Keeping a Proper Lookout -- A Cautionary Tale

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

If you want to remove all risk in life, then I guess we could stay locked in the house. Well until that Tornado or earthquake hits. What bothers me is the knee jerk reaction to legislate after every accident as if all accidents can be prevented if we only mandated and passed the right laws. We all know that single handing is dangerous...so why not ban it? Why not make it illegal? Because there is there is this little thing called Freedom and assumed risk.

I doubt that anyone disagrees with you -- peace. And no one said a single word about single handing.

It's only natural to think through policies in the light of accidents. It's the specific purpose of the MAIB investigations and reports, by the way. "What did we learn"? Is a healthy and natural response to an accident.

Different is the overwhelming urge, after a disaster, to show activity at all costs, whether it is worthwhile or well thought out at all, or not, which affects politicians. Like the Patriot Act and the wars following 9/11, but I guess that's off topic, and maybe not worth going there . . .

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I....
Whether AIS would have helped Orca or not is doubtful. One of the main points here is that the accident happened in broad daylight and good viz, and everyone was relaxed. The dredger had a perfectly good radar return from Orca. But the OOW wasn't watching it.

In the place where this happened, I would have had all my guard zones and AIS alarms switched off, because in the approaches to a port like here, the alarms will drive you crazy. SOP for me in such a place is to go to a higher state of watchkeeping constantly looking out visually and watching the instruments. But SOP for me allows me to go below for a pee (not for 5 minutes, but still). I would like to think that I wouldn't do it while another vessel was 1.5 miles away, but if it were apparently following a channel, and I were outside the channel, apparently well clear? Hmm........

Use by either party of the Mk 1 eyeball would have prevented this....

Meanwhile ... the yacht was in the deep water big ship bit of the ocean.... in the approaches to Harwich/ Felixstowe there is a 'small ship' track south of the in, the out, and the deep draught channel.

[JPA Cate]

Actually, Dockhead,

I'm not at all sure that requiring AIS transponders will ultimately help. It will result in an overload of signals, which will then be filtered out. So, then, how do you configure things?

Tragic as this incident was, I do not think additional legislation is a good deal. This is because perhaps you can legislate part of safety, but you'll never be able to legislate ALL of safety.

I want to say thank you to you for posting the report. It was such sad reading, I almost could not bear it, but very good to read how the incident was considered. My heart goes out to the skipper of Orca: what a thing to have on your conscience, one of your brace of border collies, and your wife! Peace unto him. He did so much right. So sad.

Ann... once again disagreeing with the mighty Dockhead -- cheers, mate!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Use by either party of the Mk 1 eyeball would have prevented this....

Meanwhile ... the yacht was in the deep water big ship bit of the ocean.... in the approaches to Harwich/ Felixstowe there is a 'small ship' track south of the in, the out, and the deep draught channel.

Well, if you read the report, Orca could not be seen from the dredger with the Mk. 1 eyeball, because of gear blocking the view from the helm. The Mk 88 radar was not being looked at because of very good visibility. A big screwup on the bridge of the dredger to be sure.

It's not realistic to expect the Mk 1 eyeball to be in continuous use on board a short-handed (much less, single-handed) yacht. The map in the report shows the yacht in the main channel (going the wrong way), although the narrative report says differently. If the map is right, then it wasn't the best place for the skipper to go below, but can you say that you definitely would not have left the helm in such a place, with no traffic on the horizon in that lane? I'm afraid I cannot say that. Which means that I cannot say for sure that my procedures, which I had thought were pretty good, would have been adequate to prevent such an accident.

I am often in a similar position to the skipper of Orca -- either single handed in such places near the coast, or with non-sailor guests on board, which means I am virtually single handing. When I duck down for a pee (or to make a cuppa), however, my SOP is to ask even non-sailing guests to keep a sharp lookout while I'm gone, if I'm not offshore with alarms set.

[Sea Frog]

One of the things that I found amazing is that his auto-inflate jacket failed to operate properly, and that saved his life. "Had the skipper’s lifejacket inflated, it is very likely that he would not have been able to escape from the cabin through the hatch and swim to the surface. Consideration should be given to removing auto-inflate lifejackets before proceeding below decks."

