Confidential Human Factors

Incident Reporting Programme

SY 09

Drugs, Design and Dry-docks!

“D” is for danger…

Many of the reports in this excellent edition possess a sense of familiarity, as they resemble recent reports published in Maritime FEEDBACK or in earlier super yacht bulletins.
One familiar theme is that things often go wrong during or shortly after drydockings, and it is worth bearing in mind that management and crew may not have very much experience of dockings, so everyone
needs to remain alert and anticipate problems. Even fewer people have experience of taking delivery of a newbuilding vessel, where design problems can become apparent and where owners and managers
must make every effort to change things which are not safe, even if they have been accepted by other owners, class or flag state surveyors.

We also feature reports highlighting instances where fatigue and insufficient familiarisation training are factors, and we learn about a crane missing a vital safety sensor. Equally unsafe was a yacht where the crew were expected to live on board during dry docking despite the dreadful conditions.

Two reports are especially worrying – one where a super yacht claimed to have no enclosed spaces at all, and one where some officers and crew appear to have had drug problems.

On a positive note, several reporters said they felt emboldened to report to us because they had read similar reports by CHIRP, so they knew something was not right. We are delighted to learn that our efforts are bearing fruit.

Finally, we thank all our reporters for their commitment to safety and for making this such an interesting edition.