The human element
Governing: STCW Table A-II/1 'obtaining and maintaining situational awareness'; MCA The Human Element guide (2010), sections on making sense of things, risk and decisions.
Seven things people do
The MCA's own guide to human behaviour at sea is built on seven observations, and HELM keeps coming back to them:
- People actively make sense of things.
- People take risks.
- People make decisions.
- People make mistakes.
- People get tired and stressed.
- People learn and develop.
- People communicate with each other.
None of these are faults to be trained out. They are how people work, and the job of the officer is to organise the watch so they help rather than hurt.
Situational awareness
The guide, following Endsley, describes three levels happening at once:
| Level | Question | On the bridge |
|---|---|---|
| Perception | What is out there? | Targets, lights, depth, wind, alarms, what the lookout said |
| Comprehension | What does it mean? | That target is a fishing vessel working, not a stand-on vessel in transit |
| Projection | What will happen next? | In ten minutes we will be close to him and the tide will set us onto the shoal |
Experts differ from novices in the accuracy of their mental picture and in how directly they reach a decision, often under time pressure. Their picture is still filtered by expectation, and experienced people are prone to seeing what they expect to see.
How it is lost
| Cue | Example |
|---|---|
| Ambiguity or conflicting information | Plotter says clear water; sounder says otherwise |
| Fixation | Attention on the tender launch while the yacht drifts toward moorings |
| Confusion | 'What's it doing now?' about the autopilot |
| Nobody navigating | Everyone busy with guests, no one watching the ship |
| Departure from plan without discussion | 'Let's just cut inside' |
| Unresolved alarms | Silenced and forgotten |
| Distraction | Phone calls about provisioning or guest timings |
When you see one, stop, say it, and resolve it. STCW A-VIII/2 says watchkeepers notify the master without any hesitation when in doubt.
Risk and rules
The guide makes two points worth carrying:
- Violations usually happen in the name of efficiency, to get the job done, not out of malice. If a procedure is routinely bypassed, ask why.
- Complacency is best seen as a badly calibrated sense of risk. Familiarity with a task, a place or a system makes people feel more in control than they are.
The yacht angle
Yachts combine many of the factors that erode awareness: small bridge teams, frequent short passages into crowded anchorages, guest-driven schedules, tenders and toys operating close by, and phone and radio traffic about hospitality rather than navigation. The OOW who also coordinates tender pickups is doing two jobs.
WARNING — Sterile bridge During pilotage, anchoring and berthing, keep non-navigational calls off the bridge or pass them to someone else. Hospitality can wait five minutes.
TIP — Say the picture aloud A short spoken summary ('two targets, the ferry passes ahead, we alter at the buoy') lets others spot what you have missed.