When asked about the Manila Amendments, a captain recently quipped, “What?  There’s new regulations for folders?!“ 

The Manila Amendments refer to new wide-ranging changes to the IMO (International Maritime Organization) Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW).  STCW is a comprehensive set of international regulations that attempt to ensure that all merchant mariners are held to a common standard – regardless of their country of origin or license.  These changes were agreed upon by governments in Manila in 2010 and will begin to be applied from January 01, 2012.  One of the more significant changes in the short-term are the new minimum STCW rest hour rules.

There are two changes to the STCW rest hour rules that will cause the greatest consternation on vessels.  One, the minimum amount of rest in any 7 day period has been increased from 70 hours to 77 hours.  Two, seafarers must always have 10 hours rest in any 24 hour period, with no exceptions, except during an emergency.  Previously, there was an exception that the hours of rest could be reduced to “not less than 6 consecutive hours” as long as the reduction did not extend beyond 2 days.  This allowed flexibility in the event operations were hectic – as they frequently are in port working cargo.  Now, there is an hour less of work allowed per day and less flexibility.

All the STCW work hour rules are designed to reduce fatigue and the accidents that result from tired mariners.  Unfortunately, the STCW hours are in juxtaposition to yet another IMO mandated code – the International Safety Management (ISM) Code.  Unlike the STCW work hour rules, the ISM Code virtually guarantees a heavier workload – paperwork that is.

The ISM Code mandates that each company that operates a vessel maintain a Safety Management System (SMS).  The SMS will contain procedures on all aspects of how a vessel is to be operated.  Everything from emergency procedures to the proper paint to be used might be included in a vessel’s SMS.  These procedures are invaluable to a merchant mariner first joining a company or vessel, as it provides a ready source of information that can be accessed easily.

As procedures are updated and refined, changes will be made to the vessel SMS.  Frequently, these changes are driven by the needs of the vessel crew.  Other times, changes may be made at the behest of shore side personnel in order to better track performance or prevent safety issues on a fleet wide basis.  In time, the SMS may become saturated with reports and inspections at the request of shore side personnel searching for that critical data point.

While the intent of added inspections and reporting may be good – for example, there may have been many accidents or near misses due to corroded handrails.  As a result, a company-wide program may be implemented for the monthly inspection and tracking of handrail condition.  While the man-hours required for such an inspection – say it is 1-2 hours per month – would not appear to be excessive and the decrease in handrail near misses/incidents desirable, the cumulative effect of many mandated inspections in addition to the normal workload may cause senior officers to become fatigued.

The solution to this issue might be two-fold – incorporating adjustments and management decisions both by shore side and vessel personnel.  Shore side personnel must understand that it is very easy to create substantial labor onboard the vessel through an innocuous email or inspection.  In this high-speed world of email, it is critical that requests for information from a vessel be well thought through before hitting the “send” button.

On the vessel side, senior officers frequently bear the brunt of inspections and information gathering, as they are normally more familiar with the vessel and operations.  With the limited labor pool (13 hours per day) allowed under the Manila Amendments, it will become increasingly necessary to spread the wealth and knowledge by incorporating junior officers into some of these processes.  While initially more labor intense due to the need to train the junior officers in the inspection process, in the long run you will have a labor pool more job-agile and less likely to fatigue.

The SMS is there to help companies and crews to manage their vessels more safely.  Let’s make sure that it stays to true to its origins and doesn’t evolve into a paperwork monster.

Captain Richard Madden is a maritime consultant and SUNY Maritime graduate with over 20 years of industry experience.  He holds a USCG Unlimited Master’s license and has sailed on government vessels, offshore towing vessels, tankers, container ships, coastal towing and general cargo vessels.  He is an actively sailing merchant mariner with a focus on safe operations.

When speaking about materials, fatigue means increasing structural damage occurring through repetitive stressing of the material. We’ve all seen the results of wave action on the hull of a ship and resulting fractures and cracks that occur with time. And I am certain that we have all seen the same result with our crew
and ourselves during stressful voyages. Much has been written about the causes of crew fatigue fac-
tor but how can you measure it? Does everyone react the same way? What criteria are used to identify it? Are current regula- tions sufficiently specific pertaining to the potential for fatigue and how it is to be evaluated or mitigated against. Look at HE-Alert’s “Fatigue causes, effects, and mitigation” http://www. he-alert.org/documents/centrespreads/centrespread_13.pdf and tell me, honestly, if you could possibly implement all, or even most, of those suggestions on a working vessel. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with what they are saying (theory) but can’t see how it can be fully put into practise in the current environment (reality).

Does the current STCW go far enough in addressing fatigue? IMO’s MSC has created Guidelines on Fatigue and has commit- ted to introducing a new chapter in SOLAS dealing with crew fatigue “to introduce mandatory requirements and make verifi- cation possible.” The ISM Code introduces some safety man- agement requirements on ship owners, and the International Labour Organizations’ Maritime Labour Convention 2006 will address some of the factors dealing with fatigue when it comes into force. Will any of these and other guidelines currently in effect, provide a standard, international, and implementable system that we can use?

