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.
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 .
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.