Mirabella V Report

[JoeV]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

Hi John:

I was wondering when we would see you show up on this thread. As usual, an excellent analysis.

I would have hated to be a classmate of yours if you were cranking our assignments like this in your 5th form at school....blimey, no wonder you are the financial advisor to the stars!

Hinckley..oops...strangely enough I had not heard about that part of the story before.

If you're serious about the GP you had better call me asap. The nice thing about a berth is that you have almost unlimited tickets, so we could get 40 onboard easily. We could swing the boom out over the stinkpot (oops I mean lovely motor vessel, I forgot about your baby) next door, which would give us a nice place to watch from (crows nest is limited to 3 at a time). The problem is that berths go quickly, and may be gone by now. Only way to get one this late is to know an F1 team, since they get preferential treatment. Anyone out there well connected in F1? It would be fun, but somehow I don't see it happening! Still, nice to dream about!

Hope to see you soon.....Joe

 

[Danny_Labrador]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

[ QUOTE ]

Joe if we have a forum whip round for the £30k and no charter customer comes forward, can we come to the GP then?

[/ QUOTE ]

I might be up for this...... whats the sleeping arrangments ? 60 people is a lot even for this boat!

 

[halcyon]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

As a designer, I put a lot down to the designer, anchoring is a safety critical job.
You plan on worse case scenario, one of which must be anchored on lee shore, and anchor cable fails. What do you need:-
Alarm for boat off station, with gps these days not a problem, cover's no proper bridge watch, or alerts watch.
Rapid or panic correction of problem, preferably one touch, minimum commands
i) drop second anchor, can be auto, computor can check depth, monitor anchor chain out, snub anchor, then monitor gps.
ii) one touch rapid engine engine start at bridge, by-passes all normal start up proceedure.
Above will give one man rapid response to bad situation, and remove human factor to big degree.
There should be a skipper set-up cover above panic system, or the designer can expect one, that is proper watch, and engineer on stand-by to start engine / engines, and some crew on duty if bad weather. But the desgner cannot assume there will be one.
You can get deeper if you want, but above would be low cost, simple to do, and would never be needed again now.
The skipper is human, so cannot be relied on.


Brian

 

[Ships_Cat]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

So, is a skipper supposed to assume the anchors wont work?

On any vessel of that size not assume that ...the anchors won't work? but certainly assume that they may not work.

I am quite certain that well managed vessels of that size maintain an anchor watch and review weather forecasts. Any drag resulting in a grounding is usually serious and the risk cannot be treated as casually as in the small vessels most of us operate (say under 80 foot).

{Perhaps to discourage shallow dismissal of what I say, I should point out that until recently I ran an organisation that provided safety management services to over 2,000 vessels}.

And to Joe, I should make it clear that I am not promoting the prosecution of anyone - that is entirely the decision of the authorities - nor the sacking of anyone - that is the decision of owners. Decisions regarding both of those things are also dependant on matters to do with the crew's experience in comparison to others, reliability and co-operation after the event and those never appear in any accident report. Even the best make mistakes from time to time.

John

 

[jfm]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

Been in Antibes for the weekend, supporting the local French economy buying overpriced boat bits. I chartered our boat out to my real estate consulty partners at work for the MIPIM week, managed to get a berth in Canto, actually alongside, on Kingdom 5KRs berth, so plenty of space! MIPIM's a huge event now, 35000 visitors. Fortunately they told the stewardess to spend all the APA then failed to drink it all, so I'm stocked up on nice wine for the summer

The hinckley rope thing is easy to do. When people in jet boats drift over a rope they often instinctively select neutral, which of course doesn't work, you have to kill the engine. I think i learnt that the hard way, ahem. It's a horrid job unwinding the rope from the impeller.

