Falling Off a Wave

Falling Off a Wave


Date & Time 16-12-2011  0000hrs
Position:- 09* 19’ S  144* 56 E
Course:- 277*
Speed:- 3.2 Knots
Wind:- S by W 14 Knots (Force 5 Fresh breeze)
Sea State:- Slight (< 1 meter)
Weather:- Partly Cloudy (up to 60% cloud)
(Wind Sea & Weather are all taken from the Beaufort notation to indicate the given conditions)
Distance to go:- 2709 nautical miles

We have had to drop the speed to delay our ETA at the Torres Strait pilot station situated at Dalrymple Island. We are now just a few miles from the northern most tip of the Great Barrier Reef  and have just moved from waters 1000 meters deep into 100 meters.

Todays music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZmO1ut2EPs

Falling off a wave.

I think one of my worst nightmares for a holiday setting would be a cruise. Not just because of the forced tourism part of ending up in some place that suddenly has an influx of a couple of thousand passengers and crew descend on the town all looking for that “unique experience” and which has just become 150% more expensive as soon as the locals saw the ship on the horizon (OK in large cities that may be different but I am sure you get my drift) 

All those hundreds of landlubbers (including most of the crew) with no clue of the difficulties should it all go a bit pear shaped. “Fuck my tall boots” I am breaking out into a sweat just thinking about it.

All those people running about screaming and panicking and all assuming that each one of them are more important than anyone else and should be saved first, many of the more stupid (and possession desperate) thinking it is OK to bring their luggage with them to the lifeboats.

Add into the mix the myriad of different languages spoken by the multi national crew recruited from all of the “cheap to hire” parts of the world, splash in a dash of  how the different cultures react when the shit hits the fan and you have a recipe for a massive clusterfuck.

Even on here, which is a working vessel crewed by supposedly trained  professionals, we have had people in a near state of blubbering panic during a muster drill convinced they are going to die and the ship is going to sink even though its just a training practice.

We had a small oven fire in the galley the other day and apart from one guy the rest of them  all ran out to the main deck towards the lifeboats, with all sense of training and practice lost, in blind panic. We are talking about a fire in the oven that your granny would put out with a damp tea cloth.

The mind boggles.

The true story of a small incident but demonstrates how quickly things can go wrong on a passenger carrying vessel and how quickly people lose the plot.
I was working on the Condor 9 which was the first passenger only, water jet drive, wave piercing catamaran to enter service in the UK.
It operated from Weymouth to St Malo via Guernsey and Jersey. It was the original “vomit comet”. 450 Punters sat in cheapo aircraft style seating with 6 toilets and one small snack counter for the lot.
The passenger demographic was normally 65% plus elderly (who else would want to go to the Channel Islands) on some sort of holiday deal, and the rest of all ages. The main passenger traffic was between UK and Channel Islands with only about 20% completing the whole trip to St Malo.
Condor 9 was about 45 metres long and had a supposed top sped of 35 knots although that would have to be empty, with a following wind with all four engines running flat out (rare) and downhill as well.
She had the new Ride Control System which was a set of hydraulically powered fins, one on each side of each bow and one on each inner of the sterns. The idea of the   RCS is to keep the vessels aspect to the waves level so the bows could cleanly pierce the wave. Sounds like a good plan and to a degree it works if the waves were nice and compliant and came at the vessel from directly ahead and all were a pretty uniform shape or size (no doubt like the ones found in the test tank of the designer). Unfortunately waves in the western channel are rarely like that and if they were just a couple of points or more off the bow (25degrees +) then the vessel adopted a somewhat jarring motion and it was common that out of about 450 punters, 300 or more might throw up. Because of her destination being due south and the prevailing wind and sea from the south west this was often the state of affairs on board when travelling towards the Channel Islands and France.
The motion of the vessel would be violent enough to make walking very difficult so most were confined to their chairs and had to “barf in the bags” provided.

I was sailing as an AB at the time and eating an enormous portion of humble pie (which doesn’t taste good hot or cold I can assure you ) because I had been ashore working in financial consultancy and had gone personally bankrupt early in 1992.
For those of you whose first instinct is to suspect the worst, this was personal debt and had nothing to do with clients money.
I was one of many thousands who not only found themselves in negative housing equity, with big outgoings and diminishing incomings, but who also learned the important and relevant lesson that wealth is not what you owe, it is what you own.
The humble pie comes from a conversation at a senior managers and shareholders convention in Bankok two years previously. Over dinner of lobster and champagne I was asked by colleague if I would ever consider going to sea again. After a mouthful of Moet I said (and I can still hear myself) “Fuck Off, If I ever do it will only be as a first class passenger on the QE2”
Oh Dear how ones words can come back and bite one on the arse eh?,
So two years and a few short months later I am sailing as an AB clearing up puke and placating old biddies about how rough it is likely to get on a  poxy little ferry. My Chief Officers certificate had expired because I had not done any sea time in the previous 5 years and being bankrupt I didn’t have the money to afford the two week re-validation course. In the words Buddy Guy “I couldn’t even afford to spend the night”

