RE: OOOOPs…sorry…didnt see you
I used to work on a ferry. Its not quite as simple as that. The radar isn’t perfect – and you need sailors on the bridge. It also takes a bit more to stop a bloody great ferry thats travelling at 26 knots. Besides, we had weeks where you had fog that gave you 100m visibility in the channel IN SUMMER.
I remember when the Estonia went down. I was working that night on our ferry. Funny feeling. A week or two later – the last night of my first season we were the only buggers to sail. In a force 12. The very last night I worked for the company (in fact, I had finished in Portsmouth that night when we docked, but was heading back to France to disembark with my French girlfriend) we had a refrigerated articulated lorry go up in flames on the car deck, filling half the ship with smoke, and causing the captain to alert the crew via the intercom in the cabins for the first time any of us had known. The cabin I was in contained 4 french ‘hostesses’ as they were called, and me. We were all pissed. At that time of night I imagine all off duty crew were to some degree. BUT. We used to do emergency training every week, and the waiters / barmen / etc put the fire out. 2 or 3 times as it flared up again and again. Ferries can be dangerous when things go wrong, but they aren’t deathtraps. Just look up the amount of ships lost annually – it surprised me.
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