Whatever happened to A Whale?

T/V A Whale (USCG Photo) 

What ever happened to the vessel A Whale?  It is  in  Sao Luis, Brazil. The blog oil-electric is on it: A Whale: The Rail Connection.

What happened to Kevin Costner's skimmers? - they seemed to have dropped out of sight.
K.C.

Review of "Sway The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

I picked up Sway The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior when I was passing thought the airport a couple of trips ago. Mario Vittone reviews it here at Weekly Leader, another short review here.


Sway is a  good read, and a good introduction  to the subject of cognitive biases. which I have not given much thought to before. A couple of the examples used were the Tenerife airport disaster  and the Mount Everest Disaster which was the subject of Jon Krakauer's  book Into Thin Air.

If you have ever had a "what was I thinking" moment after an incident or near incident it is likely you have been the victim of cognitive bias. If you have to make operational  decisions, understanding how to avoid bias could be critical.

K.C.

Vessel encounters drunks. Which rule applies?

 

Two Sail boats (Wikipedia) via Bitter End - this  article From The Kitsup Sun  Sailboaters Impede Bainbridge  Ferry, Moon Crew


The story is  that four drunks in a boat forced a Washington State Ferry to take  evasive maneuvers to avoid hitting them.

What was  interesting about the article was the  comments section. It was largely a back and forth as to which rule applied. Was it a  narrow channel?  Special circumstance? do ferries  on the regular run  have special  privileges and so forth. Here is a sample

Correct  me if I am wrong, but according to marine rules I believe a  sail boat  under sail has the right of way over motorized marine traffic.
The  ferry was required to maneuver around the sail boat not the other  way  around.

SUP and Merrymeeting Bay Ace

Woman Stand up Paddle Surfing - Photo from Wikipedia

I just learned about Stand Up Paddling from Old Salt Blog - What’s SUP? Stand-Up Paddling – the New Rage on the Water.

Lately my stomping ground has been Merrymeeting Bay where I have become a MerryMeeting Bay Ace which I define as someone who has paddled all five rivers that enter the  Bay (no photos, don't want to risk the camera going into the water). I'd like to give the SUP board a try there. But I am not going to invite NY Tugmaster along.

K.C.

UPDATE:  I though I was very clever with the Ace idea but I followed my own link and I see there are six rivers - I forgot the Eastern River.

Tenerife Airport Disaster and Bridge Resource Management

Bridge Simulator USMMA Photo

Continuing from my last post about Mario Vitton's post - Experience Means Nothing - Judgment is Everything. , regarding  the Tenerife airport disaster . Mario writes:

 With decades of experience and training telling him “no,” Van Zanten’s judgment failed him (and 582 others) and he made a mistake a rookie wouldn’t have dared to; why?

That's right of course, Van Zanten's judgment did fail him. Looking at it another way however Van Zanten's mental model was wrong.

Capt Van Zanten couldn't see the runway because of fog but in his mental model, the runway was clear. When the second officer questioned that model, saying "is he not clear that Pan American" - this was a mismatch. In this case Capt. Van Zanten choose to reject the feedback. as inaccurate. Air safety research based upon this incident points to the hierarchical  nature of the decision making  used by flight crew as a factor in the accident.

Today, decision making  among flight crews has been made more robust  by the introduction of  Cockpit Resource Management (CRM)  . Basically CRM (and it's close cousin Bridge  Resource Management or BRM)  stress the importance of teamwork. Pilots must now place more weight upon the mismatch among the mental models of other team members.

Another way to say this is - before taking off in the fog make sure everyone is on the same page.

K.C.

My post: 40 second Boyd here

My post about the Tenerife incident here

Judgment or Experience? - Dodging the question

I have been mulling over Mario Vitton's post  at Weekly Leader - Experience Means Nothing - Judgment is Everything.

I'll take a stab at this. I would say that knowledge is the result of grinding experience  in the  mill of judgment.

With regards to maintaining situational awareness, rather then juggle  terms  I think a more productive way to think about this is in terms mental models.

 In this view there  is the real world and a model of the world in our  head. When information from the real world does not line up with  our mental models, what we expect,  there is a mismatch.  To resolve the mismatch we  have two choices, to either reject the feedback as incorrect or adjust our mental model  (or some combination of both)

We do this all the time, when we encounter a mismatch we might say that something "doesn't make sense" If it is something important we reject the information as  not accurate  or adjust  our view so that it does make sense.

K.C.

A little off topic but an interesting example of something that appears to violate common sense is the answer to the question: Can a wind-driven vehicle travel directly down-wind faster than the wind? or DDWFTTW. a post explaining here,

A forum - trying to "make sense" of the idea

Finally  - a you tube video showing one way to "make sense" of the concept.

Opps - One more: To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice."