A Nautical Miscellany

A game changer or a footnote?

2009-05-30T14:20:23-07:00

I came across an article in the Sydney Morning Herald today about the tiny Google office in that fair city. It is run by two brothers who sold their business to Google some years ago. The business was called Where 2 Tech which no one had heard of, it became Google Maps, which everyone has heard of. In any event they've moved on since then to a new application/service called Wave which they revealed at a Google developers conference in San Francisco yesterday.

The gist of Wave is that e-mail, IM, photos, videos and blogging will all be integrated in a collaborative way. Conversations called "Waves" (of course) will exist in a browser which makes it system indifferent, including mobile devices such as iPhone and Android. Google defines a Wave:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

The description from their blog is here in Went Walkabout, Brought back Google Wave, there is an embedded video from the conference which gives a detailed demo. The demo is bit long and geeky but the technology is fascinating. I was particularly impressed with the idea that you could watch while someone was typing a message to you, not afterwards but as they actually typed it.

The question in mind is whether this will become the next big thing and everyone will be lined up around the virtual block to get signed on (as they were to a great extent with Gmail) or whether it is a bit too geeky to be adopted by the main stream.

One very smart thing they are doing is making the source code open to other developers right from the git go to enable them to build on and extend the technology. Another question in my mind and which I didn't hear addressed in the demo is how it will integrate with existing e-mail systems. If you have one system for dealing with friends/coworkers on Wave and another on regular e-mail how long will you keep it up before you dump the one with fewer correspondents? Nevertheless it's a fascinating idea, stay tuned...

Postscript: I managed to leave out one of the most interesting features, and something that the developers left to the very end of the demo. Wave can translate on the fly, and I mean literally as each word is typed to and from 40 different languages. Not too shabby.

Piracy and the criminalisation of seafarers

2009-05-19T10:17:19-07:00

I don't usually just repost other peoples blogs but I think this one from Lloyd's today is worth repeating. The officers in the blog are all victims but how they are perceived and how they are treated are vastly different.

Lloyd's List Comment

Where the chain of causation starts and how it bloody ends up

2009-04-28T12:46:27-07:00

As so often happens an article in Mondays Lloyd's List caused me to ponder. The article was headlined, "Viking Islay master ‘failed in his duty of care' ". I quote directly from the article concerning the actions of some of the crew that lead to their deaths:

"The three men successively entered the vessel’s chain locker before collapsing due to depleted oxygen in the enclosed space. At issue is whether the crew members were made aware that the chain locker was a dangerous place to go, whether they were aware the chain locker had to be adequately vented before entry and why no tests were made of oxygen levels in the locker."

The stupid thing of course is that the crew were entering the locker merely to fasten the hanging chain to prevent it from knocking on the side of the locker and keeping some of the crew awake.

The basis of the Crown's case was that the Master owed a duty of care to the crew to ensure they were not exposed to risk.The article doesn't mention a verdict so I assume that the case is ongoing. Of course the Master does have a duty of care to the crew, as I recall it's crew, ship and then cargo. I won't offer an opinion on the Masters action or lack thereof, I'm sure that he's suffering in his own hell.

Undoubtedly there is a confined space entry protocol in the ship managers safety management system that was ignored. Was there a warning about oxidisation in the procedure? Was not the Master or the first two crewmen aware of oxidisation in a chain locker (or with many cargoes)?

Sadly I was witness to a similar accident when I was at sea, though I was a supernumerary on the ship.In that incident and in this one what distresses me the most is that besides the Masters ignorance (in both incidents) there were at least 3 other people involved who either were ignorant or ignored the procedures and the dangers of entering a compartment that had been closed for some time.

One of the most powerful tools in improving safety on a ship is getting the crew to have a duty of care towards each other, it's way more effective than written procedures or a knowledgeable Master. Did anyone else know they were going to go into the chain locker? If so, did it not strike anyone that this was a danger?

We had an incident in Australia that illustrates the point very neatly. A sailor on a FSO had a pair of work boots that were basically a few scraps of leather held together by laces. It became a running joke amongst the crew about just how bad the boots were. It all came to grief eventually, one day the particular seafarer was transferring from a boat to the loading buoy to do some servicing and of course twisted his ankle. At the time we were desperately trying to improve our not very impressive LTI rate and while the injury was relatively minor it was a setback we could have done without.

We did get some value out of the incident though, it became an excellent object lesson in how safety on board is everyone's responsibility and unless everyone is involved the results can be painful or even tragic.

Stop me if you've heard this one before..