May I, at this point, suggest that money is one of the main factors contributing to crew fatigue? Crew sizes have been reduced while adding the multicultural and language dif- ferences of those smaller crews, administrative duties have ncreased, differing regulations from country to country exist, shore leave has been restricted, and pressure for quicker port turn-around times has been placed on crews. How can you have a rested crew under these conditions? One answer is to increase the size of the crew to what is actually required to deal with those circumstances. Ah, cries the owner: “I can’t be financially competitive if the crew size increases!” Ever the sea- lawyer, I ask, “why not, if all ship owners are placed under the same regulations?” The ship owner would not be paying the increased cost in the end anyway: you and I, as the product purchaser, will be paying because those costs will be passed on to the end user.

So, we face the dichotomy of being part of the problem (as purchasers who don’t want increased product prices) and also of having the potential to rectify some of the crew fatigue fac- tor (as the ship owner, operator, or crew). Don’t let this issue drop: new regulations may help but we, as mariners, must ultimately deal with the potential liability and responsibility when accidents occur.

This article was written by Captain Jim Calvesbert for the Council Of American Master Mariner’s newsletter Sidelights. The entire issue of sidelights magazine can be downloaded for free HERE.

Let’s face it, we could all use a few tips to help us stay awake especially those mariners working the late watch. From split watch schedules to operations requiring “All hands On Deck” sleep not only comes at a premium but is a critically important factor in accident prevention and remaining healthy. To highlight these issues we have brought you many articles on the subject including the popular “Night Shift A Cause Of Cancer” and “Get Some Sleep! Accident Photo Of The Week“.  We will continue the series with tips on how to cheat sleep.

Editorial Note: Sleep loss and driving ships is a deadly combination. We don’t suggest you ever attempt to cheat sleep, we simply hope to broaden your knowledge in the subject.

The Basics Of Sleep

Quality not quantity. No matter how much your mother tells you that you need eight hours of sleep, if you’re not tired and you can’t truly relax, your sleep time will be worthless.

The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes:

• 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep
• 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream)
• Final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep.

Source: CentACS

00-04 Watchkeepers: Maximize “Core Sleep”

“Core sleep” is a variant of Uberman sleep that adds a block of sleep, usually several hours, to the Uberman schedule, replacing one or two naps. (This term is also sometimes used to describe accidental oversleep by someone following Uberman, though one will more likely see the term “crash”, and occasionally “reboot”.) Another variant is called Everyman sleep schedule. Buckminster Fuller advocated Dymaxion Sleep, a regimen consisting of 30 minute naps every six hours. A short article was published about this schedule in the October 11, 1943 issue of Time Magazine. According to this article, he followed this schedule for two years, but after that had to quit because “his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men.”

Source: Wired How-To

Keys to the Midday Nap

A successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.

2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you’ll get what’s known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.

3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.

Source: Wired

Tips To Optimizing Sleep Value

• Do not take sleeping pills. This includes over-the-counter pills and melatonin.
• Don’t go to bed until you’re sleepy. If you have trouble sleeping, try going to bed later or getting up earlier.
• Get up at the same time every morning, even after a bad night’s sleep. The next night, you’ll be sleepy at bedtime.
• If you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep, get out of bed and return only when you are sleepy.
• Avoid worrying, watching TV, reading scary books, and doing other things in bed besides sleeping and sex. If you worry, read thrillers or watch TV, do that in a chair that’s not in the bedroom.
• Do not drink or eat anything caffeinated within six hours of bedtime.
• Avoid alcohol. It’s relaxing at first but can lead to insomnia when it clears your system.
• Spend time outdoors. People exposed to daylight or bright light therapy sleep better.

Source: Live Science

Foods For Sleep

An all- carbohydrate snack, especially one high in junk sugars, is less likely to help you sleep. You’ll miss out on the sleep-inducing effects of tryptophan, and you may set off the roller-coaster effect of plummeting blood sugar followed by the release of stress hormones that will keep you awake. The best bedtime snack is one that has both complex carbohydrates and protein, and perhaps some calcium. Calcium helps the brain use the tryptophan to manufacture melatonin. This explains why dairy products, which contain both tryptophan and calcium, are one of the top sleep-inducing foods.

These are foods high in the sleep-inducing amino acid tryptophan:

Foods that are high in carbohydrates and calcium, and medium-to-low in protein also make ideal sleep-inducing bedtime snacks. Some examples:

Meals that are high in carbohydrates and low-to-medium in protein will help you relax in the evening and set you up for a good night’s sleep. Try the following “dinners for sleep”:

Source: Dr. Sears

Become an Early Riser

It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.

The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail. The solution is to go to bed when you’re sleepy (and only when sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.

A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.

