Cowes Yacht / Ferry crash

[{151760}]

Our man reckons they will probably be be damaged, and apparently the nearest place to fix them is Germany. :ambivalence:

Red Falcon's still in service, so any damage must be minor.

 

[{151760}]

Re: Whitelink ran around

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.

There's a very big IF at the start of all my posts. I have no idea what they did or didn't do. But natural curiosity leads me to speculate on the possible causes of the incident, but I draw no conclusions.

 

[{151760}]

Re: Whitelink ran around

Uricanejack:
Excellent info, many thanks.

 

[VicS]

Red Falcon's still in service, so any damage must be minor.

Yes sailed to Soton the same day under own power , inspected overnight and returned to normal service the following morning.

 

[VicS]

Did not know you could not buy striped paint. Tartan paint is also very difficult to find.

Google is your friend

 

[oldharry]

Looking out the window in restricted visibility is still the primary means of keeping a good lookout. The focusing to much on the electronics and forgetting about the windows is often found to be part of the problem.
Properly used RADAR is very accurate.
Improper use can lead you up the garden path with false sense of security.

Reports I read suggested vis was down to 5 - 15m , so looking out of the windows would be unlikely to have helped. I would expect teh bridge team on these ferries to be pretty proficient at reading their radar accurately. But I do agree a good radar set in experienced hands is definitely more accurate than GPS for close quarters positioning in these conditions.

Several people suggest they should not have been operating in that level of vis, but what was it like further out, or in Southampton when they set off? I wasnt afloat, but was just 10 miles up the coast, and never saw a wisp of fog.

 

[Iain C]

Surely the right way to do things is to have a number of navigational devices and if you smell a rat for just a second on one of them, stop and check. It's incredibly easy to get the pieces of the puzzle to fit...including the rat...and put you in totally the wrong place.

Obviously it's all speculation at this point, however if the Captain pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and thought "erm...that's funny", and the mate checked his garmin handheld and thought "hmmmm...radar operator can you double check that please whilst I plot this lat/long on a paper chart" then Greylag might still be in one piece.

I'd love to know what their SOPs are, but even using yottie plotters and iPhones/iPads, I've never spotted any kind of GPS anomoly*. And it's accurate enough to usually show me exactly which finger berth I am on in a marina. I have no idea how they could have been so woefully off course.

*apart from the first turn to starboard turning inland in the Beaulieu river. Every device I've ever used there has me running the risk of hitting a cow...it's as if the land has moved but the baseline chart has not been updated.

 

[solent clown]

Yes sailed to Soton the same day under own power , inspected overnight and returned to normal service the following morning.

cool, at least that bit turned out ok

 

[Balbas]

Surely the right way to do things is to have a number of navigational devices and if you smell a rat for just a second on one of them, stop and check. It's incredibly easy to get the pieces of the puzzle to fit...including the rat...and put you in totally the wrong place.

Obviously it's all speculation at this point, however if the Captain pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and thought "erm...that's funny", and the mate checked his garmin handheld and thought "hmmmm...radar operator can you double check that please whilst I plot this lat/long on a paper chart" then Greylag might still be in one piece.

I'd love to know what their SOPs are, but even using yottie plotters and iPhones/iPads, I've never spotted any kind of GPS anomoly*. And it's accurate enough to usually show me exactly which finger berth I am on in a marina. I have no idea how they could have been so woefully off course.

*apart from the first turn to starboard turning inland in the Beaulieu river. Every device I've ever used there has me running the risk of hitting a cow...it's as if the land has moved but the baseline chart has not been updated.

I'm not suggesting for a minute that it happened in this case, but there have been reports of GPS data being spoofed by both the Russians and Chinese. Merchant ships in the black Sea have been affected as have the US Navy in the South China Sea area.

GPS data demonstrably *can* be manipulated and therefore it would be imprudent to rely on a yottie (or commercial!) chartplotter as the sole (or primary even) means of navigation.

 

[nicho]

A chap in our marina left the Medina a little later on in the day, and could not get a GPS fix until approaching Portsmouth.

 

[Mark-1]

I'm not suggesting for a minute that it happened in this case, but there have been reports of GPS data being spoofed by both the Russians and Chinese.

Agree that's not what happened in this case because the AIS track looks about right.

 

[VicS]

Agree that's not what happened in this case because the AIS track looks about right.

Curious thing about the AIS track ( Ive only just noticed this ) is that half way between where the vessel left the main channel and where in finally went aground is that it shows the speed as 6.3 knots at 278 ° ie westwards.

View attachment 73771

 

[sailorman]

Re: Whitelink ran around

Went aground about an hour and a half before HW. Wonder why it didn't float off. Did it go hard aground under power or has it lost power altogether?

I would be better towed off rather than risk damage its drive system

 

[lw395]

Agree that's not what happened in this case because the AIS track looks about right.

If the vessel was being steered to GPS, its GPS track would tend to look OK. The AIS track is a GPS track. Just maybe not the same GPS receiver as drives the plotter on the bridge....

 

[Mark-1]

Curious thing about the AIS track ( Ive only just noticed this ) is that half way between where the vessel left the main channel and where in finally went aground is that it shows the speed as 6.3 knots at 278 ° ie westwards.

View attachment 73771

Good point, my statement that the track "looked all right" seems flawed. The previous 2 fixes look a bit weird too.

 

[Mark-1]

The AIS track is a GPS track. Just maybe not the same GPS receiver as drives the plotter on the bridge....

Yup.

 

[prv]

Re: Whitelink ran around

I would be better towed off rather than risk damage its drive system

I think it was thrusting off as well as being towed - from the on-board camera I could see clouds of mud in the water, boiling out from under the stern (assuming we designate the end with the tug attached as the bow )

There's a picture of it sat in drydock during an earlier refit, without much blocking underneath, so I think the thrusters are mounted in shallower end parts of the hull and don't protrude much if at all below the deepest part amidships.

Pete

 

[Old Harry]

Re: Whitelink ran around

I think it was thrusting off as well as being towed - from the on-board camera I could see clouds of mud in the water, boiling out from under the stern (assuming we designate the end with the tug attached as the bow )

There's a picture of it sat in drydock during an earlier refit, without much blocking underneath, so I think the thrusters are mounted in shallower end parts of the hull and don't protrude much if at all below the deepest part amidships.

Pete

I thought it has VSP propulsion, it surely wouldnt also have thrusters as well

 

[prv]

Re: Whitelink ran around

I thought it has VSP propulsion, it surely wouldnt also have thrusters as well

I was being sloppy - the Voith Schneiders provide thrust, so I called them thrusters

To be clear, I didn't mean conventional bow or stern thrusters.

Pete

 

[LittleSister]

Did not know you could not buy striped paint.

It's available if you know where to look, but usually only in horizontal stripes.