The crew spent 3 days on the vessel and although it had no accommodation we had a crew flat inside the old city of St Malo. The day started at 5.45 when we would arrive at the vessel and would finish whenever we managed to limp into St Malo after the round trip to Weymouth which was rarely before 7 or 8 pm and often later.
The vessel would sail from Weymouth at about 2.pm (although often later) so the people had the chance to get to Weymouth early, have a couple of pints and some nice greasy fish and chips and then board. Loading was always quite a quick affair, being no cars to worry about, and we would sail through the breakwaters and out towards Portland for our trip to the first stop, Guernsey, which was supposed to take about 3 and half hours.
On the rougher days (of which there were many) Fraggle Rock, as Portland is known, would shield Weymouth Bay from the worst of the south westerly weather but as we approached closer to the the Bill the swell would start to increase.
At first the punters would get all excited and go “Whoooo” as we rode over the first couple of swells, but the whoooo’s would slowly turn to “Wooahs” and then to slightly hesitant and unsure “Woes”  as the swells got larger.
After the woes it would quickly deteriorate into beeeeuuuuurrrerks and huuuuueeeeeys .
The vomiting would nearly always start at the front (the worst place to sit) and would spread like a chorus of bullfrogs towards the stern as one after another would succumb to the inevitable as we rounded the Bill and headed out into the channel proper.      
When it was really rough (quite often) many of the stewardesses would also fall ill, such was the movement of the vessel, so it was left to the AB’s to patrol the passenger decks taking bags full of vomit from the sombre, and in some cases distraught  looking victims, and hand them industrial paper wipe and new bags for the next onslaught of heaving.
My favourite method of working on the bad days was to amble down to the front before the “Whoos” started. I would have a heavy duty bin bag hanging from one side of my belt, about 30 sick bags tucked in the other side, and underneath my left arm a large roll of blue industrial wipe. My fellow AB and I would choreograph our move down each side of the vessel till we were level with the front emergency exits and from there we had a good view of everyone, we would then turn facing everyone, smiling and nodding at people in a very friendly and knowing manner.
On the first “Whoooo” we would reach into out pockets and don a pair of white latex gloves with a snapping flourish, like surgeon donning the gear before and important operation, all the time smiling and casting an eye over the seated passengers. Then we would go to work.
We were looking for the ones most likely to barf first and we could tell them by the way they were fanning themselves with the emergency card.
Experience taught us that these people were two or three minutes away from a technicolour yawn and would be our first targets. We would move to them handing over a couple of extra bags and generous helping of wipe whilst ignoring the protestations of “ Oh thanks but I will be fine” and replying with “I am sure you will be flower, but have these just in case.”
By now it would be difficult, even for us practiced hands, to stand so no-one could make it to the toilets and the chunder chorus would be in full swing. There would be no respite for at least a couple of hours .
We were like the blokes who operate and take the money on the Waltzers at the fairground, walking around with a sailors easy gait among the punters, cracking jokes and generally trying to cheer up them up.
I have had grown men crawling on their hands and knees begging me to shoot them as they thought they were going to die and by then wanted to die. Some people would drag their way to the toilet and then selfishly lock themselves in, engaging in the "porcelain cuddle". They were not to know we had the special type of hinges we could open from the outside, which we would do after a warning, and then help them back to their chairs. If it was a member of a family travelling we would remind them all with a hearty grin, once reunited with the toilet hugger,  that a family that throws, together grows together.
The miniscule bit of deck space available was off limits in rough weather and even in good weather was so noisy and windy as to deter even the most gaggingly desperate of nicotine junkies.
We developed our own black humour to insulate ourselves against this torrent of vomit, but beneath it, particularly for the more experienced seaman, there was always an undercurrent of ‘this is the wrong sort of boat in the wrong sort of sea’ uneasiness .
We all knew that if anything ever went wrong, such as hitting a semi submerged object, we would be in serious shit and the chances of getting everyone off with no losses would be poor at best.