Source: Steve Pavlina

Sleeping Blogosphere Posts:

• Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better
• Everything You Wanted To Know About Sleep
• 40 Amazing Facts About Sleep
• Funny Sleep Photos
• Sleeping In Airports Guide
• Night Shift Cancer Concerns
• Do Whales Sleep?

Sleep Reading List

• Nature on Sleep
  
• How Stuff Works: Sleep
• The Sleep Industrial Complex
• Lifehacker’s Sleep Posts

Sleep Gadgets

• The Sun Alarm
• Sleeptracker Watch
• Dreamate Biofeedback
• TOCKY – For Those Who Can’t Wake Up On Time

After viewing the AIS data yesterday showing the course of the Shen Neng 1 before it ran aground on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, it’s no surprise that reports are starting to circulate that a dozing first mate may have been the cause of the incident. Tradewinds tells us:

Federal investigators are exploring whether the first mate of the stricken 70,000-dwt Shen Neng 1 (built 1993) was asleep while on duty as the bulker rammed the reef at full speed this weekend, reports say.

Interviews with the crew are taking place today with the alertness of the first mate both before and at the time of the crash one focus, says The Australian newspaper.

The development came as prime minister Kevin Rudd revealed the master of the Shen Neng 1, Captain Wang Jichang, could face jail if he is found to have breached any laws.

Rudd, in an interview with national radio, also said the ship’s owner could be hit with a fine of up to AUD 5.5m ($5.08m).

Keep Reading

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

Simple and effective. While some have suggested breath analyzers be installed on the bridge of all ships might the solution be much simpler? Is intoxication still a major problem among watchkeepers or is the occasional lack of sleep, stress and disorientation among watchkeepers a larger problem? Regardless, a few simple math problems could help determine your ability to stand watch and give confidence to the person you are relieving.

So the question to you is;

Illustration by Lars Leetaru of the NYTimes.

Can you starve to death sleep?

We have highlighted national sleep week, showed you how to cheat on sleep and even provided outrageous photos of a sleep realted incident but today’s post tops them all. Apparently our bodies have two internal clocks, one based on light and the other based on food. Lifehacker tells us:

Normally, the body’s natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travelers adjust to new time zones.

Granted, fasting is certainly extreme for just a few hours worth of jet lag, but the article points out that an 11-hour time change—like one an American traveler might experience when flying to Japan—would take the average person an entire week to adjust to. In such cases, a fast-before-you-fly policy could do wonders. The article is iffy about the effectiveness of this method, so if you’ve ever tried it, let’s hear how it worked in the comments.

If this interests you be sure visit NPR’s Science Friday post on the subject (audio file in upper left corner).

Download MP3 file: Messing About In Ships Episode # 15

Show Notes

Subscribe Via iTunes HERE

Endurance involves the body’s ability to maintain performance within safe limits while enduring psychological, environmental, and physiological challenges, Stevens said. Health, nutrition, stress, sleep, work schedules and noise levels all affect crew operations.

The issue in any situation involving transportation, whether it’s airplane, train, even a car or truck, is the fatigue issue, said Walter Blessey, chief executive officer of Blessey Marine Services in New Orleans. If someone goes to sleep when they’re involved in steering or running a piece of equipment, there can be serious consequences – maybe death.

Crew endurance management systems (CEMS) involve four categories:

* environmental factors, which are the effects of ambient temperature, noise and vibration on the human body;
* operational factors, which are the effects of company and boat policies;
* physiological factors, which are the effects of sleep, diet, exercise and shifts on the body and performance;
* psychological factors, which are the effects of stress and working conditions on performance.

Why is this an Important topic? Click this photo for the answer:

For more information visit the following links:

• How To Cheat Sleep -Tips To Stay Awake On Watch
• Night Shifts Linked To Cancer
  
• Coast Guard CEMS program
  
• CEMS Guide For Marine Operations

The ship pilot who was at the helm when a freighter spilled 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay in November suffers from a sleep disorder and was on prescription medication to ward off drowsiness, people close to the investigation told The Associated Press.Investigators want to know whether the disorder — or even the medication itself — contributed to the accident.Federal officials and others, speaking on condition of anonymity, said John Cota has sleep apnea, a breathing condition that can disrupt sleep all night long and leave sufferers severely fatigued during the day. Sleep apnea is blamed for countless auto accidents every year in which drivers nodded off at the wheel.Cota, 59, was also said to be taking a sleep-apnea drug whose known side effects include impaired judgment.Prescription drugs are “certainly a part of our investigation,” said G. Ross Wheatley, chief of investigations for the Coast Guard’s San Francisco sector.The disclosure has raised questions among members of Congress about the Coast Guard’s licensing practices and whether Cota should have been deemed fit for a job in which he was responsible for guiding giant cargo ships in and out of port and through the dangerous waters of the bay.Under Coast Guard policy, a sleep disorder can be grounds for disqualification, but is not automatically so. Continue Reading…

Those with medical concerns at sea should also check Global Rescue’s Medical Extraction Insurance for Mariners