The first weekend of fall in New England has arrived along with a hurricane and torrents of rain. The leaves here have just started to peak in red, orange, and yellow explosions everywhere you look. I adore the change of weather this time of year. My weekend was spent in the water attempting to learn how to surf. As I was getting worked over by head high swells thanks to Hurricane Kyle the smell of wood smoke hung in the foggy air, a reminder that soon my wet suit will have to be a lot thicker to manage in the cooling ocean and hopefully learn to get up on the board.
I received an email from the elder of my three younger brothers this week. He's been sailing as an AB on a heavy lift ship for the last two months and is returning from his second trip to Brazil. I couldn't be more pleased to know that he's employed and as he reports working with a good crew. Unfortunately his samba skills didn't stand up with the local guys and along with the cadet any attempts at dancing with las chicas were shot down. At least he had four to six hours a day in a crane cab to contemplate the previous nights social failures while lifting 300 ton locomotives above a deck teeming with stevedores.
It appears that my younger brother, who my mother used to pry half eaten chocolate easter bunnies out of his hands, has been appointed crane operator for the duration of his hitch. This means that he is involved in every heavy lift made on the ship. This honor gets him time and a half while he's on the controls but also bestows nightmares of accidentally compressing people beneath a train engine. According to him;
"Heavy lift ships are the most bad ass things ever to float on water. Just the operation it takes to load and discharge one of these girls is so terrifying I literally have nightmares about some balloon head stevedore getting in the wrong spot and me squishing him like a palmetto bug, Or screwing up and pulling a train into the crane's cab and squishing me. Or total equipment failure and squishing everybody. Mostly just squishing people is what bothers me. Theres just way too many people running around down there for someone not to get squished one day. Any way I'm gonna take a nap."
You can hear his enthusiasm. Unfortunately work related dreams are a common occurrence for people. I had a professor in college who told me he decided to swallow the anchor/give up sailing after repeatedly dreaming of running his ship aground on his watch. Personally I've had that dream numerous times while at work, it goes something like this; you're on watch, it's night and you are staring at the chart. You know the shoals are close but the radar image is confusing. The ship is going fast, too fast, and you want to slow down, anything to avoid the impending disaster, but instantly it's too late and blammo! The ship runs aground just as you wake up regretting that you didn't order the rudder hard over any sooner. Sound familiar?
Usually these dreams stay at work but just the other night I had a dream that my ship went aground in a channel and ruptured a bunker tank. The funny part was the kayaker in the water yelling up at me as I starred horrified from on deck at all the oil gushing into the water. Oddly I spent the prior week in a kayak.
This reminds me of one other dream episode I encountered working with a brand new third mate. I had been on the ship for a hitch all ready but it was this guys first trip. It was a rickety old chemical tanker with a young crew, very indicative about the operating company, and this guy could not go a night without breaking out in a cold sweat and waking up repeatedly from cargo related nightmares. I felt sorry for him knowing how much good sleep meant to our mutual success. The job was stressful though and I'm honest when I say that lashing rock crushers with chain is far preferable to topping up fifteen or twenty tanks of paraxylene as far as the dreams are concerned.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
New Medical Requirments
Here we go again; the requirements for a career at sea are once again getting beefed up. Now sailors can get in the same line at the doctors office as commercial aviators! I just received a notice from my employer stating that the U.S. Coast Guard Medical Guidelines "Could have a significant impact on your license renewal". Apparently taking a prescription drug, having any one of the 291 medical conditions (Including headaches and depression) listed along with the letter, or having a body mass index over 40 would require a medical waiver. The waiver of course means that processing anything with the new NMC in West Virgina could face "Significant Delays".
Lets be realistic about this. Anyone who works in the maritime industry knows that the average mariner is not a specimen of health. We spend great lengths of time in an isolated environment with high stress working conditions, wanting of sleep, fed poor quality food, encouraged and sometimes expected to work long hours with hardly any outlet for relieving the tension, loneliness, and fatigue experienced at sea. We do not get weekends off, nights at home with family, conjugal visits or even a beer after work. This environment can and often does lead to less than healthy lifestyles. Overeating and smoking is typical. Lack of exercise and replacing quality sleep with caffeine is commonplace. Who wants to spend time in the gym after a twelve or fourteen hour day when you can instead crash out until all hands is called in the middle of you're rest period?