2009-04-22T16:41:02-07:00

I quote from this mornings Tradewinds,

"Canada’s Nautisol is studying the feasibility of a new fast ferry service from Victoria to Vancouver, with the backing of foreign investors.

The marine technology company’s boss Don Stein told local media that three overseas groups are ready with $150m in funding for the 90-minute run.....

...If all goes according to plan, two 50-metre-long, hybrid hovercraft-catamaran ferries would be built in Vancouver and launched late next year."

For those too young to remember or from away, this would be the third or fourth attempt at such a high speed service between Victoria and Vancouver over the last 20 or 30 years. I do believe that one of the previous incarnations was a SES ship as well.

The problem is, as I see it, that no one wants to be trapped in a small ferry for 90 minutes. People like to be able to get up and walk around, go out on deck, have their lunch or dinner or go back down to their car. The Boeing Jetfoil ran for several years and from all accounts was very fast and fairly comfortable but I remember reading the complaints that there wasn't any deck to get up and walk around on. You sat in close rows of airline type seating all facing one direction. For all of their faults and our complaints the BC Ferries are large, pretty comfortable in all but the worst weather and despite what you read, the price is not completely out of whack. Tough to compete with.

Perusing their website (www.nautisol.com)It would appear that the ships will be propelled by gas turbines. I'll be interested to see how this works because of course gas turbines are not the cheapest way to propel a ship, even the Millennium Falcon pictured above. Small ship, relatively high operating cost, low number of passengers, I'd like to see the business plan.

Did this guy talk with that European guy?

2009-04-19T14:21:31-07:00

Recently, (ok a month ago but I've been busy) Lloyd's published an article titled, "Downturn leading to improved prospects for ship safety" The article quotes the International Union of Marine Insurance as having the view that, "the freight market crash is lifting some of the intense operational pressure exerted in recent years on the world fleet. " or in other words, when your ship is earning $100,000/day no one wants you to slow down to paint the anchor.

This is true, when things are rolling, drydocks get delayed and if repairs can safely be made on the run rather than stopping then that's what you do. What intrigues me of course is how directly at odds this is with our friend from the EMSA that I talked about in a blog some months ago where he opined that the first thing that would happen in a bad market is all the maintenance would stop and the four horseman of the Apocalypse would follow shortly thereafter.

The IUMI also attribute the improvement to the fact that a lot of old trash that should have gone to the breakers a long time ago has now finally shuffled off the mortal coil, bad for the shipowner but good for the crew and the rest of us. Bad markets do tend to drive some of the less desirable owners out of the business (and some decent ones too unfortunately). This tendency tends to be exacerbated but the fact that when times are tough charterers will also tend to go to the better owners knowing they will be keeping their standards the same. During both the Erika and the Prestige I saw that the quality companies did proportionally better (Get me a ship and make it a good one this time, someone may be watching!)

The president of IUMI stated that "there were strong signs that the safety culture at sea was taking root. But she warned: “Ship operators are being buffeted from all sides in the growing economic crisis. But to cut corners on maintenance or training can only have one result in the long term: more casualties, higher claims on insurers, and higher premium and deductible levels for shipowners.” I agree with all of this but I don't think it is the entire picture as the whole of operating a ship is not taken up only with the insurance. Charterers, particularly for oil companies and definitely in the offshore have no tolerance for ship operations that take the lives of their crew for granted. The LTI or loss time injury rate used to be a somewhat novel concept in discussions betwixt charterers and owners but now it tends to be either a conversation starter or the beginning of a deathly silence, if you pardon the pun.

The real message that has to be gotten to the unenlightened is that a low LTI rate goes hand in hand with an efficient operation, and that's what really pleases charterers once they've landed the price they want. I don't think I've ever seen, and I'd be interested if anyone could show me, an operation that had a really low LTI rate but wasn't an efficient operation.

Remanence:Variance

2009-04-16T21:30:51-07:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with things shipping or marine but is fascinating nonetheless. What I like the most is that it takes an old technique, time lapse photography, and turns into something that is technically elegant and beautiful at the same time. It's a year in the life of Tokyo, shot with a relatively low cost DSLR, a Canon Rebel.

This will take awhile to load as it's a big file, best to press the play and then pause while you grab a coffee and wait for most of the file to load before you watch. If you press the HD button on the right side of the screen and then the HD symbol that appears on the screen it will take you to the Vimeo web site where you can watch in very sharp HD.

I'll quote from the authors site:

"Shot over the span of a year with Canon DSLRs (mostly 350d), processed with Lightroom (raw files color adjustment and resizing)/VirtualDub (deshaker/deflicker filters)/Sony Vegas (editing). Original rendered in 1080p.

