Homeward Bound

The fortnight that seemed it would never end is over and once again I am on a jet liner working against sun and sky towards cooler weather and familiar country. This last hitch ended on a positive note with a hefty payoff, an open invitation back to a permanent spot and an idle day before my flight to lounge around the pool at my friends flat on the Singapore River.

The last two weeks at work were wearyingly slow and filled with uncertainty. Initially the repair was supposed to be a quick one, four days, maybe six. With fire works over the fantail we left our convenient anchorage that had been home for two months an hour past midnight on New Years Day. The job was going swimmingly until the fault end had been brought onboard and tested from the splicer’s shop.

The test signal detected a secondary fault 12 kilometers further up the cable towards Hong Kong. All work came to a standstill as the company began contacting the Singapore Port Authority, Malaysian and Indonesian governments for additional work permits. After a full day of inactivity it was decided to continue with the current repair rather than picking up the cable to the next fault. The permits in these highly contested waters would just take too long.

The decision relieved my anxiety that a four-day job would be much longer as burying an additional 12 clicks of cable would have taken at least two weeks pushing my hitch over the four-month mark. So we resumed picking up the cable until the fault, evidenced by bird-caged wire armor, was onboard and replaced with new cable from our tanks.

Not 24 hours before we would have called it a day one of the two azimuthing stern thrusters suffered a mechanical failure. The likelihood of leaking lubricating oil from the propeller seals was good so we anchored the ship a few miles up the traffic scheme in the very unsanctioned anchorage that had been causing all the fiber optic damage we were there to fix.

A few days after my 28^th birthday I passed the hundred-day mark at sea and realized I was ready for a relief. Unfortunately the prospect of dropping a cool million dollars for the thruster repair meant we would be in a holding pattern for the next ten days as the company decided how to repair a cable ship loaded down to her marks.

The thought of having to wait for a shipyard with bookings in the region so full was discouraging. On top of that the ship would have to be de-bunkered, de-ballasted and a significant amount of the cable offloaded first having enough of all three on board to cross the Atlantic. The only factor working for me was the extreme expense of dry-docking plus lost revenue from canceling the next repair.

Fortunately for the budget and my relief it was determined by port engineering that using a submersible habitat specialized divers could make the repair at anchor saving a significant amount of time and money. The time line, which we all found impressive, was a mere 48 hours start to finish once the divers and gear were on the ground in Singapore.

The process would involve a team of fifteen hardhat divers working 12 hour shifts to attach and inflate an air filled habitat around the thruster. The balloon was just big enough for divers to swim into from underneath removing their gear in the natural air lock. Once inside the habitat they would don headsets to communicate with the dive leader on deck and perform the repair work themselves.

This technique is a class approved industry norm for shaft and propeller repair on ships. It is so swift that it is normally scheduled during cargo operations in port so that sailings are not delayed. One diver told me about a cruise ship job where each time they docked his team would go over the side as passengers were going ashore to erect the habitat and perform maintenance on the thrusters. They had just enough time to do one thruster in each port on the itinerary and be back in the bar to mingle with the returning passengers by departure.

An anchorage west of Singapore was selected for the minimal currents; anything over two knots and the divers couldn’t work. After another week of waiting and wondering we weighed anchor and rounded Raffles Light. Named for the first colonial reformer in Singapore this island separates Malacca Strait from Singapore Strait. Once wind rode on two anchors the relieving officers were finally airborne and arrangements made for our repatriation. I asked the Captain to fly me out a day late so I could have some time in Singapore to bid newfound friends a fond farewell and pacify myself by the pool before two days of travel.

Naturally the Captain took this as a sign of my willingness to stay onboard for an additional day to cover the watch as other officers departed. Having my bag packed and shore going rig laid our for the night I was a little deflated to spend another 24 hours on the ship but it could have been much worse.

That very night as I slumbered prior to my mid watch the Port Engineer, onboard for the repair, tried to cancel all reliefs until after a sea trial to test the thruster. This would have meant I would’ve been delayed another couple of days missing all my social obligations ashore. Luckily the Captain shit canned the idea after convincing him that an engine test could be done at anchor and that with half the crew ashore and imbibing a hasty return to sea would not be the most prudent course of action.

Suffice to say that with just a shred of sanity remaining I was signed off in the nick of time and an hour later found myself by the edge of a pool, lime infused Corona in hand, reflecting on the ups and downs of the last four months.

