Offshore Working Hours

[marlinspike]

They should make an ILO regulation that everyone must get at least one uninterrupted period of 9 hours rest per day, up from 6, and that drills are not acceptable to disrupt someones rest period.

If these criteria cannot be met with the current crewing they have on board, then the vessels should just have to increase the number of crew so they can meet it.

Every company seems to be waving the safety card around like mad these days, but when it comes to the health of the seafarer getting a non-anti-social period of sleep safety is nowhere to be seen. The bean counters would have to pay out less divided to shareholders from the extra crew costs so safety doesn't matter then.

[condeh]

Ah yes, but health =\= safety in this regard.

They will never come out with an edict like that as shipowners will kick up all kinds of trouble over it.

It's a double edged sword really, we as seafarers want more employment so increased crews, but the country/worls as a whole wants to be able to buy things for next to nothing. We can't have both 30man crew in box boats and ?300 laptops from China.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

[GuinnessMan]

They should make an ILO regulation that everyone must get at least one uninterrupted period of 9 hours rest per day, up from 6, and that drills are not acceptable to disrupt someones rest period.

If these criteria cannot be met with the current crewing they have on board, then the vessels should just have to increase the number of crew so they can meet it.

Every company seems to be waving the safety card around like mad these days, but when it comes to the health of the seafarer getting a non-anti-social period of sleep safety is nowhere to be seen. The bean counters would have to pay out less divided to shareholders from the extra crew costs so safety doesn't matter then.

Why 9 hours particularly? Why not 10 or 12? Yes, drills should be planned to avoid folks rest hours, but people still need to take part in them.

What if the vessel can not increase the complement of crew they have on board? Not every ship around the world sails around with enough cabins for everyone, nor do they all have the ability or capacity to increase their LSA capacity to do it?

Also, if you actually look at the industry at large, it doesn't take much for a voyage to go from being a profit to a loss making voyage, a few tonnes of HFO over consumed will do it. I personally think that last sentence of yours is a bit daft as the "bean counters" don't have a say in vessel safety at all. If extra crew is required for a set charter, then extra crew are arranged for the length of that charter. As soon as they are no longer needed, then they are removed and things go back to normal. Simple as that.

[Clanky]

I have spent the last week doing 6on / 6off on the bridge and it's not too bad. 6on / 6off in the engine room kills me.

Don't know why it should be different other than possibly that I am more occupied on the bridge and there is someone to talk to, which to me would explain why the watches are more enjoyable, but not why I feel less knackered.

[Hatchorder]

I have to say that when at sea I would never sleep for more than 6 hours between watches for the simple reason or handover, wind down ,shower, relax, get up, dressing etc. On 6's it was never more than 5.

Whenever I came home on leave I would take a couple of weeks to get watch keeping out of my system.

26 years later and I still have a sleep pattern most people go "eek" at. I never go to sleep before 01:30 and up at 07:30 with the occasional "clock flog reset" sleep. Every afternoon/evening at some time I end up power napping and that is getting a bit more frequent now due to my age. Even at weekends I am the same, never sleep for more than 6 hours. Even on Friday night, having consumed large amounts of alcohol at a dinner party I stayed up until 2am clearing up and washing pots and glasses. I went to sleep as I lowered my head to the pillow but still woke up at 08:15 on Saturday morning.

Some studies have shown that two periods of rest in a day are better than one, and so I do not believe that the sleep pattern is what causes the most harm, stress and environment are probably bigger factors in my mind.

Ian

[smoggie]

I'm a 3/O doing a PhD into how seafarers accident rates change over a tour, as in are we most at risk when we first join or when we've got the channels and our heads not in it at the end of a contract. I have a few comments on this thread: firstly, the issue of fatigue is interesting and I've been looking at studies about fatigue throughout a tour and they suggest for a month tour people are at their most fatigued at the end of their first week onboard and stay at around this level of fatigue for the rest of this tour. I was quite surprised by this as I've always thought I got more tired as my contract progressed!

Secondly, to a limited extent I agree with the comment "bean counters don't care about seafarers safety" - if they were that bothered about safety why do companies flag vessels to flags of convenience? Surely the fact that flags of convenience are cheaper in part because they have less stringent health and safety requirements has something to do with it? But maybe that's a discussion for a different thread!

[Hatchorder]

Secondly, to a limited extent I agree with the comment "bean counters don't care about seafarers safety" - if they were that bothered about safety why do companies flag vessels to flags of convenience? Surely the fact that flags of convenience are cheaper in part because they have less stringent health and safety requirements has something to do with it? But maybe that's a discussion for a different thread!

Flags of convenience are not always about safety. I can name a number of "UK" flagged companies who "flagged out" to Isle of Man, Bahamas, Bermuda etc where their safety standards were the same as ours. The main difference for me was all about terms and conditions. When I was with Maersk they decided to flag out to IOM from UK flag and it was funny that we never once had a communication to say standards were dropping or safety was being compromised - no, we all got new contracts with less pay and less leave on offer - take it or leave it.

