The end of owner maintenance ...

Tomahawk said:
Where is the evidence of a oroblem that needs regulation?

One boat suffers a catastrophic failure and half a dozen innocent young people die.

Yet every day people are injured and killed in a multitude of other ways where the cause can be easily identified and addressed. In terms of numbers, serious pleasure boat accidents don’t even amount to a dry fart stacked against other water related fatalities. And of those yachting pleasure boat accidents that do happen, how many are attributable to non compliance with the content of these MGN's? In short, if the government wants to reduce water related accidents... they should be looking elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Well said.
 
FlyingGoose said:
This is good practice I dive and wash all my gear after a dive in Fresh Water to prevent corosion , your life jacket is no different if it gets a good soaking , I would always rinse my sailing gear in fresh water after a good soaking of the salty kind
But that is me , look after your gear your gear looks after you :o
Click to expand...

But each usage may not have resulted in your life jacket getting wet with saltwater.

Brian
 
Daydream believer said:
I do tire of the constant insult against office workers & the use of the " pen pusher" term

What is exactly wrong with people who work in offices using best practice to help devise this legislation & put it to the wider audience for consultation?

It does not take a lot of savvy to gather & analyse the data of findings gathered by the MCA, RNLI & others. If (for example) one finds that yachts& mobos get into trouble due to engine failure, it must be clear that something needs to be addressed. I am sure that someone, somewhere, has identified a problem. Possibly the problem is us & we care not to admit it.

If it is then found that much of the problem is due to failure by idiot owners not properly maintaining their equipment, then is not the answer to try & resolve the issue. Self regulation & efforts by the RYA & CA may have been tried & only found to be of limited success, if it is found to be insufficient, why is it that someone in an office cannot sit & devise some alternative to improve things?

& why should the community at large not strive for improvement?

Are you telling me that a bloke who does a bit of maintenance on his knackered old Westerly, or similar boat, would be better at wording this or even having a clue how to go about it?
In most cases I think not. He will just complain about additional regulation.( I am not yet convinced that it is regulation, as I said in a very early post) Something that he may not admit to needing, but it is possibly him that needs it most.
Does it need a fisherman or a tug boat skipper or some other marine professional. Why cannot a marine surveyor, architect, clerk, or similar not do the job whilst sitting in an office.It just needs someone to determine the processes, assess the risk & work out how best to do it. Then present it for consultation.

Like it or not we need the man in the office.
Click to expand...

Excellent post about time some perspective was made plain.
 
Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

Interesting thread.

From my not inconsiderable experience, it appears to me that owner ignorance and incompetence at sea is an equally big contributor to incidents and accidents, as breakdowns.

Logically, it would follow, if there is to be a tightening up on boat servicing, than there should be a commensurate tightening up on the competence of those who take boats to sea?

Unless suitably qualified, you can not fly an aircraft, nor drive a car so why is it possible to take a vessel (with a crew) to sea with no knowledge or training whatsoever?

Not that I am advocating this course of action but it would be a logical follow-on to this maintenance debate.
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

nortada said:
Interesting thread.

From my not inconsiderable experience, it appears to me that owner ignorance and incompetence at sea is an equally big contributor to incidents and accidents, as breakdowns.

Logically, it would follow, if there is to be a tightening up on boat servicing, than there should be a commensurate tightening up on the competence of those who take boats to sea?

Unless suitably qualified, you can not fly an aircraft, nor drive a car so why is it possible to take a vessel (with a crew) to sea with no knowledge or training whatsoever?

Not that I am advocating this course of action but it would be a logical follow-on to this maintenance debate.
Click to expand...

Just a passing point, where does it / or could it put boat hire, such as the Norfolk Broads, how much training experience would be required for a weeks holiday ?

Brian
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

nortada said:
Interesting thread.

From my not inconsiderable experience, it appears to me that owner ignorance and incompetence at sea is an equally big contributor to incidents and accidents, as breakdowns.

