Have you seen the RYA press release about the Merchant Shipping Regulations?

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/default2.asp?section=11&article=15344 - http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/default2.asp?section=11& ;article=15344

This is madness!

That will cost them a fortune to log all the incidents if we follow the letter of the law.

It would be like everyone admitting to the police every time they exceed the speed limit!!

Oh this could be very amusing - if they post an email address for you to register your incidents we could seriously overload them with paperwork and then maybe they would learn not to by-pass the RYA in their decisions.

Can you imagine every sailor in the country writing into report a capsize, collision, grounding, mark hitting....the ~Hunter 707's could keep them busy for a month after just one race!

Sorry for being a little slow, but......

How did this 'slip' through the RYA's far reaching net.

RYA do a fab job this is not a dig at them

god does this mean the end of the flying port start across the field???? 

imagine the paper work if a race officer ever did a downwind start with these rules!!!

   Curse the government!      

Have they gone mad?? I think that we need to show the government who rules the waves thank you very much, cause mayhem, capsize, whack bouys with tiller extensions, i think that we out to get some sticker to put on our sails in protest or just mail hundereds of videos of us all ccapsizin to tony blair person!!!!

Can you imagine if the letter of this was followed at a sailing school and you were sent to prison for every capsise practice session.  Team and match racing would be practiacally illegal as well.  I can understand it to some extent for commertial vessels cut how cann a dinghy be included in a merchant shipping act??? Its just plane stupid (guess that explains it then!)

Besides if noone says anything then the authorities will not know about an incident and people will get away with it. 

Also, will this apply to inland waters?

Just report every one !  Set up a pro-forma on the PC and print of 100 copies at the start of the day

Venue

Date

Time

Nature of incident (delete as applicable) capsize/mark hit/collision/etc...

and send them on.... 

Run a decent training weeken I think you might generate 1000 if you try hard enough......

well done the rya for givin the gov a rap for bypassin them

"The RYA’s view on the Regulations is that they will not contribute towards safety but will merely place an unnecessary and unjustified burden on the boater."

Scooby_Simon I do not think you can call it a 'decent training weekend' if you have 1000 incidents!!!

Jon

What a load of governmental *rse. I spoke to RYA a couple of months ago re this and was told an "under" had changed into an intended "over" (or vice versa )when referring to vessel at lenght 30 m this mistake in wording led to the inclusion of all "boats"

I hope whoever did this gets a firm kick up the bahooky for wasting time and tax payers money .

But untill it's resolved :

Is the act inforce now ?

How do we report ?

Who do we report to?

Are they even going to tell us ? or just start collecting fines and impounding boats for non payment .

I phoned the MCA (Maritime Coastguard Agency) regarding this for clarification today.

Gues what ? they're on strike and not answering phones !!!! I expect at the deluge of work they will get if the act is enforced to the letter !

Dis-agree... 

100 boats - so that's 100 capsize practices

short tight course racing, how many marks will get touched ?

ditto (MINOR) collissions - espically if there is little wind....

Yep sounds ridiculous but ...

... a friend who knows about such things told me the following. 

Since this is an MSC resolution it should only apply to vessels which fall under their jurisdiction, i.e. the so-called "convention vessels". Amateur sailing boats don't fall in this category and so aren't subject to the rules.

~jc

     The 405man has the answer: just do what u wan't, we rule the waves, we do what we like for fun and ill be damned if the big blair man wants to try and tell us, otherwise i may have to impale him with me bowsprit! well lets see him right a capsise anyway, i bet he couldn't tell the front of a boat from a dead albatross, fool!!!!!!!!!!

  Oh well it could be worse, health and safety could be involved!!! I was told by a friend that, they had to have health and safety round at their club. Well being a typical moron, the "officer" stated that they would have to wear hard hats because of the danger of falling masts and booms, how dumb and idiotically moronic is that?!!!!!! The government is so interested in our saftey that they have forgotten that people want to have fun, without having to be bound by a load of legal bull!!!

I have one that is worse: a club that will remain nameless was advised by health and safety that they aught to have a defibrillator (medical device that delivers 360 volt shocks to the heart if you have had a heart attack).

What no-one had thought through was that the people operating the deviceand  the victim were very likely to be soaking wet (this is a water sport after all). Given that water is a great conductor of electricity, any attempt to shock someone would almost certainly result in a awful lot of dead / shocked bystanders

     Gary is either:

     a.) h&s officer

     b.) a member of goverment

     c.) a pr representative in some big buisiness.

