Lead liners

In December of last year, a lobsterman was setting lobster traps aboard a 77-foot offshore lobster boat out of Newport, R.I. The crew was working in 19-foot seas and 45-knot winds near the Gulf of Maine’s Jeffreys Ledge.

It was about 12:20 p.m. when outgoing pot warp and traps snared the lobsterman, yanking him overboard.

He was from Thomaston, Maine, an old shipbuilding town that has been sending its men and boats to sea for generations. There were long voyages on Down Easters — square-rigged ships 200 to 250 feet long — that were designed to cargo carrying but when driven hard were fairly fast on runs to San Francisco, Shanghai or Hong Kong.

Plenty of Thomaston boys also shipped out on coastal schooners running lime, granite and cordwood down the East Coast. Later the trips would be made on lobster boats, draggers and scallopers. Thomaston’s Morse family built many of the lobster boats, first of wood and then fiberglass. And Newbert & Wallace, starting at the beginning of World War II, turned out dozens of wooden draggers and scallopers.

For some it was a rewarding trade: In 1840 two Thomaston sea captains were among only seven millionaires in the country. Later, local boatbuilder Edward O’Brien became the 14th millionaire.

However, for most it was not much more than a basic living, assuming they made it back to shore — and many didn’t.

Until very recently, if you went overboard you could figure your chances of survival were close to zero: weather conditions were often horrible, boats were hard to maneuver and the water was — and is — cold.

That was certainly the situation this lobsterman found himself in. He managed to get free of the line and up to the surface where he grabbed a life ring that had been thrown to him. But it was cold that day and he couldn’t hold on. He let go. Then the only thing seen on the water was the life ring.

I can’t help but think that it didn’t have to be that way. It’s no longer the 1800s, nor is it the 1900s. We are much smarter about how boats are designed and built: You aren’t about to mistake a modern lobster boat for a Friendship sloop built by Thomaston’s Charles Morse in 1902.

And what is worn on deck is vastly different. Lightweight pants and coats that easily shed water, and are somewhat resistant to freezing and abrasion. That’s opposed to boots made of “the thickest of russet cow hide,” oil trousers and jackets made by soaking fabric with oil that’s similar to linseed oil. Then there were hats. In the summer they were sometimes of straw, but generally it was a canvas or felt hat, often referred to as “wide awake or slouch hats.”

One item of clothing never seen on earlier fishermen and only infrequently worn by modern fishermen is the PFD. Yet it’s the one thing that might save the life of a fisherman who goes over the side. Modern materials and design have made work vests that can be manually or automatically inflated. They are lightweight, non-constricting, don’t chafe, aren’t bulky and are easy to keep clean.

Mustang, Sterns, and Stormy Seas are some of the manufacturers. Guy Cotton makes inflatable bib suspenders and, somewhat different, Regatta sells rain gear with foam flotation.

Would any of these have saved this lobsterman? I don’t know, but it would certainly have improved his chances.

For a fisherman not to take advantage of a PFD is to put himself back in time, to the early years of the 1900s when some Portuguese fishermen out of Massachusetts were said to have gone to sea with lead liners in their boots. Then if they did go overboard, they could get the “thing” over as soon as possible.

Think about it. Lead liners or a PFD. Which makes the most sense?

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Boatbuilding costs to go up

If you have wanted to build a boat and have the money stashed away or there’s a group of willing investors, now would be a smart time to build that boat. Smart because if you wait until after July 1, 2012, the same boat — as long as it is 50 feet or longer — will cost a lot more money.

How much more isn’t clear, but estimates run from about 15 to 40 percent.

There are two drivers to the cost increase and both are written into the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010. The intent of the act is to make commercial fishing safer.

One requires boats 79 feet and longer built after July 1, 2012, to meet new load-line standards. The second requires classification for boats 50 feet and over that operate beyond three miles and are built after July 1, 2012.

