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GET EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH RUNNING THE BOAT
by Capt. Daniel S. Schwartz
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January 17, 2006. This article, in slightly different form, appeared in Seattle Yacht Club’s January newsletter, the Binnacle. Dan Schwartz is an airplane pilot and a deep sea merchant marine master, with 23 years experience at sea. He presently is in charge of all the vessels in the University of Washington Oceanography fleet. Dan and his wife Kathy cruise the Northwest in their Grand Banks 32, Northern Rose.
Back in the 1930s, at the beginning of regular airline service, the infant air carriers realized that to build the public’s confidence in this new and somewhat scary mode of travel, they would need convincing safety measures. One of these measures was the permanent assignment of co-pilots to the cockpit. In the early years, senior pilots resented this imposition of junior pilots onto their turf, and co-pilots were expected to “put up, shut up, flaps up, and gear up.”
After World War II and the advent of cockpit voice recorders, accident investigators noticed a disturbing trend. The tapes revealed that pilots, perhaps overwhelmed by a cascading set of emergency circumstances, frequently made incorrect decisions or did precisely the wrong thing to react to an equipment failure. All too often, the co-pilots said nothing at all, or only meekly offered their advice. Did the culture of the cockpit and the captain’s imperious style of command actually contribute to tragic accidents? Thus was born the field of “Cockpit Resource Management” or CRM.
When conducting simulator training sessions with emergency scenarios, human factors experts began reviewing the quantity and quality of the interactions between captain and first officer, videotaping their actions and playing the tapes back later during follow-up critiques. CRM has become a mandatory part of flight crew training, in which co-pilots are encouraged to be more assertive, and captains are shown the safety advantages of a team approach that provides another brain and set of eyes, with no diminution of their authority.
After several high-profile maritime disasters like the Amoco Cadiz spill on the French coast and the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, the marine industry and the U.S. Coast Guard realized that the aviation industry had something to teach to the ancient art of seafaring. Thus was born “Bridge Resource Management” (BRM). Now, all licensed deep-sea marine officers are required to take a course in BRM and participate in Bridge simulator emergency scenarios – which are subsequently played back and analyzed to show how captains can utilize all the human resources available to prevent accidents and cope with emergencies.
Is there something we recreational boaters learn from this story? While a yacht’s skipper may have more experience than the crew, skippers should include the crew in watch-keeping, situational awareness, and decision making – especially when faced with challenging or stressful conditions.
For example, on these short winter days we may finish the day’s run after nightfall. An early morning departure may encounter fog. The crew should keep an eye on the radar, or watch the navigation on the video display, so the skipper retains night vision for looking out the pilothouse windows for logs and floating debris.
When my wife and I enter an unfamiliar anchorage on our boat, we always approach the spot where we plan to drop the hook with one of us watching the echo sounder and the other scoping out the bay and the chart. On many occasions, I’ve asked my wife how she felt about a particular location, and she’s not been comfortable with it. This has given me pause: Has she noticed something I didn’t? Are we too close to another boat, too near the shoals if the wind changes direction during the night? If I can’t summon a convincing reason why this particular place is suitable, we move off to find another anchorage. That’s BRM at work.
This year, let’s get everyone aboard involved in navigation, decision-making, lookout duty, and cruise planning. They’ll likely discover an interest in learning more, and they will find more enjoyment in the boating experience – and the skipper may get some priceless help just when it’s needed.v
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