I think you might still get a berth for the GP. Either official channels (as you know the capitainerie at Port of monaco are a nice lot and no doubt they'd try v hard to get M5 in) and Peter Insull's lot told me there was avaialbility last week. Alternatively I exchanged emails with someone on this who has appropriate connections with F1 team and offered to help. M5 is big though! So praps folk better say if they want to do this, in next 24hrs. I'll buy 5 spaces please! As M5 will be tied to the dock the 12 guests limit doesn't apply, right? Someone asked about sleeping - you can fly there and back in a day, so no need

On the report thing, yes the detailed write up of the chronology was ok but it was a bit lightweight in other places. I hate the expression "it is concluded that...", like they are reluctant to accept responsibility for a conclusion. Should write "We conclude...". And the Hinkley pictures were utterly irrelevant, weren't they? The Hinkley played no part in the whole thing, so why a photo and a line drawing? And the picture of a pile of dyneema rope, what did that add? I found the anchor analysis weak - there was a line of analysis leading to conclusion they were too small taking account of the frontal area of the rig (the maths for which was not expalined, re the overlap of the furled forsails and the mast), yet they didn't make a clear conclusion whether the anchors should be left alone or uprated. And the windage analysis should have had at least a rudimentary calc of the boundary layer effect on the rig, bearing in mind it is the tallest rig ever made (ie the windspeed will be higher at top of rig, due to lower wind being slowed by friction with the planet's surface, so a correction factor is needed). Etc etc. Really, it was a B minus kinda job, surely?

Also, your anchor chain looked a bit rusty! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[zefender]

Re: Tall mast - good view

I think Bernie E is your man for the crow's nest - his need is greater than ours

I like the idea of watching from up there in a bit of a swell - might even make F1 a teeny bit interesting!

 

[KevB]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

But didn't the anchor do exactly what it was supposed to do in that it popped from the extreme amount of pull from accute angles. The skipper if on the bridge would have noticed the boat swinging at least 90 deg (must have swung at least this much to bend the anchore at right angles to it's normal lying state) and should have laid the second anchor.

What I don't understand is how the bows of the boat were pushed so far round with the anchor and chain still deployed dragging along the bottom?
(see diagram below from report)

 

[stgeorge]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

I'm still confused after nearly 6 months of waiting for the official conclusions ! How can it be a design problem when a vessel this size is poorly ( not nearly enough cable) anchored too close to a lee shore in a classic South East wind and sea situation in this Bay ? For those who've followed this saga from the beginning, it's clear a combination of errors and a possible lack of crew training were responsible overall, however, I believe this Captain and some of the crew have undergone an extraordinarily steep learning curve over this grounding or any grounding for that matter (which the Designer's warned about in their presentation to the Royal Institution of Naval Architects in 2003) which effectively means that he is without any doubt, the most competant to continue as Master of this magnificent vessel ( hence all the interest perhaps ?) and I for one wish him well in his future career in professional yachting !!

 

[yachtbits]

Having read the report and many of the threads relating to this.

No one seems to have raised issue regarding the failure of the designers to calculate the rig windage.

If this had been done and appropriate ground tackle installed, this incident may not have happened at all.

Yes the Master did fail in his duties to an extent, but so did the designer.

Didn't go to Monaco Yacht Show specifically to see M-V, but would have liked it to have been there.

Kev
(we sell navtex rolls as well)

 

[tcm]

Re: nah

erm, I disgaree. The super-supportive owner is dead keen to ensure that everything is right with the boat hence a top design outfit with belt and braces gear so the machinery was all available and working - but wasn't used. For a start, 3.7 x depth of anchor chain overnight might be otherwise known as "winging it a bit" so it doesn't mater a tinkers toss what ground tackle they have if most of it stays nicely stacked in the locker. With a rising wind, "engine on" should have been earlier to ensure they won quick control regardlees of the anchorr when very very close to a lee shore at an unmarked non-anchorage with known shingle seabed. The whole point of a skipper at that level (or even, quite bit beneath that level) is to do the right things when it matters to save a boat or more. Skippers with primary argument that they acted within the regulations ... stay in bus lanes.

all imho, meant positively!

 

[Ships_Cat]

The designers were not required to calculate the rig windage as the vessel was built to classification rules which did not require it to be so beyond the extent to which it was. They in fact designed the vessel with anchoring in excess of the DNV rule requirements to which she was designed, it appears by using Lloyd's rules, which is a common approach if it is felt that in some aspect the rules being used are light (DNV tends to be lighter than Lloyds for scantlings and equipment). Light may not mean inadequate, it may just mean a shorter life for that aspect of the vessel or that its operation take that into account.

