If they can't see rocks and a lighthouse, what chance do we have?

Is it really a surprise? How many thousands of accidents have as their root cause tired, bored, and distracted watch keepers. After screwing up, they do something stupid to cover-up/make-good their error. Disaster beckons.

The mechanics of many, even most, big bank frauds such as Barings (Nick Leeson), Soc Gen, Daiwa, UBS, etc., are not that different.

It's just what happens when human nature curdles with poor procedures. And I think the MAIB very much gets that.

The realisation that all of us have such traits deep down somewhere is perhaps why we're all especially shocked when something like this happens!
 
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If he was bright he would take it off track mode to save fuel - tidal currents would add a lot of wastage at that low speed. But in this case it’s hardly likely he did that planning.
 
Around the time I started sailing, I read a MAIB report about a coaster heading East along the Channel. IIRC, the captain was Russian, first mate was Polish and there was a handful of Filipino seamen. First mate's on watch at night with a bottle of whisky to keep him company. Eventually he gets bored, so disconnects the bridge alarm, a gadget that goes off every few minutes and wakes the skipper if it isn't cancelled, and goes to his cabin to cuddle his bottle. The first anyone else knew about it was when, after missing a planned change of course, the boat steamed full ahead up Dungeness Point.

Ever since then I've always assumed, absent any evidence to the contrary, that any cargo vessel I meet is being driven with the same level of competence.
 
RupertW said:
If he was bright he would take it off track mode to save fuel - tidal currents would add a lot of wastage at that low speed.
Click to expand...

He's not paying for the fuel, so if he's bright he'll let it carry on following the planned and signed-off-on course rather than employing ad-hoc cunning wheezes of his own. While monitoring to ensure that the ship truly is following the plan, of course, instead of getting stuck into his YouTube playlist.

Like LadyInBed, I'm utterly baffled as to why he'd take it off ECDIS track mode onto a basic heading-hold. Boredom, laziness, and inattention aren't hard to explain, but this is. I wonder what this pilot did that meant he preferred it to the other one?

Pete
 
RupertW said:
If he was bright he would take it off track mode to save fuel - tidal currents would add a lot of wastage at that low speed. But in this case it’s hardly likely he did that planning.
Click to expand...


That’s only true if there is a change of tidal stream direction during the passage. There wasn’t. And there is no way that officer had the wherewithal to consider this and calculate a CTS. He just didn’t know what he was doing.
 
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