Crossing the notorious Bay of Biscay went rather smooth thanks to,
amongst others, some of the latest navigational technology. Apart from
all the shipping traffic, the weather is mostly bad and uncomfortable.
On loan to the ship, for trial purposes, is an automatic information
system (AIS) from the Institute of Maritime Technology (IMT) in Simon's
Town. In essence, it detects other vessels in a radius of ±20 nautical
miles. It gives you the name, type and call-sign of the ship as well as
its speed and direction. International law will require that all ships
have this facility on board. However, warships will have the ability to
switch theirs off when required.
Automatic Information System
The image above shows the coastline of Spain in the right hand
corner. The green line is the ships course, the red lines indicate the
traffic lanes and the 'light blobs' are contacts / other vessels. In the
top left hand corner is the detail of a specific contact that has been
identified.
EXERCISES AT SEA
Although a Saturday, life aboard the ship continued as normal. At
08:30 the executive officer (XO) surprised the ship's company with a
couple of exercise drills. It started with a flooding exercise in the
sonar room compartment. The ship went to Combat State One (Emergency
Damage Control). The Special Sea Emergency Party (SSEP) was dispatched
to investigate. The SSEP is ready 24 hours a day and made up from the
normal watches. They all wear orange jackets to make them easily
identifiable. For exercise purposes, they confirmed the flood on the
scene of the incident (SOTI).
CPO Twala - member of the SSEP
When the ship goes into Emergency Damage Control a primary Damage
Control (DC) Base is immediately established. The ship has two DC bases,
in case of a flood the DC base closest to the SOTI will be used with the
other one as the secondary DC Base. There is an action, nuclear
biological and chemical defence (NBCD) officer assisting the XO as a
'rover' to give on the position information to the DC HQ. The commanding
officer, overall in command, will be on the bridge. The action NBCD
officer will, according to the command priority (fight, move or float),
decide on the priority of the different incidents. Each of the above
officers has an NBCD state board, enabling all of them to have access to
the same information. The XO has a hand-held state board and the other
action NBCD officers have electronically and manually operated state
boards.
The DC Base has the following available resources:
- An attack party (AP) of four members. The leader of the AP will
establish a forward control point (FCP) to control the on-scene
damage control. The leader has a right-hand man and two sailors with
breathing apparatus (BA) sets to fight a fire or flood in smoke
filled areas.
- A support party (SP) of four people in silver fire fighting suits
consisting of a team leader, a fire fighter, a sailor responsible
for a water-wall and a hose tender.
- A containment party (CP), normally consisting of a team leader and
three to four members. They must supply all the fire fighting
equipment to the SP and also do containment of the fire and boundary
cooling.
Back to the flooding exercise: The AP arrived at the scene and steps
were put into place to combat the flood. It was established that there
was a crack of 20 cm by 1 cm and leak-stop-and-shoring was initiated.
Both DC bases were closed up to lend support. A mobile repair team, led
by the shipwright and specialising in leak-stop-and-shoring, was
dispatched to control and supervise the temporary repair to the ship
structure. The primary DC base was tasked to take control of the
situation with the secondary DC base in support.
At 08:40 a fire fighting exercise was initiated. The "exercise
fire" was in the scrambling room in the ship's hanger. The
secondary DC base was tasked to investigate a fire alarm that went of.
On initial inspection by the AP a casualty was found in a fire and smoke
filled room. The casualty was evacuated and the SP combated the fire
while the CP ensured that the hoses and necessary equipment was at hand.
A debrief was held to give feedback on the success of the exercise
and to correct deviations from the standing operating procedures (SOP).
Fire and flood are the biggest enemies of any ship. A warship must
therefore have regular exercises to be best prepared for an eventuality.
To conclude the exercises for the day, a 'man overboard' exercise was
also held at 10:30. A buoy was thrown overboard, simulating the 'man
overboard'. All crewmembers not on watch mustered on the flight deck for
a roll-call to ensure that everyone was accounted for. A sea boat was
launched at the same time to recover the 'man overboard'.
