Cowes Yacht / Ferry crash

Re: Whitelink ran around

Just read that the owner of Greylag is asking for£200,000 to cover replacement, i would guess it was quite a new boat .
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

I'm going to Speculate the Red Falcon captain mistook the Shrape breakwater for the ferry terminal due to ferry travelling much slower than normal.
Possibly the shouting could have been the crew telling the moored boats to get out of the way
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

A new one is well over £200k inc. vat.
And that's without dinghy, outboard, liferaft, electronics etc etc etc
 
StormNorm said:
Dom and prv, thanks for the info. Let's hope the investigations don't take too long.
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Agreed, although an owner investigation into its own cock-up, which is only made partially public will need to be read with a good seasoning of salt!
 
dom said:
Agreed, although an owner investigation into its own cock-up, which is only made partially public will need to be read with a good seasoning of salt!
Click to expand...

Fortunately this time it's made the MAIB list, though of course we'll have to wait about 18 months to see the result.

Hopefully that report will also mention the earlier practice run (where they knocked some Dragons off their moorings instead of bisecting a Contessa, and clonked the channel marker pile instead of running aground) which seemingly didn't merit an investigation of its own.

Pete
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

Somebody gently needs to tell the owner that's not how insurance or compensation is supposed to work - otherwise we'd all be putting our old bangers in harm's way to get a brand new car.
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

Boat2016 said:
...the owner of Greylag is asking for £200,000 to cover replacement.
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I foresee lots of old yachts wandering into the path of docking Red Funnels, during fog. Steam gives way to sail, don't you know?

Sorry RupertW, you got there before me.
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

Topcat47 said:
Just read the Cowes Harbour NTM. I'm still wondering how the ferry got so far from the fairway.
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If they couldn't see any thing, and weren't using the electronics for whatever reason, the first thing they would have known about being off course would have been contact with the first moored boat. They were close enough to the East Cowes shore by then for their momentum to carry them on to the mud regardless of reversing engines etc.
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

StormNorm said:
If they couldn't see any thing, and weren't using the electronics for whatever reason, the first thing they would have known about being off course would have been contact with the first moored boat. They were close enough to the East Cowes shore by then for their momentum to carry them on to the mud regardless of reversing engines etc.
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Suprised they didn't know when looking at depth sounder, it was common practice to practice blind nav in that area, following a contour & knowing you were in the main channel when the depth increased, then came back up when you got across to the other side. They should have asked someone from UKSA to con the ferry. ;)
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

StormNorm said:
If they couldn't see any thing, and weren't using the electronics for whatever reason, the first thing they would have known about being off course would have been contact with the first moored boat. They were close enough to the East Cowes shore by then for their momentum to carry them on to the mud regardless of reversing engines etc.
Click to expand...

At the Marchoness trial the prosecution rested on not posting sufficient lookouts and avery possible means of navigation. Not using the electronic nav in fog is inexcusable.. Even my Raymarine C120 would give sufficient data with radar overlay to navigate in fog.
 
Re: Whitelink ran around

alant said:
Suprised they didn't know when looking at depth sounder, it was common practice to practice blind nav in that area, following a contour & knowing you were in the main channel when the depth increased, then came back up when you got across to the other side. They should have asked someone from UKSA to con the ferry. ;)
Click to expand...

Or simply using GPS chart plotter. Absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be possible to keep a ferry within a corridor of 2x beam at all times every trip, using GPS (before allowance for avoiding other traffic).
Clearly radar is essential backup for poor visibility, as is depth. But (with suitable operating procedures in case of very rare signal outage) modern GPS does mean knowing position very accurately - certainly not getting a long way off the fairway.
Easy enough to have an automatic alarm if more than 20m off a predefined regular track.

Let’s hope they were giving sound signals, and if visibility as poor as stated should have a crew member at the bows with radio commas to bridge. I wonder if they did?

PS In some parts of the world charts are not accurately baselined, and some car satnavs have secondary features with wrong (osgb) baseline, but these are not relevant to a ferry using a regular route in a highly charted area. And the navigation into Cowes is hardly challenging compared to many rocky ferry routes in Scotland, Sweden etc, even if other traffic is higher
 
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