Bureaucracy kills

Posted on May 8, 2012 by KG

‘Easy Rider design a death trap
Almost half the boats built to the same design as the Easy Rider have sunk, sparking an urgent safety call for the remaining vessels operating.
The Easy Rider, which capsized off Stewart Island in March with the loss of eight lives, has been found to have stability issues, the Transport Accident Investigation Commission says.
….The Commission believes there may be at least five boats of nine boats of the same design built nearly 40 years ago still in service…’
Assuming these clowns are right, and the design is faulty, then it’s only taken the sinking of half the boats and forty years to prompt an “urgent” safety call! But I smell a rat–if for commercial use, the boats should have been built to survey–and one of the survey requirements is a stability test or at least stability calculations. So what happened?

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23 Responses to Bureaucracy kills

  1. Mark.V. says:
    May 8, 2012 at 08:32

    The same thing that is happening with leaky homes. The Officials did not do their job and are passing the buck onto someone else.

    • KG says:
      May 8, 2012 at 08:36

      “Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”
      Rudyard Kipling.
      Kinda fits, doesn’t it? These bastards are never held personally responsible.

  2. Andrei says:
    May 8, 2012 at 08:45

    Any boat that is overloaded has “stability problems”. Duh

  3. Ciaron says:
    May 8, 2012 at 08:51

    OWENGA CLASS: unstable when heavily loaded.
    Nooooooo…. Really?/sarc :rant

  4. KG says:
    May 8, 2012 at 08:55

    I assume (from the wording of the article) that what the Commission is saying is that the hull design is inherently unstable. I’ve worked on crayboats which have been very overloaded, in rough weather too but the hull designs were excellent, and with expert handling there was never a problem.

    • Ciaron says:
      May 8, 2012 at 09:01

      The Easy Rider was believed to be built in about 1975 to the Owenga design for use in the Chatham Islands fisheries.

      What are the typical conditions encountered in the Chathams, and how do they compare with Stewart Island?, where did the Owenga design originate, and what conditions were they designed for?

  5. KG says:
    May 8, 2012 at 08:59

    Some skippers need to have the difference between form stability and initial stability explained to them.
    Lots of tinnies, for example are stable enough for a person to stand on the gunwale without the boat capsizing, but one past a certain angle the hulls will flip like a pancake on speed. The owners are convinced they have a “stable” boat. On the other hand, plenty of traditional designs feel unstable, because they roll a gunwale under easily, but they’re almost impossible to capsize. The Chamberlain dory is an excellent example of the latter. Designed over a 100 years ago for unbelievably rough waters, it feels “tippy” as hell. But I never could get mine to do more than slop a cupful of water aboard.

    • mawm says:
      May 8, 2012 at 14:36

      They also don’t know about the free fluid effect and how it affects stability.

  6. Andrei says:
    May 8, 2012 at 09:15

    In 1947 my father was an Engineer on a Liberty Ship that was in ballast and the ballast shifted in a hurricane.

    The ship survived and the way liberties were ballasted was changed as a result. Liberty ships had a bad reputation at that time because a number had come to grief but they were excellent and sea worthy vessels as their longevity proved.

    • KG says:
      May 8, 2012 at 09:25

      Didn’t they have problems with the welds early on, Andrei?

      • Darin says:
        May 8, 2012 at 10:27

        Some of the first all welded hulls had problems with Hydrogen embrittlement early on,but it’s understandable considering that Arc welding was still a fairly new technology then.Once the problem was solved it went flawlessly afterward.

        Henry Kaiser is one of my heros,by the time the last Liberty slipped down the ways in 1944 they were finishing a complete hull every 4-1/2 days.

        My boss went over from Brooklyn,Ny to Hamburg,Germany in 1949 as an oiler on a Liberty,he was all of 17 years old at the time.Imagine todays 17y/o kids doing the same :shock:

        SS John Brown engine room-
        http://youtu.be/8lICFLvf5tk

  7. KG says:
    May 8, 2012 at 10:33

    “..he was all of 17 years old at the time.Imagine todays 17y/o kids doing the same”
    No, I can’t.
    That’s a cool link. :smile:

    • Andrei says:
      May 8, 2012 at 11:14

      You don’t leave school until you are nineteen these days

      And if you want an apprentiship (after 13 years of school) you have to do a pre- apprenticeship thingy at polytech with no guarantee of an apprenticeship to follow but a student loan no doubt to pay back.

      People are not even starting work until they are in their early to mid twenties in these enlightened times.

      • KG says:
        May 8, 2012 at 11:15

        Yet there were 22 year-olds skippering clipper ships in the 1800’s….and 19 year-old officers leading men in WW1.

        • Darin says:
          May 8, 2012 at 11:34

          And we have a 17 y/o hire on at the shop rightnow that was never taught to read a tape measure or clock dial :x

  8. KG says:
    May 8, 2012 at 11:17

    What we have now is males inhabiting a state of perpetual adolescence.

  9. Andrei says:
    May 8, 2012 at 11:25

    Talking of good books and boys becoming men

    Wet Behind the Ears – by Peter Taylor, if you can find a copy

    Many adolescent boys dream of running away to sea, but Peter Taylor is one of the few who actually did it. With some fast-talking and fictitious references, sixteen-year old Peter found a position crewing on a British tramp steamer from sleepy Wellington to post-war England, via Australia and apartheid South Africa. So began a series of journeys throughout Africa, North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe.

    Peter crewed with many sailors-rough or cultured, reclusive or outgoing, all with different reasons for choosing a sailor’s life, and experienced both comradeship and hardships on the sea. Gun-toting soldiers, terrifying hurricanes, Equatorial initiation ceremonies and the sailor’s catch cry of ‘a girl in every port’ all feature in this true action packed story, told with intelligence and humour

    • mawm says:
      May 8, 2012 at 14:34

      and apartheid South Africa.

      When the blurb mixes up politics with geography I won’t read it.

  10. pinkofreezone says:
    May 8, 2012 at 14:08

    The FDA in America is a mass murderer of the highest order. The drugs they have banned or delayed approval of could have saved literally millions of lives…

    Regulation doesn’t work as well as consumers making free choices.