Coming off long trips at sea is an absolute rush. It is a mix of emotions that include accomplishment, excitement, relief and reluctance to ever go back. All of the possibilities that the profession allows seem tangible while the knowledge of having to go back in two or three months time is staved off by an ambitious vacation agenda.

Like most things in life seafaring is a cycle that repeats itself and the sacrifice has become a familiar feeling. Longing for life ashore, at home amongst the world balances with the desire for unhindered movement over the ocean, under the open sky, towards unknown destinations. For me it is a love affair and a compromise between two worlds as far apart as my zenith and nadir.

I’ve been slowly building up my chord vocabulary on the guitar over the last year and have found this tune to be one of my favorites in that slow progression. The following two versus are two that for some could be as true today as they were two hundred years ago amongst the wharves of Liverpool. Cheers!

I spent a night with Angeline too drunk to roll in bed.

My watch was new and my money too and in the morning with them she fled.

And as I roamed the streets about the whores they all would roar:

Here comes jack rack the young sailing lad he must go to sea once more.

Come all you bold seafaring men and listen to my song.

If you come off of them long trips I’d haves you not go wrong.

Take my advice, drink no strong drink, don’t go sleeping with no whores.

Get married lads and have all night in, so you’ll go to sea no more.

Trad. English Song as sung by D. Grisman and J. Garcia.

Bath Iron Works Eyeing Offshore Energy Market

Here is a link from Maine Public Broadcasting covering BIW's move into offshore wind energy. I'm particularly fond of the remark about support vessel's which would certainly help ensure American mariners benefit from from offshore energy construction. The last thing we want is another exemption for offshore construction as we have for big oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bath Iron Works Eyeing Offshore Energy Market

Safety First

One of the omnipotent catch phrases you hear at work in the maritime industry is the all-encompassing “Safety First”. This idiom of our industry is often repeated in training videos, on job hazard analysis paperwork, conspicuously posted mission statements, stenciled onto coveralls and painted across the face of a thousand ship’s superstructures.

As you know the key to running a safe operation is having skilled and attentive human beings doing their jobs properly 24 hours a day. And the most effective means of ensuring those humans are prepared to fulfill their job descriptions, besides excellent compensation and benefits, is training. While compensation and benefits are arguable there is no lack of training in this industry. Despite all that training I've been noticing how us mariners can become complacent over the one thing that should keep us on our toes the most.

For example, today after lunch the deck department was gathered in the lounge to view a safety training video on our humongous flat screen. The video was better than average starring a few mariners in the British Isles. They reminded us through their imprudent actions not to enter a confined space without proper testing, even if your mate happens to be sprawled out at the bottom of the ladder and looking any part of unconscious.

Right, right, right I thought. I’ve been hearing this message since I was 18 years old as a freshman on a training ship. It’s now ten years later and I have safely ventilated, tested and entered numerous void spaces, ballast tanks and cargo tanks. I have filled confined space entry permits and practiced confined space rescue drills but…what about the 18 other guys in the room?

They’re from different countries and went through different maritime training institutes. They may not have had a training ship. They may not have worked on chemical tankers. They may have just moved up from being a stewards assistant to an ordinary seaman and have never entered a confined space. How do I tell? Never mind, move on. Time for the Chief Mate to read the drug and alcohol policy less we forget that you can’t step foot on board with a BAC of .04.

And that’s what we do time and time again. Rely on the movie to impart that crucial nugget of information that 99 percent of us most likely all ready know but maybe that one guy way in the back has never heard or only seen in a movie and doesn’t know why an unopened fore peak tank can asphyxiate the unwary occupant.

It would have been better if after the film the boson or a mate were tasked with explaining the particular dangers of confined spaces and how we mitigate them at sea. Maybe someone had personal experience they would have liked to share? Perhaps we could have taken the afternoon and practiced a confined space rescue and discovered first hand how hard it is to pass someone through limber holes while wearing an SCBA to reinforce prevention as the best answer to a crisis. This month the video alone will have to suffice.

After ten years of learning about and working in this industry I am beginning to see some of the chinks in the armor of a robust and effective safety culture. I for one am not perfect. I have done some stupid things (At home and at work) that could have gotten myself and once or twice someone else hurt. Yet I learned and vow to never make those same mistakes twice.

