Hi Pieter
of course, it will take ages as you said,IMO is a "hindrance institution" in itself and seemingly only there to provide well paid jobs and plenty of high class travels to conventions in cities world wide where in the end nothing really was decided beside to meet again in 6 month in another high class Hotel in a high class city. Therefore I said, that any country can put minimum passing requirements to their coasts by themselves. Like in this case 12nm and the ship might have not even been close to the shoreline. At least there is then a chance, if a ship breaks down to catch it before grounding by tug or the crew would have time to do repair/fix. Of course that does not really help when it comes to blatant ignorance and not doing !!!
Another thing, which comes to mind, also when it runs against nature of a sailor, to have to send passage plans to a central world-wide institution who checks it and ok,s it. After all, vessel are now tracked already by LRIT every 6 hrs and close to coasts by AIS (Which I hear suppose to be expanded to world wide) so, the tracking would be easy. But then again one can,t stop stupidity or ignorance.
As for the Reina, the decision to short-cut was sure based on time, which translates into money loss, however I was in the container business for a total of about 10 years (left it in 2008) and the pressure on Masters is extreme when it comes to time.
One story : I was on a feeder in 97, Terneuzen/Immingham/Halmstad/Wallham/Moss/Immingham/Terneuzen, ,1 week rotation. We arrived in Moss like 1000 in winter, good snowing , off land wind, no tugs no pilots. Had a shitty time to get the ship onto the pier, normal a 15 min job,,took like 30-40 min. While I was trying, I noticed that the foreman was standing on the berth and shouting up to the forecastle and the gantry went down and back up, and then pulling his phone. When I was alongside holding the ship in place, with only the spring fwd over my cell phone was ringing. The owner of the vessel was on the phone and asked me why we were on strike !!!!!
What happened: The Bsn, for what ever reason mixed up the bays and took the bridge fittings off from the wrong containers. The foreman demanded, still while we were giving lines from the Officer/Bsn fwd to go right away and remove the fittings where the officer or Bsn gave the foreman most probably a not so decent answer. However the foreman called the agent,,he the charterer, that one the owner and he me !!!
all within rough 5-10 min and we were on strike !!!
That was and is reality, still today. Now imagine the Master complains,,the next time on vacation, unfortunatlely the next ship is delayed,,and no place free until you get the message,, one more time and you are "toast" .