06/011 - Observations from an Instructor

The ILO recommends a minimum of 10 hours of rest, of which at least one should be a continuous period of 6 hours. The human body also requires at least 6 hrs of continuous sleep. My student’s contention is that nobody gets this continuous period of sleep since they tend to do their personal care also during that time. So maybe the regulation should state a continuos period of 7 hrs as the compulsory requirement, with the remaining 3-4hrs at some other time, so that at least 6 continuous hrs of sleep may be obtd.

The need for an extra hand is usually seen when the ship is doing frequent ports. Here, each docking is time consuming, may have been preceded by sailing in congested waters, and usually followed by long periods of duty for discharging/loading/inspection/stores/etc. Here is where all the mandatory rest periods go berserk since all hands are needed. They go into a sleep debt, and before they have compensated, they are already for the next port! This chronic sleep debt slows down their responses and is responsible for accidents.