Unlike your situation here it is early summer and in the country a V belt failing on a hay baler requires a more urgent response. The ship was the BOA Galatea. I don’t know what it is called now.
Really? Please explain.
- some azipods are push instead of pull type.
- pull type azipods mounted on the stern still push the vessel through the water.
If you think azipods inherently handle differently than regular z drives then maybe you could enlighten us with exactly why that is because I see no reason why they would.
Same here in regard to heavy autopilot usage, but with tugs and barges on the wire. Even towing super short through Wrangell Narrows and Peril Straits, we were on the auto pilot. Watching it like your life depended on it, but letting it do its thing, because it can drive better than I can.
I think the answer is in your question, yes?
Many people here are using the propulsion machinery and nomenclature interchangeably. Anyone who has actually put their hands on both systems and had to maneuver each type on a vessel will better understand the differences.
But I don’t want to belabor the point. What is clear here obviously is that this ship had officers aboard who barely understood the basic concepts of how the ship moved through the water … much less how to turn it on and off.
This forum is getting into the weeds of the subtle nuances of the propulsion technology, based on everyone’s personal direct experiences. But at the core of this issue is the “technological failure” of equipment onboard a blridge of a ship that resulted in the total loss of that ship. It can be debated that the equipment may not have actually failed. But it was not built in a way such that, intuitively for a mariner (Naval Officer), they couldn’t figure out how to turn it off in less than 10 minutes.
If steering by computer is the norm today, so be it. If anyone has total faith in their equipment explicitly, awesome. This effort is (partially) behind the growing desire to remove human Pilots from the bridge and have “shore based pilotage” in ports around the world and/or autonomous ships running all around the globe. It all sounds great, it can be done, the technology exists, why aren’t we doing this right now???
Because sometimes it doesn’t work.
Then you have an accident like the MANAWANUI and it reminds us that humans aren’t perfect. But either are machines. Machines do in fact, fail at times.
Like the CEO of Maersk said years ago discussing autonomous ships… “If it isn’t cheaper to build, safer to operate, or reduce overall operational costs, why would I want it?”
Thanks for that.
Here is some details on the Boa Galata when new:
She is still afloat:
PS> Sorry to have caused any agony in the middle of first haying of the summer.
I dont know DP the System or the ship. I do have some idea about various different drive systems which have some similarities.
The main point here. There there was nothing wrong with the mechanical or electronic operation of the ship.
The entire problem and failure was the Bridge Crew.
The human made an error.
The error should not by itself have been a big deal.
The error was a basic mistake with an auto pilot.
Operation of the vessel on auto pilot was a choice. which can be argued ither way.
On one hand it was very close to shore.
On the other tha auto pilot steered better and more accurately for the survey.
Take your pick.
According to Sal based on information from the report.
The ship, did a run along the coast on auto pilot then made an alteration of course in hand steering.
The information about the alteration to 340 is not clear, but the ship ends up steering 340 in auto pilot directly towards shore.
The Bridge crew were trying to alter course again but the ship did not respond to steering impute.
Resulting in the bridge crew believing they had a thruster failure.
Not having checked the auto pilot.
BRM. It’s a navy ship, So bridge team might have quite a few people. The number not mentioned.
Probably more than a typical commercial vessel.
Layout of the bridge. The conn position appears to be a chair or standing between two consoles with a joystick on each.
Not able to see from photo. I suspect an adjacent conn position to port of the one viewed in picture.
People manning these two seats should be working together. Pilot, Co Pilot
Clearly they were not.
Both crew in these positions miss the auto pilot setting and go down the failure rabbit hole.
This is where lack of understanding of system and poor bridge resource management turn a minor error into a disaster.
It could have happened on a conventional ship.
Changing between auto pilot and manual steering was not conducted well or systematically.
Worse. Normal routine checks after changing were clearly not conducted.
Clearly, the other bridge team members were not being made aware of the change in status from auto to manual steering.
This is very basic entry level bridge watch keeping stuff.
The compounding factor after getting this ballsed up completely. Was the failure to even consider this possibility and go off on a tangent about thrust failure.
This shows a fundamental lack of understanding how the system they were using worked. Worse, or even very basic bridge routines.
This bridge crew couldn’t organise a tot of rum in a kayak.
The problem is the bridge crew were not working together and communicating with each other during important parts of the task at hand.
WTF not.
Lack of experience probably has a lot to do with it.
I’m old.
Which means I’ve made lots of F ups with auto pilots.
There are very few auto pilot f ups I haven’t made at some time or other.
So if the ship won’t do what I want it to, one of my first checks is what the hell did I do with the auto pilot.
Switch it to hand everything working now. Problem solved.
Better yet problem avoided.
When changing. You tell everyone, Which might be just yourself and the QM.
Going from Hand to auto.
Confirmed auto has it. and is responding.
or
going from auto to hand.
hand steering tested and confirmed.
Most of my errors were back in the day when I was on my own. As a watch keeper. There was nobody to catch my mistakes so I had to catch them myself.
You make the change then you check the operation. Not complicated.
Then you watch your course position ect.
If its not right why not.
Check the setting on the auto pilot, did you set it right.
Easy we have all done it.
Mistakes happen people make errors we have all done it.
Having a system in place to check for and catch errors. is what was missing here.
