ISM Required Designated Person - Lacking Knowledge?

The is a very good summation of the ISM Code in Wikipedeia here. One of the requirements is "A Designated Person to serve as the link between the ships and shore staff"

At Bob Couttie's Maritime Accident Case Book Mr. Couttie has two closely related articles . The first is Piper Alpha 20 years on. (gcaptain coverage of Piper Alpha here.)
The article focuses on limitations of safety management systems. According to the article:

Occidental President, Glenn Shurtz, under cross examination during the Cullen Inquiry – “I had no reason to doubt that all was well. No one ever told me otherwise.”

The president should know if things out on the water are going well or not, obviously. One of the most important way to know is via the designated Person or DP, which is the subject of the second article. Command 2008 - The 14th International Command Seminar Series: According to the article:

In the eyes of many experts, Safety Management Systems have actually stagnated because many DP’s have not received relevant training in management systems and safety management in particular. Often, it seems, the DP is unaware that he or she is lacking knowledge, until deficiencies come to light following a major incident when an external consultant of lawyer puts the Company SMS under the microscope”

This former master at Inform ISM is harsher:

Often the individual DPA has received little or no training in the job, they are often the original architect of a SMS which is basically incapable of ever working efficiently and they are more interested in making sure that all the bits of paper have been produced rather than ensuring that the management of safety is being improved

According to the ISM code the Designated Persons job is:

To ensure the safe operation of each ship and to provide a link between the Company and those on board, every Company, as appropriate, should designate a person or persons ashore having direct access to the highest level of management.

The full ISM code - text is here. I would consider this required reading, its short and every master should be well acquainted with it. - This is the top tier of ISM.

Lowered Seamanship Standards or Higher Workloads?

Capt John G. Denham has an interesting post over at gcaptain. Capt Denham asserts that

most non-environmental induced failures are produced by poor ship management: collisions, allisions, groundings are mostly caused by the lack of a proper lookout, inadequate BRM, and or failure to observe the ordinary practice of seaman.

This is true of course, Denham also writes:

The ordinary practice of seaman implies a knowledge of proper seamanship and experience that is disappearing in our mariners

But has there been a decline the quantity and quality of seamanship in the merchant fleet over the last few years? I said so my self here just yesterday. Taking the role of devils advocate I can see it may not necessarily be true. Consider a situation in which three ships are jockeying for space in the vicinity of a pilot station. One of the three captains is inept. There remains however sufficient sea room for the other two ships to stay clear. Now take the same situation except ship traffic world-wide has increased and there are now six ships arriving. At the same ratio of good to bad seaman now two captains are inept. But now, with six ships in the same are there is much less sea room, less room for error. Each ship faces a much higher risk situation.

What is the situation aboard each ship?. A ship may have four good, experienced seaman on board, say the captain, chief mate, second mate and bos'n. To stay within STCW guidelines each can work two 18 hour days back to back. If a ship was going to arrive in port, stay for three days, and then depart on a 10 day sea voyage there will always be sufficient skill available to cope with most situations. On the other hand if a ship is going to call at 8 ports in 10 days in marginal conditions it will quickly burn up the skilled crew. There will inevitably be both fatigue issues and a shifting of the workload to less skilled crewmembers.

Is there a decline in skills or is the industry just asking for too much from the seaman it does have? Or both?

Ships, networks and safety at sea

UPDATED Below

An incident off New York in which the captain of the outbound ship tried to run me down in broad daylight at Ambrose light while I was waiting for the pilot to board was a moment of enlightenment. I have come to believe that the situation at sea is rapidly getting worse and things are not going to improve soon. While the amount of traffic has increased it seems that the level of expertise aboard ships is in decline. Here are some possible solutions:

1. Raise the level of training for ship's officers and crews.
2. Accept the increase in the number of ship mishaps and the attendant increased damage to the environment (not to mention deaths and injuries to mariners).
3. Turn ships into the equivalent of bumper cars, double hulls and the like.
4. Use improvements in electronics and communications to better link experts ashore with mariners aboard ship.

- As for the first, evidently it is too expensive to train officers and crew to the level that will reduce the risk of mishaps below what is acceptable to society.
- As to the second, in may take a decade or two, but at some point the public will realize that simply putting unlucky mariners in jail and throwing away the key does not reduce the number of mishaps.
- Bumper cars, this is the most popular solution so far, when those double hull tankers corrode and start breaking apart at sea the public will likely take a second look at this solution, they may demand triple hulls.
- As to #4, at the site gcaptain, Capt John Konrad, in one of his articles on the Basha Buker explains:

"Ships Captains have historically needed to be strong in their opinions and self reliant but times are changing. We now live in a small, connected world. The negative result are micro management by marine superintendents detached from the situation and real time monitoring by both regulatory and news organizations. The positive results? Most mariners would say there are few, but why?

