Do You Bother With Navigation Warnings ?

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Woodentop

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There is an irritating bit on the Navtex that just wastes paper and is torn off and thrown away ; or if you are listening live, the boring bit after the weather; these things called Whiskey Zulus.

In mid Channel a rather clever Dutchman is using all kinds of remotely controlled stuff to cut holes in the cargo vessel Ice Prince and remove the heavy fuel oil. (It sank last year - took a while for the clever gear for deep oil removal to be designed and built)

The wreck is at about 50 metres (plus) , the heavy fuel oil has to be heated to 50 degrees centigrade to flow, there are about two thousand tons of the stuff and the British Government has said that it will be removed.

So the Vos Sympathy is on station doing the business. Any vessel which goes close will be entering a Total Exclusion Zone and thus committing a criminal offence. (Which is explained in the boring bit you never bother with).Today a Belgian yacht passed 10 metres off Vos Sympathy - and thus 990 metres inside the TEZ.

Last week it was a Channel Island registered boat which came too close and whose owner is about to gain a criminal record.

Did you known that you could get a criminal record (and hefty fine) from sailing across the Channel and being totally unaware of an Exclusion Zone ?
 
I think the only way to have a temporary exclusion zone is to enforce it (like the US carriers or firing ranges for example). Not everyone has Navtex, not everyone has a VHF so there is no reliable way to ensure everyone gets a nav warning. To fine someone when they may not legitimately know it is there is over the top.

The only exclusion zones that work and therefore could have fines attached should be the permanent ones that are charted like TSS lines.
 
We don't have a paper printing Navtex and need to scroll through miles of screen to see if we have even received the weather (most often didn't or it wasn't worth the search) and 90% of the warnings are repeated ad nauseam so yes they get ignored.

We do listen to the CG VHF forecast broadcasts if we don't have a better way to get weather information and yes we will listen after those occasionally to see if anything affects us where we are. If we hear a separate VHF broadcast announcing a warning for 'our' area then we will listen to the first one we hear that day at least. St Peter Port and Jersey Radio are very good at announcing these on Ch16 with an indication too of what it is about so you know if it is new or applicable to your trip.

I would have thought too that an operation such as that on Ice Princess would have guard boats in attendance and that they too would be putting out regular warnings - hopefully without resorting to a DSC Alarm every 20 minutes though!

Any chance you might tell us the position of the Ice Princess operation so we are forewarned, or is that a secret under the Terrorism Act? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Is it this one?

Coastal
WZ 475/09
131915 UTC APR 09

ENGLISH CHANNEL, CENTRAL PART.
Traffic Separation Scheme off Casquets, approaches to westbound lane.
1. Salvage operations in progress on charted wreck 50-09.9N 002-02.1W.
2. Temporary exclusion zone radius 1000 metres established at this position. Entry into this area is prohibited for all unauthorised vessels. Failure to comply with this direction is a criminal offence.
3. Cancel WZ 473.

I would expect a guard boat for an operation like that. How else are they catching the offenders?
 
I just plotted it and it would be a problem for boats headed to either Cherbourg or The Channel Islands from Weymouth. Poole or the Solent depending on the tide set on the day. I suspect that might be a contributory factor in boats getting too close, because the course plotted in a straight line might be well clear but the actual ground track with a strong cross tidal flow might pass very close.

We had similar problems with an oil rig many years ago in the Channel, this was pre Decca/GPs goodies and we thought we were well clear uptide of it under spinnaker but in the event had to drop that and head more upwind/tide to make it past, 4kts plus of cross tide isn't noticed until you have a fixed reference point!
 
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To fine someone when they may not legitimately know it is there is over the top.

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I guess that ignorance is no defence, and to not know is not legitimate. You are required to make a passage plan (SOLAS V) for every trip and if you don't, or your plan fails to make mention of such events as the Ice Princess problem you can expect to have the book thrown at you in court.
 
This would be another win for rules and uncommon sense. How often do people stick rigidly to passage plans? Weather changes, tides stronger than expected, someone taken ill, equipment problems. You can't plan for every eventuality.

