Vampire Parrot
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Posts posted by Vampire Parrot
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I've just got home from some time on the Arcadia, and whilst I was onboard I repeatedly measured humidity in my cabin, and the humidity in public areas such as the restaurants, bars and theater.
In my cabin it varied between 52% and 58%, in the restaurants it varied between 52% and 70% (highest during dinner!) and in the theatre it varied between 51% and 65% (highest towards the end of a show when the theatre was full).
These are all well within the range of normal, comfortable humidity levels for indoor areas in the UK.
VP
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Ahem. I am British and certainly do NOT want to let Schettino off the hook.I don't understand it. Why is it that everyone from the British Isles wants let Captain Coward off the hook.--
I'm rather concerned that some lawyers are implying that it was up to Costa HQ/Carnival to tell Schettino to give the orders "To Muster Stations" (i.e. sound the General Emergency Signal) and later, "Abandon Ship". Those are decisions to be made by the Captain.
Based on the the information I have, Schettino had all the information he needed to make the decision to sound the General Emergency signal within a few minutes of grounding his ship, and to order Abandon Ship shortly afterwards. What I want to know is why he didn't make those decisions in a timely fashion.
I now have a transcript of what went on in the bridge, but it's in Italian. I'm trying to get it translated - if I do would folks like me to post it?
VP
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[quote]The US may have made it mandatory to remain with the ship but you should NEVER measure any other country's standard by that of the US, the SOLAS1974 is open to interpretation, purposely so by the International Maritime Organisation.[/quote]When I stated "Article 1097 of Italy's Maritime Law says that if the commander does not leave last, he risks two years in jail; if the vessel is lost, two to eight years; if the boat is used to carry people, three to 12 years."
I am quoting the BBC news website, which is quoting Italian Maritime law.
Which is appropriate as the ship had an Italian Captain, was built in Italy, registered in Italy, and whose Classification Society is Italian (Registro Italiano Navale).
CS, are you saying that despite this, the Captain was not obliged to follow Italian Maritime Law?
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[QUOTE]It would have been a great job had I the qualifications that it requires, such as a CPFL, for example (Google that if you are at all unsure what it might be, there's a good lad).[/QUOTE]
I did... and Google came up with no qualifications with that acronym.
And from the same BBC article you reference:
[QUOTE]Article 1097 of Italy's Maritime Law says that if the commander does not leave last, he risks two years in jail; if the vessel is lost, two to eight years; if the boat is used to carry people, three to 12 years.[/QUOTE]
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VP ... There may have been two radar bowls but how do we know there was anything in both of them? you know a bit like the 4th funnel on the Titanic.
The radars aren't in the domes. On the picture I posted a link to there are two radars visible which at sea are usually rotating. They look to me as if they are manufactured by SAM Electronics AG - many cruise ship radars are.
It is a SOLAS requirement that every passenger vessel over 3000 tons must have two working radars.
There is absolutely no way Costa Concordia would have gone to sea without a working radar. Any bridge officer who stood watch on a ship which they knew before the ship left port had no radar would be foolish in the extreme.
VP
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CostaSmurfette posted
Please provide a reference. It would be interesting to see what equipment had failed.The minimum equipment list failings are well known and documented....Note:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Costa_Concordia_2.JPG
shows that Costa Concordia had at least two radars. Two are visible on the top mast just ahead of the flags.
VP
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I totally agree' date=' a minor delay! :D
VP... as to the radar, I disagree there. The radars, even the ones I had all those years ago, on a low setting (1/4 to 4 miles) could pick out a bouy and small boats without any trouble. They could certantly pick up the rock.
AKK[/quote']
The difficulty is that in any kind of sea, spotting a rock or bouy in the clutter can be tricky.
But yes, the water was calm that night.... they could/should have spotted the rocks.