Some of the increased cost is the result of bringing more people into the process. What would currently be a discussion between you, the designer and the boatyard would also involve a classification society. This also drags out the time it takes to design a boat.

Further, every few years the boat will have to be hauled and surveyed. Some surveys will be more extensive than others. You will pay for the survey and cover the travel and work-time costs of the classification society’s representative.

Currently, no classification society — or any other group — has come out with a fully developed list of guidelines for classing a commercial fishing boat or building one to load-line standards. Though DNV has developed a preliminary 130-page book of best construction and design practices. ABS seems to be sitting on its hands and doing little or nothing.

Regional standards would be appropriate to the risks posed to the boats in a particularly dangerous fishery. The basis of the standards might be based on the best designing and building practices in a fleet.

Unfortunately, to date the impetus for the load-line and classing sections of the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 have been driven by politicians. The fishing industry — be it fishermen, naval architects or boatbuilders — has not been a part of the process.

It’s not too late for the industry to get involved. Contact the Coast Guard and classification societies, especially DNV. In November, Seattle’s Pacific Marine Expo will have seminars focusing on these issues. That would be a good time for fishermen and boatbuilders to make their concerns known. Not to do so will just make the final requirements much more onerous than they already are.

In the meantime, pick up the October issue of National Fisherman for more information.

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Ethanol alert

On March 1, the Coast Guard put out an announcement: “Beware of E15 fuels in boats.”

If you’re like a lot of fishermen who use outboards you should pay attention to this, because you probably get your fuel at the local service station when you gas up the pickup. In most cases that means you have been using a mixture of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol, or E10 as that mixture is called.

The benefit of combining ethanol — made from things like sugar cane and corn — with gasoline is that the combined product produces a better burn and thus reduces air emissions.

The E10 combination probably hasn’t been a problem if you have a fairly new outboard, as the more recent models have been tested to run successfully with E10.

But they have not been tested to run on a mixture with 15 percent ethanol, and as of Jan. 21, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency said the use of ethanol in gasoline could be jacked up to 15 percent. It will probably be a couple of years before outboards are tested for E15.

The problem is that ethanol is a solvent, and increasing the mixture by 50 percent could adversely affect an engine’s fuel lines, fuel tanks, pumps, injectors, carburetors, valves, O-rings, and gaskets.

Even assuming E15 doesn’t damage those engine components, if it remains too long in the fuel tank or even the carburetor, you can have the same problem you would have had with E10 — phase separation. That’s when ethanol, which absorbs water and holds it in suspension, takes on too much moisture. Then the ethanol-water mixture drops out of the fuel. It settles on the bottom of the tank and is sucked into the engine.

If the separation takes place in the carburetor, the bowl can corrode. On a 4-stroke the mixture could gum up and corrode the small passages in the carburetor to the extent that the carburetor can’t be repaired.

There is a way to avoid ruining a perfectly good outboard: Buy your outboard fuel at the marina, not the local service station. The EPA waiver allows the use of E15 only with newer cars and lightweight trucks and is not permitted to be used in boats, which is why the Coast Guard recommends you only use gasoline purchased at marinas.

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Gulf boats risk contamination to antifoulant

Well, they say much of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout is gone, and areas are being opened up for commercial fishing. Then again, oil is still in some nearshore areas and probably will be for some time to come.

The point is that you only have to run your boat through a relatively small patch of oil to contaminate your antifouling paint. Once that happens, the biocide in the paint is prevented from being released. That means the hull will be quickly fouled with marine growth, which increases the hull’s resistance going through the water, which drives your fuel bill up.

In addition, you’ll have a contaminated layer of petroleum on the hull that, if it stays too long, makes it very difficult to apply new antifouling paint. And if crude oil remains on paint above the waterline, the paint will be stained and degraded.

All of this is pointed out in a short brochure from Interlux and Awlgrip, along with some pointers on what needs to be done.

