200111 Fast Ferry Safety

Fast Ferry Safety - Response to MARS 200064
Report No. 200111

I can appreciate the author's concerns, but his views are alarmist and show a lack of appreciation for the expertise of the Officers who operate high-speed craft. It is apposite to point out that supertankers trundling along in fog must, merely to maintain steerage way, maintain a speed that prevents their stopping in half the visibility. The illogical conclusion could be that they should anchor, yet that might constitute an even greater hazard for those still under way. As to the comment about 'road hogs', that is as fallacious as saying that drivers in the British Touring Car Championship are dangerous, whereas in reality, it is those who think they can drive the same way on the open road that are really dangerous. We should all remember that Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.

In my days of skimming across the Channel at up to 65 knots I too can remember near misses. As ever in such circumstances, I suspect both 'drivers' were equally frightened by the event - certainly it would be engraved on the soul of all but the foolhardy. My first encounter was with a yachtsman motoring along in his 45ft ketch, inshore of the Goodwin Sands, after dark, in a Force 6 and with rain falling in torrents; that played havoc with the radar screen that I, as Navigator, was glued to while the Captain drove, but there would have been no need for our emergency stop if that idiot had not been out there without a radar reflector and carrying no navigation lights whatever! As Captain, I vividly remember the two in a rowing boat, out for a day's fishing in a Force 5 and reduced visibility, with no radar reflector even though they were hidden in the troughs most of the time; I must have missed them by no more than twenty feet!

I too have been at the helm of a yacht and I learned that what is apparent from that low in the water is far different to what can be appreciated from higher up and with the benefit of sophisticated electronic aids. That said, there will be fools operating out of their depth as long as man goes to sea. Good companies weed out most of the misfits with extensive training programmes and rigorous testing, yet I would be the first to admit that corners have been cut by a few. Such blinkered practices feed insufficiently trained personnel into the system, which means we Captains have to take even greater care to ensure Officers are not doing a job for which they are unsuited. If they are, it is as much the fault of the company's procedures as anything else.

I can assure the author of MARS 200064 that those Hovercraft Navigators who survived - I use the word advisedly - our training, I would trust implicitly to avoid all the perils of a crossing at high speed in fog. However that does not mean that we, as a team, are able to give as wide a berth to each and every radar target encountered as their Captains might perhaps wish. When all is said and done, as Captain of a hovercraft I could bring it to a dead stop from 65 knots in a mere quarter-of-a-mile and still be in the hover and able to move off in any direction required - no other vessel could do that!