VP
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The detour to salute the island was minor and not significant... it added maybe five to ten minutes to the journey time. Even if Costa Concordia had slowed down to say a sensible five knots for the salute (slow enough to be safe, fast enough so the rudders are effective), it would not have been a problem to make up the time given that the average speed for the transit without a salute was around 15 to 16 knots, and Costa Concordia was quite capable of making 20 knots without upsetting the Chief Engineer (i.e. without burning too much fuel).Tonka or VP, the ships high speed near the island has always seemed odd to me. I have wondered if the speed was kept up so the deviation from the normal course would not put the ship behind schedule. I am sure you can address my theory. If that is the case then can one assume the salute to Giglio was not standard practice otherwise it would be built into the schedule set forth by Costa?VP
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Tonka's Skipper made some interesting points...
Damn right. Being a recently built ship with a modern bridge, I would expect Costa Concordia to have a complete set of electronic charts for the entire region for which she sailed at both large and small scale. To expand TS's question: Did she have the e-charts? If not, why not? If she did, were they used? If not, why not?Now new questions/concerns....1. No vessel is reqiured to have large scale charts of any coast line or harbors, etc, unless they are likely to be going close inshore.
Why did the Concordia not have these large scale charts, since the (and correct me if I am wrong) vessel had already done island fly bys before the sinking?
If the vessel knew the fly byes were possible they dam well should have had the proper charts.
Certainly not paying attention to his course and where his ship was heading.2. What was the Master doing those minutes before he saw the rock???? Entertaining his guests?
If the rock only protrudes a metre or two above the sea then it may not be visible... it depends on the declutter setting of the Radar and even at minimum setting, the rock may not have shown up. Given the modern bridge and multiple redundent GPS, the exact position, speed and future position of the ship relative to the rocks was information that was available for many minutes before the collision.3. Why did the duty Officers not see the rock and why didnt they see it on the radar??? What was the look out doing? The Radar onboard that ship were said of the art, like the ones on Star Trek!!
Absolutely. Rule 1 when on the conn: Give a command, listen for the command to be correctly repeated back, check that the correct input has been given, check that the machinery obeys the input.4. As I asked before, why wasnt the Captioan and duty officer watching the rudder angle indicator??? If they were it is possible they could have corrected the rudder and maybe even avoided hitting the rock.
Because he was showing off? They had plenty of time to reach their destination at an economical speed.5. Why was the Captian still at such a high speed??? It was like driving a 18 wheeler down a curving country road at 75!
Very true. Some cruise lines have implemented Bridge Team Control and Command (BTCC) in the last few years, which would have required each and every officer on the bridge to actively "be in the loop".As I have been saying from the start and as CS points out, the Captain has the final responsiblity, but many other people, including the Bridge watch and some of the office staffs of Costa and Carnival have a peice of this pie!VP
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Thanks sidari. Very useful.
I've been trying to make sense of the "Technical report of the consultants appointed by the investigating judge of the court of Grosseto" which is in Italian (which alas, I don't speak). It was at 21:39:17 that Schettino started saying "I take the conn" and Ambrosio responded "Master has the conn."
The following table from the report show the time at which if the rudder had been put to the specified angle, the ship would have missed the rocks.
5 degrees 21:42:09
15 degrees 21:43:00
25 degrees 21:43:30
35 degrees (hard over) 21:43:37
Thus Schettino had plenty of time to avoid the rocks.
At 20.8 knots, (faster than she was travelling) hard over would give the Concordia an advance of 686 metres. i.e. she'd travel 686 metres in the initial direction of travel before she was perpendicular to her original course. That's only just over twice the length of the ship. At 16 knots the advance would have been less.
VP
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VP ... Though i have not yet had time to go back through the programme from a few nights ago i clearly remember that the commentary said that the Autopilot was programmed to turn the ship at 1 kilometre from Giglio, hopefully tomorrow i will sit and re watch it and add the timeline from the programme here.
You are probably right.... I've just checked the 1:5000 chart and a route one kilometre from the shore of Giglio would have kept Costa Concordia between 700m and 800m away from le Scole in waters over 300 feet deep.
VP
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There have been several statements made in the last few days whch are factually incorrect, and implications made that are also misleading.