To me the whole spirit of the sea is to apply common sense because nature rules first and foremost.
 
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I would expect a guard boat for an operation like that. How else are they catching the offenders?

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A number fit a clever electrical gaget that broadcast their speed position and course to assist their own prosecution.

Never let a good safety device get in the way of a good nick!
 
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How often do people stick rigidly to passage plans?

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You are not required to stick to your plan, just to have one. It can be updated as circumstances change. However, there are some things which are unlikely to change such as the presence of the oil recovery vessel sucking it from the wreck of the Ice Princess. This leads me to reinforce my argument that "not knowing" would be no defence in a court of law.
Please don't start a new argument as to whether we need passage plans or not, the fact remains that SOLAS V demands that we do whether you like it or not. If you don't like it you have the choice to run the risk of not having one, and maybe getting away with it, but you cannot complain if you are caught out one day as in the case of this post. The Navigation Warning is there and it should be included in your passage plan, if you have one.
 
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You are not required to stick to your plan, just to have one. It can be updated as circumstances change. However, there are some things which are unlikely to change such as the presence of the oil recovery vessel sucking it from the wreck of the Ice Princess. This leads me to reinforce my argument that "not knowing" would be no defence in a court of law.
Please don't start a new argument as to whether we need passage plans or not, the fact remains that SOLAS V demands that we do whether you like it or not. If you don't like it you have the choice to run the risk of not having one, and maybe getting away with it, but you cannot complain if you are caught out one day as in the case of this post. The Navigation Warning is there and it should be included in your passage plan, if you have one.


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Well I think it IS worth the debate! Leisure vessels are not required to have a written passage plan but only to have 'considered' all aspects of their 'trip' be that weather, tides, equipment on board etc.

That apart, on X-Channel trips we do prepare a printed passage plan, not to be smug but mostly because in our case we have software that calculates things like optimum departure times, tide times, CTS etc. This software (simple program, Neptune) has provision for pasting it's results, and even a chart showing expected groundtrack, into a Passage Plan template of which ours is modified to include crew list, passport details, Reg Number, forecasts and so on. The whole process takes just minutes, the reason why we use it. ALL this is irrelevant if we haven't heard any Nav warnings like that for Ice Princess beforehand. There is of course NO requirement to have a VHF or a Navtex on board even though like most we do, so how can it be an offence to not hear what we might have no means of hearing? In any case as this is in international waters who would be the prosecuter and under which country's law?

I'm not arguing against not having all relevant information but just being Devil's Advocate.

In my mind this operation cries out for escort/guard vessels such as were used when we had oil rigs drilling in the Channel in the past - and even then they were often 'under attack' from big ships. I heard a Texan voice on a guardship yell at one such attacking ship on Ch16 to "get your goddam arse out of there, it is the 3rd time this week youve' strayed inside the booies".
 
The only time I have encountered anything like this was an underwater cable repair operation off Folkestone five or six years ago. There they had marked the area with cardinals and they had a gaurd vessel in attendance. We heard about it via a WZ on the vhf too but there was nothing about "A criminal offence".
 
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Today a Belgian yacht passed 10 metres off Vos Sympathy - and thus 990 metres inside the TEZ.

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Are they being prosecuted? If so, by whom, under which law and which jurisdiction?

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Last week it was a Channel Island registered boat which came too close and whose owner is about to gain a criminal record.

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Can you confirm that they are definitely being prosecuted? And that they will definitely be found guilty? And just to clarify - is it the owner or the master?
 
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IMO you are on the button Robin and raise good points.
escort/guard vessels or at the very least, cardinal marks.

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But if you used an AIS receiver, you would see that the danger zone is marked by virtual cardinal marks....
 
Funny isn't it. I get a warning message every time I turn on my GPS which tells me not to rely completely on electronic navigation devices. I would have thought that with the amount of dosh floating around to recuperate the oil a little could be spent on more reliable - but faintly old fashioned ways of warning boats.
 
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