Royalist Fall

[Mark-1]

I was out the weekend when a lad fell to his death on Royalist in Stokes Bay.

For some reason it just popped into my head to find out what happened and, sure enough, the MAIB have reported.

If anyone else was wondering what happened here it is:
http://www.maib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Royalist_Report.pdf

There but for the grace of god...

 

[prv]

I sailed on Stavros shortly afterwards; the MAIB investigation hadn't concluded yet, but they'd briefed our permanent crew on the incident and they passed it on to us.

Biggest single cause was probably Royalist's harnesses only having a single tether.

Pete

 

[penfold]

The biggest single cause was the deceased doing what he was instructed to not do.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

The biggest single cause was the deceased doing what he was instructed to not do.

Its not as simple as that and while that is the cause of the fall it is not the "biggest single cause", nor even the root cause. It is clear that rule breaking was condoned with regards to harness unclipping, it was also clear that young males will break rules if it suits them, there were better harness systems available and known about which had been tried.

All in all a set of small matters that aligned on the day to cause the death of this young man. Basically, in my opinion, the organisation failed to adopt robust enough controls for young people working aloft.

This sort of pattern of underlying causes is all too familiar in fatalities and the sad fact is that all the lessons and knowledge was already available to prevent this death.

Sh'it happens, he unclipped his harness, is not the reason why he died.