It is time to put an end once and for all to the commonly acknowledged ‘truth’ that the six hours on/six hours off (six on/six off) watchkeeping system is an acceptable work practice.

I do not believe I am alone in considering this practice, piracy aside, the bane of shipping today. It can result in events which may seem not only improbable, but downright unbelievable. In a report from the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) on the grounding of a vessel in 2008, for example, we read: ‘It is probable that the chief officer fell asleep shortly after taking over the watch at midnight, and then remained asleep for more than three hours until the vessel grounded.’

It is hard to find another trade or industry that has its members work on such a retrograde, counterproductive and outright dangerous schedule. Yet this system is accepted by IMO, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), flag state administrations, ship-owners and operators and even watchkeepers as a matter of course. But to do away with this, it is worth first looking at how it came about, and how it continues to be implemented.

Work/rest in context

In 1958, the ILO Convention C109 defined ‘normal hours of work’. For watchkeeping officers on near-trade ships at sea these normal hours of work were to be not more than 24 hours in any period of two consecutive days. Alternately, watchkeepers on distant trade ships, while at sea, had their normal hours of work set at not more than eight hours in any one day. Anything more was considered overtime – so minimum rest periods were still an illusion.

These early initiatives, however, lacked a broad application as few countries ratified the conventions. In 1996, ILO 180 was adopted and later ratified by a good many countries, albeit mostly in the European sphere. This convention finally established that minimum hours of rest should not be less than 10 hours in any 24 hour period and 77 hours in any seven-day period.

As far as hours of rest are concerned, however, both ILO 180 and the similarly worded Marine Labour Convention 2006 that will soon supplant it were superseded by STCW 1978. This IMO convention entered into force in 1984 and enjoyed many more signatories than the ILO initiative. The same 10 hour minimum rest in any 24 hour period was echoed in STCW but total hours of rest in any seven-day period were set at a less favourable 70. Yet nestled within both these conventions was a fatal flaw. Both conventions specified that the hours of rest may be divided into no more than two periods, one of which shall be at least six hours in length.

The weak point

While 10 hours of rest are highly commendable, having only six hours of ‘guaranteed’ continuous rest certainly is not. Let’s have a closer look to see why this is the weak point of the whole affair.

It has been shown in study after study over the last 50 years that human beings need seven to eight hours of continuous sleep for that sleep to be restorative. Without adequate restorative sleep, they cannot perform optimally. According to authors Smith, Allen and Wadsworth from their paper A Comparative Approach to Seafarers’ Fatigue, while a six hour sleep period may be adequate for one day, it is not sufficient on a regular basis. They concluded that anything less would lead to accumulated sleep debt and will impact on performance.

In other transport sectors, such as aviation and trucking, six on/six off work schedules are no longer condoned. In some cases, they never were. For example, in many countries bus drivers are permitted to work up to 14 hours in one day, but they must receive at least eight consecutive hours off duty before starting a new shift. This requirement ensures sufficient consecutive hours of rest.

Seafarers, however, are expected to carry out their duties safely even if they have had fewer consecutive hours of recuperative sleep than most human beings need….

Please continue reading the article HERE to find out why – and why this system is in fact at odds with the requirements of STCW itself – and why 6 On/6 Off should not be tolerated.

“I asked Ed Cooke, a competitor from England — he was 24 at the time and was attending the U.S. event to train for that summer’s World Memory Championships — when he first realized he was a savant.

“Oh, I’m not a savant,” he said, chuckling.

“Photographic memory?” I asked.

He chuckled again. “Photographic memory is a detestable myth. Doesn’t exist. In fact, my memory is quite average. All of us here have average memories.”

That seemed hard to square with the fact that he knew huge chunks of “Paradise Lost” by heart. Earlier I watched him recite a list of 252 random digits as effortlessly as if it were his telephone number.

“What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly,” Cooke said.

…At the time, I didn’t quite believe Cooke’s bold claims about the latent mnemonic potential in all of us. But they seemed worth investigating. Cooke offered to serve as my coach and trainer. Memorizing would become a part of my daily routine. Like flossing. Except that I would actually remember to do it.“

Foer provides details on how to improve your memory in his book (a great summary of tips can be found HERE) but the important lesson is that memory is a skill learned through hard work and practice… not through naturally born talent. This is important for mariners because having good memory leads to good seamanship, especially when “snap” decisions need to be made. But it’s also important because countless studies of great CEO’s and managers show that top performers have all developed great memories.

