…more or less.
That’s quite the editorialised title 😆. But not far off.
The grounding of the ferry Aratere began with a “turn execute” command being pushed 36 seconds late, sending the ship’s autopilot onto a course crew didn’t know how to stop, a preliminary report has found.
The report showed the crew did not know how to take back control from the autopilot, and it took about two minutes before the ship was brought back under manual control.
It says it was a new steering system installed 3 weeks earlier. A bit crazy that hitting a button 30 seconds late caused a course that when undone in 2 minutes still wasn’t able to prevent a grounding even with engines put into reverse as soon as they could.
That system sounds like a bit of a nightmare to use. And worse to turn off.
Maybe we don’t know everything yet & thats just employees and/or company covering for themselves.
Seafolk likes to talk about mermaids & evil sentient autopilots.Tho not having 3 minutes of buffer at the start of the journey/when hitting autopilot sounds wild.
Unless this was autopilot for the port, but the pic doesn’t seem like it.Also, I was under the impression that any autopilots from the least 50 years were dynamic (ie at least manoeuvering between gps locations, not holding fixed azimuths for certain periods of time), but I don’t actually know much about big ships.
Edit:
The vid explains it, they were already at speed (13kn) and along the shoreline when the unclear new system caused the ship to steer into land (bcs software otherwise has no issues with traveling over land, wtf).
They completed the same journey with the new system 80+ times but I understand how they didn’t know the ‘execute’ confirmation of autopilots actions (thats necessary, like with train conductors) can skip waypoints like that depending on location.
And yes, anther fuck in this clusterfuck was the two minutes of figuring out what’s happening & trying to get the controls back.
If you turn that hard into land I imagine it pretty hard to save/stop the ship before beaching.
The thing is, ‘the bridge team did not know that to take back control they needed to hold the button for 5 seconds’ …
(Sounds like they weren’t power users or gamers … 3 people trying to figure out how to press their takeover buttons)After that it took 40s for engines to reverse (because they are big fans) and the bow thrusters to come on.
The ship was only very slightly damaged (that bulb only, basically could sail onwards, but they prob decided it’s better to check everything before doing so as they were in a safe position to do so).
They only needed two tugs to pull it back, then it sailed to powder it’s bulbous nose.
No injuries.Ah this makes more sense. Thanks for watching the video for us! Can we just sail straight to Blenheim and avoid all that sailing close to land, instead of navigating the sounds…
There’s been so many proposals to do that, and they’ve never managed to get into proper planning phases before getting canned for one reason or another.
Yeah I know. But the current route just seems dumb.
Oh I don’t disagree at all, but the problem is the National Party scupper any public investment in these services, eg:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/interisland-ferries-to-stick-with-picton/POXPKGCRWSTJ6HAOXGNQKJG3YI/
This is a really good write up of the last time the Clifford Bay plan was canned; includes a map of the route and a summary of the economies of it all.
And in the comments section this popped out from someone - which with the benefit of hindsight we can see was not true in the long-term.
3. The supposed costs of “upgrading” Picton were massively over stated and were in fact only actually 50% of the supposed cast in stone costs given by some consultancy company in 2012, so Picton is actually the cheaper option.
Yeah, I also see in the comments some disapproval at the freight industry not wanting to pay, claiming they get the benefits.
I disagree with that assessment. The freight companies don’t get the benefit of shorter routes, what they get is competition forcing prices down on those routes because costs have dropped. The economic benefits aren’t to the freight companies, it is a wider economic benefit of cheaper freight and more efficient transfer of freight that is spread across many companies and individuals. Hence why it doesn’t make sense for freight companies to pay for, but does make sense for a government to invest in.
Tell me it wasn’t made by Boeing pls
I kinda feel like in Ferry Driving 101, Section 1a, Paragraph 1 is: How to Steer The Thing.
Steering it wasn’t the issue, it was how to actually take control from the autopilot.
The title is actually pretty close, it sounds like nobody knew how the helm system worked, nobody had been trained, and people were frantically pressing buttons trying to get control back.
Also, the vessel was doing freight only crossings and taking the long way across the strait via outer Queen Charlotte sound, because Kiwirail didn’t trust the boat, in particular the transmission.
I’m sailing across the strait Saturday, wish me luck!
I always figure the best time to travel is just after an incident like this, when everyone is trying not to have a second incident.
Third incident, this is the second major fuck up in recent time.
And I was on the boat for the first one.
Maybe you’re bad luck?
We’ll find out, I guess.
Well turns out they had a pretty fuckin great reason not to trust this boat lmao
Except it was a different failure mode to what they were concerned about.
