BRM for 21 century is 

1-01 What is Situational Awareness? knowledge, feeling and instinct

Situational Awareness is the term derived from situation report. Whether we can handle the situation or not depends on our knowledge, feeling and instinct. The knowledge is to know what we are looking for. The feeling is to set out our priority by current situation. The instinct is to decide what we will do next. That’s easy to say. What we can do to improve our situational awareness? It’s also easy as long as we are at scene we are in the situation already. No matter we are doing right or wrong in our knowledge, feeling and instinct there is a chance we will improve our situational awareness. This is the reason we professional seaman are insist of one year sea time before validated the OOW certificate. On the contrary, is our situational awareness bulletproof when we have been a very experienced Master with many years of sea time? The truth is sad to say that the sea never ceases the test on us for incidents of any sort. Situational Awareness is unique in every each case. Without situation knowledge we will not have the feeling of danger. No proper training our situational feeling will yield no solution to our crises.     

“When any one asks me how I can best describe my experiences of nearly forty years at sea I merely say uneventful. Of course, there have been Winter gales and storms and fog and the like, but in all my experience I have never been in an accident of any sort worth speaking about.“

by Captain ED Smith of Titanic 1907.

1-02 Situational Knowledge

All the knowledge we learnt from school or company circulars are precautional based. These precautions are things should be done before any incident/accident had happened. Those knowledges summarized by our shipping company or relevant parties after incident are based on perfect condition who supervisors are not at the scene and no mental pressure on his clear mind. After a collision happened, we read the investigation report or verdict written by officer or judge who sit in the office/court and summarize how many COLREGS - International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea rules had violented by you. These are not situational awareness, this is allocation of reliabilities between parties. Knowledge are not only answer to avoid accident. We also need to know the priority when the situation is in progress. The priority is defined by standard operation procedures SOP. As a student prepared for school exam we used to treat these SOP in general terms not knowing the sequence of SOP are very importance.

1-03 Situational Feeling

Feeling sounds like very unprofessional. Everybody has his feeling about something. But it is true for our priority are mostly come from our subconscious. We never think it twice when we kick out the leg to get up from the bed. We can do pro and con list in casual situation but in emergencies we have no option but to trust ours feeling.  We may have the knowledge of one situation write in Fishbone Diagram according to situation changed or know the priority in different phase of incident should be. Bridge procedure or standing order have many precautions in writing for collision avoidance. These information or knowledge did not say which one is top priority in each stage of situation. All precautions in writing are right but what is top priority had to decide by our feeling at that time. The feeling we have come out from our subconscious. Like we sat in front of school desk and gazed at the exam paper without any clue. Even though our hand begins circling some points in the question try to make sense of it. Like we approach to ARPA while in desperate to find the way out from current collision situation. What clues are useful now and how can we get it? When we have options, it is for our feeling to decide the initial approach and when we don’t have a feeling it is our instinct to lead us to the final solution.     

1-04 Situational Instinct

 I was trying to write this book and avoid mislead our fellow seafarers who are at different stage of their career with different knowledge and practice of their own. Reader should not expect themselves become a master when they had finished reading although the layout of it is to cultivate our instinct. In master stage I will motivate your subconscious to implant conclusion into your long term memories. Thousand meters high mountain begins where we stand now. The knowledge and awareness here are interesting which based on our daily sense at sea.

 “The science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.  Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” by Thomas H. Huxley. 

Something here is the common rule or common sense. The science is to find the common rule we sensed in daily base and to test its correctness with everything we sense thereafter. The knowledge prepared here is something you had seen at bridge but means nothing to you now. It’s human nature to look for something we interested and known. Other things in our eyes are distractions only. This book is to tell you what you should be interested and find out its importance for your usage. In another words, this book is to cultivate our instinct at bridge. 

1-05 Situational Awareness improvement at sea 

That awareness is the knowledge you raised in real scenario in each minute to testify your feeling of priority and your instinct of what will come in next minutes.  The situation presented here is to reflect what is better or worse in your knowledge and professional acknowledgement. Did you get the feeling right? What knowledge you can know better from now on?  Situational awareness is improved by knowledge, feeling and instinct (lessons) we accumulated not our sea time. The cheapest lessons we can had is in at paper. Let’s start the journey to become a Master here.   

