Kate got her start in the yachting industry working as crew. She spent five years cruising the Bahamas, Caribbean, New England, and Central America, then segued that experience into a career in marine journalism, including stints as editor of Dockwalk and ShowBoats International.
Chain lockers and other enclosed spaces on yachts pose hidden dangers that are often underestimated by crew. Even a small lapse in safety protocols can lead to tragic outcomes.
“Hey, I need you to help me inspect the anchor chain,” the bosun told the new deckhand on board the 60-meter motor yacht, following up with, “It’s a two-person job, and we need to get a permit to work…” He trailed off as his attention was pulled away by a contractor on board.
With the bosun distracted, the deckhand thought he’d be proactive and take a quick look at what the job would entail. He opened the chain locker’s hatch and climbed down the ladder.
Twenty minutes later, task completed with the contractor, the bosun called for the deckhand on the radio and got no response; he walked around the deck, but no one had seen him. “Oh no, he didn’t,” he thought, as he saw the hatch open. With a feeling of dread, he peered into the chain locker. The deckhand lay at the bottom, as if he were sleeping.
In a panic, the bosun called out the situation over the radio. He knew he needed to get a breathing apparatus but felt if he could just get the deckhand out of there quickly, it might be OK. He took a deep breath and descended into the locker. Unfortunately, he too collapsed. By the time the captain arrived with the proper gear, both men needed rescuing. The bosun was able to be resuscitated, but it was too late for the deckhand.
This is a hypothetical worst-case scenario, but, sadly, it has played out in real life far too many times. Chain lockers can become oxygen deficient due to the natural corrosion of the metal chain in a damp environment. Opening a hatch is not sufficient ventilation, and there won’t be any warning signs for the victim — it may take just a couple of breaths for them to succumb. The lockers are one of the many spaces on board to fall under the category of an “enclosed space,” which, per the MCA, means an area that is not designed for continuous worker occupancy and has either limited openings for entry and exit and/or inadequate ventilation.
These spaces have claimed many lives. According to InterManager, a trade association for ship and crew managers that tracks incidents for the IMO, 310 crew and shore workers lost their lives in enclosed spaces between 1996 to 2023, an average of 11 a year. In mid-December 2023, the association reported that eight deaths occurred in enclosed spaces over the previous week.
“One death is too many, but eight in seven days is ridiculous,” said Capt. Kuba Szymanski, secretary general of InterManager. “This is not an isolated issue, but a problem that requires collective action from the entire shipping community. Crewmembers and shore workers are often placed under unrealistic time pressures to perform high-risk tasks, such as tank cleaning, and there is a lack of consistent instructions regarding procedures and protocols across ships.”
While the word “ship” is most often used when speaking about enclosed spaces, superyachts are subject to the same regulations and have many of the spaces in question on board. A crewmember recently reported to CHIRP Maritime — a confidential incident- reporting program — that no gas detection equipment was carried on board their sub-500GT yacht, because, allegedly, there were no enclosed spaces on board this yacht. CHIRP’s advisory board irrefutably counters that point. In the summer 2023 edition of Superyacht Feedback, they wrote, “Enclosed spaces do exist on superyachts, and can include areas such as chain lockers, bunker tanks, paint lockers, battery lockers, peak tanks, cofferdams, sail lockers, and void spaces.” They point out that non-tank spaces can be more dangerous as crews are less aware of the risks.
“If access to any of the above spaces is required, then proper entry procedures must be followed. These include a risk assessment, a test of the atmosphere using properly calibrated portable atmosphere-testing equipment, and the completion of a permit to work. If the testing equipment is not on board, then entry must not be attempted,” say CHIRP advisors.
The MCA published new regulations concerning enclosed spaces in 2022, which came into force on May 14, 2023, for non-SOLAS vessels. With few exceptions they apply to all vessels, commercial or otherwise, regardless of size. Among other stipulations, they say that all vessels must carry testing equipment that checks for concentrations of oxygen, flammable gases, hydrogen sulphide, and carbon monoxide, whether or not anyone intends to enter these spaces, and that enclosed space rescue drills must be conducted at least once every two months.
CHIRP’s advisory board also recommends that the required entry and rescue drills should not only focus on the physical drill but also raise awareness about what constitutes an enclosed space.
Crew awareness of the dangers of these spaces is not the only issue; complacency can kill as well. “It’s called the normalization of deviance,” says Rick Thomas, who has been in the superyacht industry for close to 40 years, following a career as a commercial diver. “Say your norm is that you always drop an O2 detector down into a void space, and you always have somebody on deck watching the second person going in, and then you always ventilate that space before you go in. But then a circumstance comes up, and you didn’t have that O2 detector. So now you have two people on deck. You put the vent in there, and the one guy goes down and he’s fine, and the other guy is on deck and he’s fine. And that worked out.
A few months later, you go back and say, ‘Well, last time we did it that way but, you know, bringing out that fan is such a pain in the ass. And it wasn’t necessary. We don’t need to do that.’ So now you’ve moved one more level and you don’t have the ventilation; you don’t have the O2 detection. You have the two guys — one guy goes in there and he passes out. Well, that didn’t happen last time. Because last time the air happened to be fine. This time it wasn’t. And that’s normalization of deviance, where you get complacent.
“It’s, like, if you stay right here,” says Thomas, holding his hand up, palm down, “you’ll never have a problem. But sometimes you can go here and here and still be OK,” he says, lowering his hand. “Not always. It is something to really pay attention to because that’s how the safety barriers get pushed back and pushed back until something catastrophic happens.”