As luck would have it we never did hit a submerged object, but we did fall off the top of a wave when we were on a passage back to Weymouth.
It was rough (SW7) and getting rougher as we approached Portland.
I have explained how everyone would be sick if the weather was a couple of points on the bow, but if it was couple of points, or more, abaft the beam then about 70% of people would fall asleep. It was quite bizarre to watch.
The crew knew we would be in for an easy ride when it was like this, however you will always get one or two chucking up, even on the calmest of days, and we often  wondered how some people ever managed to have a bath or even stand on a damp towel without barfing.
We were only about half full and had spent some time convincing people not to sit at the front (it is not the best spot if the weather is a bit suspect). There were a few “I know what I am doing” types but they were mainly on the outboard window seats so we left them to it.
The person with the hardest job on his hands in those sea conditions was the Captain as when a big sea is following, you stand a chance, because of our speed and diminutive size, of running down the face of the wave and burying the vessel into the back of the previous one.
It takes concentration, experience and something of a surfers eye to maintain the vessels integrity and keep to a commercial timetable in weather like this on a small, high speed vessel.
You have to climb the back of the wave you are on and adjust the speed and direction, so as to almost surf the crest, and then twist her around to be in proper alignment again for the next wave.
As is normal the waves tend to heap up a bit near Portland in any sort of a blow, and we had a good south westerly 7 going, when a secondary wave heaped up behind the one we were on and, catching the captain unawares, pushed us over onto the face.
It gave the Captain no time to react and we shot down the face of the wave and buried ourselves (being a wave piercer) into the back of the next wave, practically stopping us dead. The entire bow of the vessel was submerged as were the main deck front windows.
As the captain struggled to force her out of the wave the lashings that held down the aluminium window protectors snapped and the motion of water and vessel caused them to crash into two of the forward windows shattering them instantly.
That’s when things started to get tense and people started to scream.
Being submerged when the windows broke they exploded inwards sending glass and a wall of water into the front of the passenger deck completely flattening 3 rows of seats. Luckily myself and the other AB had stationed ourselves near the forward escape doors so were close at hand when it occurred.
As I said earlier we had managed to dissuade most passengers from staying at the front and we just had the few sat on the side. These were now up to their waists in icy cold water and a couple of them had sustained cuts and one old girl looked in difficulty. I waded in and grabbed the old girl while my shipmate led the two injured chaps out of the water. We then ushered the rest of the wet ones out.
One of the stewardesses had come down the stairs from the upper deck and stood frozen on the steps crying. I had to fire a few harsh expletives in her direction, reminding her about the job she was trained to do and that is was now ‘show time’ so either “p!ss or get of the pot”. It seemed to snap her out of it and she took over the injured party and was an absolute rock from then on.
One woman holding a child came running to me from the dry bit screeching and screaming about a lifejacket for her child and then started screaming “We are going to drown” which sparked up a few of the others who started shouting and trying to get up from their seats.
I shouted into her face “Shut the Fuck Up” and it had the same effect as if I had slapped her. I then said loudly and forcibly to the others, who were on the edge of freaking out, “Sit down, put your brains in gear, and look out of the window. It’s alright we are not sinking, we just have some water through a window.”
I said to the lady with the child and to anyone else with kids that if they would feel safer then go up to the upper deck and the stewardesses would take care of them.
That seemed to calm things down a bit.
At this time the Chief Steward turned up with another couple of stewardesses and they began to look after the other wet ones.
The Chief Mate arrived from the bridge and called up the report to the Captain who manoeuvred the vessel to protect the foc’sle so myself and the other AB could go out and secure the window protectors (known as dead lights) over the broken windows.
It is always an adrenalin moment when you are out on a deck and all around the waves are towering above you, but you learn to trust the powers of buoyancy, although we didn’t dawdle in boxing the job off.
By the time we got back in off the deck the Chief Steward and the girls had done a good job of settling everyone down and getting all the people with kids up to the top deck.
We tried to get the water out by draining it down into the void spaces in the hulls but could not open the lids against the pressure, so it was decided to get to port and worry about it there.
As the Captain accelerated the vessels the ride control system kicked in and levelled the vessel up from her head down position. The water that had collected at the front just followed gravity and with increasing force this little indoor tsunami went hurtling towards the stern of the vessel, hitting the legs and knees of all the dry people sat towards the stern and splashing right over them. It washed away handbags holdalls and duty frees and it smashed through the back doors and was gone.
We had gone from about 20 people wet to about 120 wet in 10 seconds but seeing it splash over people sat in their chairs and who could do noting as they watched it coming  was still one bright spot of humour in what could have been a very bad incident.
Although there were about 4 ambulances to meet us the few injuries were minor although one old feller had some sort of heart tremor but it could so easily have been a lot worse. The old lady who I had dragged out of the water first was just a bit shocked but suffered no other injury.
We sailed back to Guernsey to get her dried out but it was about a week before all the carpets were dry again however she was back in service the next day.

Love and Peace
Bentley