One of the incorrect statemnents is:
Ambrosio was the senior watch officer, that is true. But he did not call Schettino to the bridge "when the initial mistake was discovered." No mistake had been made at that point; the ship was in open water and there was plenty of time to turn the ship before it was in dangerously shallow water.Schettino who was on public duties and who was called to the bridge when things went pearshaped.Ambrosio who was on duty and thus effectively in charge of the vessel, albeit as bridge officer (notwithstanding he was one pip below Schettino who is in overall command but Schettino (as all Captains) should be able to leave his or her first officer in charge without fear of them getting into a dangerous position. Ambrosio obviously called Schettino to the bridge when the initial mistake was discovered.
In other words, the situation was under control and quite normal when Schettino took command. Being that distance to land when Schettino was on the con (1.8 nautical miles) is not a problem.
It was stated by the Italian Maritime Investigative Body on Marine Accidents during their presentation in London on May 18th that it was prior to or at 2137 when Schettion took the con, ordered helm to manual, and ordered the helmsman to keep the course unchanged. So we know at 2137, Schettino had the con and the ship was in manual steering.
It was at 2145, seven minutes later, when the ship hit the rocks.
As I posted earlier, Concordia met IMO standards for ship maneuverability and would have easily been able to miss the rocks if a moderate amount of starboard rudder had constantly been applied, even several minutes after he had the con.
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A series of misleading comments have been made concerning the autopilot that imply that the autopilot would have put Costa Concordia on the rocks, and that Schettino did his best to prevent that happening. For example:
The information I have is that the autopilot had been correctly programmed for the ship to pass the island at a safe distance of approximately 800 metres. If Schettino had not taken manual control, the ship would have safely saluted the island.Who programmed the auto-pilot....?Routinely on several cruise lines it is the First Officer, which would have been Ambrosio in Concordia's case.
All it takes is a distraction or a fat finger hitting the wrong digit for the wrong track to be entered...Concordia was not that far off the usual course...so potentially a miskeyed entry on the auto-pilot could have sent her where she was not meant to go...and then you have the realisation, the return to the bridge by Schettino, the barked orders by Schettino and Ambrosio and the confused Indonesian at the helm....chain reaction that probably started before Concordia even left Civitavecchia during charting and auto-pilot setup.
Of course it is not good practice to have the ship controlled by autopilot at such a close distance, and putting the helm into manual is good practice..... so long as the Officer who has the con then keeps the ship at least as far away from the island as the autopilot would have. Schettino, for reasons I do not understand, then brought the ship closer to the island than the autopilot would have. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
VP
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Of course tug boats are often used to get cruise ships in and out of port when the conditions are interesting.... but occasionally the ship's Master will be caught out if the wind increases. For example, the sideways force imposed by the wind on a cruise ship can be two hundred tons or more.Would'nt it be cheaper to hire some tug boats to help and escort the ship in and out of port rather than risk damaging these expensive ships, not to mention, lives could have been lost?I don't understand, maybe it would be exciting to go in and out of ports in gale storms and playing bumper boats but I don't think the airline industry takes those chances.
Airlines do take chances; I have several videos of aircraft landing in bad weather and "only just getting away with it". I showed one of these videos of an A320 attempting to land in a crosswind to a friend of mine, an A320 Captain, and in his opinion the crew and passengers were very lucky.... I have a video of a 747 landing in Hong Kong, short of the runway, pointing 20 degrees to the right of the runway heading, and only just getting away with it. And don't forget the MD-11 that crashed at Hong Kong in 1999....
Sometimes people take chances; it's just human nature. Training, experience and legal remedies do a very good job of improving the decision making process of those in charge, but there are still some rogue Captains out there....
VP
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I'm not going to directly answer all of CostaSMurfette's questions but I would like to make a few points that some people may find informative.
Ships do have a MEL. However something failing after you sail which means you no longer meet the MEL does not necessarily mean you must return immediately to port.