Music is "Is That What Everybody Wants" from Cliff Martinez's superb soundtrack for Solaris, available from all major music outlets."

By the way, the definition of remanence is: The imprint of energy that remains long after an object has been moved

remanence : variance from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

Have a try at this...

2009-04-15T21:32:19-07:00

gcaptain's_maritime_terms_quiz

Now I know it will all be ok

2009-04-14T10:39:14-07:00

A recent article in the Canadian Press [ there is a newly released application for the iPhone that delivers all the CP news ] says that, "Barely a day after the daring rescue of an American sea captain, cable TV's Spike announced a deal Monday to produce a show about U.S. Navy pirate hunters."

It turns out that the deal has been in the works for three months but has only recently and conveniently come to fruition. What's interesting to me, probably out of ignorance, is exactly how many US flag ships there will be to rescue? I don't think this is like the first Gulf war where owners re-flagged to the stars and bars in order to get protection, so what exactly are they going to film, U.S. cruisers and destroyers waiting around while flag of convenience ships get hijacked?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of ships getting rescued by anybody's Navy and it's a great thing that the Master of the Maersk ship was rescued so quickly. What would be even better to see would be a coordinated effort amongst the Navy's present to rescue all of the 228 crew (at last count) that are still being held prisoner. The flags on their ships may not be US but my bet is that the ultimate ownership of a lot of them ends up in the G20. Would it be too much to ask to have the people that ultimately own the ships to apply pressure to the governments that have the Navy ships in the area to get on with it?

UPDATE: The Economist has posted a related article here.

"One Western naval officer says placing all the warships under a single command, perhaps of the UN, and adopting the same rules of engagement would help to make them more effective."

Do ya think?

The NFB online

2009-04-08T17:20:35-07:00

I am a fan of the NFB, or the National Film Board for those outside of Canada. The NFB is a wholly government-funded agency that produces films about Canada and has done since before the second world war. Some of the early stuff, particularly during the WW2 was certainly propaganda but in amongst the 13,000 films they have produced in the last 70 years are many fascinating views of Canada most of which I am sure would never have been made if there was no NFB. Some people take the view that it's a waste of money and that the government shouldn't be spending tax dollars on making films about Canada and Canadians. I can certainly think of worse things that have been paid for by tax dollars than the small investment it takes to provide such a unique reflection of ourselves!

Of the 13000 films I think they have won 70 Oscars, many for animation. There is also controversy, the first NFB film to win an Oscar was a short by Norman McLaren called Neighbors which was deemed too violent for government produced film. As well there was the 1982 film [ at least I think it was 82] the If You Love This Planet, which was basically a lecture given by the anti nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. The film had two distinctions, it won an Oscar for best short documentary subject and was virtually banned in the USA as the Department of Justice felt it was propaganda!

When I was but a lad, I used to borrow NFB films from the local office [ which I don't think it exists anymore ] and watch them on a very old 16mm projector on the wall in the kitchen. For a while there it was hard to watch the films because there was no local office and you had to go to one of the main offices if you wanted to watch them. Technology of course has changed all that and now the NFB has put 700 of its films or clips from its films online.

A new film that looks quite interesting is The Memories Of Angels. it is a film by Luc Bourdon about the Montréal of the 1950s and 1960s, made from clips of 120 NFB films. I've included the trailer here:

Trial By Media

2009-04-03T12:12:59-07:00

I've attached an article on the bottom of this post from a recent issue of Lloyd's LIst DCN from Australia.(LLDCN Is part of the Informa group who also publish Lloyd's List, the newspaper in the UK but are more of a semi-independent paper focused on multi-modal transport in Australia.)

The Pacific Adventurer was a general cargo ship owned by Swire's that had an unfortunate incident off the coast of Australia. She left port in bad weather and she lost some containers which managed to punch a hole in the bow of the ship thereby losing bunkers.The really unfortunate part of it was that it happened just before a state election in Queensland. I'd say there are some questions to be answered about why the ship set off straight into the teeth of a storm but a rational dialogue was not possible when the event occurred as the media twisted and mangled the story to sell more newspapers. In the words of Professor Gold, "Such reports appear to be generally based on conjecture, innuendo and a total lack of understanding of ship operations."

This article is by Edgar Gold, many people will recognize his name is being a rather well-known ex-mariner and professor of law at Dalhousie. if you haven't heard of him, a short biography is available here. It's a rare event when someone actually gets to straighten out yet another story of a shipping that has been incorrectly reported, read the article and see if you agree.

Download Lloyd's List Edgar Gold article 020409