Your Fellow Seafarers - A Mixed Bag

Book Extract

If you are to take the right decisions consistently, you must recognise what other vessels are doing, and understand how they are likely to react in a given set of circumstances. I have set out some observations in the following paragraphs, but much of this comes from experience and anyone embarking on a career as a professional seaman could do much worse than to spend time – ideally at sea – in a wide variety of vessels, to understand better the pressures and constraints of their fellow seafarers.

Merchant ships
The great majority of vessels that you will encounter on the high seas will be merchant vessels. They will often have the most exotic provenance: owned in one country, flagged in another; officers and crew coming from a variety of places, and speaking a number of languages. But I have found most of them to be extremely professional in their conduct and operation. In deep water, they are slaves to an unforgiving schedule: I recently visited a container vessel which was about to leave Southampton and make a passage to Singapore. The Master showed me his itinerary which listed his arrival time at the Suez Canal, calculated to the nearest six minutes. These are not vessels with time to waste, and they will always tend to steer a straight course unless they have some good reason to alter. Despite that, however, in open waters they will generally take appropriate and timely action to avoid a close-quarters situation.

But you should recognise that the Officer of the Watch’s field of view is often limited by the deck cargo, and in open waters the bridge normally has no more than two people on watch at any one time. The deck officer’s job is to run the ship, operate the ship’s radios, navigate . . . and be responsible for collision avoidance. If he is putting a fix on the chart, and his look-out just happens to be tying up his shoelaces, hunting for his sunglasses or dreaming about that delightful creature he met last month in Buenos Aires, the ship will not be in any position to take avoiding action.

Many vessels use electronic systems linked to the radar or Automatic Identification System (AIS) to give warning of a developing close-quarters situation, which is fine as long as the system works, but it isn’t entirely reliable.

But, in any case, you should never assume that another vessel has seen you. You have no idea how competent they are, how good their look-out is, or whether the deck officer and the look-out even share a common language. You should treat everyone with suspicion until they prove you wrong: 99.9 per cent of the time, they will be fine, but the other 0.1 per cent could be expensive! In inshore waters, nearly all big ships take a pilot with local knowledge to supplement the bridge team. Because of this, and because the waters are busier, the standard of look-out is likely to be pretty good. However, the effect is more than offset by the manoeuvring limitations of a big ship in shallow water. Just consider the draught. A large container ship can draw 50 feet (15 metres) or more, and that alone limits the pilot’s freedom of manoeuvre. But that isn’t his only constraint: tidal streams may be stronger and more variable close inshore, and the proximity of the bottom reduces the effectiveness of a ship’s rudders and propellers. So not only is navigation more complex, but his ability to turn or stop is also less than it would be in open waters. And this, of course, is where he is most likely to meet the greatest concentration of fishing vessels, ferries and enthusiastic, well-meaning but curious yachtsmen.

As if this weren’t enough, the turning diameter of a big container ship may be as much as a third of a mile – more in shallow water – and any significant angle of rudder will induce a roll which increases the draught because of the rectangular section of the hull, sometimes by up to 2 metres.

Since big ships often manoeuvre with minimal under-hull clearance when entering harbour, it could quite simply go aground if too much rudder is used.

Nor can it stop that easily. If the Captain of a large container vessel were to put the engine controls full astern at high speed, the flow of water over the propeller and torque limitations may even prevent the shaft from turning astern until the ship’s speed had reduced significantly. Thereafter, it would take a mile or more to come to a halt. It is really little wonder that many merchant ships press on regardless: there is often little more that they can do.

Under these circumstances, big merchant ships do pretty well. But other, more manoeuvrable vessels should help them out where possible, particularly in restricted waters. If you can think ahead and make a small, early alteration to avoid a close-quarters situation from developing you will have done your good deed for the day.

A container ship in restricted waters

Fishing boats
Fishing boats are a different problem altogether. They are hugely gregarious and often hang out in large groups. They are also massively constrained in their ability to manoeuvre when engaged in fishing. Even if you can’t see their nets or lines, you can generally tell whether a boat is actually fishing or not by its speed. Most commercial fishing is conducted at 5 knots or less, which puts them on a par with a sailing boat. By contrast, when moving between fishing areas, or when they are coming home, they go like the clappers.

