Crew Safety

Our valued customers, friends and crewmembers families are reassured that yachting is essentially a safe and pleasant pastime. Our notes here are for our crews for whom this is a place of work, and like any workplace, has inherent dangers if not recognised and addressed intelligently. As an industry we are fortunate that our trade does not take us into hostile environments or expect us to deal with noxious or hazardous cargoes, but for illustration we have taken the misfortunes of our commercial shipping colleagues and use them to underline what can go wrong if the sea is taken for granted. As Joseph Conrad wrote ‘I have known the sea for too long, to believe in its respect for decency.’ Senior staff at Watkins believe safety is paramount.

The world’s commercial shipping industry, and particularly the tanker sector shares many of our challenges. It is a high-profile, sophisticated, security-sensitive marine business currently facing a global quality manning shortage and in the event of accident or tragedy, one which would attract the most intrusive and potentially damaging of media attention. Individuals within the commercial shipping world have for many years understood the need to share notes privately on fatal accidents, near misses, hazardous occurrences, collisions and groundings in closed forums. All are, in some shape or form, competitors. Despite the ever present risk to their public profiles and companies behind them who do not necessarily want to be having commercial discussions with their competitors, barriers are lowered in the name of safety. We are not naive enough to believe this could be applied to the large yacht industry overnight but it is a worthy ideal and some of us do believe that there is a need to communicate with one another on an informal basis. Despite there being some long-established associations within the large yacht sector who lay claim to bear responsibility for circulating this type of information, this has not materialised. To say we must maintain confidentiality about yachts is fatuous when it comes to safety.

We at Watkins are fortunate to be party to safety, security, environmental and health information which is of interest to all seafarers which serves no purpose sitting in a forgotten file. Much of the following information relates to commercial shipping or areas outside of our normal areas of operation, but we can all learn from the wider shipping community we share with other seafarers. We welcome all seafarers to use this site freely, to read, educate, circulate and to contribute. In the interest of confidentiality, names will always be omitted or removed.

Please feel free to forward any contributions to:
info@watkinssuperyachts.com