For heavily contaminated (thick, sticky, tar-like) hard-polishing and ablative antifouling paints you are going to have to use a paint stripper to get rid of the oil and the old paint. Then you will have to scrub the cleaned-off surface and wash it down with water. If the hull is just lightly contaminated, a good power washing might do the trick, followed by a scrubbing with Fiberglass Surface Prep YMA601.

The above is for fiberglass boats. On the bottoms of metal boats you’ll have to use a grinder or sandblast the surface after it’s cleaned off. If you don’t clean the surface before sandblasting you will just drive the oil into the metal, making it hard for antifouling paint to adhere to the hull.

That’s pretty much the gist of the brochure. For more details you probably should contact your paint supplier.

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155 and counting

America’s fishermen are a pretty diverse lot with Norwegian, Italian, Vietnamese, French, Croatian, Portuguese, Irish — just to name a few — backgrounds, all fishing a multitude of gear types from boats with very different designs. Some fishermen are out for a day and others stay out weeks at a time. There are fishermen who are slow to accept new ideas, and fishermen who are more willing to try something new. In some fisheries you can make a lot of money, some not so much, and in others it’s a battle to pay for the fuel.

Despite their differences, one habit seems common to all fishermen: the refusal to wear a PFD. That’s what fishermen from Maine to Alaska seem to be doing — and it’s killing them.

That’s a pretty safe statement, because of the 155 commercial fishermen who died after falling overboard between the years 2000 and 2009 NONE were wearing a PFD.

That’s just one depressing statistic among many in a study on fishing vessel fatalities by Jennifer Lincoln and Devin Lucas with the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health in Anchorage, Alaska. A summary of the work is in the July 16, 2010, issue of the aptly named “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

A number of fishermen who died after going over the side were working alone, so what caused the accident will never be known, but 43 cases were the result of “slips or trips,” 34 were due to “losing their balance,” and 21 died from “gear entanglement.”

There really isn’t an excuse for not wearing a PFD. After all, these aren’t the cork life preservers of World War II. Those were definitely something to avoid. After a survey of men who had been on torpedoed tankers and freighters, a report was issued in 1942 that said not to “trust your life to the cork preserver… Men who have jumped overboard wearing cork preservers have had ribs, arms, and shoulders broken. The front of the preserver strikes the chin, knocking the wearer unconscious.”

We are not even talking about the PFDs of several years ago. Those could be a little bulky. Modern PFDs, like Mustang Survival’s MD3188 inflatable work vest, are lightweight, can be worn under foul-weather coats, will self-inflate, or can be manually inflated and are relatively easy to clean. And the Mustang PFD was designed with fishermen in mind.

These PFDs aren’t inexpensive — the Mustang is over $300 — but you can probably knock the price down by going in with several other fishermen and buying in volume. The other option is to be on the waiting list for the 155 And Counting Club.

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Oil and engines — not good

The last weekend in June the U.S. Navy was due to sea trial a new 509-foot destroyer out of Pascagoula, Miss. The ship would have been operating in the gulf at least four days. But then the Navy started thinking about what all that oil floating in the gulf would do to the engine’s cooling system. Sea trials were canceled.

Just because your boat is less than 500 feet, lacks four gas turbines delivering about 108,000 horsepower, doesn’t run easily at over 30 knots, and isn’t outfitted with Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles for deck gear doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be worried about oil contamination.

Of course, those with the most to worry about operate boats in the Gulf of Mexico, but if oil swings around the tip of Florida and starts floating up the East Coast, then the class of concerned boat owners becomes even larger.

Oil and dispersants in the oil are most likely to affect anything rubber — hoses, gaskets, seals, impellers — and cooling piping.

In a recently released service bulletin from Caterpillar, owners of Caterpillar engines — and this would apply to diesels other than Caterpillar — are advised that the following components are at risk: pumps, heat exchangers, aftercoolers, seals, hoses, and any other component in contact with the polluted water.