There are a few commonalities in safety training that I have seen going from ship to sail boat and back to ship lately. I’m going to share them here in order to get them off my chest and will say that I don’t have all the answers to this issue, which could fill a book the more I think about it, but I do have some ideas.

First off safety training, in particular drills, is repetitive. According to SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea), and not the Code of Federal Regulations because of the ships I work on, a fire and an abandon ship drill are required to be held on board once a month with all hands in attendance.

On my ship right now we do both each week, which you would think is great. Four times the training right? Not really. Rather than taking our time throughout the month to do one or the other fire, boats and maybe a security drill get thrown into the same hour between coffee and lunch each Friday. The drills are unplanned and hurried. We lower the boats quickly and safely but we do it like robots which I don’t think is the best approach.

After the drill we all pile onto the weather deck to hear about flares or fire extinguishers for the thousandth time. How many times would a seafarer with twenty years of water under the fantail have heard about the classifications of fire and why not to use CO2 anywhere but an unventilated space? I think we could do better.

Safety training is also one way. In my experience it is almost always a deck officer telling an unlicensed crew member what to do; how to don an SCBA, how to approach the fire, how to signal man overboard. And it’s almost always the deck cadet or third mate giving the SOLAS mandated safety training in first aid, the line throwing apparatus or immersion suit donning. This instruction is usually void of feedback, albeit because the crew might only be present in body and not in mind, and since questions aren’t being asked I have a hard time believing everyone knows as much about using a SART as they need to.

Safety training is predictable. We all know the fire is going to be in the galley, the laundry room or the paint locker. We all know who is going to put the boat plug in and who will release the gripes. We all know that in another thirty minutes the crew will be back on their needle guns while the chief mate fills out the drill forms and the second mate fills out the log. That’s what we’re used to.

I can imagine how someone feels after twenty years out here doing drill after drill after drill, at least if they’ve never seen a crisis on board ship. One stack fire was enough to convince me that our whole emergency preparedness on that ship was way short of the mark. Every weakness was exposed in the first ten minutes and I thank my lucky stars that the fire was not of the serious variety.

I thought after that fire that we would revamp how we drilled, who suited up, who labeled the SOLAS approved bottles with no pressure gauges on them as empty after use. I was ready to get all training ship emergency squad gung ho over it but I didn’t. I was no longer the Cadet Chief Mate, just another second mate which meant spending the drills on the bridge with a Captain who wasn’t about to change a thing.

So what can we do as mariners if we are on a ship where training is being carried out in what I have come to view as the standard? On the personal level one can bring energy, enthusiasm, realism and personal experience. On a larger level it would take a major initiative by the company or an outside consultancy to provide better quality instruction for the crucial moments when fate hangs in the air at sea.

Why do I say a consultancy? Because we are up against some odds that are not the norm in shore based safety training. First the trainers, commonly the officers, though receiving months and months of shore based training for licensing purposes are not normally credentialed expert instructors as fire departments and rescue teams have onshore. We train a group of people who are constantly revolving between ship and shore and ship to ship. That same group of people is as varied in experience, education and skill level as you could ever find at work.

Furthermore there is very little tracking of individual skills beyond IMO mandated Basic Safety Training that is just as it sounds, basic. I haven’t been exposed to any advanced fire fighting or medical instruction since my initial certification five years ago. If you were to ask me to insert a catheter to relieve a swollen bladder I’d get it done but not without a practice run.

Being able to accurately assess and track personal knowledge about safety preparedness would be invaluable in tailoring safety training in the industry though actually doing this would be a massive feat.

Bringing a little creativity and critical thinking into the world of safety would be a good thing too. Breaking groups up to construct a fire response plan to have it critiqued by the rest of the group is a great method a co-worker here used when he was master. Giving the crew a chance to instruct in a profession where they normally do nothing but receive instruction is another innovation.

Lastly I must make the point that the last thing we mariner’s need is more shore based training. While it is an important component of maritime education today, especially in the initial stages of certification, I feel that having quality in depth training on board your own vessel is paramount. Industry will have a hard time finding people to do this job if we must spend even more of our time away from home to qualify for more certificates.

It’s high time that we get a little trickier than just ringing boats before we ring the fire drill to see if people are listening. If more can be taught than more can be expected and safety will come first instead of the alternative, which is panic.