Last week I was asking for any information that could lead to us identifying common issues that could have contributed to the ‘spate’ of groundings in the Med. The number of responses and views convince me it is worth staying on the topic and sharing some more thoughts on the issue. I have spent much time during the last week reading reports made by the MAIB and others, that I have found on the internet. In general it would appear that in many cases where human error of one sort or another is cited as a cause, it is the fundamentals of seamanship that are not observed. Sounds obvious I know, but the problem with many accident reports is that they focus on much of the minutae that may have been part of the series of mistakes that led to an accident.
Now, taking it a step further there would appear to be a few reasons why these fundamentals were ignored which could be loosely grouped as follows:
1 – Ignorance. This would seem to reinforce many of last weeks’ respondents opinion that lack of experience is a factor. If you are not aware that there exists a risk, then it would be natural to question why you are in such a decision making position.
2. – Complacency. This factor could be caused by over confidence or simply considering routine, the nature of navigation of yacht operations and not stopping to consider the ‘worst case scenario’.
3. – Bad Judgement. This factor that could be caused as a result of fatigue, stress, illness or indeed pressure. By pressure I mean pressure that we often feel to achieve the goals that are commonly set for us by our peers.
As I looked into various accident reports, I saw that even the most experienced masters can excersise bad judgement or complacency or a mixture of both. So it would seem that inexperience may not be the obvious cause of accidents that some have suggested.
There are always technical failures which could be considered as causes, but in many cases accidents were as a result of poor or no contingency planning or putting a vessel in the position where she was solely reliant on her equipment performing without failure. This could in turn be described as the essence of “good seamanship”.
Take for example the very sad case of a large square rigged sailing vesel that foundered off the coast of Cornwall nearly fifteen years ago. The vessel was wrecked when her main engines, which she had been using to reduce leeway as she passed through a channel on her way to rounding a headland and making her entry to port, failed. Three lives were lost and the very expereinced master was charged with the responsibility and fault.
A huge amount of research went into defending the master and there were undoubtedly a chain of technical events that led to the engines failing and the crew being unable to restart them in time to steam away from the danger. However, the fundamental issue of sailing too close to a lee shore was largely accepted to be the cause as the master was left with no options when the engine failed. In short poor seamanship.
Now there are certain vessels that could be argued to be more prone to certain risks by virtue of their inherent make up of crew compared to the job they perform. If we take vessels in the 100-120 range for example it could conceivably be difficult to operate the vessel to it’s guest’s full demands by day, what with watersports, fishing, dining, traveling and the like and then carry out a full anchor watch by night if the vessel was tasked to be on the hook. If you take a vessel with six crew including a captain, engineer and deckhand if they were keeping an anchor watch as well as undertaking their normal duties, that could be quite a workload and probably would cause a danger of fatigue after a few days even in good weather.
So if such a vessel did not observe anchor watches and I know several do not, what are the alternatives? Stay alongside, rely on electronics or perhaps just keep going and hope that guests change their mind about anchoring. It could be a very difficult position to find oneself in; trying to please the guests and keep the crew on the go day and night.
If the captain did not bring up the issue of fatigue and set the limits for the owner or guests, one could argue that this showed ignorance of the risks or inexperience. If on the other hand, the captain just did not bother with an anchor watch as he or she did not consider the risk significant one could suggest complacency. Of course if the captain made a bad choice of location to anchor or failed to use a sensible scope then judgement would be called into question.
Given that there are so many factors that can contribute to a mishap, it is worth reiterating that in many cases it would appear to be failure to observe some of the very basic rules of seamanship that causes problems. How long does it take to learn those skills? There can be no doubt that seamanship is like the learning the piano; you can do it all your life and never master it.