Mooring stations and fatigue

[The Kraken]

Taken the basis of this question from a reply to another thread:

What are your opinions on being called for stations and rest hours? Every chief mate I have sailed with, except one, has ordered every deckie be called for stations no matter how much rest time/sleep they have had. This broken/reduced sleep sometimes led to crew members being cranky, fatigued and accident-prone. I can understand on smaller ships with a limited crew but these ships had more than enough deckies to let others rest during mooring.

I sailed with one chief mate who did take into account peoples rest and when he was onboard you could see the whole crew morale lift. I personally felt more alert, capable and efficient when on duty.

[alistairuk]

Of the 5 ships I have worked on the watch keepers have never done stations unless there was an illness or other unusual issue.

Applies to both officers and crew; only day workers deal with stations we have more than enough onboard - chief officer and safety officer dealing with morning stations - if either one is unavailable or required elsewhere then it falls on whichever watch keeper was last off (2 hours) or next on (2 hours).

Has been system on all the ships I've sailed on with 3 different operators.

[HolyNougat]

Some ships do operate a 'one up all up' philosophy for arrivals and departures, at the end of the day if you can't do it within the ILO hours of rest, then you should not be doing it at all.

I work on a small passenger ship these days and we use the bosun forward and the carpenter aft as the people in charge - if we wanted to use deck officers then literally everyone would be awake every time we came into port.

Big passenger ships like making a drama out of everything and some Staff Captains / Chief Officers love getting people out of bed for all sorts of stupid things - Nautical Meetings, Cocktail Parties, Bridge Visits, every drill that every happens, stations, toolbox meetings, company brain washing training, any training that every happen etc. it's the price you need to pay for being on those ships.

On cargo ships and smaller ships, people are usually more pragmatic.

[chris]

The oil company I work for uses ISF watchkeper software for hours of rest, and you're not allowed to work if it would put you in the red. Except for emergencies of course.

[bobofinga]

In my experience on large passenger vessels it depends on the Captain.

Last trip I sailed with a captain who expected the 8-12 watch keeper (3rd) to be up for arrivals and departures both around 7am/pm.
The next captain after that didn't expect anybody else than the on-watch watch keepers.

[captain_hook]

Ships I have worked on use a 2 hour each way policy for arrival and departure. If either falls within two hours before your watch or two hours after you are expected to attend stations and set lines and moor up. On a ship with two 3rd officers one of the bridge team would always get a chance to rest.

[condeh]

If you have the manpower onboard to have stations without disturbing the off-watch watchkeepers, then great, but lets face it, most ships are not blessed with a handful of dayworkers/on-watch watchkeepers, and, at times, needs must.

Of course, we should all stay within our hours, but that is just a spreadsheet fudge away... Much easier than explaining why we delayed arrival/departure...

[Martyboy]

The way we do things on this vessel are the OOW stays on the bridge and then 1 other officer is called if it's within 2 hours of your watch IE I'm on the 8-12 so i'll get called from 6-8 and from 12-2 for stations, then after that the mate would be called, and the day man/leading man/ bosun or whatever Maersk are calling them these days is in charge of the aft station. System works pretty well. For Arrival last night we got in around midnight, so I stayed on the bridge until 1am and the 2nd Mate went forward, Chief mate slept through until his watch started, everyone got lots of sleep and were all happy I'm not a fan of the 1 up all up policy.... Some Captains don't like to let the crew run stations by themselves which is ironic because those guys generally know how to moor a ship better than some officers.

[condeh]

Strongly agree with Martyboy on the point regarding crew competence. At a previous company it was usual for the bosun to lead the fo'c'sle mooring stations, but if we were going to a 'difficult' berth or doing something a little more unusual like a medi-moor then one of the OOWs would be called to go forward.
I'm not entirely sure how my getting in the Bosuns way helped, but there we go...

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[alistairuk]

Strongly agree with Martyboy on the point regarding crew competence. At a previous company it was usual for the bosun to lead the fo'c'sle mooring stations, but if we were going to a 'difficult' berth or doing something a little more unusual like a medi-moor then one of the OOWs would be called to go forward.
I'm not entirely sure how my getting in the Bosuns way helped, but there we go...

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I think it's more from the viewpoint of covering their asses and potentially communication...

If something happens and someone dies, if there is no officer there, then there's probably going to be a lot of explaining to do (rightly or wrongly - I fully agree that most bosuns and ABs are far far more experienced than the officers).

Other point is probably from a communication perspective - certainly on our ships - where when the person on the other end of the radio starts screaming and shouting (rightly or wrongly not really relevant here) because it's taking you 30 seconds instead of 10 to send a line most crew will go into sheer panic wheras most of the officers will just go "copy" and carry on as normal.

This last point is particularly relevant with a certain staff captain we have, who for lack of a better description gets extremely excited during arrival and departure - I find it hilarious to listen too during stations, you learn to ignore most of it and just pick up on important ****, but again because he's very excited he isn't listening to anything your telling him even when he's acknowledging it - so u find yourself having to repeat stuff... I'm always amazed at how we've managed to magically go from 150m left to run to "in position" in the space of one bollard length (there frigging 20m apart usually).

[The Kraken]

Slightly off topic, but still on topic (if you get me ) but... how do you all find comms between the bridge and stations? I don't know if it was the model of Motorola or the age of the UHFs the company supplied our ships with, but usually the captain sounded like he'd been gagged with cotton wool the sound was that muffled. The sound of the winches rotating didn't help much either! Led to many instances of "Can you please repeat that, Sir?"

[alistairuk]

Slightly off topic, but still on topic (if you get me ) but... how do you all find comms between the bridge and stations? I don't know if it was the model of Motorola or the age of the UHFs the company supplied our ships with, but usually the captain sounded like he'd been gagged with cotton wool the sound was that muffled. The sound of the winches rotating didn't help much either! Led to many instances of "Can you please repeat that, Sir?"

We have a UHF repeater system throughout the ship for channel used by deck dept. and channel used by hotel, so the coms were always fine - we do have issues if we're using one of the other UHF channels but we wouldn't use them for manoeuvring coms unless the repeater system was down.

[Silvertop]

I always make sure the backup system (or talkback,PA) is tested and ready as a backup in case people can't hear the radios or one dies (as has happened in the past).

Moorings can be (probably is) the most dangerous operation we do, so being prepared and ready at mooring stations is a must.

[Martyboy]

I find communications very good for stations, the ships 300m long and the radio signal carries well over the boxes. It helps on here that the old man has what i'd describe as a BBC english accent so its very clear. The only comms problem with the crew down aft is if they are in the middle of running a line, they wont respond on the radio. And sometimes the complex instructions are lost like for example we have a problem with a winch so aft is usually " two stern lines on 60% Auto tension, red winch on the brake and 40% back spring" which usually causes confuzzlement

I'm guilty of getting stressed on stations though, if i'm running two lines and the radio goes I get stroppy


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[condeh]

My favourite (!) question while on stations and running lines etc...

"What's going on down there?!?"

Almost bit my tongue off...