Kerre Woodham: A valuable lesson

The interim report into the grounding of Interislander’s Aratere ferry has found the bridge crew didn't know how to turn off the autopilot function on a new steering control system.

A report by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission was published yesterday, setting out the facts and circumstances established to this point and its inquiry into the incident, which remains ongoing.

So, the interim report said the Aratere received a new steering control system in May 2024, that was a month prior to the incident, to work with the ship's autopilot and integrated bridge navigation system. The Aratere was pootlingalong and it was just past its second waypoint off Mabel Island when the autopilot was engaged at 9:26pm, putting the steering for the other teddy under autopilot control. About 30 seconds later, a master who was on board the ship to refamiliarize himself with the Aratere after some time away, pressed the turn execute button, intending to initiate the Mabel Island waypoint turn.

After seeing the Aratere was heading towards shore, the crew attempted to press the takeover button and turned the wheel hard to port, all to no effect. The bridge team was unaware that to transfer steering control from the autopilot to the central steering console, the new steering system required them to either set the same rudder command at both consoles, which makes sense, or hold down the takeover button for five seconds. You couldn't just press it, it had to be held down for five seconds.

So how did the crew not know that? Well, according to Interislander Executive General Manager Duncan Roy, who spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night, you can't know what you can't know. 

“That's what I'm saying. We got a new piece of equipment and there was a very specific set of circumstances that meant that required a 5 second override. For the 83 crossings prior to this, the one press button worked. The day they arrived in Picton that day, they pressed the button once to take control. It was only when in this very particular set of circumstances where the rudder was out of sync with the steering wheel that you had to do a 5 second override. The bridge didn't know.

And are you telling me that whoever provided this equipment to Interislander told no one in Interislander that in the specific set of circumstances, you have to press the button for five seconds. Like literally nobody knew?

We are working with that provider right now and as TAIC said today a number of times it's a very complex part of the investigation.

Duncan, but nobody in Interislander knew you had to press it for 5 seconds?

Heather, if we'd known that you had to do it, we would have done it.

OK, well, it might have just been a communication problem, but I get it. Did somebody go get a coffee?

Yeah, we can put that to bed right now, the right number of people are on bridge doing their job professionally. No one left the bridge to get coffee.”

There we go - nobody left the bridge to get coffee, that was all just scurrilous scuttlebutt.

So, you can't know what you don't know, do you? I mean, I've got a new little oven in my kitchen and I couldn't make the elements go, so I hadn't bothered to read the instructions. Read the instructions, saw that there's a child lock was on, which you had to press and hold down for five seconds, funnily enough. And then it would come off and I could operate the elements. But I suppose you can't really Google when you're on the bridge of a ship, as it's heading towards shore, can you?

So, you can't know what you don't know. If you accept, and I do, the interim report, if the provider of the gear said oh, by the way, if your rudder is out of sync and this is happening, you can't just press the button once, it has to be held down and held down for five seconds. So, if they haven't told you that, you're not going to know.  

Immediately after the grounding, Interislander worked with the company that provided the new steering system to understand what had happened, and they've now issued new guidance on the use of the autopilot system and upgraded retraining of deck staff on the control system. So, fair enough. So far from what you've heard, the crew, Interislander (initially, of course), the bosses and then the captains, and then the crew weren't briefed properly by the provider, they weren't given every circumstance in what to do when that happens, that's now been rectified.

One part of me goes that is perfectly understandable, I totally get it. The other part of me, a little part of me is going nobody seems to brief anybody properly these days. You know the Transpower crew with the nuts and the bolts and having to redo roading because you've done something really stupid that somebody should have picked up along the way. There's a little part of me that goes is nobody briefed properly about anything anymore? Are the where are the men in their walk shorts and their walk socks and their highly polished shoes and their short sleeve shirts and their ties and their pocket protectors? Where are they? They wouldn't have let this happen. Measure twice, cut once. That have read through every semi colon of that manual, had it seared into their little grey consciousness, and when the ship started going and the crew were going yikes, what's happening?

Somebody sensible would have stepped forward and said on page 273 of this manual, you'll see that if you hold the button down for five seconds we'll be able to take control again. If you take it as a one off, it seems like a genuine accident. The provider didn't brief Interislander properly, the provider didn't brief the client properly. But if you're taking over some heavy machinery, like if you were working in the heavy machinery industry, either in construction or farming or what have you, are you always briefed properly or do you sometimes find yourself in the middle of a field or the middle of a ditch, thinking what the Dickens? Now what do I do? And you ring the provider and they’re like mate sorry I should have told you.

To me it seems a reasonable explanation, but not if it's happening all the time, all the everywhere. In this case, no real harm done. A bit of bowel damage happens when you run into land and you're a ship. Nobody hurt, everybody learned a valuable lesson. No real harm done but there could have been.

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