Q6.


Given your extensive experience, what key words of advice can you offer to future generations of marine surveyors?


Don’t do it unless you enjoy it, if you are not comfortable and happy in your work, you will make a poor surveyor, and you will not reflect well on our institute. Research your vessel if you have not surveyed that type before, take your time, be thorough, methodical, critical, analytical and write your report as though you are going to court the following day to defend it.


Q7.


How important is it for experienced, as well as less knowledgeable marine surveyors, to maintain a library and to keep abreast of changing industry technologies?


The role of a surveyor, professionally, can be a lonely one as most of us work alone and we don’t often get to discuss professional aspects of our work in a changing industry with technology advancing at a very fast rate. I have been surveying for many years, but I learn something new at every seminar that I attend. I love learning and I like asking questions, as I have a curious and enquiring mind. Most of my schoolteachers and lecturers and instructors appreciated my questions, the ones that did not were the weaker and less successful, less committed and less professional ones, whose careers were limited by their attitude.


Q8.


Which is your favorite and most used surveyor’s tool in your bag and why?


A ball pein hammer on metal vessels and a rubber coated mallet on FRP and timber vessels. I have discovered serious and major faults in hulls and fittings with them, more than any other tool. Recently, I discovered a poorly completed and dangerous repair to a Broom Continental which could have caused her to sink, had I not spotted it with my mallet. The owner of the yard was embarrassed as it had been completed by his staff some years previously. I have put my ball pein hammer through many barges and steel hulled vessels. The hammer is also valuable when checking skin fittings, valves, engine parts and deck fittings.


Dingle, Ireland


THE REPORT | SEP 2025 | ISSUE 113 | 133


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