But memory is not enough. A study of historically great Chess Grand Masters found that many had only average IQ scores and some even had bad memories for remembering facts. In one example a master won the world chess championship and, when leaving, could not remember where he left his umbrella. This is because chess masters have a different kind of memory… situational memory.

Aboard my first ship the Captain told me that “Traffic situations are like chess games, you need to understand the flow of the game and predict the moves of your opponent long before he steals your first pawn.” He, of course, was right but how do chess masters know what moves their opponent are going to make?

It turns out the best don’t remember tactics they studied in books, although this does help, they remember stories from their earlier matches. They talk of past games as you and I would tell the story of a close call at sea and stories are things that stick in our brains better than anything. This is why experience counts, master’s with long careers have more stories stored in their memory than the rest of us and some of these memories stick in your brain.

But which ones stick? It turns out the ones that stick are the ones we tell others the most, it’s this repetition that build memory. Think back to the traffic situations you remember best. It was probably a close call right? Now think how many times you told the story of that near collision to others.

A common phrase is “I’ll never make that mistake again!” and this is correct but not because you remember the close call itself but because you built a story around the collision and retold that story many times in your career… a repetitive act that makes it “stick” in your mind.

Homework:

We can all learn from this lesson by purchasing Foer’s book and working hard at the practice of memory skills but a far simpler solution is to simply tell more stories. For this reason I suggest that all cadets, as part of their summer seaterm project, write the stories of their traffic situations on paper and recount these stories in class.

For the rest of us, those of us long out of school, we too can start writing stories around traffic situations we encounter by starting a journal. But it’s not enough just to write, you have to go back and re-read your stories and make a point of sharing them verbally with others. And remember; the most memorable stories are the most interesting so… get creative!

And note… it’s important to be truthful in telling your sea-stories! Otherwise your memory of events, memories you will need the next time you encounter a similar traffic situation, are based less on the facts and more on the stories you have built around them!

The Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) earlier this year set out its plan for dealing with the problem. This includes inspection of crews’ timesheets and cross-checking them with other on-board documentation and ships’ voyage schedules. Surveyors are also checking that dedicated lookouts are being deployed at night.

The MCA also said it would be looking for evidence companies were auditing shipboard records, pointing out the requirement for such audits under the International Safety Management Code. Previously, German casualty investigators had criticised the operators of a containership which smashed into a bulk carrier at 25 knots one night in September 2007 for failing to either spot the excessive hours being worked by the lone watchkeeper or act on the information. Casualty investigators are reluctant, however, to state categorically fatigue was the cause of an incident. In the grounding incident the report says, “We are unable to exclude the possibility of the officer of the navigational watch being affected by fatigue caused by an excessive workload.” In the collision case the report noted “significant violations of the stipulated maximum work and minimum rest periods”, but could not conclusively attribute the incident to fatigue, despite evidence

This cautiousness derives from the fact that while fatigue has been acknowledged as a potential risk it remains difficult to measure. Someone may have worked long hours but may still be capable of performing satisfactorily. Other factors such as an individual’s physical and mental state have to be considered. Yet the assumption is being made that working long hours with inadequate rest can cause error-inducing fatigue, hence the reliance on rules setting maximum and minimum hours for rest and work that will increase with the entry into force of the Maritime Labour Convention and the amended Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping convention. An overly prescriptive approach can, however, throw up problems. What, for example, exactly constitutes rest or work? If a watchkeeper after completing a watch does anything, except in emergencies, that could be described as work – record-keeping, for example– when they should be resting, it may be construed as a breach of the rules. In aviation, work can include the “commute time” taken by flight crew to reach the airport from where they are due to fly and other duties such as record-keeping. In shipping it is not unknown for Masters and other senior officers to take up their posts shortly after arriving by air and the briefest of handovers, while the workload created by administrative duties has also increased. An alternative approach to “archaic” prescriptive rules adopted by some airlines is the use of company-specific “fatigue risk management systems” (FRMS). They retain the limits on maximum hours but only on a monthly or annual rather than daily basis.