Your points are well made and it is something that I tried to emphasis. The ship didn’t behave any different than an ordinary vessel under autopilot. The control face of the autopilot told the user whether it was on or off.
The situation where the ship’s course is being maintained by a computer in seismic surveying which is not much different than ordinary surveying is entirely different . the heading and track is under close surveillance by two people that have no distraction. I have yet to come across a helmsman who could maintain a constant rate of turn of 3 degrees per minute for an hour and come onto the reciprocal within 2 to 3 metres of the new track.
As to the question why are we not doing it . Try chartering a seismic survey ship.
My hat’s off to you. Am former ONI navigator/ HGS, Western-Geco marine crew mate. Tried to stay in seismic, but wanted to keep me in GOM on OBC little boats. I moved out of seismic because they refused to move me. I remember when streamer boats started deploying multiple streamers and the Ramform ships entered the industry. Best to you.
The final report has now been released. As per normal government practice the report was released on Friday afternoon when media are at either a long lunch or afternoon drinks. It is possible that no one will be held to account as no one was qualified to drive it.
So the commander who sent the ship on that task should (with those aboard) be in the dock for deploying a ship which wasn’t in a state of readiness to do the task, or even be at sea. It seems pressure to complete a task was a factor which overrode other safety considerations.
From the article:
"The Court found no errors with the ship’s engines during the grounding.
“At the time of the grounding, there is no evidence that the ship had a loss of power or a steering/control failure,” it said."
1 of 3 things or a combination of these 3 things happened after the sinking. 1. The Manawanui had awesome engineers who knew how to CYA. 2. The Bridge Team were too dumb to pin it on the engineers & mechanical failures. or 3. They had some really honest investigators & judges. I say these things because often mechanical failures & the engineers get a lot of blame for incompetent bridge teams sometimes.
Also, Kudos to the New Zealand investigating court/board. This happened in Oct '24, a little under 7 months ago & the final report is out! Amazing if you’re used to dealing with the NTSB, uscg or us navy. In the US it seems it takes 7 months of bickering & delays to just appoint a lead investigator. All participants lawyers-up & no one answers questions until they do a book tour 5 yrs down the road.
Welcome to DP vessels where the vessel is too complicated for the crew.
And normal control to get to dp with thrusters etc have no class rules.
Supposedly class makes you have a manual but gov vessel??
We will have some issues here but i am too busy right now 
But be prepared . I am coming & You Dear Weird SIR not gonna like it
By todays latest “standards” and industry blah , blah , blah ( P&I) Clubs the fact the crew was defficient in many respects makes the said vessel " UNSEAWORTHY"
NZ has it’s own LAW and navies/militaries in many countries have it’s own rules like for example exemption from SOLAS and other conventions so such can not possibly apply to navy.
But :
For example under UK Merchant Shipping Act 1995
98 Owner and master liable in respect of dangerously unsafe ship.
(1)If a ship which—
(a) is in a port in the United Kingdom, or
(b) is a United Kingdom ship and is in any other port,
is dangerously unsafe, then, subject to subsections (4) and (5) below, the master and the owner of the ship shall each be guilty of an offence.
…
…
…
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to [F64a fine not exceeding £50,000][F64a fine];
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine, or both.
So.
If a civilian merchant regulation is so strict then one would expect from the Navy Court Martial as a minimum.
added:
even this disgusting thing like AI agrees:
VDR’s a bitch…
<At 18:17:59 a rattling noise commences on the audio recording, a depth reading of zero is recorded in the VDR and the crew on the bridge become noticeably agitated.>
… but took it out of auto 10 mins (!!) after the grounding…
<18:27:34 Discussion about “do you want to take it out of auto now?”
”18:27:43 Conversation heard regarding propulsion control re-established and “it was in auto and I didn’t realise Ma’am…">
Oh dear!
ETTO - efficiency throughness trade off
Let’s see & hear Dr. Sal
The report however, has a couple of omissions that makes it hard to built a complete picture of what was the intention of the survey.
- Where was a plan of the survey area showing the lines the ship was going to run to complete the survey. All I saw was a box showing the outer limits.
- The original autopilot had been replaced by an Anschutz Pilotstar D prior to purchase by the original owner.
3 The autopilot was integrated with the Konsberg K-Pos DP-22 DP system but the report doesn’t state as to whether the autopilot was being used in a stand alone mode. If it was the case all that was required to alter course was to push down on the knob directly beneath the window displaying the existing set course (340°) and turn it in a clockwise direction and the vessel will immediately start altering the course to starboard. There is no need to switch the autopilot off.
If the autopilot was being controlled by the Konsberg DP the autopilot control panel would display EXT.CRS and any adjustments including the set course would be made at the Konsberg control that was active..
It seems that since the loss of a dedicated hydrographic vessel and the take over of the naval hydrographic office and assimilation into LINZ in Wellington we have lost some of the most skilled seaman officers who used to conduct hydrographic surveys in the navy.
Manawanui was equipped with a 100 tonne heave compensated crane and a deck area capable of a deploying a sizable watercraft equipped with the latest in electronics for survey to do the close inshore survey. A vast improvement on the 3 32 foot launches that used to launch from Lachlan equipped with a wet paper sounder and an officer and survey recorder armed with a sextant and a piece of chart paper fixed to a piece of plywood.
bridge autoplilot connected the DP, that does not sound right.