The same principal applies to aircraft. For example if you are in a 747-400 flying from say San Francisco to London Heathrow and an engine fails one hour into the flight, it is still safe and legal to carry on to London. You still have more redundency that you would if you were flying a fully-functional 767.
All elevators on board ships are designed for ships, not for buildings.
All passenger areas on a modern ship have at least two seperate well signposted/highly visible exit routes They may involve going through doors marked "for emergency use only".
Horizontally closing watertight doors do not let significant amounts of water through once they are closed.
If you want to read an example of really poor bridge resource management, go to the maib website at www dot maib dot gov dot uk, search for K wave and read the report.
VP
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I think the worse part of a cruise is the low you feel when you are walking off the ship. It's over and you are heading back to the same old same old...that is until you get the itch again and book your next cruise
When I disembark, I always know when I'm going to be back onboard..... unless circumstances mean I'll be back onboard sooner than I'd planned :D
VP
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The worst thing about cruising is having a whole area of the ship's toilets being put out of action because someone has brought their own toilet paper which blocks the pipes....:mad:
VP
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A question that has been asked is along the lines of "When Schettino took the conn, did he have enough time to avoid hitting the rocks?"
I believe I have the answer.
At 21:39:17 Schettino took the conn. Even if the ship had been heading directly at the island (which it wasn't but I'll take the worst case scenario), giving the command "helm starboard 5 degrees" would have taken the ship clear of the island. Yes, just five degrees.
The ship hit the rocks at approximately 21:45. Let's round that down to 21:44. And let's assume it took Schettino 43 seconds to put his coffee down, so it wasn't until 21:40 he effectively took the conn. Again, worst case scenario. At 16 knots, Concordia would travel 1950 metres in 240 seconds. (8.23 m/s * 280 seconds)
If the rudder had been put to 5 degrees starboard at 21:40, 43 seconds after Schettino took the conn, the ship's advance (i.e. maximum distance travelled in the initial forward direction) would be sllightly less than 1400 metres and she'd have missed the rocks.
VP
p.s. At 16 knots, full rudder (35 degrees) on Costa Concordia has an advance of only 530 metres - she was a very maneuvreable ship.
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which side of the ship is the anchor on ?
The outside.
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
Vista class ships have two anchor winches on the forward mooring deck, one on each side. There is (usually) a spare anchor on the foredeck. There isn't an anchor at the stern, however there are three mooring winches.
VP
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When the ship is travelling at speed above 22 knots, the Azipod blades are revolving at 130 to 136 rpm - (and strangely 2 rpm more at night!)
The hotel load is lower at night so more electrical power is available for the motors.
I was on Arcadia just after she came out of refit and one evening she undertook a "speed run" as the sea and wind were both was calm. She made a constant 24.5 knots, but a) we could feel the vibration in the restaurant, and b) I'm *very* glad I wasn't paying the fuel bill. With 5 engines running, Arcadia drinks around 10 tons per hour at 24.5 knots, whereas at 22 knots and 4 engines it's closer to 8 tons per hour.
This is partly due to careful husbandry by the engineers who take care not to operate the PEMs at speeds less than 30 rpm. Some users of these ABB azipods do run them slowly, or even reverse the direction of rotation and, at slow speeds the roller bearings slide instead of roll, thus wearing them.Absolutely! Arcadia runs her azipods at 30rpm minimum. To move at slow speed, the azipods are pointed almost towards each other so that the resultant port/starboard thrust vectors cancel each other out, leaving a small resultant vector forwards. This means Arcadia can travel very slowly forward, even if both pods are still running at 30rpm.
Edited to add: mvarcadia.com - where's the pic. of the bearing control panel? ;-)
VP
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The link sidari posted contains the text
"According to the experts, it was a communication error between the master and helmsman that caused the impact, which is why Rusli is now under investigation for the sinking of Concordia."