Outboards have some of the same problems. A bulletin to Mercury Marine repair centers listed things to be concerned about after running through oil contaminated water: thermostats, water strainers, and coolant passages can be blocked by oil; water pump efficiencies are reduced with an oil-water mixture; an oil-coated cooling system leads to higher than normal engine-block temperatures.

About those rubber-based components — hoses, impellers and engine mounts. Mercury says they can absorb oil and swell. That means less rigidity and strength, followed by possible failure.

What to do? Well, Mercury advises you to monitor the cooling system and when you are back at the dock then flush out the cooling system with 150-degree water for 10 to 15 minutes with the prop removed.

For its inboard engines, Cat says to check fluid levels, inspect for leaks and monitor coolant temperatures, inlet air, and the exhaust. Additionally you can monitor the flow rate of seawater by measuring the pressure drop across pumps or coolers.

For cleaning operations, Cat says to refer to the owner’s manual.

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Lockout/Tagout

There are all sorts of ways to be killed or injured on a fishing boat. Most of them are preventable. One type of injury that seems the most avoidable is machinery related: You are working on equipment when someone turns it on and your body parts are crushed or cut off, or you are electrocuted.

Avoiding this is smart for all parties concerned. It’s smart for you because you are still intact and functioning. And it is smart for the boat owner because he isn’t being hauled into court, where the damages can be notable. The Web site for one group of attorneys who obviously go after this type of case says they won a decision for $2.5 million for a fisherman who lost a hand because a machine didn’t have the proper guard on it.

I’m betting the fisherman would rather have his hand. And I’m betting the guy who started the engine on a boat a few years ago in Kodiak wishes he hadn’t. A diver was working on the boat’s prop. He was killed.

It happened again at the end of March on the factory trawler Ocean Peace, which was near Adak, an island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain, 450 miles west of Dutch Harbor. Joemar Lontoc was cleaning a fish-processing machine. When the machine was turned on, he almost lost a hand and had to be airlifted off the boat.

The way to avoid this kind of accident is not complicated: First, shut off all power to whatever it is you are working on; second, make sure everyone on the boat knows power isn’t to be activated to that piece of equipment.

The best way to do this is with a Lockout/Tagout program. As the name says, you put a lock on the power source to physically prevent someone from operating a switch, key or lever. The tag that accompanies the lock has your name on it and when the power was shut off.

Jennifer Lincoln with NIOSH in Anchorage, Alaska, and Jensen Maritime Consultants in Seattle, Wash., developed a handout explaining how Lockout/Tagout works.

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Wake-up call

The 54-foot steel trawler Patriot sink early on the morning of Jan. 3, 2009 on Middle Bank, 15 miles off Gloucester.  The two-man crew died. It was at least two hours before the Coast Guard launched a search and rescue mission, after concerns were raised when a remote fire-alarm signal was received from the Patriot.

The Coast Guard said part of the problem in sending out a search and rescue mission was they “were with out a known location” for the boat.

As a result of the Patriot’s sinking, Ted Harrington, fishing vessel safety officer for the Coast Guard’s 1st district out of Boston, often hunkers down with his phone when winds get above 50 mph and a weather alert is issued.

But first he finds out what boats are offshore by accessing a VMS-data base. From that list he selects the names of 10 boats. Each of those boats is supposed to have an EPIRB, and that EPIRB is supposed to be registered, and with that registration must be thee phone numbers to contact in case of an emergency. From an EPIRB-data base he gets the three phone numbers for each of the 10 EPIRBs and starts calling.

The people that answer Harrington’s calls should know where the boat is fishing. After all, that’s what an emergency number is for. Except in many cases they don’t know. They don’t even know whether the boat is fishing or not.

“This is really important. If the EPIRB goes off and it doesn’t get just the right satellites, calling the emergency contact numbers can make a difference of two to four hours for arriving at the spot of the incident. It can be the difference between living and dying,” Harrington says.

