy: TripAdvisor 2018 Complaint of Noxious Fumes in Atlantia Cabin.

I contacted the poster, asking for more information and received a reply this morning, which surprised me. And then concerned me even more. 

Hello Paul

Our situation was different but still the boat was in terrible shape. I am a boater and have a 65ft yacht so I do know something about the mechanical side of things.

During our trip the AC was not running, so the generator they had was off most of the time. I would think that if this happened at night the generator was running and the exhaust fumes were leaking in.

In our case the grey water holding tank was getting full and the water would actually back up into the aft cabin. This was terribly smelly but not a CO issue. The boat was in bad mechanical shape, just not maintained well. From my experience it would need a minimum of about 50,000USD in maintenance at the time just to patch things up.

The boat did have a bit of an old boat smell, also at some anchorages everyone was running the generators so even if your window was open it would stink like exhaust. I can understand that it could easily happen that you would dismiss the exhaust smell inside the cabin. I am just speculating here anyway.

The generator they had when we were there did not work correctly, so it must have been fixed. Whoever did this work probably dropped the ball with the venting of the exhaust.

Also, in retrospect I wonder why a CO sensor is not required on any commercial vessel. I know over here in Canada we are required to have them.

So it would appear that the noxious fumes of last year in the cabins came from a different source, but the answer got me thinking about the level of checks and controls. Croatian nautical tourism is growing rapidly, and my sailing friends tell me that more and more people with less and less experience are jumping on the bandwagon, with profit seemingly the most important factor. A snapshot of a view from an experienced sailor who has spent years working on the boats on the Croatian coast is just one excerpt from my increasingly busy inbox:

The larger story is poor regulations. Boat registries hardly do their job, you can normally pay and they check basics like the amount of fire extinguishers, not important systems like engines etc.

There are also new captains taking over these large yachts and gulets with ZERO experience. I've actually been saying since the beginning of the season that I am surprised there haven't been more serious incidents, what happened is the worst possible scenario.

Everything in the system has been made to make it as easy as possible for boats to get registered and people to get their Captain's license to fill the increase in nautical tourism. With zero experience and zero respect for basic seamanship.

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Our old friend, the Croatian tourism strategy. Numbers over quality experience. 

I am no sailor, my sailing knowledge is limited, and it is in nobody's interests to sensationalise the story, but surely it is in everyone's interests to do a thorough investigation into current practices, put safety not profit at the top of the agenda, and make sure that such incidents never happen again?

TCN will invest some effort to researching this topic further in the public interest. If you have a story, expert comment, or something constructive to add (no rants of unhappy customers, please), we would to hear from you on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject Sailing. Contributions will be anonymous if required

August 15, 2019 - With one death and two children still in intensive care from monoxide poisoning on the charter boat MY Atlantia, TripAdvisor speaks about noxious cabin fumes on the same boat in 2018. 

A very emotional day for the three Italian adult survivors of the tragic events on the charter boat MY Atlantia today, as they returned to the boat on Hvar to pick up their belongings after they were helicoptered to Split with what investigators have concluded was carbon monoxide poisoning from a leak on the boat into the cabins. There are photos in the Croatian media, but I personally feel they are a little intrusive, so no link from me. 

The 23-year-old owner and 27-year-old captain have been arrested. And while there are many questions being asked about how something like this could have happened (the faulty unit was apparently installed on August 8), this is not the first time that there have been complaints about noxious fumes in the cabins of MY Atlantia. A TripAdvisor post of 2018 had a very negative experience:

So, let’s talk about the boat. From what we found out the ownership changed a couple of years ago and as a boat owner the vessel has been totally neglected on the maintenance side. The grey water tanks backed up two times and filled the cabins with noxious fumes almost makes you throw up. The grey water tank needs to be flushed or changed as it is totally full of sludge. The toilet flushing was not working in two of the cabins; the impellers need to be changed.

It is VERY important to note that Atlantia was under different ownership last summer, and the current owner commented as such in the comments below this post, promising the following:

MY ATLANTIA has a new owner since 2019 and we're very sorry to that you have had such experience with Atlantia.

We have taken the following steps to provide our guests an amazing holidays;

MY ATLANTIA for the 2019 season has a new crew , very good refreshments on interior and exterior was made furthermore all technical details was improve.

Interestingly, the charter company refunded the clients $700 after they complained about their experience. 

While the focus is quite rightly on the current situation and how it could have happened, perhaps this tragedy will be the catalyst for more attention to be paid to ensuring something like this can't happen again. The fact that the same boat was giving noxious fumes to other sailors last year when the boat had different owners hardly fills one with confidence. 

Sailing in Croatia has been booming in recent years, as more people discover the beauty of summer on the Adriatic. The explosion of new businesses and more boats and crew has been rapid, perhaps without all the appropriate checks and balances along the way. 

A little like Croatia's tourism strategy in general, more attention to the strategy and details of the sailing industry would do wonders for reassuring safety and providing a better sailing experience.