The end of owner maintenance ...

capnsensible said:
Iwould like to stress that the MGN’s are non-mandatory guidance that the owner of a pleasure vessel does not need to follow and they do not prevent an owner from carrying out maintenance on their own vessel.
Click to expand...

And indeed you have stressed that fact repeatedly and vociferously :D

But you continue to ignore the lesson of experience that guidance has a nasty habit of becoming either effectively or actually compulsory

To cite an example from my own personal experience, the HSE issued a guidance note "Electrical safety at places of entertainment Guidance Note GS50" which had no more or less force in law than an MGN

The very next fesitval I was involved in as Entertainements Technical Manager (the guy responsible for the stage, lighting and PA rigs) had a stipulation in the event insurance that the guidance in GS50 had to be followed. A failure to do so (not that I would because in fact GS50 was and remains a well written document with little to take issue with) would have invalidated the event liability cover

So the guidance became effecfively compulsory

So how long will it be before these MGNs, as they stand, are used against a boat owner?

I guarantee that at some date in the not so distant future we would see MAIB reports saying "the vessel foundered because the owner had not followed the advice in MGNx" or similar. And it's virtually certain that sooner or later an insurance claim will be contested for the same reason.

I actually don't have a problem with the MCA issuing guidance notes that cover pleasure vessels. It's the content of these guidance notes that I take issue with. They're badly written by, it seems to me, people with a lack of real world knowledge (for example, the notion that changing a furling headsail for a larger sail is a stability issue. Why "furling"? It makes no difference whether the sail is furling or not! And changing a 135% genoa for a 155% genoa on an average cruising yacht is hardly likely to lead to instant capsize!
 
Tomahawk said:
From which we need to prepare a response that shreds these badly written documents.
Click to expand...

On that front, a collective response will not be effective, it will count as just one response

Nor are boilerplate responses a good idea, people who deal with responses to consultations get very good at spotting "cut and paste" jobs and, trust me on this, they get bundled up together (either literally or figuratively) and also count for less

The most effective responses are individually thought out, well written, to the point and above all else as brief as possible

Mine is in draft at the moment but is currently rather longer than I'd like and needs an attack of the pruning shears!
 
Bru said:
On that front, a collective response will not be effective, it will count as just one response

Nor are boilerplate responses a good idea, people who deal with responses to consultations get very good at spotting "cut and paste" jobs and, trust me on this, they get bundled up together (either literally or figuratively) and also count for less

The most effective responses are individually thought out, well written, to the point and above all else as brief as possible

Mine is in draft at the moment but is currently rather longer than I'd like and needs an attack of the pruning shears!
Click to expand...

I suspect that it won't matter what you write. You will get the standard response letter, which I and others have received.
 
NormanS said:
I suspect that it won't matter what you write. You will get the standard response letter, which I and others have received.
Click to expand...

A standard response is generally all I would expect. However, some responders have had specific replies to specific points they have made and I shall be making some very specific points!

From long experience on both sides of the consultation fence through my former involvement with inland waterways politics, responses that make specific points are often filtered out for further attention by the people working on the detail especially if a significant number of responders are making basically the same point (without just copying and pasting)

There are no guarantees of course but if you're going to respond you might as well make the effort to respond as effectively as possible. It costs nothing but a bit of time and once in a while it really does make a difference
 
A bit of a drift:-
I URGE you all to get a copy of today's Daily Mail and look at the "Common Sense thrown Overboard" article on pages 38 & 39.
If this is the way the MCA operate then we are all "doomed".
Complete and utter nonsense in response to experienced and dedicated coastguards using their initiative, but not following the MCA rules.
Sadly , the article is far too long to include here.

PLEASE read it, and consider it when anyone is yet to respond to the MCA MGNs.
 
Chicken Licken for lunch anyone? :)

Im not going to keep reposting the response from the 'MCA' or as what really happens, some bloke in an office answering with the exact state of whats happening.

But its as extant as the MGN's that go back more than 30 years. They werent born yesterday.......although some people seem to think they were!

So, then, people are quite rightly responding, as asked, to a consultation and are going bonkers at some notion the sky is gonna fall in. Taking a first draaft and saying its all wrong and being given the chance to correct that.

