Like Chinese whispers facts slowly turn to stories when they reach your ears. But what I write hasn’t passed too many ears and so I believe there is more of facts here than fiction. Of course you could doubt my memory for I heard this about 3 years ago.
A VLCC coming back to the Persian Gulf, after discharging at a South African port did not get to the PG with its hull intact.
It was only when the duty AB reported to the officer that he is seeing silhouettes of what are possibly rocks- off the bows- did it add some spark to an otherwise routine watch. The echoes from the rocks were written off as clutter- how could you have rocks when there is nothing around for over a 100miles off. The AB could hear birds too! It would have sounded like music to the ears; but not just then.
Just too late. The ship then went over the rocks off the Kuria Muria- off the Coast of Oman -like a car rides over speed breakers. Conrad’s Lord Jim must have felt something similar on that famous morning during the last few minutes of his watch onboard the pilgrim ship Patna.
The chart showed the ship to be well on her charted track. What happened then? It remained a mystery for not very long. The purple finder that was tracking the ship from its records found the ship was way west off course- by over a 100miles!( I don’t think it a fair question to ask why were people monitoring the purple finder were not alarmed) . And it had been so for the last 3 days or so. And no one knew.
Why? The GPS went in to the DR mode because of some fault in its antenna connectors. It did give an alarm. A small beep that was reset immediately as any XTE alarm or WP Arrival alarm would be. And no one noticed the small letters “DR” flashing on the bottom of the display.
Once the GPS went in to the DR mode and the first person to receive the alarm did not investigate its cause nor think it significant enough to talk to the others, no one else knew. And no one checked the DOP status. The small blinking characters “DR” did not catch anyone’s eye. Fear grips the mind when you contemplate what such an oversight could do.
The GPS with what ever little brains it has now began calculating the ships position based on the dead reckoning method. Use the previous course and speed. And so the ship was always on its charted course. A course that ran straight on for over 4-5 days taking the ship from somewhere NW of Madagascar to east off the Kuria Muria whence it was to head into the gulf of Oman.
The DOP is a term that is in most cases relegated to the textbooks once we wear our stripes. It is not a very fancy term that has gathered many eyeballs. It still remains obscure in the pages of manuals and textbooks. I feel it deserves a little more attention than it is being given. Spend some time and look up what the DOP values on the GPS receiver are. Higher the value, the lesser the angle between the satellites being tracked and so the more diluted the precision of the position given by the GPS. Press a few buttons and you get to the DOP status.
And these few buttons might one day save you from hearing birds sing when you really didn’t want to.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Bridge Team and paperwork.
No one will dispute how important an effective bridge team is. It could be the difference that will land you on the Takong Kecil or take you safe east off it.
There have been volumes written about the Bridge Team. The Nautical Institute spends a good deal of its energy in increasing awareness about an effective bridge team. And I am sure most if not every Master would agree how an effective bridge team lessens the weight on his shoulders.
Having sailed with ineffective team members many Masters have the habit and consequently the ability to multi task on the bridge and navigate despite the ineffective officer. This would mean that he could handle the situations leaving the sundry paper work to the duty officer effectively cutting him off from the active bridge team.
I am not in anyway implying that paperwork is meaningless. But I think anyone would agree that paper work is of an historical importance. The moment you plot a position, the ship has already moved at least 2-3 cables ahead. Now that plotted position doesn’t help except to show an auditor that the passage plan has been followed. An effective and continuous Parallel index is what will be most effective here.
A similar story plagues the record of soundings, the GPS log and every other log. There is even a terrestrial position fixing log. Now the duty officer has to read off ranges and bearings off the landmarks. Write that down in a log book and then plot a position. Effectively the ship would have moved a lot more ahead than just 0.4miles by then.
Yes the argument here could be to have two officers in addition to the master so that paperwork is not neglected.
But a more effective argument could be to reduce the irrelevant paperwork. Especially so when most of our ships have a printer for the GPS and the echo sounder. Can’t these printers effectively take over the role of record keeping so that you have a more active bridge team member who expends his energy in monitoring parallel indexes and soundings rather than recording them? And is more alert to the fast moving container vessel creeping up close on your stern.
The intention of this article is to set off a debate and improve efficiency and last but not the least, SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
There have been volumes written about the Bridge Team. The Nautical Institute spends a good deal of its energy in increasing awareness about an effective bridge team. And I am sure most if not every Master would agree how an effective bridge team lessens the weight on his shoulders.
Having sailed with ineffective team members many Masters have the habit and consequently the ability to multi task on the bridge and navigate despite the ineffective officer. This would mean that he could handle the situations leaving the sundry paper work to the duty officer effectively cutting him off from the active bridge team.
I am not in anyway implying that paperwork is meaningless. But I think anyone would agree that paper work is of an historical importance. The moment you plot a position, the ship has already moved at least 2-3 cables ahead. Now that plotted position doesn’t help except to show an auditor that the passage plan has been followed. An effective and continuous Parallel index is what will be most effective here.
A similar story plagues the record of soundings, the GPS log and every other log. There is even a terrestrial position fixing log. Now the duty officer has to read off ranges and bearings off the landmarks. Write that down in a log book and then plot a position. Effectively the ship would have moved a lot more ahead than just 0.4miles by then.
Yes the argument here could be to have two officers in addition to the master so that paperwork is not neglected.
But a more effective argument could be to reduce the irrelevant paperwork. Especially so when most of our ships have a printer for the GPS and the echo sounder. Can’t these printers effectively take over the role of record keeping so that you have a more active bridge team member who expends his energy in monitoring parallel indexes and soundings rather than recording them? And is more alert to the fast moving container vessel creeping up close on your stern.
The intention of this article is to set off a debate and improve efficiency and last but not the least, SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
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