For some people Heath and Safety generates apoplexy. There are plenty of apparently stupid H&S examples around, most of them apocryphal. However, one caught me yesterday. I tried to buy a loaf of bread but the best-before label had come off. The loaf could not be sold. Could I be given it? That wasn’t allowed either. I never got my cranberry and walnut treat.
A harbour’s equivalent of this is the Port Marine Safety Code (PMSC). This is a national standard by which harbour authorities can be held accountable for the powers and duties they have in order to run harbours safely. It specifies responsibilities which Harbour Board Members cannot delegate.
Salcombe’s document runs to 29 pages, with 15 supporting documents, as well as the certificate of compliance – the Harbour has been compliant for the last 11 years. All this is fearsome, but the upside is that the paperwork comprehensively covers the safety risks in the Harbour and how to respond to them. Some of the items it covers are obvious, like the need to check the reliability of navigation lights. It’s not enough to turn them on and hope that they will survive a winter gale.
But others are less obvious. The monitoring system drew attention to a number of mooring failures. There are two places in the Harbour where even properly-maintained Harbour moorings can fail – Dodbrooke and South Sands. In Dodbrooke, there is a considerable fetch to the west and the mud is so soft that it becomes liquid (colloidal) if disturbed: so at High Tide in a gale the moorings can bump their way downwind towards the bridge. The solution is to install a length of heavy chain on the block, attaching the mooring chain to this heavier stuff. At least this means fewer boats going walkies.
In South Sands, the problem is similar as there is considerable snatch on moorings in an easterly. But here the moorings not only move – bumping their blocks across the fragile eelgrass, horror of horrors – they may simply break. The solution here is to install a Seaflex mooring which has a spring in it to absorb the snatch. It is hoped that will do the trick.
But the statistics show that by far the biggest cause of mooring failures in the Harbour is with licensed moorings which are the responsibility of private owners. A number are in poor repair and where a mooring fails as the result of insufficient maintenance the solution is to withdraw the licence. It’s too dangerous having boats crashing around the Harbour.
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