I left it!

I do sometimes think that that people think of the "bad old days" when they see flagging out and think that it is about rust buckets with no lifeboats etc. Monrovia and Panama were two that spring to mind from the early 80's. You are right that the bean counters are involved - companies are profitable or they die, simple. But bean counters are sometimes the people that keep many thousands of people in their jobs in times of hardship by making savings that can sometimes seem harsh but keep 95% of the workforce in jobs rather than 100% being unemployed.

I took my redundancy and started my first business, so I have sat on both sides of this fence. Trust me when I say some days you have tough decisions and tough decisions!

Ian

[marlinspike]

On the front page of this months nautilus telegraph it says the the MAIB are now saying that the 6 on 6 off work pattern can no longer be considered safe. Time to put an end to this form of torture, and stop dropping anchor in Guantanamo bay.

It always has been unsafe, and always will be unsafe unless they make the Graves dream machine from the james bond die another day a reality.

"After undergoing gene therapy treatment, Gustav Graves suffers with permanent insomnia. In order to keep himself from going insane due to lack of sleep, he uses this machine. He tells Zao that a couple of hours on the dream machine keeps him sane. "

http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/gadgets/graves-dream-machine

[cableguy]

Please correct me if I am wrong throughout this. I would just like a little clarification.

As far as I am aware, vessels working offshore have unique working patterns.

When operating in DP mode, the pattern of which I am told is 6 hours on, 6 hours off. This does coincide with the ILO's working hours and does include, of course, a uninterrupted 6 hour rest period.

Is this enough sleep? The National Sleep Foundation recommend a minimum of 7 hours -6 at a push. With this work pattern, one would be lucky to get 5 hours 30 minutes of sleep.

Although Margret Thatcher managed to get by on 5 hours sleep a day and achieved the age of 87, is this damaging our health?

Hi Lewis,

Going back to your original question, whilst working offshore I have never done any other watches apart from 12 on/12 off (apart from when working in "on call" positions where I've always done 12 hours across the day and then gotten up when needed). Hope that kind of helps to answer it. 12 hours does make it considerably more bearable as I would say, including handovers I get 11 hours below, so a movie and 8 hours sleep, along with meals after/before handovers!

Cheers,


Greg

[HarmlessWeasel]

So do you get a meal (or two) brought up to the bridge while you're on watch then?

[endure]

When I worked for Sea Containers I used to do 6 on 6 off driving the ship's gantry crane in places where they didn't have any container handling facilities. I hated it. I was always knackered.

[cableguy]

So do you get a meal (or two) brought up to the bridge while you're on watch then?

It all depends to be honest. If you are doing overlapping watches (ie DPO 1 0000-1200, DPO 2 0600-1800, DPO 3 1200-0000, DPO 4 1800-0600) then at meal times (0000, 0600, 1200 and 1800) there will always be three DPOs on the bridge, so everyone can go down and get as meal.

If you don't have this set up and the whole watch changes over at the same time then the old man (if he is not one of the four aforementioned DPOs) might be kind enough to relieve the DPOs for a meal, or alternatively you may need to get the meal in the middle of the watch sent up to the bridge. I have sailed with both such arrangements.

On the extremely odd occasion where only one DPO is required on the bridge (cable ship's working on deep sea repairs are the only ones I can think of) then you can go down in the quiet times and get something.

I think since I changed over to offshore construction (project instead of marine) I have eaten more meals on either the bridge or deck than I ever did as a DPO or SDPO.

[cableguy]

When I worked for Sea Containers I used to do 6 on 6 off driving the ship's gantry crane in places where they didn't have any container handling facilities. I hated it. I was always knackered.

Sounds nasty endure. The worst watches I ever worked were on a coastal dredger with Hanson. It was 8 on 8 off there, which on face value does not sound too bad until you work out that you are never sleeping at the same time from one day to another, and therefore never getting in to a regular sleep pattern. However at least you could get some decent length of sleep unlike your experience, nasty.

[endure]

The only redeeming feature was we only used the crane in dumps like Hodeidah and Bandar Shapour. Most other places had their own container cranes apart from Fremantle and Geelong but the Aussie dockers always drove our crane there. They used to send us a different gang every time and it used to take them a week to get the hang of things so we always had plenty of time ashore :-)

[Clanky]

Sounds nasty endure. The worst watches I ever worked were on a coastal dredger with Hanson. It was 8 on 8 off there, which on face value does not sound too bad until you work out that you are never sleeping at the same time from one day to another, and therefore never getting in to a regular sleep pattern. However at least you could get some decent length of sleep unlike your experience, nasty.

I have done 8 on / 8 off before and found it better than sixes. Due to the way that the hours of rest rules are worded it is no longer possible to work 8 on / off, but sixes and twelves are both OK, just shows how silly the regs are.