would you call a pan pan in this situation

[Searush]

FWIW, I have had similar problems & used the dinghy to avoid going in the water. You can wear a mask & put your head & arms under water & manipulate tools (knives on a pole etc) yet avoid getting your body soaked & cold. This technique has allowed me to clear problems on the prop & rudder on a number of occasions. Being mostly dry, you get a lot longer working time with your brain still in gear!

Just a bit of usefull info to hold at the back of your brain untill needed.

 

[photodog]

The only time (Knock on wood) that I have wrapped anything around the prop has been in Trellis bay on the BVI's..... fortunatley the water temperature was 28'c... so I didnt feel the need to make a pan pan call.....

OTOH If we had run out of Mount Gay....

 

[searover2]

This is what i think. 1, disclosing anything heard on vhf is illegal. so shouldnt be discussed on hear.2,he or she is the skipper and any dissition made by him or her, at the time is law, to whoever makes the said dissition, right or wrongly. so for anyone especially those that never leave the marina, to talk about others dissitions are i think both arrogant and out of order .....cheers have a nice day..

 

[noelex]

I went to help a charter boat today. Their anchor dragged and their dingy rope caught around the prop. They were on the rocks by the time I got to them. The surprising thing was despite 60 boats in the anchorage Their was only me and a local Greek boat helping them. The local boat helped for over an hour and left without waiting even for a thanks. The Greeks are wonderful and helpful people.
We managed to cut the rope away and safely re-anchor.
If we helped each other a bit more maybe the world would be a better place. Immediate help from fellow yachtsmen can prevent a more serious boat or life threatening situation. By the time the coastguard would have arrived the boat would have been pushed up on the rocks by the 20K winds with probably some serious damage.

 

[ninky]

This is what i think. 1, disclosing anything heard on vhf is illegal. so shouldnt be discussed on hear.2,he or she is the skipper and any dissition made by him or her, at the time is law, to whoever makes the said dissition, right or wrongly. so for anyone especially those that never leave the marina, to talk about others dissitions are i think both arrogant and out of order .....cheers have a nice day..

i think you are being a bit oversensitive. no personal information has been divulged and even rya tutors will use examples of things they have heard over radio for educational and illustrative purposes.

everyone makes decisions all the time and you are not going to get them all right all the time. it's fair enough to discuss what decisions others would have made in the same situation - it's a varied response as it turns out.

 

[SAWDOC]

i think you are being a bit oversensitive. no personal information has been divulged and even rya tutors will use examples of things they have heard over radio for educational and illustrative purposes.

everyone makes decisions all the time and you are not going to get them all right all the time. it's fair enough to discuss what decisions others would have made in the same situation - it's a varied response as it turns out.

I agree. Ninky good thread & good debate

And no I would not Pan pan on anchor in the situation described.

 

[photodog]

so for anyone especially those that never leave the marina, to talk about others dissitions are i think both arrogant and out of order

Ha! If we all stayed in the marina then there would never be these problems would there??

All these reckless types.. sailing around and getting stuff around their propellor... Utter Foolishness... Who are the most arrogant... those who keep themselves safe.. or those who go running off and expect society to bale them out if their leisure activity should end in disaster???


No, I think it is quite right that those more cautious types who sit on the sideline should express there disaproval when some foolhardy adventerous muppet should be silly enough to put to sea and then have to be saved from his own stupidity! All at OUR cost I might add! Who do you think pays for the MCA????

 

[OGITD]

"so for anyone especially those that never leave the marina, to talk about others dissitions are i think both arrogant and out of order"

"Ha! If we all stayed in the marina then there would never be these problems would there??"

Well!....I have to say that over the last two seasons I have seen six examples of skippers getting mooring warps and pick-up lines wrapped around their props...and there must be more because I have not been paying that close attention....all in the confines of the harbour / marina.
What Searush suggested does work...but not always...another excellent piece of kit is a 6" ish diameter tube with a piece of perspex sealed on one end...this allowing visibility through and below the surface without getting your head wet...probably costing around £5 if you make one yourself.
Not had this problem yet...but! I also had never run aground until a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Definition of Pan-pan

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Pan-pan

Pan-pan (from the French: panne - a breakdown) indicates an urgent situation of a lower order than a "grave and imminent threat requiring immediate assistance", such as a mechanical breakdown or a medical problem. The suffix medico used to be added by vessels in UK waters to indicate a medical problem (Pan-Pan medico, repeated three times), or by aircraft declaring a non-life-threatening medical emergency of a passenger in flight, or those operating as protected medical transport in accordance with the Geneva Conventions

 

[RIB_imposter]

This is what i think. 1, disclosing anything heard on vhf is illegal. so shouldnt be discussed on hear.2,he or she is the skipper and any dissition made by him or her, at the time is law, to whoever makes the said dissition, right or wrongly. so for anyone especially those that never leave the marina, to talk about others dissitions are i think both arrogant and out of order .....cheers have a nice day..