Yet when you get the direct absolutely defining answer from the office that is tasked with writing the thing in the first place, the squealing goes on! Do you guys do that to absolutely every question you ask????

Im starting to feel like an onwatch supervisor at a Chernobyl reactor with the exception being that he was wrong.....:rolleyes:
 
Robert Wilson said:
A bit of a drift:-
I URGE you all to get a copy of today's Daily Mail and look at the "Common Sense thrown Overboard" article on pages 38 & 39.
If this is the way the MCA operate then we are all "doomed".
Complete and utter nonsense in response to experienced and dedicated coastguards using their initiative, but not following the MCA rules.
Sadly , the article is far too long to include here.

PLEASE read it, and consider it when anyone is yet to respond to the MCA MGNs.
Click to expand...

If you google it comes up on pressreader
 
capnsensible said:
Chicken Licken for lunch anyone? :)

Im not going to keep reposting the response from the 'MCA' or as what really happens, some bloke in an office answering with the exact state of whats happening.

But its as extant as the MGN's that go back more than 30 years. They werent born yesterday.......although some people seem to think they were!

So, then, people are quite rightly responding, as asked, to a consultation and are going bonkers at some notion the sky is gonna fall in. Taking a first draaft and saying its all wrong and being given the chance to correct that.

Yet when you get the direct absolutely defining answer from the office that is tasked with writing the thing in the first place, the squealing goes on! Do you guys do that to absolutely every question you ask????

Im starting to feel like an onwatch supervisor at a Chernobyl reactor with the exception being that he was wrong.....:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Hang on a minute. MGNs have indeed been around for a long time in the merchant shipping, fishing and small commercial craft sectors. You get an MGN and the MSN making it mandatory follows later.

There have never been MSNs, MGNs or even MINs applying to the private pleasure vessel sector under 13.7 metres Register length before now

My big Nic was owned by Her Majesty and her Certificate of Registration shows her length as 13.7 metres. Her actual length is 16.7 metres. Someone in the Forces had thought about keeping the MCA out.
 
Ok lets take an example, MGN 33 (M+F) that was issued I August 1997.

MGN 33 (M+F) Sewage systems on ships: associated hazards, installation and maintenance

Which parts of it, if any, have been put into an MSN to make it mandatory? As we all know, as its stands, it is simply guidance. :encouragement:

Nic 55's have to be coded for Service use although my weeks on them was prior to the Marchioness disaster on the Thames that effectively drove the introduction of the Small Commercial Vessel code of practice. Not a lot of people know that. Drift.

Think of all the money the Queen saved by a typo on the registration document! :)
 
fisherman said:
Choose your poison chaps: do nothing and hope for the best, or plan for the worst and do something.
Click to expand...

Exactly!

The "it's not a problem, it won't be a problem"
approach is all well and good right up to the point when it DOES become a problem

And from long, and occasionally bitter, experience of dealing with officialdom, I've lost count of the times when something that was "just guidance" became compulsory by one means or another in time

Now to be fair, most of the time the guidance was good and only a brain dead moron would have ignored it anyway but this guidance is most definitely NOT good and if, however unlikely some may think it to be, it became effectively enshrined in law by precedent or a condition of insurance it would be a massive problem

So whilst it isn't time to press the panic button, it most definitely IS time to nip it in the bud because once the MGNs have been issued getting them changed will be next to impossible
 
Bru said:
Exactly!

The "it's not a problem, it won't be a problem"
approach is all well and good right up to the point when it DOES become a problem

And from long, and occasionally bitter, experience of dealing with officialdom, I've lost count of the times when something that was "just guidance" became compulsory by one means or another in time

Now to be fair, most of the time the guidance was good and only a brain dead moron would have ignored it anyway but this guidance is most definitely NOT good and if, however unlikely some may think it to be, it became effectively enshrined in law by precedent or a condition of insurance it would be a massive problem

So whilst it isn't time to press the panic button, it most definitely IS time to nip it in the bud because once the MGNs have been issued getting them changed will be next to impossible
Click to expand...

+1
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top