Safety and Rescue Advice From SAR

[barnakiel]

I found this well worth reading:

http://www.worldcruising.com/feature...ID=235267&src=

Cheers,
b.

[Sssssailor]

Good find. I'm prior CG and I didn't know some of that. Lots of useful tid bits. Using a checklist is a great way to be safe and prepared on the water. However, I will admit I'm not as obsessive/compulsive as I used to be.


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[DeepFrz]

I like the way that guy talks and you know its from experience. His talk about maintenance checklists is spot on in my opinion. I never piloted an aircraft without doing an external inspection, checklist in hand, then had my cockpit checklist ready when I entered the aircraft. I also had an arrival checklist and a shutdown checklist. I wouldn't sail without checklists either.

Maintenance checklists are vital to maintaining a healthy seaworthy ship, IMHO.

[avb3]

Great article. Thanks for posting.

[Cheechako]

Great read. I have to disagree with: “You don’t have to call Mayday first - I’ve never heard a mariner of any variety say ‘Pan Pan’ over the radio. It was my job for 15 years to listen. I’ve never heard it. ‘
Though. I've heard Pan Pan dozens of times. Probably only heard Mayday a few times.

[Doug Brown]

A couple of really good bits of information, especially about the orange smoke flares for night time use.

During my days of Captain of a container ship, we use to do 1 or 2 out of the 12 listed disaster drills each month. Everything generally went pretty smoothly and I thought we were pretty much prepared for whatever came our way.

One day I decided to change things around and went out on deck amongest the containers and lit a small smokey fire in a 5-gallon metal pail (having a garden hose & dry chem nearby, just in case).

First surprise was that it took 20-minutes for anyone to find the fire. Second surprise was once found and reported to the bridge, the officer on watch said he was correcting charts and to get the Captain involved. Not what I was expecting to hear.....

Once I told the 2nd that I was trapped in the fire, and fire was all his to deal with, things began to change - mostly for the best.

My third surprise was once everyone did get suited up and hoses run out, the AB that was supposed to turn on the deck hydrant was late in getting to the scene - so a fully dressed fire fighter was standing there with an empty hose for 5-minutes with no water. Definitely what I did not expect to happen...

So the entire way I/we/the ship dealt with any fire event radically changed from the lock step pattern in the previous drills to a "think on your feet" approach where whomever discovered the fire notified the bridge and then laid out a hoseline and turned on the hydrant themselves and began to fight the fire from a safe distance until the AB's in turnouts & SCBA's arrived.

By doing this, we were able to get water on the "fire" in less than 2 minutes vs. 5 minutes the old way. Faster response, smaller fire.

I also removed myself from most future drills and let my junior officers handle the entire event, including positioning and slowing the ship to get the smoke over the side. Sometimes I would stay at the scene and change the events that were happening so the officer on watch and the crew at the scene had to react and handle the "change of events".

The entire crew enjoyed the drills more as they were far more lifelike and the officers learned what it was like to really be "in command".

It all paid off on a midnight when we had a major engine room event. From dead asleep, the crew was mustered, fully suited up and entered the engine room with a AFFF foam line and PK extinguisher in just under 5-minutes.

Another thing I did was to combine several drills into one, with my record being 12 different events combined into one drill. I never set a time limit on drills and the multi-event drills could take up to 2-hours to do. Again, real world.

So drill realistically on yachts. I had a 10-man crew on the container ship, a yacht will generally only have a 2 to 4 man crew, so you better know what you are going to do and have the equipment onboard to do it.

Safe sailing, and learn from your mistakes!

[Sssssailor]

Originally Posted by Doug Brown

Second surprise was once found and reported to the bridge, the officer on watch said he was correcting charts and to get the Captain involved. Not what I was expecting to hear.....

Sounds like some of the stars I have to work with.


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