In a world where experts and amateurs can work together to write encyclopedias and master mariners from Australia can visit gCaptain to discuss topics with mariners thousands of miles away (in real time!) I question that self-reliance is still the most important trait for a ship’s master. Instead captains need to embrace technology and work on their social skills. They need to use real time monitoring to understand conditions and communication technology to call field experts

The phone number of the man who’s the foremost expert on heavy weather anchoring needs to be posted on every bridge and then conferenced in with the local pilot and a meteorologist, each sharing information on same computer screen. Then the ship’s master should be able to log-on to a conference call with the nearby captains."

Capt Konrad is on the right track here. Mariners need to take an active role in increasing the sharing of information.

On the same topic I have a message for the master of the ship that almost ran me down at Ambrose - next time, give me a call, or if your not going to answer the radio, port to port!

UPDATE: The same day I posted this, Capt John Denham at gcaptain posted an interesting article with a similar theme:Where are the Inspectors? so to be contrary I had to play devil's advocate the next day and posted: Lower Seamanship Standards or Higher Workload?

The History of the Beaufort Wind Scale

The crew at Royal National Lifeboat Institution asks us to imagine two farmers, one in Europe and the second in Kansas, observing a spinning anemometer and trying to determine if the rate of 37 rpm indicatedthat a "well-conditioned man-of-war" would be running with "Royals, &c" or reefed down to "Double reefed topsails, jib, &c."

This article, on the origins of the Beaufort wind scale Who put the speeds into Admiral Beaufort's force Table? involves a storm during the Siege of Sevastopol in 1854, two, what they call gadgets, the anemometer and the telegraph, the beginnings of a weather network and our old friend Admiral Beaufort.

Life at Sea - Dredger Captain

- The Dredge "Gerardus Mercator" - Photo is by Capt Marc Van de Velde from The Art of Dredging
Question: What is a dredge?

Answer: "A bunch of idiots up front, lots of misery at the back, and a load of sand in the middle."

That's according to one Chief Engineer of the "jumbo" dredger Gerardus Mercator. here At the same place you can learn that dredging has three levels, junior, level two and jumbo - no love at this level.

Question: What constitutes a captain's job ?

Answer: "To run the ship in a safe and economical way."

That's according to the captain of the same vessel, Capt. Marc Van de Velde.

- Capt Marc Van de Velde from The Art of Dredging

Read the rest of the article at First-time-captain by dredger Captain Marc Van de Velde at his site The Art of Dredging

Report of the Grounding of the Pasha Bulker

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau's report on the grounding of the Pasha Bulker is here

The link provided is a summary, the full report in pdf form is also available at that site.

Pasha Bulker Grounding Report Released.

Bob Couttie has the story on the release of the report of the grounding of the Pasha Bulker and, big surprise, the master is to blame.There were 57 bulkers at anchor that day as the storm approached. Evidently the assumption on the part of shore side authorities is that each of these ships is commanded by a captain who is a well rested, experienced seaman, with superior judgment, unclouded by commercial pressure with absolutely no concerns, except the one that, in hindsight, is going to prove his and his ship's undoing.
The article points out that the anchorage was unsafe in bad weather condition.

Newcastle anchorage is suitable only in good weather and nautical publications contain warnings about the local weather conditions and recommend that masters put to sea before conditions become severe.

The master got just three hours of sleep the night before the incident, the question is what was he doing sleeping for three hours when he clearly should have been studying his nautical publications?

According to the report

"Newcastle Vessel Traffic Information Centres advisory role “was not properly understood by the masters of a number of the ships in the Newcastle anchorage on 7 June 2007″ says the ATSB."

Also this...

"Newcastle Vessel Traffic Information Centre asked the masters of three ships, including Pasha Bulker, to leave the restricted area off the ports entrance. Given that all three ships were struggling to clear the coast and that there was no need to keep the area clear because there was no traffic into or out of the port, these communications were of no benefit and unnecessary, and may also have adversely influenced the decisions of masters, including Pasha Bulker’s."

So, the captain of a 225 meter, 77,000 DWT bulker is clawing his way off the lee shore in 40 kt winds and 10 meter seas. At this point the Traffic Information Center calls and informs him that his ship has entered a restricted area. In hindsight, what the master should have done is to check his inbox to see is there a memo or circular informing him that regulations concerning the use of crude, obscene and vulgar language on the VHF will be waived in these circumstances. Because he should have told them to go fly a kite, but put in a more 'colorful" manner.

Electronic charts may prevent groundings

How could you not love a site called "The Art of Dredging"?

From that site, this is worth a read: Electronic charts may prevent one in three groundings.

"If Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS) are made mandatory on board ships, the number of groundings is likely to be reduced by a third according to a study carried out by Det Norske Veritas, a Scandinavian classification society."

I found site The Art of Dredging from the "recent remarks" at Bob Couttie's Marine Accident Casebook.