This is something to seriously think about.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

Actually, Dockhead,

I'm not at all sure that requiring AIS transponders will ultimately help. It will result in an overload of signals, which will then be filtered out. So, then, how do you configure things?

Tragic as this incident was, I do not think additional legislation is a good deal. This is because perhaps you can legislate part of safety, but you'll never be able to legislate ALL of safety.

I want to say thank you to you for posting the report. It was such sad reading, I almost could not bear it, but very good to read how the incident was considered. My heart goes out to the skipper of Orca: what a thing to have on your conscience, one of your brace of border collies, and your wife! Peace unto him. He did so much right. So sad.

Ann... once again disagreeing with the mighty Dockhead -- cheers, mate!

LOL. You know me long enough to know that I like it when people disagree with me. Bwah ha ha Seriously, I would never learn if no one ever disagreed and proved me wrong. A good part of what I learned about the COLREGS I learned years ago and right here on CF, when our own Lodesman disagreed with me on a fine point of Rule 9. I was stupidly confident in my own position, but was forced to study the Rules deeply to come up with the answer to the question, which turned out to be as Lodesman had been arguing. In the process, I found out how little I actually knew about the Rules, and did something about that. Huge learning experience. Something like that happens to me almost every day on CF. if you know how to tap into it, CF is such a vast pool of knowledge, that you could call it the Sailing University


But you're not disagreeing with me. I did not advocate requiring AIS, just noted that I think it's inevitable. I totally agree with you about the futility of legislating safety, beyond certain bare minima.

You're certainly right about clutter, and what we all do anyway is switch off the alarms in congested places.

I would not advocate mandatory AIS, but I would love it if the electronics manufacturers would give us a way to vary the alarm criteria which did not require diving all the way down into the menus. It could be like our sea clutter settings on radar "Offshore" "Harbour" and "Manual", and you could easily toggle between them. Offshore, my definition of a "dangerous vessel" which triggers an alarm is CPA less than 1 mile and TCPA less than 0:30. You obviously can't leave alarms on with those settings in traffic areas. But if TCPA were 10 minutes and CPA where a couple of cables, you could. That might have prevented the Orca accident.

[poiu]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I think that a requirement that we broadcast AIS is inevitable. This will certainly help safety, but will also allow us to be tracked everywhere, all the time . . . That being said, I have a "transmit off" switch on my AIS which I've never used . . .


Whether AIS would have helped Orca or not is doubtful. One of the main points here is that the accident happened in broad daylight and good viz, and everyone was relaxed. The dredger had a perfectly good radar return from Orca. But the OOW wasn't watching it.

In the place where this happened, I would have had all my guard zones and AIS alarms switched off, because in the approaches to a port like here, the alarms will drive you crazy. SOP for me in such a place is to go to a higher state of watchkeeping constantly looking out visually and watching the instruments. But SOP for me allows me to go below for a pee (not for 5 minutes, but still). I would like to think that I wouldn't do it while another vessel was 1.5 miles away, but if it were apparently following a channel, and I were outside the channel, apparently well clear? Hmm.

This really shook me up. Maybe AIS alarms could be set with different parameters in ports, rather than switching them off. That can't be done easily on my system.

You can with a few mouse clicks change the CPA and TCPA values to something low, suitable for near a port on OpenCPN and in Maxsea.

I do agree though, this is a wake up call for me too. My procedures are not up to scratch.

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

If you want to remove all risk in life, then I guess we could stay locked in the house. Well until that Tornado or earthquake hits. What bothers me is the knee jerk reaction to legislate after every accident as if all accidents can be prevented if we only mandated and passed the right laws. We all know that single handing is dangerous...so why not ban it? Why not make it illegal? Because there is there is this little thing called Freedom and assumed risk.

I'm with you here all the way. It is a question of balance and proportion. I am not sold on compulsion for AIS (or radar), just that that there is a pretty good case for it, and the value of AIS/Radar should have been recognised in the MAIB report. Recognition of their value and a recommendation for their use would have been desirable in my view. Having good rules or laws are only part of the problem. The dredger had rules, but he wasn't obeying them. (as with Orca). So they were not much use there.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

When I duck down for a pee (or to make a cuppa), however, my SOP is to ask even non-sailing guests to keep a sharp lookout while I'm gone, if I'm not offshore with alarms set.

