Another new year in St Barts gets off with a bang. Two anchored yachts collide and through a series of pictures taken from a single perspective, a number of would-be Sherlock Holmes are revived from the dead to demonstrate an uncanny, almost instinctive ability to deduce fault and point the finger of blame.
There are almost certain to be many more pictures and videos of these sorts of events which are, frankly, at times greatly entertaining especially to see from afar. It simply has to happen more and more as ever greater numbers of people are using smart phones equipped with video and more ‘apps’ than a Swiss Army, dual voltage, digital, multi tool sort of thing.
Without doubt, the numpties out there will appear, in most cases in absentia, before the court of free speech where their minimum sentence will be an open aired public spanking. Egos will be dented and mechanical failures will be invented. There may even be a “Yachting’s Dumbest ” TV series with a former ‘captain to the stars’ reading scripts linking puns of pure cheese and introducing video clips of yachting prangs to a room full of salad dodging morons who look like they were hired to entertain deaf children. Obviously, I’d be up for presenting such a show as that.
There is a serious point though and that is; just supposing for a moment that the power yacht with the unusual design and star of the 2010 St Bart’s ‘first anchored shunt’ competition, was dealing with an electrical problem that rendered the yacht systems useless and the tender was being launched to get the chief engineer; who had suffered a massive electrical shock, to hospital. And, that the captain had decided that he and his crew’s best efforts were to forget about a bit of scratching to a lightweight blow boat in favour of saving a life. In this case the typical speculation would not serve the common good. Especially if the part that failed causing the electrical fault was poorly designed for its application, new to the market and in danger of exposing others to the same risk. In this case, the communal ears would serve better than the mouth.
There is absolutely no question about the fact that the greater good is served by learning from the mistakes and misfortunes of others. But, open and frank discussion is very different from smug speculation which serves a subjective agenda. We cannot escape the fact that laughing at the misfortunes of others is a vital part of entertainment and where no-one is hurt who cares. But let’s not kid ourselves that it benefits anyone other than the kindred voyeur among us.
There is discussion within the industry about a forming a forum already used in other sectors of the Maritime industry; where officials get together to share their own honest accounts of their misadventures, mistakes and lessons gleaned from accidents. There are no notes allowed to be taken, no names allowed to be used and no publicity allowed to be exploited even by others that could gain from it. The idea is that such a forum would be an altruistic gesture aimed at sharing safety issues in a candid, frank and honest forum.
Could this work in yachting? Do we care? Is criticism so hard to swallow? Perhaps it’s alimentary, my dear Watson.