The report makes it clear that even if the rig had been taken into account the anchors still complied with DNV (to whose rules she is stated to have been built and also presumably who the design would have been appraised by), but not the chain (would have required 197m 32 mm chain instead of the 169 m of 24 mm fitted and which, from the events as set out in the report, would hardly seem to have contributed to this accident).

I think the direction of the report is that the classification societies should review their rule requirements for this type of vessel and all involved be alert to the effects of rig windage and anchored behaviour of them. Seems a reasonable and non fault finding outcome from the investigation to me. It should be noted that this does not mean that such vessels will always be built with heavier anchoring systems because it is possible to class vessels with systems less than the rule requirements if the operation of the vessel makes provision for that (I have done that for the case of vessels expected to anchor rarely).

Your (and others) comments seems to assume that anchoring a ship, and M5 is a ship, is just like anchoring a small vessel ie one can expect to lie at anchor under most conditions and the anchoring system will be so designed. A ship cannot lie at anchor under all circumstances because it is impractical to carry equipment heavy enough and their safe management has to take this into account. In the case of Mirabella it seems that its behaviour at anchor was well understood and that should have been taken into account in its watchkeeping and management (and may have indeed been so, I am not claiming that it was not).

I suspect that this "little boat" mind set also carries over to some super yachts as many of their crews have graduated from small vessels and have qualifications extrapolated from small vessel qualification, and consequently their management sometimes does not include for the strict formal watch standings and security that a merchant vessel crew would adopt (they even when berthed at a dock).

I also go along with TCM's comments to your post.

John

 

[yachtbits]

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to remove the fact that onboard management was shall we say less than perfect.

The point I felt should be raised is that even though class reg's do not require rig windage to be calculated, it does not mean that it does not exist!

Including windage into the designers calc's would not have resulted in ground tackle that did not comply, it would have just resulted in "over spec'd" equipment with regard to class regulations designed for ships without this kind of rig.

The question I would like considered is,

if M5 did not have a mast or had the "over spec'd" ground tackle, would the anchor have dragged at such a relatively low wind speed?

For reference, my background includes over 10 years at sea working on "ships" including some with 4 point mooring systems. Operations also included deployment of anchoring patterns for floating drilling rigs.

 

[yachtbits]

Re: Skipper and Designers - a combination

Err, my mates son is one of the technical directors, is that far enough up the ladder?

kev

 

[Ships_Cat]

if M5 did not have a mast or had the "over spec'd" ground tackle

It did have "over spec'd" ground tackle according to the report. It exceeded the requirements of class.

would the anchor have dragged at such a relatively low wind speed?

Who knows?

"over spec'd" equipment with regard to class regulations designed for ships without this kind of rig

The rule used does apply to "this kind of rig" as the vessel entered class under that rule and would have, we must assume, have also been design appraised by class to it. They are the class rules and class are the ones who say whether they apply or not. In this case they clearly by their actions say that they do apply to ships with that rig.

The only question is whether the rules of the classification societies provide a sufficient solution for this type of vessel - but the rules are not meant to be bullet proof regardless of how the vessel is operated or the conditions that it finds itself in. Unless you go for a fail proof physical design, which is impractical, the design solution has to be a balance of what the rules require, what the designer believes is required, and the operation and operational requirements of the vessel. You cannot determine any one of those without making decisions about the others and you cannot say that any one by itself is deficient.

For example, if a particular vessel type has a history of dragging with equipment complying with class, one can either place restrictions on its operations (eg only anchor under these conditions, take these precautions, etc) or one can voluntarily put heavier gear on it, or class may decide that some special physical design provision should be made for that type of vessel. Any or all of these may be applied dependant upon the severity of the problem. I don't think any of us can make any comment from the report on what should be done as the required information is, rightly, in the hands of the flag, class, the designer and owners. Owners on here have already said they have made operational changes. Maybe those will be regarded by all as being sufficient for this and future vessels, or maybe not.

John