Logically, it would follow, if there is to be a tightening up on boat servicing, than there should be a commensurate tightening up on the competence of those who take boats to sea?

Unless suitably qualified, you can not fly an aircraft, nor drive a car so why is it possible to take a vessel (with a crew) to sea with no knowledge or training whatsoever?

Not that I am advocating this course of action but it would be a logical follow-on to this maintenance debate.
Click to expand...

Yes. That is where this is headed. And that is why we must put a stop to it. I’m not aware of anything that suggests that the British adoption of voluntary training schemes is any less effective than the Government regulation used in France, America, etc. Is anyone?
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

Call me Chicken Licken, but you just keep being logical and sensible, I can assure you the MCA if left to its own devices won't be. There will be some good sound improvements, but at the cost of embracing a lot of embuggerances. Yes from the fishing point of view we had a lot of slack to haul in, in terms of casualty rate....I wonder how it compares with the leisure sector when man hours at sea is taken into account.
A FV can be prevented from going to sea if the vessel, skipper and crew don't have the relevant paperwork, there are 12000 of us in the UK. These regs have definitely saved lives. How many leisure boaters are allowed out without any training or vessels without any certification? Your low casualty rate may be the only card you hold.
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

"Guidelines" are just the thin-end-of-the-wedge...
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

You will have spotted the snag with looking down the list of current MGNs, of course. Those that set out only to offer guidance were replaced by regulation, once the initial softening up had had its effect. (Please note the smiley):encouragement:
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

Minn said:
You will have spotted the snag with looking down the list of current MGNs, of course. Those that set out only to offer guidance were replaced by regulation, once the initial softening up had had its effect. (Please note the smiley):encouragement:
Click to expand...

For those of us who don't want to read through all the MGNs, are you able to provide some examples of those which started as guidance, were replaced by regulation and were not applicable for regulation (in your opinion). I am not arguing this isn't the case - but I am interested to see some specific previous examples of where guidance has been replaced by regulation by the MCA.
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

RobF said:
For those of us who don't want to read through all the MGNs, are you able to provide some examples of those which started as guidance, were replaced by regulation and were not applicable for regulation (in your opinion). I am not arguing this isn't the case - but I am interested to see some specific previous examples of where guidance has been replaced by regulation by the MCA.
Click to expand...

Not at half past eleven. I’ll take a shot tomorrow if there are no office dramas or visiting firemen.
 
Re: Maintenance - What About Competence At Sea?

Another thought..
Given that the majority of sea rescues are performed by the RNLI, where is any potential cost saving to the exchequer from this process?

It appears to be a simple taxation by regulation process.
 
Robert Wilson said:
It is all too easy for "the authorities" to legislate against the "soft options of this world" while appearing to little or nothing about some bigger, nastier situations. e.g. knife crime, plastic pollution, cyber attacks to name but three.
Click to expand...

I’m not sure that the MCA cover these...

And expanding the subject a bit further, has anyone thought about the number of CCTV cameras watching you ALL the time (which do go some way to dealing with knife crime)???
 
On the basis of conversations with friends in the MCA, whom I’m certainly not going to name, what seems to have happened here is that the failure of the prosecution in the Cheeki Rafiki case and the criticism of the MCA in that case caused huge embarrassment to the MCA and their new hyper active CEO, recruited from a housing association, fresh from Grenfell Tower, has directed that no stone be left un-turned to make sure that the MCA is never as embarrassed again.
 
Last edited:
In which case, the new CE needs the sack. There just isn't the evidence to support a whole raft of extra regulations

I found the RoSPA website and from there a sub group dedicated to water safety. They publish an annual report on water accidents by area and activity. https://www.nationalwatersafety.org.uk/waid/reports-and-data/
Looking in detail at the annual reports, the number of boating deaths (sail, PWC, mobo) is tiny compared to the overall numbers of water related fatalities.

Indeed we all know the most dangerous part of sailing is getting from the boat to shore on a tender! second to that, not falling in the marina.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top