One thing about ships Des is that they keep their shape, I doubt those girls in Genoa have!Quote:
Originally Posted by Des Taff Jenkins
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One thing about ships Des is that they keep their shape, I doubt those girls in Genoa have!Quote:
Originally Posted by Des Taff Jenkins
That's caus one eats Pizza, and the other doesn't!
Julian, "moderate speed in fog is probably the worst observed CoReg. How moderate is moderate having many interpretations in practice. Remember in 1972 as 3rd Mate on a Townsend ferry between Felixstowe and Rotterdam we hardly ever reduced speed even in pea soupers. Speed is a killer of course and especially on roads.
A Serang who was witness to a collision in Beirut got it right when he said one the ships was "going at Fool Speed" he meant Full Speed of course.
If you were driving a motor car in fog and were in collision, your legal speed would be considered to have sufficient visibility to see another car and have sufficient time to brake . I would think a land based court would take the same principle, but in the case of a ship one cannot brake, so expect the legal term would be to have sufficient time and visual contact to take avoiding action. However the Article which used to state Speed to be moderate in Fog or restricted visibility left it open much to the masters discretion. A 25 knot ship with time schedules to meet and such like he might consider dropping back to 20 knots which would not do much for the possibility of collision but he could say he was going by the book. The master on a 10 knot ship on the other hand might also drop back 5 knots to give him a speed over the ground of 5 knots. If these two ships were in contact at a combined speed of 25 knots would hate to be a sandwich in the middle. It was and unless they have put a rider to the Article very unsatisfactory. It was putting the ball in someone elses court. But by the same token masters are supposed to be master mariners and have sufficient sense to do the right thing. Even though they might get the sack for missing a deadline. Fog was always my worse nightmare, bad weather I didn't mind, but restricted visibility with or without Radar I hated. If the master of the ill fated Titanic had survived he would of had to face a disciplinary court and the storys and epics built up about the ship may not have been what they are today. When up for 2nd mate in Newcastle in the orals, one always tried to accrue information about the examiners by people who had had them before, another one had a pet question , he would put a model of your ship on the table and a trawler on your port bow and a trawler on your starboard bow crossing. Both a few miles distant. He would then say the visibility shuts down, what do you do ? after telling him about the sounding of the whistle and by what rule paragraph and subsection, and the posting of lookouts on each wing of the bridge, he then said you can still hear the fog signals of these two crossing trawlers, what do you do. The answer he wanted to hear I was told by a previous candidate was slacken speed and let the case develop. He seemed to be happy with that and went on to other questions. When in fact the first question was not yet finished. Cheers JWS