IT IS TIME TO START PROTECTING OUR CREW
We all know mental health within our industry needs to be talked about more. It’s not all glitz and glamour and our crew need protecting and they need more support from within the industry. But, where do we start?
On the morning of Thursday 24th November, many of us woke up to a video message from Karine Rayson, The Crew Coach, on Instagram, asking for our help to make a positive change for crew and their mental health in the yachting industry by answering her exclusive questionnaire. The purpose of which was to gather information about incidents, issues, unsafe working environments, and to use this information to hold people accountable for their behaviour.
Coincidentally, we also woke up to the tragic news that a bosun working on a motoryacht in the USA, Clive “Billy” Baker, had taken his own life.
Reactions to Billy’s suicide were quick to hit social media channels, with touching tributes, heartfelt condolences, shock, disbelief, and heartbroken crew all over the world coming together to share their memories of him. Something that stuck out for me, as I’m sure it did for many, were the comments saying, “Not another one.” “Not again.” Take that in for a moment. It’s a deeply sad time when suicide is viewed in this way, as commonplace, as a frequent occurrence. Here we go again though, we see a wave of anger across social media platforms, a sense of helplessness and of desperation from crew and industry professionals, demands for change, for better resources, for something, ANYTHING to help stop this happening again. But as always, the emotions die down, people carry on, and nothing, nothing changes.
So, what the hell is the yachting industry going to do about it?
So where do we start? How about with reviewing the training systems and starting from the bottom. In order to work on a yacht all crew must hold a minimum of the STCW basic safety training. First Aid? Great. Fire Fighting? Excellent. Personal Survival Techniques? Fantastic! Personal Safety and Social Responsibility? Hold up what even is that? I reviewed a number of seaschool websites to find out the syllabus in an attempt to figure out what crew learn on this one day course, as surely this would be a great opportunity to address mental health, in themselves and their co-workers, surely that’s PSSR right? Apparently not. According to the South West Maritime Academy’s website, the PSSR module “gives basic induction training in safety procedures and accident prevention and familiarizes novice seafarers with employment and working conditions aboard.” Clyde Training Solutions adds, “while familiarising them with the employment conditions”. Sounds all a bit fluffy and a bit vague to me so why not use that day to cover the above (in a couple of hours as, arguably, before spending over a grand on a basic safety course you’d think the crew might have googled all that but still), talk about mental health on board. Coping mechanisms, stress relief, what to do and who to talk to if you feel you’re struggling. We need a process in place for reporting mental health issues just as we do for reporting a physical accident. So, MCA I’m looking at you here, let’s address that right at the start of a crew’s training. Karine confirmed she feels the same and told me “I’ve been saying this for some time now, but it seems getting approval to make these changes takes a very, very long time.”
Damian Martin, Head of Edmiston Yacht Management, agreed, “PSSR is a single day (often less) module. Given how the industry and how yachts have grown, I personally feel this is woefully inadequate in laying any grounding in these key areas.” He rightfully pointed out how the industry takes young adults from their normal lives, and, “after a single module about what is expected of them, we throw them into a mix with a variety of people from very different societal backgrounds, in a floating tin can of pressure, with often demanding guests and then look on in amazement when some crack or break… it shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
Damian went on to discuss this further, “When we carry out an audit, we carry out a ‘root cause analysis’ to try and work out where/why something has failed… the deckhand fell off the side of the yacht because he/she wasn’t wearing a harness – that is easy to fix. The root cause analysis is very clear to me – we often set crew up to fail before they even begin, by not preparing them for what lies ahead and by not equipping, auditing our leaders to ensure that they can actually look after people when they need it. You wouldn’t drive a boat without the right training, so why is it good enough to allow Senior crew to take responsibility for the well-being of other crew without giving them any tools to help them (not just captains, all crew with positions of responsibility have some responsibility for other human being’s welfare).”