If you are going to quote the law you really should get it right! s 46.1 of the WTA 2006 says a person commits an offence if he discloses information as to the contents, sender or addressee of a message of which he is not an intended recipient.

Since a PAN-PAN message would be directed at All Ships/Stations he IS an intended recipient.

You also seem to be deluded about the legal status of the skipper of a vessel, and his ability to "make the law".

 

[ninky]

You also seem to be deluded about the legal status of the skipper of a vessel, and his ability to "make the law".

here's where we get into the domain of the powertrip hobbyist under the impression that because they have a boat and call themselves a skipper they are somehow god and their word is law. as it stands when it comes to being a leisure skipper you can be man, woman or 13 year old girl. therefore respect to a certain extent has to be earned and is not a given. if i was crewing on a boat and the skipper made what i considered a very dangerous decision i would point it out - as i hope my crew would do if i was skippering. crew can drown just like skippers you know - we are all 'in the same boat'.

 

[Refueler]

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Pan-pan

Pan-pan (from the French: panne - a breakdown) indicates an urgent situation of a lower order than a "grave and imminent threat requiring immediate assistance", such as a mechanical breakdown or a medical problem. The suffix medico used to be added by vessels in UK waters to indicate a medical problem (Pan-Pan medico, repeated three times), or by aircraft declaring a non-life-threatening medical emergency of a passenger in flight, or those operating as protected medical transport in accordance with the Geneva Conventions

?? Dear ol'Wikipedia again rewriting ....

Think you'll find that Pan Pan has a more specific meaning than Wiki gives above, and second Pan Pan medico was not just UK waters ...

Beware Wikipedia is information edited / posted by readers and is not always correct.

 

[ChiPete]

I was that skipper

Hi Folks,

Thought this might get picked up here!!

OK, so here's what happened, make of it what you will!

On passage to Poole. Making way to the N of the Brambles, noticed thick black warp streaming behind boat. It would seem we had picked up an unmarked fishermans line. No stress at this point, continued sailing with the plan to sail to a sheltered spot out of the way, probably around Newtown, drop the hook and sort it out. However, the situation degraded when the line then jammed (as it turned out) between the starboard rudder and the hull making steering very difficult, almost NUC.

We took the decision to anchor where we were so that if we ended up totally NUC, we wouldn't be drifting around particularly into the deep shipping channel. I had planned to dive under the boat there (I'm fully qualified, 17 years, open circuit and rebreather, blah blah) and sort it out. I carry a cut down scuba rig for exactly this situation.

I issued the Pan with the intention of advising the CG of my intent so they were aware of the situation. I missed talking about the jammed rudder only the prop; in hindsight (a wonderful thing) I should probably have advised about the possible NUC rather than the prop but there you go).

Solent tasked the Hamble lifeboat who were with us in 10 mins. We had a quick chat with the crew about the pros and cons of diving where we were and agreed to take the tow to Hamble HM pontoon and sort it out there. On reflection, it was gusting 25kts, moderate sea state and the stern of MC was moving up and down like a politicians underwear. Had I attempted diving, I would no doubt have been brained by the boat and ended up on Seaside Rescue.

Tow was uneventful, though the steering hardened up so that by the time we got to Hamble I was starting to get concerned for the mechanism. Grand job by the Hamble Lifeboat chaps getting us onto the pontoon and thanks to the HM for the berth.

Once we were all settled and had had a brew, I got in the water and took a look. The offending article came off the rudder actually quite easily with a bit of pulling (I had thought it would be jammed solid). Moving to the prop I found that one plait of the three strands had somehow got over the blades and was snugly wrapped around the shaft (billion to one chance???). A few minutes with a serated knife and it was off.

HM then proceeded to pull in the line from the pontoon with me helping from the water as it appeared there might be a pot or similiar on the end. It turned out to be a grapnel with about 30m of weighted line streaming off with multiple hooks and bait, all setup for bottom feeder fishing.

I went back down and checked the rudder for play, no apparent problem and checked the prop for any obvious play or issues. All OK. Tidied the boat, went for a walk and repaired to the Rising Sun...

HUGE thanks to all concerned and the traditional bottles of Scotch and donation are on their way to the Hamble Lifeboat boathouse.

