Spring is a busy time of year. You’re fitting out, scraping, painting, polishing and getting electronics plus propulsion machinery set up. You must always take the time to do it right.
Why not take advantage of this fresh start to the season to reinforce with your crews that teamwork and safety should continue to be top priorities aboard your vessels?
Summer crews come from a variety of backgrounds. They can be high school or college students, teachers, ski industry workers and others. Your crew orientation is the right time for everyone to learn (and relearn) that the master of the ship is the boss, no questions asked. As time goes by, you should be able to identify whom the best candidates for permanent crew are.
One of the most valuable lessons of fitting out is that grunt work now pays dividends once you are at work on the water. Your new crew will find out where everything on the vessel is and in most cases how it works. This includes the very important lesson of how a system can be repaired under stress. They’ll learn where all the safety gear is because they’ll be putting it all where it needs to be.
Be sure to cover everything. Should the Coast Guard come aboard and ask a crewmember what something is and how it works, that time will have been a great investment.
Speaking of investments, are your electronics fully operational? Too often, a captain has become so used to something not working that he or she has figured out ways to work around it. Start the season by making sure that everything works. Well, it’s a money issue you say? No, it’s a money-in-the-bank issue. If everything works, then anybody can use it without a work-around. This is very important in an emergency.
Here are three final and important words about safety: “Drills save lives!” Man overboard and fire drills, where to muster, how to deploy lifeboats and, in northern waters, how to put on survival suits — all are lifesavers for mariners.
Most will agree that far too many accidents and injuries are caused by things that weren’t taught at fitting-out time.