This! When other vessels are in sight, there should ALWAYS be SOMEONE keeping a lookout. If you're single handing, p*ss in the scuppers or wherever, but don't go below for any non-emergency.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, if you read the report, Orca could not be seen from the dredger with the Mk. 1 eyeball, because of gear blocking the view from the helm. .....

Well, yes, I did read the report... and yes... the OOW should have shifted his arse and had a look around... with his Mk 1 eyeball! Lots of ships have serious visual blind spots.

Have you ever worked 12hours on 12 off at sea? I have ( 6 on 6 off is worse ) and once spent about 12 months on a Boskalis ship as mate( edit.... on average 4 or 5 port entrys and departures every day)... try it one day... it will open your eyes up to the life aquatic... concentration lapses... stuff happens. Clear sunny day? Radar and AIS? OK, whatever....

Speaking about blind spots, I also spent some time on a 40k geared bulker which the year before was believed to have run down Patanela ... visibility from her bridge was crap ( 4 BF Cranes on the centre line) if you didn't walk around quite a bit...

[Jim Cate]

Dockhead, with your considerable knowledge of and collection of marine electronics, I'm surprised that you don't know about the Vesper AIS alarm setups. They do indeed have four different sets of criteria for alarms, Anchor, Harbour, Coastal and Offshore. One can set each scheme to whatever set appropriate to your vessel and crew and toggle between them quickly.tings

I find them easy to use and switch between them as required.

Jim

[El Pinguino]

Obviously the well found yacht going out for an afternoon sail should have an AIS alarm in the bog.....

The most interesting thing in this report ( for me ) involves the PFDs....

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Dockhead, with your considerable knowledge of and collection of marine electronics, I'm surprised that you don't know about the Vesper AIS alarm setups. They do indeed have four different sets of criteria for alarms, Anchor, Harbour, Coastal and Offshore. One can set each scheme to whatever set appropriate to your vessel and crew and toggle between them quickly.tings

I find them easy to use and switch between them as required.

Jim

That's really good!

I've not used the Vesper AIS devices, but the more I hear about them, the more I like them.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Obviously the well found yacht going out for an afternoon sail should have an AIS alarm in the bog.....

The most interesting thing in this report ( for me ) involves the PFDs....

I was not actually all that surprised by that.

Automatic vs manual jackets is one of those really tough calls. Manual jacket won't inflate if you get whacked going over and are not conscious to activate it. Auto jacket can kill you by getting you stuck in the cabin.

Also auto jacket gives you no choice in case you want to swim. The first time I ever went overboard, it was swimming like hell, and knowing instantly that I needed to, which saved my life. If I'd had my auto jacket on, I would be dead.

Nevertheless, I choose to have auto jackets, because of the getting whacked risk.

[El Pinguino]

Apart from the weather and location aspects ( sunny afternoon and close inshore v shitty night well offshore ) this reminds me of the loss of an american yacht offshore from N Cape New Zealand maybe 15 years ago... maybe more.

Watchkeeper went below to make a cuppa.. hit ship.... lost her husband and two children... Tragic.

Ship ( either her or a sistership shown in my photo taken from the bridge of my day job) steaming north in half a gale... .. I think they saw the yacht at about a mile or less

So, you are watchkeeping on that bridge ... windows covered in spray... cranes all over the show... yes... radar good... maybe...ais good ... maybe...

[Viking Sailor]

Just a couple of of updates that might be of interest -

Lack of proper lookout caused fatal yacht collision off Felixstowe - YBW

Had either officer on Shoreway’s bridge checked to ensure that the course was clear of traffic, either visually or by radar, before changing direction, Orca would have been clearly visible to them.

Man to appear in court over dredger collision that killed yachtswoman - YBW

Gerardus Johannes Chapel...(has) been charged with failing to discharge his duties properly, as such the manner of his acts and/or omissions caused or were likely to cause loss destruction, death or injury, contrary to section 58(4) of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995.

Dutch chief mate sentenced for fatal yacht collision - Practical Boat Owner

Mr Chapel was sentenced to nine months, reduced to six months which has been suspended for 18 months, after pleading guilty to conduct endangering ships, structures or individuals, section 58 Merchant Shipping act 1995.