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Department of Connections

15-May-2006
The Captain's Alarm-Clock Stop, from Michael Olagnon

Last week, I went with a colleague to meet Charles "Carlos" Claden and retrieve material for a presentation that we will give on his behalf at a workshop at Cape North on emergency marine operations. Carlos is probably the most respected captain of a rescue and assistance tugboat in Western Europe, and meeting him is a pleasure equal to none. After we heard some rescue stories that could inspire novels and movies, the discussion wandered to the decision making process, and he showed us 5 slides about the problems as he sees them:

1. Stubbornness, desire to succeed and being dragged along lead to ignore previously defined limits.
2. Having a large audience gives a tendency to show off, and to take risks that one wouldn't take if he were alone.
3. Having a long record of successes gives exaggerated self-confidence.
4. Being considered as an expert in one's field mutes those with common sense, as they believe that the expert, whatever tired and under pressure he may be, knows better.
5. And last but not least, the more extreme the conditions, the more people feel compelled to take [any kind of silly] action just not to remain idle.

He then smiled and said: "Do you know how I deal with those problems ? I use an alarm-clock to stop ourselves from over-passing the limits. When we engage into an operation, say getting the towline across, pumping the water out of a flooded compartment, restarting an engine on board a disabled ship, we make an estimate of the duration it should take to complete, and I set an alarm on the bridge to ring after that time plus a small margin. If the alarm rings, we disengage from the operation whatever its status is and try something else."

Isn't it odd that such an alarm that would seem more suited to a trader's workplace, should rather ring to save lives and ships on the bridge of a 21,700 HP tugboat?