Fire on safari boat Suzana in Egypt (Red Sea Aggressor)

[Dan]

I'm not 100% sure it was the Maldives Aggressor so I have taken it out of my comment. I think thats what she said but it was after a long day of diving!

I'll be in RSA2 next month. I'll find out and check their escape hatch accessibility & operability.

 

[Mike Walker]

I'll be in RSA2 next month. I'll find out and check their escape hatch accessibility & operability.

Hopefully only before the trip and deliberately.... not unexpectedly during the night....

 

[tursiops]

The word is that Aggressor Fleet is leasing the Mistral (from the Tornado fleet) until the end of the year, and is planning to buy it, to replace the RSA 1.

 

[ReefHound]

I'll be in RSA2 next month. I'll find out and check their escape hatch accessibility & operability.

A couple of our club members will be on RSA2 in two weeks.

 

[Dan]

A couple of our club members will be on RSA2 in two weeks.

Looking forward to hearing their trip report when they are back.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

Uhm.. You can also have several shifts each night, so that they would still be able to perform other Jobs during day time.

That's generally the way it's done now and IMHO that's part of the problem. You have people who have worked a full day, are tired from that, and now they pull the 2-4AM watch? Recipe for falling asleep on watch. Either have a dedicated - only job - night watch, or have a mandated rest period before a night watch added to daytime duties, or max # hours you can work in a 24-hour period, or something like that.

 

[Schwob]

Here is a waterproof phone soft case that has clear plastic on both sides and can fit both iPhone & passport.

View attachment 549098 View attachment 549099 View attachment 549100

I should be able to wake up, grab the kit from end table, put over lanyard loop over my head and dash to the cabinet and grab the life jacket in a jiffy.

Sure should work for that purpose.
However, diving with your passport (and green card and some cash) in such a waterproof pouch, even with all excess air squeezed out because you are diving from a cruise boat via self booked day dive trip and are to chicken to leave these items on the day boat is I'll advised as, even so it worked just fine a number of times, you might one daypend some time drying the items in the cruise cabin. You might even find out that older style passports (with the hard book binding kind of fabric coated covers) sort of have their cover structure delaminate a bit and that the thin covers (like in US passports (like in my sons) hold up much better. However, runny ink on some visa stamps (or stamped visa stickers) or on some entry / exit stamps also could be an issue if some day you find you have a reason to need to decipher something.
Ask me how I know...
Anyway a wet passport with you is oodles better than none!

 

[Schwob]

Received your PM and have replied to you. Thanks.

Replied in PM explaining one way to PM...

 

[DandyDon]

This person would have no other duties but this? I wondering if that is the case typically. How would someone do other activities during the day and then stay up all night?

Two hour sifts. Starting in Marine Corps boot camp, we always had a firewatch/guard walking the respective areas. The guard finishing his watch wakes up the one who replaces him. No one got off during the day for pulling a two hour nightwatch. Some other watches were overnight shifts of eight or more hours, and only those were off duty the day following. If the boat has to add one more full time worker to accomplish this extra rotation, that's just part of the cost of doing business.

IMO and many flag states do not allow any crewmember to be on duty any more than 12 hours in any 24. Take it from an operator, when dive operations are on from 7 AM to 9 PM, it's really hard to get proper crew rest. Add a 2 hour sounding and security watch to that and you're really pressing the crew rest issue.

I know no one more safety conscious than you, so how do you accomplish that? It's been many years since the one time I went out on your multi-night FG trip, and I didn't know to ask then. You have a smaller crew than many of these larger boats, but I'm sure you still get it done.

See attached statement from Aggressor........

Yeah, yeah, we see some obvious lies there, since we have been fortunate enough to receive several survivor reports first hand here...

I get daily emails from google alerts on dive news involving lost or dead divers, and there has been very little about this accident. I suspect the Aggressor company must be working actively to suppress such. This news story did show up today: Red Sea Aggressor I Sinks After Fire, Killing One Diver

We know from first hand experience here on SB that survivors releasing the their stories to the public can leave themselves open to expensive lawsuits, and fighting those for a win can still bankrupt some. Scubaboard almost went under defending against one years ago, and as the loud mouth poster I tend to be - I was put at personal risk as well.

 

[nm7sp]

That's generally the way it's done now and IMHO that's part of the problem. You have people who have worked a full day, are tired from that, and now they pull the 2-4AM watch? Recipe for falling asleep on watch. Either have a dedicated - only job - night watch, or have a mandated rest period before a night watch added to daytime duties, or max # hours you can work in a 24-hour period, or something like that.

Hi Ken,
As a backup to the night watchman (in case he falls asleep or becomes incapacitated) do the think the following would be practical.

At various points around the boat there would be buttons positioned well away from sleeping areas.
If none of these buttons have been pressed within the last two minutes then all buttons would start to emit a warning sound, not loud enough to wake anybody up but loud enough to alert an inattentive or distracted night watchman. (Maybe it could say alarm activates in xx seconds)

If none of the buttons are then pressed within the next 60 seconds then the alarm systems are activated and emergency services automatically called.
There would be a gigantic call out fee by emergency services for a false alarm.
I think that a fairly simple and inexpensive system like this could be devised.