Lessons learned:

1. This was my first Pan or call of this nature. I had thought that perhaps it would be easy to accomplish the dive where we were but the professionals know best and tasking a life boat was the best option. I was playing the British ''oh but I don't want to be a bother'' character! They're there to help and I now have this ingrained in my conciousness!

2. I should have reported the worst-case problem. I only reported the prop problem not the possible NUC (at the very least it would have stopped the megabytes of vitriol above about whether or not you'd have Pan'd for a rope round the prop!!).

Pete

 

[ninky]

Thanks Pete. Sounds like your predicament was indeed worse than it sounded on your message - or your voice conveyed. I'm sure if I had been in that situation it would have all been a lot more garbled than your calm tones conveyed.

Glad to hear it all ended well!

 

[ADLS]

I would call the CC on CH16 and advise them I have an urgent message for them, they would request I go to a working channel, where I would notify them of my problem.

This woked well fore me when I lost one engine in the Thames estruary and had to cross from the essex shore to the Medway. I had some problem keeping a course as I only have a centre rudder and wanted to know what shipping would be bearing down on me. they sent out the Southend Council patrol boat who escort me into the Medway and thanked me be being so responsible. I called the CC by phone once I was back on my Cuxton mooring and again they thanked me.
So keep the CC informed, would I have used a PAN PAN well no I'd have just called them up on 16.

 

[David_Jersey]

Hi Folks,

Thought this might get picked up here!!

Yeah

All's well that ends well

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Pan-pan

Pan-pan (from the French: panne - a breakdown) indicates an urgent situation of a lower order than a "grave and imminent threat requiring immediate assistance", such as a mechanical breakdown or a medical problem. The suffix medico used to be added by vessels in UK waters to indicate a medical problem (Pan-Pan medico, repeated three times), or by aircraft declaring a non-life-threatening medical emergency of a passenger in flight, or those operating as protected medical transport in accordance with the Geneva Conventions

While I don't doubt the correctness of the information, Wikipedia is hardly a reliable and authoritative source of information. After all, would you rely on a web-site where anything can be edited by someone with little knowledge of the subject, or where information that is specific to one country can be presented as if it referred to all? I do use Wikipedia, but for critical information, I check the references!

 

[nathanlee]

would you have called a pan pan in this situation?

No way! Even if you feel it prudent to call the coastguard, that's in no way a pan pan. Just call them up and tell them, but even then, I wouldn't bother. Use the sails, use the outboard back-up, get in the water and sort it out. There are always options. Only at the point of having no viable options left, would I resort to calling the coastguard.

However, I have that luxury when I'm single handed. I suppose there are others to think about when you have crew, although I'd still find it hard to ask for help.

 

[jhr]

While I don't doubt the correctness of the information, Wikipedia is hardly a reliable and authoritative source of information. After all, would you rely on a web-site where anything can be edited by someone with little knowledge of the subject, or where information that is specific to one country can be presented as if it referred to all? I do use Wikipedia, but for critical information, I check the references!

A couple of years ago, for a bit of a larf, Nature magazine compared the validity and accuracy of various entries on scientific matters in Britannica and Wikipedia (not sure if they peer-reviewed their findings ). They came to the conclusion that Wikipedia was more consistently accurate than Britannica - a finding that was none too popular with the folks at E.B. who complained loud and long

Wikipedia needs to be used with care, and with cross-checking to avoid personal prejudices and downright ignorance, as you say, but it's a useful and - usually - credible resource in my experience.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

A couple of years ago, for a bit of a larf, Nature magazine compared the validity and accuracy of various entries on scientific matters in Britannica and Wikipedia (not sure if they peer-reviewed their findings ). They came to the conclusion that Wikipedia was more consistently accurate than Britannica - a finding that was none too popular with the folks at E.B. who complained loud and long

Wikipedia needs to be used with care, and with cross-checking to avoid personal prejudices and downright ignorance, as you say, but it's a useful and - usually - credible resource in my experience.

Yes, I know the survey you mention. And what people forget about encyclopaedias is that they often depend on the opinion of one "expert" for each topic - a person who may or may not be current in their knowledge, or who may have a particular axe to grind! Also, an encyclopaedia may well be substantially out of date; they are in print for too long for rapidly changing information or knowledge to be corrected in a timely manner.

Don't get me wrong - I use Wikipedia a lot! But for safety critical information, it isn't a definitive resource, and like any other encyclopaedia, it should be used with extreme caution. But the problems with Wikipedia are about malicious edits, vandalism and bigotry. Also, a spotty teenager in Kansas has just as much ability to edit a piece as a person with a lifetime's knowledge and understanding of the topic! And, regrettably, a lot of people think that what they've seen on a television documentary is necessarily true...