1-06 Knowledge Awareness for Rating: Visual Lookout

Visual lookout for rating on watch is first step in collision avoidance: 

Figure 1-01: passing port to port, red to red, passing astern, lookout for first sign

1-07 Verifying target’s portside or starboardside 

In our seatime, we must have overheard VHF conversation from Master / Pilot with outside party discussing how to pass each other "red to red" or "port to port". When two vessels confirm with each other pass “red to red”, it's means passing ownship portside by target vessel’s portside all the time. The red is portside navigation light color at night. It means when we saw one vessel on our Portside and her portside red navigational light is also facing ownship. This is a port to port passage. It will be a safe passage to both vessels as long as this  "port to port " aspect (which side she is facing us) is kept by both vessel. It is a designed way of passing in COLREG. Each vessel sails along starboard side of fairway or channel or traffic separation scheme. Port to port passage guaranteed other vessel will not approaching ownship from her starboard side and her track will not cross ownship’s track. We can see from the figure 1-01. Port side vessel need to turn their ship’s side to starboard side to maintain the “port to port” aspect where aspect is which side she is facing ownship.

If we saw target vessels portside facing our starboardside it will be a questionable passage. The problem is target vessel’s track is crossing ownship’s track at some point. She is going to a direction ahead of ownship’s bow like the vessel at top right position is aiming some place ahead of ownship’s bow. Portside to starboardside, or red to green, it is a crossing situation. Crossing situation may involve with collision risk. If you are the lookout and OOW apparently overlooked crossing situation you should notify him (accountability or assertive). Which side target vessel facing own ship is not a mystery to us if it is at close range. We can judge it by vessel bridge location or her wake current after propeller or her side light color at night. This is our first clue in lookout for safety. “Port to port” or “starboard to starboard”? 

Here we can see in the figure 1-01 and 1-02 there is a mysterious line divided which part is safe or not (safe green zone or red danger zone). It is target’s relative bearing line. If target vessel headed into ownship’s stern it will be safe(her heading is aimed after her relative bearing line), “port to port” or “starboard to starboard”. Port to port or Starboard to starboard side passing are usually for vessels have reciprocal course line, that is vessel coming from opposite direction.  If target vessel headed into ownship’s bow like figure 1-02 has its portside facing ownship starboardside, red to green.  This is a crossing situation when two vessels compete each other for same location at sea. This same location at sea is where two vessel’s course line crossed at sea.  Most time each vessel sails along her course line without notice other vessel’s movement as sailor said lonely sea. Until some vessels distance are getting shorter and they are not sailed port to port, both vessels are heading into one common location where her and ownship’s course line are crossed each other. There will have three kind of crossing situations. First situation, she made it and pass ownship’s bow. Second situation, she did not make it and pass ownship’s stern. Third one most unfavorable to both vessels is she made it at same time with ownship. Her vessel body will pass not on our bow nor on our stern. Then, these two vessels met each other in between. In another words, both vessels made it at the same time is a collision. This mysterious it is collision point which we will discuss in later chapter for OOW. When target vessel made it she passed collision point earlier than ownship. When she did not make it and ownship did she passed collision point later than ownship.  Who knows what crossing situation is now? This is a problem of timing. We need another means to verify which crossing situation target vessel is in now.  

Figure 1-02: passing port to starboard, red to green, passing ahead or astern, looking for second sign of safety

1-08 Finding collision risk by relative bearing unchanged. 

Knowing that red to red/green to green is safe for two vessels to pass by in opposite or almost opposite direction. When two vessels see each other sailed not in same side ownship should have the awareness that there will be a possibility of collision.  Even an agreed passage plan for “port to port” or “starboard to starboard” target vessel may suddenly change her direction due to some malfunction of steerage system or something. We can see target vessels is not at same side with ownship but her collision risk is unknown. This is a technique that can help us to verify. As we watching vessels passing by on the bridge, some pass our stern and some through our bow. 

Usually, other vessel’s aspect (which side she is facing us) is easy to identify by visual. We can know does it at “port to port” or “starboard to starboard” situation? But, her movement around ownship is hard to detect by aspect only like figure 1-02. It would be very difficult for ownship to know “Can she make it?” in crossing situation at first sight. We have to check it once, twice, and third time to know where her position is now.  

Þ   Those vessels passing our stern are approaching ownship stern direction little by little if we take their relative bearing from ownship bow as figure 1-03. When we first saw her shape at sea her relative bearing is about starboard side 42 degrees (purple line). The second time we check it her relative bearing become starboard side 50 degrees. Third time it become starboard side 76 degrees. No matter what direction or speed she is going it always looks like her position is moving to ownship’s stern, the way other vessel moving around ownship is its relative motion. The relative bearing numbers are increasing each time we take her bearing reading till ownship passed her port bow, from “port to starboard” to “starboard to starboard” situation, from uncertainty to certainty of collision risk.

Þ   If we can finally safe pass its relative bearing will be 180 degrees which is exactly at ownship’s stern. For those vessels relative bearing is getting bigger and bigger will give us a sign of its movement. The black line joined her position around ownship is her relative motion line which is pointing somewhere behind ownship at direction 204 (T). In this situation, ownship made it to collision point earlier than target vessel. When ownship passed it target vessel is still on her way to collision point. That’s why her relative bearing will be at 180 degrees of ownship after some time, at our stern. We said these vessels are going astern.

