Monday, November 23, 2015

Drunk and Stupid is No Way to Go Through Life

Or navigate a ship: Drunk Russian sailor grounds 7,000-ton ship on coast of Scotland at full speed
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

Don’t put him in charge of a 7,000 ton, 423-ft cargo ship, for starters.

That’s how a Russian mariner who drank half a liter of rum before work managed to crash into the coast of Scotland — at full speed.

The “Lysblink Seaways” was on its way from Belfast, Northern Ireland to Skogn in Norway when it slammed into the rocky shoreline near Kilchoan on the Ardnamurchan peninsula.

When the ship was salvaged, it was so badly damaged that it had to be scrapped.
I guess they'll just have to take that out of his final check. . .
An investigation into what happened found that the vessel’s 36-year-old chief officer — the sole watchkeeper at the time of the crash — had become “inattentive … due to the effects of alcohol consumption,” the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch said in a report released Thursday.

While off duty in his cabin the officer made a private phone call which “caused him anxiety, after which he consumed about 0.5 liter of rum,” the report added.

He then started his watch at midnight as the sole officer in charge of the vessel.

The amount of alcohol the officer consumed caused him to fail to plot crucial course adjustments — and the ship’s navigation alarm system, which could have alerted the rest of the crew to his incapacity, had not been switched on.

A breathalyzer test taken by the chief officer a few hours after the accident found his breath alcohol at 2.71 mg/ml — almost eight times the UK limit for professional seafarers.



What would you do with a drunken sailor? The ShamRogues at Molloy's Irish Pub last night!
Posted by Naptownmusic on Saturday, November 14, 2015

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