Back in May I was on holiday, I was Captain of a 50 foot boat in fairly narrow waters, easy, eh? Alas... I was too relaxed, I screwed giving orders one morning, I said starboard instead of point, easy to do :( It was *MY* sole responsibility to hear and understand the helmsmans reply. He correctly said "helm to starboard". I realised I'd got it wrong, I stated "Correction, helm to port. Helm to port.", watch for the correction and listen for the helmsman to say "Helm to port".
Some years ago, there was a communications breakdown (again, my responsibility as the Master) and because we were close to shore, I said "I have the helm, I have the helm" and took the wheel.
The point is that in my opinion, the person giving the commands to ensure safe navigation has the reponsibility to ensure her/his commands are being acted upon correctly. In both of the above (true) examples, it was my responsibility to ensure safe navigation. In the first case, I'd got it wrong. In the second case, the helmsman had got it wrong. But in both cases, it was *my sole responsibility* to ensure the vessel's heading was correct.
VP
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At 11:08 p.m., as a confused evacuation got under way, the Captain called his wife Fabiola.
"Fabi', my career as a captain is over. We hit a reef, the ship is listing but I performed a great maneuver... everything is under control," he is heard saying.
I'd like to know more about the great maneuver. Was it avoiding the rock...? No, he turned too late. Was it using the bow thrusters? I don't think so... once the engine room was flooded and the EG was the only source of power, the bow thrusters were inoperative. People with a dirty mind might think that the great maneuver involved a young blonde - you may very well think that, but I couldn't possibly comment.
VP
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VP
The truth has been there since day one.
Captain Coward ordered the ship into a danger zone to win kudos from fellow Costa employee who were residents of Giglio.
Then he shifted his attention to more pressing issues.
I agree. The truth is always there.... but the trick is finding it. Captain Antonio Di Lieto, the author of the paper referred to by Morgan, has obviously invested a lot of time and experience in getting closer to the truth.
What Schettino does show is the huge difference between a properly planned and executed sail-by which we can all safely enjoy and his reckless unplanned stupidity which kills people.
VP
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Morgan.... a fascinating paper. I've read it and I'll read it several more readings (with a pencil and highlighter). Thank you Morgan. I might make a few more comments here in the next week or two.
Something very apparent - the sail-by was about as unplanned as it could be - the newly planned route wasn't plotted on a suitable chart, the newly planned route was far too bloody close (0.5nm at night in unfamiliar waters without a pilot??! Part of my anatomy would be doing a very good impression of a rabbbit's nose), and as it was the Captain who had decided on the sail-by, he should in my opinion have been on the bridge before the ship had deviated from the original route so that he had situational awareness.
And there was no proper handover when the Captain took the conn.... and it's (mainly) the responsibility of the person taking the conn to make sure they are properly briefed. Where they are, speed & heading, next waypoint, nearest land (if appropriate), any traffic, etc.... without that very basic information, how the hell could the Captain take the conn????
I need a drink.
VP
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You don't know who you are until something happens.....then you REACT and will be a hero or a coward
I'm not sure it's so much being a hero or being a coward. It's more a case of realizing that for whatever reason, the shi...p has hit the fan and it's up to the person in command to do what they have the training and experience and aptitude to do keep everyone safe.
If they can't do what they have to then it's a question of either their training, experience or aptitude are lacking. The last is the hardest to quantify and it really is only when things go wrong that it can be tested.
Now on a ship, things will sometimes go wrong and events will hapen. It's the nature of being at sea. A good Captain will observe the reaction of his junior officers, whether they be a cadet, third officer,... up to Staff Captain. From that the Captain should be able to recommend whether the persons they are observing have what it takes to make the final step and to become the person who will at some point have the qualities required to take overall responsibility of a ship.
The evidence that is currently available shows that Captain Schettino made a very poor decision attempting to sail by the island at an unsafe distance for whatever reason, and then he froze after his ship was damaged. So the evidence suggests he's at fault. But more importantly for the rest of us who travel by ship, I would also expect that the selection procedure for Ship's Masters at Costa, and possibly in other/all cruise lines, to be examined.
VP
Concordia News: Please Post Here
in Costa Cruises
Posted · Edited by Vampire Parrot