Aratere grounding began with a 36-second autopilot mistake
www.rnz.co.nz
A single command sent the ship on a course the crew didn't know how to stop.

…more or less.

  • thevoyagekayaking@lemmy.nz
    0·
    18 days ago

    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!

  • Dave@lemmy.nzM
    0·
    18 days ago

    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.

    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
      0·
      18 days ago

      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.

      • Dave@lemmy.nzM
        0·
        17 days ago

        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…

        • TagMeInSkipIGotThis@lemmy.nz
          0·
          17 days ago

          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.

              • TagMeInSkipIGotThis@lemmy.nz
                0·
                16 days ago

                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.

                • Dave@lemmy.nzM
                  0·
                  16 days ago

                  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.