From far away, those big boats always look slow. It’s deceiving.
If you look at about thirty seconds in, the green boat is going about twice as fast as the red one. It’s going at least two boat lengths for every one the red is doing.
Those beach fences are almost certainly a band-aid for this kind of wake being acknowledged as a routine possibility. Ten or twenty years ago, they marked a commercial shipping lane on the chart as close to the shore as they could, it probably caused sub-surface erosion that worsened over time, and they put up the silly fences instead of making ships go to a further distance out.
This captain was negligent, he was overspeed, and the company that set his schedule will blame him, sack him, and give the next captain the same work schedule, and he’ll speed, and it will repeat until there’s no longer a swimmer-suitable beach to cause any hiccups in the flow of goods on the waterways.
Looking at the bouys that the two ships are staying inside it looks like the green ship stayed where it was supposed to be vis-a-vis the marked shipping channel. The question then is if the ship speed is specified as an absolute value or if it’s more of a no-wake specification. If it’s an absolute and the captain was inside of that then he should walk away unscathed.
He is being investigated for piloting his ship alongside a beach in the Netherlands
You can see the channel buoys in the video. The ships are exactly where they’re supposed to be, and where ships have been running for, most likely, centuries.
I would have assumed there’s at least some general rule about reducing speed, but apparently, they’ve had this discussion for years, and there is none?
Ok, so, when you accuse people of negligence, can you please point me to that regulation? Because I have found none, and I think this is intentional. Shipping is king in the Netherlands and, as the articles I have linked above seem to indicate, a debate about a speed limit in that area been going on for years, without results.
Hey, if you don’t want to read the story posted by @FGD135, I’ll read it for you. You seem to have posted an article from Aug 2004.
A directive by Rijkswaterstaat has been in force in the area since 2011, stating that ‘a captain must adjust the speed of his vessel as “good seamanship” to prevent dangerous tidal waves forming so that no danger tor recreational beach users arises.’
In een verklaring uit 2011 van Rijkswaterstaat staat onder meer: “Dat een kapitein de snelheid van zijn schip als ‘goed zeemanschap’ moet aanpassen zodat geen gevaarlijke golfslag kan ontstaan en er dus geen gevaar voor recreanten op het strand kan ontstaan.”
