A Coast Guard investigation found that a pilot guiding the huge cargo ship was drafting an email and didn’t order a turn.
A pilot was distracted by his phone for a minute at a critical turn in a shipping channel just before the mammoth Ever Forward container vessel became stuck on the muddy bottom of the Chesapeake Bay earlier this year, according to a Coast Guard investigation into the incident.The ship’s crew appeared to be aware that something was amiss but didn’t do enough to get the pilot’s attention before it went aground March 13, the report found. The Ever Forward remained stationary for about five weeks.
The evidence was enough to support a finding that the pilot was negligent, a Coast Guard investigator concluded. The investigator recommended federal authorities take enforcement action against him, but in a memo filed with the report, a senior Coast Guard official said he would wait for state-level proceedings to conclude before making a decision. A state hearing on the case that would determine the status of his license and any penalty is pending.
While the report described the pilot as agitated throughout the voyage, the first two hours of the trip went fairly smoothly. At 8:16 p.m., the ship was on its proper course through a bend in the shipping channel.It was then that the pilot began drafting an email, according to the report. At 8:17 p.m., the ship passed a point where it should have made a turn to the right, but no order came from the pilot.
“The Third Officer stated that the Pilot was still looking at his phone at this time,” the Coast Guard investigator wrote.
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Coast Guard faults pilot in Chesapeake Bay ship groundingA Coast Guard investigation into the grounding in March of a cargo ship in the Chesapeake Bay faulted the pilot tasked with helping the ship navigate the waterway, saying he relied too much on one piece of equipment to navigate and was on his cellphone in the runup to the grounding. In a news release Tuesday the Coast Guard specifically cited “the pilot’s failure to maintain situational awareness and attention while navigating, and inadequate bridge resource management.” A more detailed report described the lead-up to the moments when the Ever Forward ran aground March 13 north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge while it was traveling from the Port of Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia.
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