Having the people listed as emergency contacts aware of where a boat might be fishing is  critical for the Coast Guard’s search-and-rescue command center. Harrington hopes that as a result of his calls, if one of those emergency numbers is contacted again — when an EPIRB goes off because a boat is in trouble — this time the person knows where the boat is fishing.

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Man overboard

It is generally recognized that commercial fishing is safer than it was in the early 1990s. And the statistics show that is true. But a lot of fishermen are still dying. Just look at the fatalities as a result of falling overboard between 2000 and 2008. By region, the numbers read New England 13, Mid- and South Atlantic 17, Gulf of Mexico 49, Alaska 34.

The numbers for other types of fishing fatalities have gone down over the years, but not for falling overboard. That’s why one of the products exhibited at Seattle’s Pacific Marine Expo, which was held Nov. 19—21, seemed like a partial answer to this ongoing problem.

The Autotether is a small (3 1/8" x 1 1/2" x ¾") wireless electronic sensor that can be carried in your pocket or clipped onto your oilskins. When it is submerged or goes more than 150 feet from the wheelhouse-mounted receiver, it sets off an alarm. It can also be rigged to shut down the boat’s engine within 1 ½ seconds of going under water. 

Setting up the receiver to shut down the engine is not a big problem. No wiring is required. Just expose the adhesive strip on the back and attach it next to the kill switch. Turn on the Autotether system and the man overboard alert is activated. It runs on three AAA batteries.

An alarm like that provided by Autotether is only part of the answer. If the alarm goes off and you die of exposure by the time you are picked up or shortly after, the Autotether will not have done you any good.

Between 1990 and 2008, 78 fishermen in Alaska drowned after falling overboard. None of them were wearing a PFD. In October 2008, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Anchorage, Alaska, began surveying 400 fishermen to get their opinions about the risks of falling overboard and what they thought of PFDs. Plus six different styles of PFDs were distributed among half the fishermen to be evaluated over a month of actual fishing.

The PFDs were graded on the following criteria: lightweight, not tight, non-constricting, non-chafing, not bulky, no snagging, ease of donning, and keeps clean.

Final results should be published in late January or February, but from preliminary results distributed at Pacific Marine Expo, it appears the Mustang MD3188 Inflatable Work Vest was the number one choice and Stearns Manual/Automatic Inflatable 1339 was right behind in favorable ratings.

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NMEA 2000

If you are wiring up a new boat or rewiring part or all of an older boat, it seems like you can’t help but like the NMEA 2000 networking system. This is a bidirectional, multitransmitter and receiver system that allows electronic products from different manufacturers to share data. NMEA 2000 can handle data up to one megabit per second, versus the older NMEA 0183 system’s normal operating speed of 4,800 bits per second.

It is pretty much a plug-and-play network, allowing you to add or take away electronic devices without powering down the network. Electronic devices used with the 2000 network need to be “certified,” which means that data from one manufacturer’s device can be sent to the instrument of another manufacturer.

Besides NMEA 2000’s operating advantages, designing and wiring the system seems like it would be a real time saver. Basically you have a trunk line, also called a backbone. Into that go Tee-connectors with drop lines having premolded connectors on the ends. The connectors can be set up for individual electronic devices or multiports. There’s a single power feed for the entire network.

The waterproof cables are color coded to reduce wiring errors. Data lines are always white and blue and the power lines are always red and black. And, instead of having to climb in and out of your boat numerous times, a NMEA 2000 system can be designed at your shop bench, after making basic measurements on the boat.

Good tools make things easier and Maretron recently came out with one for designing a NMEA 2000 system. It’s a free software program that works with Windows PC. The N2KBuilder lets you match up and move around on the computer screen cables, connections, numerous electronic devices and the power source until you have a wiring layout in a blueprint format.

N2KBuilder tells you if there’s a problem with your design and what the Maretron components in the system will cost.

So, spend some time putting the system together at the bench. Plug it in to make sure everything works and then take it out to the boat.

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