Good Seamanship Summed Up in One Word

- Photo is by Will Van Dorp aka tugster
What is the difference between a good seaman or ship's officer and a merely competent one? No doubt a good writer could sum up in a sentence or two. The 1961 edition of the Navy's Watch Officer's Guide does it with a single word - forehandedness. According to the Guide, while a good officer is technically competent, vigilant and has good judgment the superior officer has the faculty of forehandedness.

According to Merriam Webster forehanded means mindful of the future, prudent.

When I think about it all well run vessels have this in common, the crew is trained, procedures are in place, tools and materials are on hand before they are needed - forehandeness. Nice word, I'm taking it with me on my next trip.

Navigation Software

Anyone doing research on Navigation Software, the place to start is Tim Flanagan's post the aptly named "The Best Navigation Software" on his excellent site NAVGEAR. His post summarizes and points the way to a extensive review over at MadMariner.

I've been researching navigation software myself. What I am looking for is a program running on a laptop which is plugged into a AIS pilot plug. At minimum I would like to be able to display the AIS data on the laptop's bigger screen. Beyond that, a display of the track-line and the cross track error would be helpful as would the ability to easily enter in data such as traffic separation limits and the like.

I have been using Waypoint for Windows for many years now, I consider it the American Express of software, I won't leave home without it. Aboard ship it is one of the main elements in the voyage plan. The principle advantages of Waypoint is, it passes the KISS test, it has a low learning curve and is designed for professional mariners.

One of the disadvantages of Waypoint for Windows is it is more or less a spreadsheet which calculates distances, bearing and ETAs but has no charting functions. We use paper charts so that by itself is not a big problem but I have found that it is easy make an error while keying in waypoints and it is somewhat difficult and time consuming to check for errors. If there is a clerical error in the waypoint file I often only discover it when I enter way points (again!) into to the proprietary weather routing program which has a simple, non-navigational type chart display.

Most of the software I've seen is directed at boaters or cruisers, anyone have any deep-sea, professional experience with navigation software?

Guidelines For Avoiding Hurricanes At Sea

Regarding Hurricanes at sea, Bowditch warns: “Even the largest and most seaworthy vessels become virtually unmanageable,and may sustain heavy damage. Less sturdy vessels do not survive.” Adm. Nimitz commented: “The time for taking all measures for a ship’s safety is while still able to do so.”



The U.S. National Weather Service has guidelines for avoiding hurricanes in the North Atlantic Basin, the web page is here. From that site:

Hurricanes have been the cause of many maritime disasters and unfortunately, there is no single rule of thumb that can be used by mariners to ensure safe separation from a hurricane at sea. Instead, constant monitoring of hurricane potential & continual risk analysis when used with some fundamental guidelines become the basic tools to minimize a hurricane's impact to vessels at sea or in port. Today, even as our understanding of hurricanes increases, there is still much error inherent in forecasting the movement & intensity of these systems. Through the use of a recurring risk analysis, mariners can minimize potential impacts of a hurricane encounter.

The core of the guidelines is the 34 kt rule and the 1-2-3 Rule. From the NWS:

"The 34-knot wind radius rule states that ships should stay outside the area of a hurricane where winds of 34 knots or greater are analyzed or predicted."

According to the NWS:

"The 1-2-3 Rule is the single most important aid in accounting for hurricane forecast track errors (FTE). Understanding and use of this technique should be mandatory for any vessel operating near a hurricane."

The 1-2-3 Rule uses:
1. the 24 hr forecast + radius of 34 kts winds + 100 mile error radius
2. the 48 hr forecast + radius of 34 kts winds + 200 mile error radius
3. the 72 hr forecast + radius of 34 kts winds + 300 mile error radius

The result is the diagram above- also here (pdf)

NWS warns:

The 1-2-3 rule establishes a minimum recommended distance to maintain from a hurricane in the Atlantic. Larger buffer zones should be established in situations with higher forecast uncertainty, limited crew experience, decreased vessel handling, or other factors set by the vessel master. The rule does not account for sudden & rapid intensification of hurricanes that could result in an outward expansion of the 34 KT wind field. Also, the rule does not account for the typical expansion of the wind field as a system transitions from hurricane to extratropical gale/storm.

There is more detail in this publication on pages 45-50: Mariner’s Guide For Hurricane Awareness In The North Atlantic Basin (its a 60+ page pdf file)

The original Mariners Weather Log Aug 1999 article "Hurricane Avoidance Using the “34-Knot Wind Radius” and “1-2-3” Rules by Michael Carr,George Burkley and Lee Chesneau is here.

In avoiding heavy weather, the rule is safety first of course but, being mindful of commercial pressure, avoidance actions that are both effective and efficient is optimum. Achieving this requires methods that are appropriate and systematic.

Beaufort Wind Scale - On Stamps

Beaufort Force 8 - Photo is from Bowditch on line (ch35 pdf).

Above is the standard illustration from Bowditch on-line showing the effects of 34-40 kt winds upon the sea - But you have to see the following - all on stamps.

The Wind Force Scale

State of the Sea

Stormy Seas

Check them out, worth a look. - Home is Ships on Stamps.