Photos of a couple Navy ship in the PG

U.S. Navy Ship in the Strait of Hormuz(photo by K.C) 

A U.S. Aircraft Carrier in the Persian Gulf (photo by K.C)>

My last post doesn't seem very nautical so I am going to throw up some photos from a couple trips ago.

K.C.

Critical Decision Making Lectures on DVD

For the last year or so I have been doing some reading on cognitive bias and Normal accident theory so when I saw both subjects listed on The Teaching Company lectures The Art of Critical Decision Making along with some concepts I had not heard of I was intrigued enough to order the DVDs to take to sea.

 I was skeptical about  academic lectures aimed at businessmen but  many of the lessons  could be applied to  ship operations. Some of the insights might mean the difference between  having a clear understanding of what need to be done and just muddling though in some situations.  For someone with training in business some of the material covered might be old hat but a lot of it was new to me.

There are reviews from customers here. There were a total of 24 lectures of 30 minutes each.

If you spend time at sea I recommend having a look at what is offered and see if anything catches your eye. It is nice to listen to a lecture rather then reading at the end of a long work day. Not to mention that entertainment choices on the ship are often limited. Last trip it was either  theses  DVDs or season one of  Desperate Housewives.

K.C.
                                              A list of the lectures on 1 of 2 DVDs

Passage planning errors - S/V Quest

Planned Route of the S/V Quest (from Quest website)  

I would no sooner navigate a small sailing vessel in the waters around the Horn of Africa then I would rent an RV and take a trip to Tripoli, Libya. But  by all accounts Quest owners Jean and Scott Adam were skilled and experienced ocean cruisers. So what happened?

My guess is they made the error of wishful thinking. No doubt the crew of the Quest badly wanted to finish their voyage and just a a mountain climber can be blinded by summit fever so can yachtsmen fail to properly evaluate risk in some cases.

Below is a standard risk assessment matrix. 

Risk Matrix from Step Change in Safety - Task Risk assessment (lots of good risk assessment info (large pdf))  
The key point here is that capture by pirates is a catastrophic outcome, so no matter how you rate the likelihood of capture, very strong countermeasures are required, countermeasures that are beyond the resources of a sailing yacht.

My heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the crew of the Sailing vessel Quest.

K.C.

The Hawsepiper has a good take on the rise in the level of violence in the HoA area.- Piracy issues 

At Manu's Scrips stronger  words- J'accuse

I now accuse the international community- and their trigger happy navies- of culpable homicide in connection with the murder of innocent mariners. They sure as hell had knowledge that their acts were likely to cause death; they are not that incompetent.


I accuse them of criminal negligence that has resulted in the barbaric torture of seamen (BIMCO’s words, not mine) - including savage keelhauling, beatings, threats of execution and such assorted outrages. I accuse them of knowingly and deliberately putting seamen’s lives at risk by their calculated escalation of violence when dealing with hijacked or mother ships, shooting crew- human shields or not- and otherwise gambling with mariner lives at risk with full foreknowledge of inevitable fatal consequences.

Thinking Like a Mariner - Managing the Unexpected

Managing the Unexpected by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe is about so called High Reliability Organization..  I mentioned the book when I first purchased it here -US Airway Flight 1549 and High Reliability Organizations I think the book is worth reading and keeping for reference.  It was tough sledding at times, not because the ideas are complex but because  it didn't link the examples to the theory very well.

The book  didn't really change the way I think about ship operations, I think ship's masters generally  already think this way.  It did sharpen my understanding and learning the vocabulary has made it easier to communicate these ideas to other people.

There is a professional written review here.

GPS Vulnerabilities

At the Clay Maitland blog, Michael Grey has a good post - The dangers of GPS reliance about the vulnerabilities of GPS.  He relates the story of a test of a GPS jammer and says:

Keeping it real - USCG's Towing Safety Advisory Committee

Tugboats in Burrard Inlet. Photo: Environment Canada.

This article from Oct, 2010   Feds' Foggy Reply to Tug Crewing Questions. (found via the post Why TC does not comment at The Monitor ) is about  confusion at Transport Canada regarding tug manning regulations for tugs doing ship assist work in Vancouver Port. The article is worth a quick read,  this caught my eye:

what about the assertion from Transport Canada that it is up the vessel master to ensure safe crewing requirements?

Vessel manning is  up to the vessel's master? Is that supposed to be a joke? How many vessel masters have any say about manning? None that I know of.

Tech Details on Tankers and the Suez Canal

Typical Tanker (photo from Wikipedia)

The Oil Drum has a good post with some technical details about tankers and the Suez Canal - Oil Tankers in the wake of the Egyptian Crisis.

Alaska Ranger - Sailed though loophole created by the Coast Guard

F/V Alaska Ranger - USCG Photo

Both the Coast Guard and the NTSB have now released their reports on the sinking of the Alaska Ranger. The Coast Guard's report can be found at the CG site Homeport - type "Alaska Ranger" into the search box to find the report. The NTSB's report can be found here.



The Alaska Ranger case is not complex. The hull of the vessel  was in such poor condition that, in typical Bering Sea conditions, water entered and flooded the entire vessel. The actual point of failure evidently was the Kort nozzles which were tacked onto the vessel in 1991.

The Coast Guard report claims that there was ambiguity in regulations regarding the Ranger status as a fishing vessel or a processor. Thirty-two of the forty-nine people aboard the Ranger were titled "Factory Processors", that makes it a processor.


The Coast Guard created a loophole in the law  called the Alternate Compliance Program which according to the Coast Guard

"allows exemptions to the class and Load Line requirements while at the same time creating improved safety requirements for these vessels, thereby avoiding the incentive to operate strictly as uninspected fishing vessels. ACSA vessel owners work with the Coast Guard"

In effect the Coast Guard put it's stamp of approval on a vessel which was not seaworthy but which carried thirty non-mariners onto the 32 degree waters of the Bering Sea.

This is a case of risk assessment, scrapping the Alaska Ranger would have risked adversely impacting the owner's bottom line.

K.C.