Floating Life Captain’s Meeting 2016
Floating Life organized its second edition of Floating Life Captains’ Meeting.30 superyacht captains of Floating Life yacht fleet and not, together to discuss the industry’s key safety and security issues for operators.
Straying from the minutiae of the myriad rules and regulations to which each and every super yacht must adhere, discussions focused on the minimization of risk through a focus onpeople, as opposed to the yacht itself.
Enrico Ursomando – RINA Maritime Office Training Manager – invited at the event, exposedto delegates that approximately 80% of incidents are the result of human error, be it fatigue orlack of qualifications.
Andrea Pezzini, CEO of Floating Life, disputed this with his own view, suggesting that humanerror can occur at any moment in a yacht’s life, from its creation in the shipyard all the way untilits eventual demise.
The “day one” of the meeting so underlined the importance of awareness and workingrelationships for the minimization of risk. At today auditing is usurping the importance of surveyWhile the latter still have their place in ensuring a superyacht’s hardware is up to scratch, auditshave risen to prominence because of the priority that they give to limiting and highlighting humanerror.
Ursomando explained that “Brain, procedure, paperwork,” he said, highlighting that experience,awareness and adaptability must form the foundation of safety procedures, with paperworkrepresenting proof. With that mention, delegates began to explore the importance of therelationship between captain and yacht manager – a relationship that has not always been a comfortable one. “If only yacht manager has a good relationship with a captain, when asuperyacht encounters dangerous conditions, he can be a big help” – Andrea Pezzini referred.
Day two’s discussions moved towards the 2010 Manila Amendments, taxation and fiscalrepresentation. The Manila Amendments, which came into force in 2012 with a five-yeartransitional period, were created to ensure global standards and will be in place to train andcertify seafarers. A yacht’s current certification will no longer be accepted by the end of 2016,and as an industry have, by and large, been too slow on the uptake.
Major shipping and oil companies need to also comply by 1 January 2017. Due to the lack ofqualified schools able to issue the updated certification – the superyacht personnel are going tofind it extremely difficult to obtain certification because of over-subscription to the requisitecourses. Large companies have booked all the available spaces they can in order to ensure acertified work force. The IMO’s states that there will be no further extension (already given by thea five-year transition period).
