CG proposes SMS for all domestic pax vessels

We did the passenger vessel drills about twice per season. Once during USCG inspection with no passengers aboard.

Obviously, a vessel with overnight passengers will have more log entries.

In the passenger trade I was in, there was no night watch or roving patrol. The USCG tried to implement requirements for a licensed mate, an extra deckhand, and a night watch, but owners fought it off with help from the Congressional delegation. This trade has a good safety record. Many thousands of passengers carried over the last 75 years. Injuries are few. I am only aware of three fatalities: 1 passenger had a heart attack, 1 crew committed suicide, 1 crew had a bad fall. I recall one sinking with no injuries. I recall one fire with modest damage, but it was caused by solvent covered rags while in the shipyard. Nothing has changed. No nightwatches or roving patrols. None proposed. None really needed.

“Only aware of three fatalities”?? Apparently you are new to this industry or?

I have worked for several passenger boat companies, only one did not keep a detailed log book.

Next step is a list of required entries. Even pre-SMS some ships had few pages in a binder with an example of all required entries.

It was helpful in getting new third mates up to speed with minimum of hand-holding. Better for the new third too.

Experience in the industry? I received my first license in the 70’s and I’m still sailing. How about you?

Although I have not been involved in the particular passenger trade that I mentioned for many years, some of the boat owners and captains are old friends. When there is a serious incident I hear about it. Now that I think about it, I know of 4 fatalities: 2 bad falls ( one involved showing off while drunk at midnight, and the other involved a habitually reckless crewman that should have been fired before it happened),1 heart attack, and 1 suicide. I’d call 4 fatalities spread out among a couple dozen boats over a 75 year period a pretty good track record, especially considering that there isn’t much that can be done to prevent heart attacks or suicides.

I have seen detailed logs on small passenger vessels. Some are really more of a literary journal with poetry and drawings, and most of the details are about personalities and places visited. I’ve never seen the sort of daily navigational and regulatory detail on a small passenger vessel that is routinely kept on a larger coastwise commercial vessel. Things like time, distance off, course and speed at every significant mark or course change, position and weather every hour, etc. Small vessels are mostly navigated by eye or chart plotter without a lot log entries.

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For vessels that navigate by eye alone the SMS can reflect that. Something general along the lines of keeping the boat a “safe distance from hazards” or the like.

The process by which coastwise vessels are navigated has evolved over time to reflect lessons learned and changing technology. Instigating a SMS shouldn’t alter good procedures already in place.

As you have pointed out numerous times, passage validation is paramount to safe navigation, reducing the watch keeping workload by highlighting dangers ahead of time. The fact that it is being omitted in “chart plotter navigation”, where operators spend their increased sitautional awreness on facilitating a relaxed attitude to passage planning, is not a good development. IMHO, some level of systematic passage planning should be part of a small craft SMS, if not a full blown analysis with XTE limits and the like, then at least some evaluation of possible dangers on each leg.

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Since 1997 some US small passenger vessels have been required to have ISM base SMS and the USCG provided a pretty good template. This is not a new concern. When STCW was enacted in 1997 (?) any US flagged small passenger vessel on international voyages with more than 12 passengers had to have a SMS. The USCG recognized that this burden might be too much for small companies and allowed them to not have to use a RO and obtain a DOC and SMC (with all the associated costs), but rather the USCG would review and certify the SMS and notate such on the COI. Many small passenger vessels working out of South Florida, San Diego and Puget Sound received (and maintain) such endorsements.

https://homeport.uscg.mil/Lists/Content/DispForm.aspx?ID=2350&ContentTypeId=0x010077A263807AAFE54DBF09C291D3EAA816008BFEC11A80BC564EB4241068A94ACD2E

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I think it’s likely that those dive boats could benefit from a more formal navigation process.

The point I was trying to make is that if good procedures are in place than a SMS is not a reason to change.

Your post does show one advantage of codifying procedures is it causes them to be seen in a new light.

Difficult to image that the procedure wrt the roving watch would survive the act of typing out the words “roving watch to sleep in the passenger area”.

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I doubt in the case of the Conception that the one crew sleeping in the passenger open berth compartment was assigned to do so as a way to comply with the roving watch requirement. We won’t know until trial. The passengers on the diveboats I operated slept in private cabins and it never occurred to me that having a crewmember sleeping in an unassigned cabin could be considered any type of watch. The only reason it would happen would be for that crewmember to join a “friend”.

Don’t have a link but I read a newspaper article that based on interviews of crew at other companies some reported that was how they met the requirement.

Don’t know if that was the case here. Either way I doubt that the practices in place at the time on the Conception would have survived the process of putting those practices in writing.

Edit: This is not the article I was thinking about but it shows the thinking pre-fire.

When Hrabak operated the Vision, the crew would be up at all hours and “would walk all the decks when they got up to go to the bathroom,” and passengers would do the same, he said.

Not too much of a stretch from there that a crew in the passenger area would be considered a roving watch.

Not STCW. You may be thinking of the ISM Code, it took effect in 1998.

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I got a license back in 1961 to carry 12 pax in Swedish coastal waters. And the boat had a log book where I noted departures/arrivals and people aboard. And most important … fuel used. At the end of the season I used the logbook to see what I had done during the summer and how many hours the engine had run.

jdcavo- Great catch. And yes you are right. It was the implementation of the ISM code, not STCW. I should not participate in the forums until I have had my first cup of coffee… lol.

I remember going on the Conception as a diver in its first year of operation (1984?). I was a regular at the 22nd street landing in San Pedro and did many many trips on the Golden Doubloon owned and operated by Capt. Eddie.

I do not recall ever having a safety briefing or their being a roving patrol on any of the vessels in the fleet of SoCal dive boats. Even the dive n surf boat owned and operated by the Mistrial (SP) brothers did this…

With that industry I do not believe it is a case of normalization of deviance as suggest by some… that idea suggests it was once done correctly and over time the discipline of compliance had eroded… I do not believe the regulatory requirements for roving patrol were ever fully implement or enforced .

Is this like my MARPOL trash plan?
(Put trash in bag, throw in nearest dumpster)

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No not really. A better example might be the attitude about things like no-go areas. The captain I was sailing with when I was C/M told me that marking no-go area was bs and it was only done because the auditors liked them. He’d draw them in quickly following some contour line on the chart.

Some years later I was approaching the pilot station at, IIRC Charleston. It was getting dark with gusty winds.

Thing about car ships in the wind is they have more sail area then most tall ships so when near the coast better to plan your moves ahead of time.

As we got closer the pilot boat called and canceled for some reason. I wanted to get turned around and out of there so I quickly checked the chart and it looked like I had plenty room.

I was just getting ready to start the turn to head back out when something made we want to take a closer look at the chart. On the second look I realized that unlike the BA charts we normally used it was a U.S. chart and the depths were in feet. 15 meters was enough water, 15 feet was not.

After that I got religion on marking the no-go areas.

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Miss Majestic, Ethan Allen, Baltimore Harbor Water Taxi, Stretch Duck 7, Bounty, Staten Island Ferry.

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