We are not treated like jet pilots or compensated like them. But now we must have a waiver for anything less than optimum health. And who knows how long it will take the medical evaluators to grant those waivers each time we must have a piece of paper approved by the Coast Guard?
I do agree with some of the provisions of the new standards. Though flawed, the body mass index will provide encouragement for sailors to monitor their weight. My body mass index for being a modest 5'6" and weighing 160 pounds is 26, a number that comically puts me in the "overweight" category but well under a BMI of 40. I would have to pack 86 pounds on to qualify as "Extremely Obese". Not likely but on my last trip I worked with four people who were nearly at or slightly above a BMI of 40. Certainly that is cause for concern when you're at sea and relying on that person to don fire fighting gear and follow you into a smoky compartment. How people this close to being handicapped by body weight can be qualified as fit for duty over and over again is concerning.
In this way these new regulations may have a positive affect as long as the industry as a whole takes it upon themselves to provide a healthier environment for their employees and promote better living while at work and at home. What I'm talking about is preventative health care. Rather than the companies dealing with the outcomes of ill health like discharging crew for medical issues over seas or fighting lawsuits for back injuries the new physical standards can be used as a target. Having healthier employees would lessen injuries and sickness both of which are capital intensive but if the industry thinks they'll just wash out the overweight and sick think again, there won't be anyone left to hire.
Instead an approach of improving the health of the existing labor force might work. Perhaps the quality of provisions and the methods of preparing it should be addressed. Less frying in trans-saturated fat for starters. Maybe shedding pounds or investing time in exercise might be rewarded by the companies. A back injury is much less likely for some one who can carry their own weight up and down ladders and move loads without the aid of back braces.
I know it's a long shot given the nature of shipping companies. My captain for instance practically had to beg the company to purchase a single used elliptical machine for the ship, the only piece of cardiovascular equipment now on board. Besides, for those of us who do routinely work out at sea, aren't we sometimes looked at with disdain by other crew as we walk back to our rooms breathing hard and sweating as if we've just been sunning ourselves on overtime? (I always tell them to add up the time they take smoke breaks while actually on overtime and compare it to my forty five minutes in the gym).
Maybe we can take a cue from the Swedes. A company I am familiar with actually has an Activity Challenge where crew members record hours spent exercising, submitting them to a director ashore and then receive points for rewards and lottery drawings. Not a bad idea, perhaps a start at getting the dwindling pool of certified labor to meet the increasing physical requirements for a trade that does not promote low blood pressure.
It's either that or my employer needs to start hiring less experienced younger, healthier employees and start paying them like commercial aviators to staff the ships and offshore installations.
Lets be realistic about this. Anyone who works in the maritime industry knows that the average mariner is not a specimen of health. We spend great lengths of time in an isolated environment with high stress working conditions, wanting of sleep, fed poor quality food, encouraged and sometimes expected to work long hours with hardly any outlet for relieving the tension, loneliness, and fatigue experienced at sea. We do not get weekends off, nights at home with family, conjugal visits or even a beer after work. This environment can and often does lead to less than healthy lifestyles. Overeating and smoking is typical. Lack of exercise and replacing quality sleep with caffeine is commonplace. Who wants to spend time in the gym after a twelve or fourteen hour day when you can instead crash out until all hands is called in the middle of you're rest period?
We are not treated like jet pilots or compensated like them. But now we must have a waiver for anything less than optimum health. And who knows how long it will take the medical evaluators to grant those waivers each time we must have a piece of paper approved by the Coast Guard?
I do agree with some of the provisions of the new standards. Though flawed, the body mass index will provide encouragement for sailors to monitor their weight. My body mass index for being a modest 5'6" and weighing 160 pounds is 26, a number that comically puts me in the "overweight" category but well under a BMI of 40. I would have to pack 86 pounds on to qualify as "Extremely Obese". Not likely but on my last trip I worked with four people who were nearly at or slightly above a BMI of 40. Certainly that is cause for concern when you're at sea and relying on that person to don fire fighting gear and follow you into a smoky compartment. How people this close to being handicapped by body weight can be qualified as fit for duty over and over again is concerning.