Fatigue risk management plans that are subject to approval by the relevant authority make use of “biomathematical” models to predict the risk of fatigue in specific patterns of working hours, with monitoring of alertness levels and feedback gained from crew reports. Pilots wear wristwatch-like devices that monitor movement and light and can tell whether a person is asleep or awake. Other industries such as rail, chemical and health are also adopting FRMS, while in the mining industry drivers of heavy trucks are donning “smartcaps” that by measuring brainwave activity can alert them to dangerous fatigue levels that can lead to “microsleeps”. As the science of fatigue advances and technology provides more reliable means of monitoring and measuring wakefulness, shipping stands to benefit. A research project into fatigue among seafarers aims to produce a “fatigue management toolkit” for the industry. Volunteers in Project Horizon, funded by the European Union, are having their brainwaves monitored while performing duties on bridge, engine-room and cargo-handling simulators at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the Warsash Maritime Academy in the UK. The project will, however, take 30 months to complete and in the meantime the industry, at a time of economic crisis and during a continuing shortage of officers, won’t be allowed to rest by ever-louder calls to reduce the workload on sea staff.

Some companies do seem able to respond. One has added a fourth officer in reaction to a port-state control inspection critical of the workload of the Chief Officer, according to a recent posting on an internet forum dedicated to fatigue at sea. A Master on the same forum says timesheets have provided him with a “data-driven” case to press management for higher manning levels. Complying with the separate rules on hours of work and rest and all other crew-related regulations can be “a nightmare”, according to one industry expert. Airlines admit managing fatigue is just as complex and challenging but when successfully done can result in both greater safety and efficiency, while improving flight crews’ lifestyles. That is something for shipping to sleep on.

Discussion has returned on the use of Class-B AIS data by commercial ships. For those unaware of the technology, Class B is an AIS system designed for use by boaters and is compatible with the Class A AIS units of large ships but with limited features.

One of the provisions the IEC, IMO and other regulatory bodies have included in the AIS spec is the ability for SOLAS classed vessels to filter out Class B targets. The general reasoning is that, if a large percentage of boaters adopt this technology then radar and ECIDS screens will become too cluttered to see important targets. Our friends at Panbo are currently figuring out the details but, according to the operating manual, it seems that Furuno’s latest radar units allow Class B targets to be slept (the AIS target is replaced with a less pronounced icon) or removed from the Display and you can also prevent Class B targets from sounding the unit’s CPA warning alarm.

What does this mean for professional mariners? A quick survey reveals that most mariners do not understand the full scope of Class B filtering settings and, therefore, leave these settings untouched. Most of us would agree that leaving settings we don’t understand alone is a good practice. And those that do understand the settings only use them in busy harbors.

This brings us to a word of caution. While Class B data can, and sometimes should, be suppressed in port it is important technology that will help us avoid boats which venture offshore. Therefore deactivating the display of Class-B targets on your ECDIS and RADAR is an action that should be logged and a note should be placed in your passage plan (or penciled next to the sea buoy on the chart) to remind all watchstanders to reactivate the setting once you have set out for sea.

The bottom line is that every watchstander wants to avoid colliding with a boat – but mistakes can happen. As technology improves, so will sound watchstanding practices to assure that navigation displays are sett-up properly. Until then, it is your responsibility to understand your equipment, understand it’s capabilities and potential faults, and create ship specific procedures to assure it is set up properly…. both in port and at sea.

Recently, the USCG issued a Marine Safety Alert warning operators to have policies in place on the use of cells phones and other devices that may distract crew members from performing their job functions to the best of their ability.  In fact, the alert brings to mind a popular discussion on the gCaptain forum regarding playing music in the bridge, something that most members consider acceptable.  But while music is not directly addressed in the alert, I think that it could technically be classified as a “distraction”.  Even so, the USCG makes abundantly clear their stance on use of cell phones: Don’t let it be you!

Continues reading the full alert below:

Throughout the United States, and across all transportation modes, safety initiatives are being established to address issues related to Distracted Operations. The Coast Guard recognizes the importance of this issue, understands the potential consequences caused by increased operational risk in marine operations, and is supportive of the goals and objectives of the U.S. Department of Transportation and other distracted driving safety initiatives.