For a start you can't expect that all clubs can raise the thousands of pounds to buy one of these, that would be a nice little addition to the club membership fee wouldn't it, and also as far as spending more time on the shore, what the....?

Wrong on all three (well I wouldn't admit it anyway would I!) - But I am a first aider at work and have been on the wrong side of H&S inspections several times.

Clubs may not be able to afford a difibrillator and I accept that, though I wonder how many have investigated to see if grants are available...  Therefore, the idea of having a defibrillator is not stupid because we do a watersport, but may be unaffordable given the limited resources of many clubs.

Just because the H&S inspector doesn't understand the risks and consequences for sailing as a sport is not a reason to imply he's moronic but rather to work with the system to demonstrate that both the risk and consequences are low.  I assume the club eventually achieved a satisfactory outcome?  I sacked a scaffolding company from site many years ago for calling me a moron when I insisted they only smoke in designated areas - they were smoking next to a very large methane tank at the time! I leave you to make up your own mind on the relative IQs

I believe everyone should ask themselves this (but especially if you do an activity that puts you at slightly higher risk of injury): do you know how to save someones life if their heart stops/drown/fractured skull etc? Since it costs virtually nothing to do a first aid course if clubs organised sufficient numbers there is no real reason why all club members shouldn't have some basic first aid skills.  Its also (in my view) important for club members to raise any H&S issues they see round the club with the committee and also work with the committee to solve them if possible, that way we can all enjoy our sport in a safe environment with little interference from the beaurocracy of the state.

PS I reckon the average split between shore and water time for many dinghy sailors would be 50:50

Garry is right that defibrillotors CAN save lives but this only applies if your heart starts beating in two of three abnormal rythmns and if you see the person collapse and deliver the shock within a few seconds / minutes. Even in a specialist hospital unit, with the patients monitored all the time to detect the abnormal rythmns the chances of saving someone are less than 30%.

If someone had a cardiac arrest due to sailing it is most likely to be due to hypothermia or hypoxia (lack of oxygen e.g. due to drowning). In these cases using a defibrillator is more likely to kill the person than help them.

As far as the risks to the first-aiders and by-standers are concerned even in a hosiptal, where everyone is trained to use them, we see near misses and actual injuries every few months. I have never been to a sailing club with a dry enough floor where I would be happy to use a defib.

I am all in favour of clubs sending members on first aid courses, and I am certainly in favour of people making their own minds up about the risks of taking part in a sport. But I also think it is really important for those in charge to think long and hard about the very real risks involved with some 'safety measures'.

The sailing club in question decided not to get a defibrillator, not because it could not afford one but because it felt the risks were far greater than the potential benefits. 

[QUOTE=Garry] They state that 80% of cardiac arrest cases are venticular fibrillation and this can be treated with a defibrillator
[=QUOTE]

To the best of my knowledge this is true of you count all cardiac arrests. The bizzare thing is that the majority of these take place in a coronary care unit, when the patient is being monitored after a heart attack or during a period of unstable angina. In these cases it is absolutely true that prompt and competent use of a defib will massively increase your chances of survival! These cardiac arrests will almost all be due to ischaemic heart disease.

There are two problems with applying this logic to a watersports environmet:     

1) People who are out doing watersports are at low risk of a cardiac arrest from ischaemic heart disease (compared to the general population), because they are actually doing some exercise, and it is reasonable to assume that they do not suffer from exertional angina (otherwise they wouldn't be out there in a boat!). Therefore the actual risks of someone who participates in a sporting activity have an arrest are smaller that the general population. This may not be true for the spectators / non-active participants.         ; ;         

2) The most likely type of heart attack in someone reasonably young and fit who has been sailing / windsurfing is going to be an 'EMD' arrest, brought on by hypothermia or drowning. An automatic defibrillator (AED) won't let you shock an EMD rythmn. But here is the scary bit: if you try to resussitate someone with a core temp below 28 deg you can precipitate a VF arrest, at which point the AED will try to shock the subject. Defibrillation will not be successful until the core temp is >30deg, but of course you can't effectively re-warm someone if you have their chest exposed to deliver shocks.

In otherwords: a complete nightmare, and very confusing / frightening for anyone trying to decide what to do.