Just think about the skipper for a moment. He’s out there, day and night, trying to earn an honest crust to feed his family. His boat will almost certainly be connected to an impossibly complex structure consisting of wire, cordage, netting and heavy metal, which is valuable, unmanoeuvrable and potentially very dangerous. The tension on the trawl wires is measured in tons, and fishing boats often work in proximity to wrecks and other underwater obstructions. This is a demanding, tough job, conducted in all weathers on an unstable, slippery deck with a pervasive smell of fish entrails. It is only fair to treat them with a well-earned respect and keep clear of their bows and any wires or nets that they may be towing astern. It won’t always be possible, but where you can find a way to sail around a fishing fleet, rather than through the middle, I would strongly advise you to do so.

If you are sailing in unfamiliar waters, it is often worth looking up the characteristics of the local fishing activity in the Admiralty Pilot, or another reliable reference book. I was once badly caught out in a submarine when making a dived passage through the Mediterranean. It was night time and I saw a succession of flashing white lights through the periscope, passing down each side of the submarine at a range of about half a mile. Over a 20-minute period, they progressively got closer, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was swimming gently into a large, static fishing net.

Happily there was time to reverse course without snagging the nets and I escaped with little more than a bit of dented pride. The next morning when I looked in the Sailing Directions, I found that this kind of net was characteristic of the local tuna fishery, and a little advanced research would undoubtedly have saved me from a potentially awkward situation.

Warships
Warships are generally quite well-mannered: they keep a more-or-less reliable look-out and they are pretty good at adhering to the COLREGs. They are also, however, extremely unpredictable and will manoeuvre, turn, speed up and slow down to a rhythm of their own. They won’t thank you for getting too close, even when they are at anchor, and they may occasionally tow things behind them without showing any shapes or lights. In particular, when refuelling at sea or when launching or recovering aircraft, they have only limited freedom of manoeuvre, and you should try to give them a wide berth.

Warships can be quite intimidating for other seafarers, and their signals and flag hoists are not always designed to be understood by the average mariner. But on the whole they have complex agendas and tight deadlines to stick to, so they generally leave you in peace to get on with your business.

Yachtsmen
It is easy for professional seafarers to denigrate yachtsmen5. This may occasionally be deserved, but many are surprisingly competent and they are, after all, people who choose to spend a substantial part of their disposable income in order to go to sea – for the sheer enjoyment of doing so. Their vessels are by far the most manoeuvrable on the water, and they seldom have hard deadlines to make, so they ought to be able to keep out of trouble fairly easily. On the whole, though, they are very much less experienced than professional mariners, so both their fluency with the Rules and their general awareness are often rusty.

So too is yachtsmen’s capacity to assess other ships’ movements. Their ‘seaman’s eye’ is not as practised as that of a professional mariner; they have only limited capacity to accurately measure bearing movement, and with their radar and AIS are likely to give erratic predictions of CPA6, even in a moderate sea. To further complicate matters, crew efficiency is often reduced in heavy weather, and they generally have no idea how difficult they are to see from a ship’s bridge, especially at night. And I would never rely on a yacht to keep a perfect look-out, particularly astern.

It is also worth bearing in mind that sailing boats, when racing, conform (only within the racing fleet) to a wholly different set of rules – the Racing Rules of Sailing – and their movements may well be a little erratic as they manoeuvre for tactical advantage, or converge on a navigation mark.

While none of this should prevent them from reacting to other shipping in accordance with the COLREGs, it is perhaps worth making some allowance for their preoccupation on the race, and giving them more space than the solitary cruising boat might require. In particular, when racing in light airs, they may be slow-moving and unwilling to start their engine for collision avoidance.

They may therefore react rather later than other vessels in a similar position. You may be able to identify racing boats by the fact that, when racing, they seldom fly an ensign.

In short, yachtsmen are good and willing seafarers, but they cannot always be relied upon to take consistently predictable actions in a close-quarters situation and need to be treated with caution.

 

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Learn The Nautical Rules Of The Road is written by Paul Boissier. Paul Boissier has spent much of his professional career working on the sea, or in support of the people who go to sea, and in his leisure time he is an avid yachtsman.  In the Navy he commanded and navigated warships and submarines in many parts of the world, ending his career as a senior Admiral. He then spent 10 years as Chief Executive of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the charity that saves lives at sea and operates over 340 lifeboats around the UK and Republic of Ireland. This lifetime’s experience has given him a unique perspective on navigation, from the bridge of a warship, to the cockpit of a cruising yacht and the control room of a submarine.