With respect to vessel operations, the bridge team management approach to safe navigation is an essential element of risk management and safe vessel operations. The team approach to safe navigation requires the clear, frequent and accurate exchange of information between all crewmembers relative to the safe operation of the vessel. In other evolutions, such as discharging cargo, loading fuels, etc., full attention is required by all involved in order to prevent casualties or pollution incidents. Additionally, when mariners are navigating or working alone, the use of cellular or other devices unrelated to the operation at hand could impede the exchange of vital operational information, delay reaction time, or cause attention lapses of those involved which could result in unwanted circumstances having very serious consequences causing injuries and fatalities, material damage, and environmental impact.

NTSB findings in investigations involving other transportation modes have found that the use of cellular telephones and other wireless devices can degrade performance, slow response times, and increase attention lapses of those in safety-sensitive positions. A recent executive order signed by President Obama prohibits text messaging by federal employees, including contractors, when driving government vehicles or their privately owned vehicles on government business. Most states and the District of Columbia (DOC) have recognized the risk and banned texting while driving. Nine states and the DOC have banned the use of handheld cellular telephones while driving. Lastly, the United States Department of Transportation has established a national initiative focusing on Driving Distracted. (More information is available at http://distraction.gov.)

The potential risk associated with improper use of cellular telephones and other devices in the marine environment while navigating or performing other vessel functions should be apparent to vessel owners and operators.

Consequently, the Coast Guard strongly recommends vessel owners and operators to develop and implement effective operational policies outlining when the use of cellular telephones and other devices is appropriate or prohibited.

This advisory is for informational purposes only and does not relieve any domestic or international safety, operational or material requirement. Developed by the Headquarters Office of Investigations and Analysis. Questions may be forwarded to HQS-PF-fldr-G-PCA@uscg.mil.

High-speed Internet connectivity on merchant ships and unintended consequences

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Since early this year, ships running at least one make of ECDIS can download navigational charts and chart updates at sea, via Internet download. OK, last year’s wreck won’t show up on ENC updates from hydrographic offices for another two or three years yet anyway, but this is progress, damnit. Don’t question it.

DNV’s OK’d it, as well. They will type-approve an ECDIS that uses Internet connections for updates, provided a) there is a firewall, b) there is an anti-virus strategy, and c) there is an electrical Internet kill switch. Of course, all of this assumes that the greatest threat is from outside.

I’ve heard from more than one source that this is not the case. One major shipping company had an ECDIS crash because the officers were using it to surf the Internet while en route (perhaps they were studying the company’s HSE policy online). The fuming manager said that they would fix this by allowing the machine to access only one url, that of the chart update provider.

Is it a shock to imagine an officer bored out of his mind jimmying the ECDIS to serve him YouTube videos? To me it wouldn’t even be a shock to hear that the flight crew of an airliner overflew their destination because they were tweeting about Justin Bieber. Better that than arguing about airline policy.

There’s a fear of technology at work here. It’s the same kind of thing that led employers ten years ago to hesitate to give their office workers Internet access. It’s alive today when they cut off access to YouTube, Facebook or Skype (I was told by one executive that his company wouldn’t let him use the last one because “it’s free and it works, unlike our enterprise solution.”)

Hell, give seafarers Internet connections broader than the New Jersey turnpike, if they want. If they can’t pull it up on the ECDIS, you can be sure they’re going to pipe it into their iPhones or Androids. The fact is this: They might be looking at porn and strike a bridge. They might also access countless tools to make them even better and more accountable officers. The Internet doesn’t kill people (OK, sometimes it does).

The fellow running the IMO’s e-Navigation working groups told me they’re putting the focus on what they call a “single window”. Let’s not split hairs here; that’s the ECDIS. This window’s going to be full of good stuff, and soon. And it’ll be up to every mariner to use it as he likes. In fact, I hope that seafarers come equipped with their own system in the future (like Norwegian pilots).

Imagine when a master can just show up with her ECDIS under her arm, plug into any ship and she has everything in the digital and physical world she needs, right there. A reality, you think?

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

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.

Download MP3 file: Messing About In Ships Episode # 15

Show Notes

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