Þ   Those vessels passing our head will appear closer to our fore mast each time and finally passed. We say they are going ahead. Like the vessel heading west in figure 1-03, her first relative bearing is starboard side 28 degrees as green line. Her second relative bearing is starboard side 18 degrees. The third one is at ownship’s bow. Her relative motion is to our port side and relative motion direction is 239 (T). The relative bearing numbers are decreasing each time we take her bearing reading till finally she sailed to our port side, from “port to starboard” to “port to port” situation, from uncertainty to certainty.     

Þ   At some point target vessel will not go backward or forward but in-between. These target vessels will steady on one direction not moving anywhere ahead or astern from long distance away while it still small. These relative bearing unchanged target vessels will create a collision with ownship. If OOW did not act to change target’s bearing these targets will grow bigger like a monster in one direction and finally collide. This called blossom effect in aviation, the horizontal angle of target getting bigger in close range. If we know target’s dimensions we find her distance related horizontal angle in nautical tables. It is not a favorable situation to anybody on board. We will lose our personal belongings in cabin and those cashs we do not have time to spend. Maybe everything come to an end including the Universe in today. We lost our live there. The relative bearing where target is steady can be any direction on deck, even the relative motion line in direction of 204(T) or 239(T) we discussed before can a danger bearing in some case. How to know target relative bearing is changing or not? This will be the second thing to learn in lookout for rating. 

figure 1-03: How to know target relative bearing is changing or not?

1. 1.     For those harmless targets, even there are large vessels, they may not show their actual size to us If passing some distance away and their relative bearing is constant changing. For those large dangerous targets, they will grow bigger and wider in their look. For small dangerous targets, they look small and relative bearing is constant. It is not reliable if we judge collision risk by target’s size or blossom effect. Please compare three figures below in figure 1-04. The vessel on our starboard bow with blue ship’s hull changed her size as times go by.  Her size became smaller as she passing ahead because her speed is faster than ownship. So, her shape become smaller. This is a port side to starboard side passage. We are safe because she moving ahead in relative motion. We don’t know if it is OK or not in figure 1-04-1. After 6 minutes we check her movement again find target vessel in figure 1-04-2. If we ever run some errands on the bridge in this 6 minutes we may confuse this vessel’s movement ahead or astern. It would be better if we can take some relative bearing of targets as we described in last paragraph. We can check target vessel relative bearing reading is increasing or decreasing?  Different side sailing is a sign of danger. Relative bearing decreasing is a sign of safe. Whether it is safe or danger is a comparison of our judgement of which side target vessel is facing us and our reliability of observation of her relative bearing change. In general, I will recommend to trust your observation of relative bearing change if you are well trained for it. 

In portside we have this four cranes vessel coming as figure 1-04-3. We cannot locate it at first figure exactly by our bare eyes, maybe with the help of binocular we can. It won’t be necessary to look for target cannot be seen by eyes unless it is in fog weather where visibility is very limited. We always have to set our priority in lookout. It became apparent that she is growing bigger on our portside. Port to port passing is first safe sign. Her relative bearing is increasing toward our stern. Relative bearing increasing is second safe sign. But, it is our instinct to detect collision risk by size and distance of target. By looking at figure 1-4-1 everyone will feel sense of collision of this starboardside blue hull vessel by her distance to ownship. This same ship looks OK in figure 1-4-3 like other vessels at sea. Actually in figure 1-4-1 all vessels in starboard side became smaller in figure 1-4-3 because ownship slow down and they all sailed ahead of us. Growing bigger and bigger is third sign of danger in collision.  The best help in lookout is to report target's distance if we think it is a danger. If we can tell how many distance away can further safe guard our ship and personal belongings. 

figure 1-04-1: starboard side vessels go ahead; portside vessels go astern

figure 1-04-2: starboard side vessels go ahead, portside vessels go astern

figure 1-04-3: starboard side vessels go ahead, portside vessels go astern

How to know target relative bearing is changing or not?  Find reference point on deck. 

Well, we don't have all day to stand before bridge.  There will be more than one vessel at sea to lookout. If it is possible we need something nearby to help our lookout. To mark relative bearing of approaching target is important to know its collision risk. At sea, ownship is on steady course and speed thus everything outside ownship will have some kind of relative movements to us.  In another words, everything moving outside is because ownship are moving.  But in collision situation, target vessel will become closer and bigger as starboard side blue hull vessel in figure 1-05-1 is bigger than 1-05-2.  

