Overlooking lockout/tagout safety procedures can have serious consequences for those working in and around the water.
The crew of the motor yacht Oblivious was busy preparing to meet the owner in the Bahamas in three days’ time, and the list of tasks that needed to be done before they could leave seemed never-ending. The captain felt like his mobile was permanently glued to his ear.
“Oh great, the hull cleaners have finally arrived,” he thought, as a couple of guys in wetsuits came down the dock. “Hold on a minute,” he said into his phone, as he went out to the side deck to acknowledge them. Back on the bridge, still on the phone, he grabbed some blue tape, stuck it over both engines’ start-up buttons, then gave the divers the thumbs up.
An hour later, with the captain off the yacht for a meeting, a stew entered the wheelhouse and went to work dusting the dash. She didn’t notice the bits of tape, which fell off with a swipe of her cloth and were sucked up by the vacuum. Then the first mate entered. She needed to lift the rescue boat on board from the dock but the crane didn’t quite have the reach. A quick thrust would help. But when she activated the thruster, there was a strange clunking sound, quickly followed by yelling and screaming...
In 2017, a diver cleaning the bottom of a 164ft motor yacht in a North Palm Beach marina was killed when the first mate turned on the bow thruster
This is a hypothetical worst-case scenario but, unfortunately, it happens that commercial divers are killed or injured when working around vessels. In 2017, a diver cleaning the bottom of a 164ft motor yacht in a North Palm Beach marina was killed when the first mate turned on the bow thruster. None of the crew was aware the diver was under the boat. The dive company had notified the captain of a date and time for the hull cleaning, but the diver had arrived on a different day and did not speak with any of the crew before submerging, nor did he display a dive flag. The only indication of his presence was a tank in a cart at the end of the dock. Tragically, he died from head wounds after being pulled into the starboard bow thruster.
In an ideal scenario the bridge would have displayed a sign: “Do not start engines while divers are in the water,” in what Captain Herb Magney calls the “most universally used version of lockout/tagout in yachting.”
In Farley Carney’s experience as owner of Mrs G Diving in Fort Lauderdale, what happens when his divers arrive for a cleaning or propeller service can vary.
Sometimes they meet nonchalant crew and have to insist they talk to someone in charge, while other boats have a more secure protocol. “They’ll send someone out with a clipboard and a checklist of what’s been locked out and what’s been tagged out. And then we ask them to make an announcement to the crew to let them know we’re down there, and ask if they have any technicians or mechanics scheduled for the day to let them know,” Farley says.
In any circumstance, a diver’s safety is always reliant on the boat’s crew. In a recent close call, two of Mrs G’s divers called the captain on their way to a boat and were told that there was no one on board. Per company protocol, they set up a caution “diver under boat” sign by the gangway, and put out their dive flag. As they were in the water, a crew member arrived, walked past the sign, went on board and started the engines. Luckily in this instance, the divers were not hurt.
Divers in the water is just one example of the many times the lockout/tagout safety procedure should be used. Captain Herb lists, for example, during electrical or plumbing system work, maintenance of the anchor chain or windlass, when running an ozone generator in the bilges, and so on. “It’s about communicating a potentially unsafe situation to all your crew,” he says. “When it’s locked out, it’s safe; it’s potentially unsafe at the flip of a switch or the turn of the hand.”
Herb believes the lockout/tagout mentality needs to be much more prominent in yachting. “Unfortunately, there’s a whole generation of captains and engineers who know nothing about it.” These are crew who came up from smaller boats without the benefit of working under someone with more experience or who came from the commercial world. And sometimes even experienced crew feel too busy in the fast-paced yachting environment to properly lockout and tagout.
“It goes to the heart of situational awareness. And if we don’t start thinking about it and talking about it, we won’t become familiar with it,” Herb says. “There hasn’t been [the safety] culture, because we’re not an industrial industry. We weren’t even an industry 10 years ago; we were a fledgling industry, and 30 years ago we were a hobby industry.
“So we’ve gone from being a bunch of sailors and boaters and having a great time, to this is our job; it’s our workplace. There are responsibilities now and there are liabilities involved. It has gotten complicated, but that doesn’t mean it has to become dangerous.”