In this way these new regulations may have a positive affect as long as the industry as a whole takes it upon themselves to provide a healthier environment for their employees and promote better living while at work and at home. What I'm talking about is preventative health care. Rather than the companies dealing with the outcomes of ill health like discharging crew for medical issues over seas or fighting lawsuits for back injuries the new physical standards can be used as a target. Having healthier employees would lessen injuries and sickness both of which are capital intensive but if the industry thinks they'll just wash out the overweight and sick think again, there won't be anyone left to hire.
Instead an approach of improving the health of the existing labor force might work. Perhaps the quality of provisions and the methods of preparing it should be addressed. Less frying in trans-saturated fat for starters. Maybe shedding pounds or investing time in exercise might be rewarded by the companies. A back injury is much less likely for some one who can carry their own weight up and down ladders and move loads without the aid of back braces.
I know it's a long shot given the nature of shipping companies. My captain for instance practically had to beg the company to purchase a single used elliptical machine for the ship, the only piece of cardiovascular equipment now on board. Besides, for those of us who do routinely work out at sea, aren't we sometimes looked at with disdain by other crew as we walk back to our rooms breathing hard and sweating as if we've just been sunning ourselves on overtime? (I always tell them to add up the time they take smoke breaks while actually on overtime and compare it to my forty five minutes in the gym).
Maybe we can take a cue from the Swedes. A company I am familiar with actually has an Activity Challenge where crew members record hours spent exercising, submitting them to a director ashore and then receive points for rewards and lottery drawings. Not a bad idea, perhaps a start at getting the dwindling pool of certified labor to meet the increasing physical requirements for a trade that does not promote low blood pressure.
It's either that or my employer needs to start hiring less experienced younger, healthier employees and start paying them like commercial aviators to staff the ships and offshore installations.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Short Seas Shipping one step closer?
Last night while having dinner with some friends in coastal Maine I mounted my soap box and started preaching my sermon on the necessity of Short Seas Shipping. This concept was a wholly new idea to my friends who had never contemplated a cheaper, more efficient, pollution reducing, infrastructure preserving means of transporting the goods of life apart from the tractor trailer trucks that clog I-95 and pollute New England's air. It seems that the the largest road block to getting our domestic cargoes on ships is peoples complete lack of information about this mode of transportation.
Above is my current fantasy dream job. Why should we have to drive to New York or Baltimore. Why not utilize coast wise ro/ro's like this ship in Northern Europe? Below is an excerpt from Professional Mariner magazine about an issue pertaining to the second biggest road block (The Harbor Maintenance Tax) in freeing up our aged highways and bolstering our Merchant Marine, shipyards and working ports and enabling my dream job:
BrownWater News
Above is my current fantasy dream job. Why should we have to drive to New York or Baltimore. Why not utilize coast wise ro/ro's like this ship in Northern Europe? Below is an excerpt from Professional Mariner magazine about an issue pertaining to the second biggest road block (The Harbor Maintenance Tax) in freeing up our aged highways and bolstering our Merchant Marine, shipyards and working ports and enabling my dream job:by Carlo Salzano
Bill would free coastwise shipping of non-bulk cargo from HMT
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has introduced a bill that would exempt coastwise shipping of non-bulk cargo between U.S. ports from the Harbor Maintenance Tax (HMT). Specifically, the bill (S. 3199) provides that no HMT would be imposed on non-bulk commercial cargo “that is loaded at a port in the U.S. mainland and unloaded at another port in the U.S. mainland after transport solely by coastal route or river, or unloaded at a port in Canada located in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System.” Furthermore, the bill provides that no HMT would be imposed on non-bulk commercial cargo that is loaded at a port in Canada located in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System and unloaded at a port in the U.S. mainland. Strong support for the legislation was voiced by Charles G. Raymond, chairman, president and CEO of Horizon Lines, who said the bill would “eliminate both the tax and associated paperwork burdens that discourage shippers from routing U.S. cargo by sea. By removing these barriers, the legislation would encourage use of the fuel-efficient marine mode to move cargo along our nation’s coast, helping ease highway and rail congestion and the demand for imported oil.”
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