44 FOGHORN FOGHORN FOCUS I asked him what happened. He said: “One of my crew noticed something felt off before we left the dock. But they didn’t say anything.” I asked why. He looked at me and said, “Honestly? I don’t think they thought it was their place.” That right there. That’s the whole conversation I want to have with you today. YOUR EQUIPMENT DIDN’T CAUSE THAT. YOUR CULTURE DID. Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night when I think about maritime safety: most serious incidents aren’t caused by missing equipment or ignored checklists. They’re caused by a crew member who saw something, felt something, knew something, but said nothing. Not because they didn’t care. Because the culture around them hadn’t made it safe to speak up. That’s a safety problem no inspection prep solves. No binder fixes it. No certification covers it. It lives entirely in the space between your people, in what they believe is expected of them, what they’ve seen rewarded, and what they’ve learned to keep to themselves. And here’s what makes it so dangerous: you can’t see it. You can walk your vessel stem to stern and find nothing wrong. Your paperwork can be spotless. Your equipment can be current and properly stowed. And you can still have a crew that, in a critical moment, doesn’t feel empowered to make the call that matters. That’s what safety culture actually is. Not a policy. Not a drill schedule. The invisible set of rules your crew operates by when no one’s watching—and when everything is on the line. LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT THIS COSTS YOU I come at everything from a business lens—that’s my job, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. So, before I get into the how, let me make the case for the why in terms that hit the balance sheet. A serious onboard incident doesn’t just hurt people. It can end your business. Here’s the cascade, and it moves fast: U.S. Coast Guard investigation. Operations suspended. Certificate of In- spection potentially pulled. Your insurance carrier is on the phone before the day is out. Premiums that won’t re- cover for years. Civil liability that follows you long after the headlines stop. And the headlines—during peak season, with your name attached, in the local market you’ve spent years building a reputation in. That’s the business version. The human version is worse, and it’s the one that actually matters most. But I find that operators who haven’t lived through an incident sometimes need to see the business version first before the full weight of it lands. What I’ve seen, over and over, is that the operators who’ve been through something serious didn’t lack equipment. They lacked a crew culture that caught the problem before it became one. That should stop you cold. Because the equipment is the easy part. You can buy equipment. You can’t buy a crew that speaks up at the right moment, you have to build that. And building it costs a fraction of what losing it costs. SO, WHAT DOES A REAL SAFETY CULTURE ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE? Let me get practical, because “build a safety culture” can sound like something that belongs in a corporate training seminar, not on a working vessel. It doesn’t have to be com- plicated. It just has to be intentional. The most important thing you can do is make speaking up completely normal. Not encouraged. Not tolerated. The most important thing you can do is make speaking up completely normal. Not encouraged. Not tolerated. Normal.
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