Mexican Navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge leaving two people dead

RIP to everyone who died. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but when you're standing on the mast, how can you not tell that you're about to collide with the bridge?

You can. You just can’t get down in time.

Why not just jump into the water?

The boat being wider than the mast, you have a near 100% probability of just hitting the deck even when propelling yourself.

Life is not a Super Hero action movie.

You can jump away from the boat and land in water. And you can moved along the yards to get closer to the water.

But the tallest mast is 158 feet and that’s a big jump.

Source: was on a tall ship for a week, and done some cliff jumping

I think the top yards are not much, if any, wider than the deck, are they? Depending how quickly this happens, you may not have enough time to get across the yard and prepare for a 50m jump into water

You see it’s going to happen and move towards the edge of the yards.

You then get a bit of horizontal momentum and jump away from the centre of the ship, giving you a few seconds to fall away and hopefully hit the water.

How many people are jumping?

If only 2 died then you'd need a pretty high survival rate from jumping for it to be advantageous over sitting still.