Line of sight

These two lines (red and green) are what we call line of sight joined by two points, one point is target the other is our eye. The line of sight easily changes by movements of target or our eye. Our eyes move with our legs. We cannot control target movements outside. Targets won't wait. The first line of sight is our reference line for lookout. If we cannot have a constant line of sight we cannot know whether target is at her original direction or not. Our eye is at cross point of these two lines of sight in figure 1-05-1 where is the place of our daily lookout position on bridge. We can fix one point on original line of sight by control our eyes not to move away from its original position. We need one more point on original line of sight to help us remember original direction of line of sight. This point has to be fixed on board as we know everything outside have relative movements. We find one point marked by green arrow for starboard side blue hull vessel in figure 1-05-1 and one point marked by red arrow for port side four cranes vessel. We find starboardside vessel’s stern is on green line of sight and outer row container’s aft end which marked by green arrow is in green line too.  Ownship’s portside has one four cranes vessel did not know which side she is going. We find one reference point on red line of sight marked with red arrow which is intersection point of outer row green container and red containers. These points marked with green and red arrow are reference points we chose on deck to mark original line of sight. So, and so. 

Characteristics of reference points

Actually, we can use relative bearing of target to replace this handicap line of sight. What green and red container, inner or outer row, for or aft corner etc.…… need to remember with. There are two reasons why we need to set up line of sight by ourselves. It is available any time any place on bridge as long as we have a standing place. Second reason is human brain cannot handle digital bearing number. The relative bearing is useful only when we can remember it correctly. Most people have problem to remember one set of telephone number in our daily life not to say everything have to taking cared at bridge. Line of sight is not only handy. It is part of our visual lookout and collision risk instinct if we trained ourselves well.  Relative bearing can be taken from ownship’s bow black line at figure 1-05-2 to target’s green or red bearing line at port side or starboard side.  We can try it out by using relative bearing to verify target vessel’s movement. Soon we will find its handicaps, hard to remember, hard to recall, no means of observation when other superior colleagues are using compass repeater.     

Figure 1-05-1: use container stowage on deck as reference mark for bearing checking

Figure 1-05-2: use container stowage on deck as reference mark for bearing checking

Target vessel is not her original direction

In figure 1-05-2, we search along original line of sight to see where are target vessels now? both vessels are not at their original bearing. We find starboardside vessel’s port side facing ownship and her stern is moving ahead of green arrow (original green line of sight in figure 1-05-1), closer to ownship’s bow, relative bearing on starboard side decreased which is “moving ahead”.  Ownship’s portside vessel is moving astern quickly, closer to ownship’s astern, relative bearing increased. We sought her portside to our portside, port to port. Second assurance of safe passage. If we double check its red arrow marks which is ahead of its new line of sight. Her red line of sight or her stern is moving astern quickly.  We are OK with her. 

For those ships have deck containers, the specific deck cargo's shape, color, cargo ends, etc., may serve as characteristics of reference points. For example, we took reference point of a container positioned in the outer row of certain bay forward may have orange color, one foot lower than the row next to it, etc. and target vessel is located on its fore corner post direction. These characteristics of colour (orange), gap (different height between containers), and position (fore-end of the container) comprised a vivid and compound visual impressions of the target's bearing which may not be easy for a rookie to remember and check with. The graphic memory is more stable than digital reading from the gyro compass. Try to remember “outer, orange, lower” three words to compare with 049 zero four nine.  For visual data processing in the brain have more complicated connection with our daily life while digital are few. Orange color is the same as the fruit or our working suit. Lower may be seen at bridge platform or coach. Outer, we have compass stand and rudder indicator. For 049 zero four nine we cannot remember any one who has this number in his ID card and nobody is born at February 49. Wide connections vitalize more parts in our brain cells. The visual data are always overflow for us to memory. The mariner needs to chunk visual data into more meaningful words if his photo memory is not good. The mark been chosen along the relative bearing line can sort out specific characteristics like colour, height, and position, etc. for easy memory.   

Figure 1-06: use tanker fixed deck fittings as reference mark for bearing checking

Visual bearing: first lesson in lookout 

You may say they are lucky with deck containers to refer to. You may not know their deck containers shape are constantly changed due to stowage plan different from port to port. As a tanker in figure 1-06 we have something more useful to mark approaching direction of target.  For those vessels without deck cargos, deck fitting’s relative bearing is always the same. For instance, the fore mast's relative bearing is always zero if we take it from the ship's centerline. The sheer deck plate on the break of fore castle may be 23 degrees relative bearing to each side from fore mast, and forward tug line chock may be 39 degrees to each side, head of starboard side crane may be 52 degrees, etc. The concept is that, the precise bearings of reference points (fore mast, break of fore castle…) on deck is not important, their relative bearing to the ship's bow is always the same. And, they can be used as visual reference points to ascertain the bearing change of the targets. If we knew each deck fitting’s relative bearing on board we can have a quick estimation of approaching vessel’s relative bearing. We may report to OOW more precisely and help OOW to identify those targets vessel more efficiently. In another words, you can help to reduce OOW anxiety when lots targets around ownship in close range. Now, you got it visual bearing.