Costa Concordia Parbuckling – Live Updates Plus How to WATCH | gCaptain
Here’s the latest on the salvage of the Costa Concordia. They did manage to get the ship upright with no major problems. Now they still need to stabilize it and refloat it so they can tow it off to dismantle it. I thought at first they were going to try to fix the ship but now it looks like they’re just going to scrap it. Such a sad story…
You can watch the videos in the link.
Light it Up: Another Weed Ship Goes Up in Smoke | gCaptain
Wow! What’s going on in Tanzania lately?? Have they taken over from Columbia or Hawaii as the worlds leading pot producer or something?
For the 2nd time in a week, a Tanzanian flag ship has been lit on fire to avoid being caught and charged with smuggling marijuana. This time, the French are the ones chasing them down.
But again it looks like its the house burning instead of the cargo holds.
I wonder how many fishermen are hanging out in the smoke trail along with the French Navy? 😉
U.S. EPA Fines Shell for Arctic Air Pollution Violations | gCaptain
OK, they got fined $1 million, I don’t think that’s really all that big a deal to them. I am SO glad I didn’t stick with that job!
That was going to be my perfect job. I left Oceaneering after they brought my ship to the Gulf of Mexico. What a HUGE culture shock! I’ve done everything I could do to get the hell back overseas ever since (STILL trying). When I got the offer from Frontier Drilling to go as 2nd mate on the Frontier Discoverer (now Noble Discoverer), I was on that like white on rice 🙂
It was out of the GOM, the pay and benefits were better, the schedule was better and best of all, it was drilling but NOT going to be stuck sitting in one spot for months on end not doing anything. This one was supposed to work in Alaska in the summers and Australia in the winters. I figured, great, I would still get to do some actual navigation. Finally get to go somewhere interesting again!
So, I flew over to meet the ship in Singapore. Whoa, what a surprise I got. I had the idea the ship was ”new”. The ship itself was built in 1966 (but NOT well taken care of- parts of it below decks looked like Swiss cheese- NOT good!). They stuck a new drill rig on it midships. They stuck a new house on it aft. It still had the original engine (that wouldn’t start) and bridge. Not much in the way of modern electronics, no DP systems- it was “turret moored”. They only had a captain, chief mate and 2 second mates for bridge team. I guess we were going to stand watch like a regular ship (12-4, 4-8, 8-12) instead of the usual 12 hour watch like the oilfield. I never did find out since I quit before we left Singapore. They did have a bunch of good ABs at least.
I really wanted to keep that job. It offered everything I wanted. Actual sailing around to interesting places around the world, good crew (international), good schedule, good pay, good insurance, decent quarters.
I hated to leave! But things were getting pretty scary to me. More and more every day. For instance, I would make my way up forward to the bridge for my watch and someone would casually mention to me that the “swimming pool” was full again. WHAT???? Swimming pool??
Yes, some ships do actually have swimming pools but this one was NOT supposed to. So, what were they talking about. Turns out, the swimming pool was a void space, starboard side midships. It went all the way down from the main deck to the bilge. Every other day it would fill up to the top. Then it would drain down. What was going on? No one knew. No one really seemed to care…
I was there only about 3 weeks. We would have fire drills every couple of days. Mostly because we could not conduct a ‘proper’ fire drill to satisfy the authorities. We would start the fire pump, but where was the water??? We could never get any water to the forward part of the ship. Why not??? Yeah, pretty important question…
Turns out that about 50 feet of the fire line had been cut out previously. No one had put a blank on the line. No one had ‘remembered’ about it. So, when we started the fire pump, the water from the fire line would fill up the swimming pool instead of going down the fire line to the forward part of the ship. WOW!
So, OK, that problem solved. Only took 3 weeks I was there and who knows how long before that they had been without any fire fighting capability. Again, no one seemed to care.
They did finally manage to get the main engine started too. I’m not sure why they bothered. The company man assured me they would TOW the ship to Alaska if they couldn’t get it started. They were bound and determined to get it there on schedule!
I almost fell out of my (top) bunk when they finally lit it off! It sounded like a bomb went off the first time it rolled over. Of course, the engine being so old, they don’t service that type anymore, or make parts, so the engineers were having a hell of a time. A great bunch of guys. They all walked off the ship a week before I left. The chief mate left a couple of days before I had enough. The QMEDs left when I did. All that were left was the Captain, the other 2nd mate (who was used to getting shot at while working in Africa) and the (foreign) ABs who were staying til the end since they wouldn’t be allowed to stay once the ship got to the states.
I felt bad leaving like that before my scheduled hitch was over. That was one of only a couple of times in all these years I’ve quit like that. It just wasn’t worth either my license or my life for that job no matter how badly I wanted it. Every time I see this ship in the news I’m reminded of that time in Singapore and glad I made the decision I did. I feel sorry for the people who had to deal with all that crap in Alaska. 🙁
Here’s a link to the ships details so you can see what I’m talking about 🙂http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?MMSI=636014934
Maritime Monday for September 9th, 2013: Movies About Sailors Part II; Shape Ahoy! | gCaptain
Maritime Monday- movies about sailors part II. Thanks to gCaptain and MonkeyFist for putting all this together every week. There are lots of good old movies in the mix here. Pretty entertaining…
Italy Approves Costa Concordia Parbuckling | gCaptain
Here’s the latest update from gCaptain on the progress of the Costa Concordia salvage operations.
Google Offers First Street View from Inside a Ship | gCaptain
This is pretty cool! If you’ve never been on a ship before, or if they’ve never let you look around the bridge, engine room, or other areas usually restricted to the crew, this post from www.gcaptain.com will give you a virtual tour. It was taken on board the research vessel Falkor (owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute). SOI was founded by the same guy (Dr Eric Schmidt) who founded Google- cool!!
Enjoy the tours and let me know what you think 🙂
Maritime Monday for September 2nd, 2013: Movies About #@!!%* Sailors; Part I | gCaptain
Here’s another post from gcaptains Monkey Fist with a new listing of maritime movies. This series focusing on the sailors themselves. There looks to be some good ones in there… Captains Courageous starring Spencer Tracy, Captain Horatio Hornblower starring Gregory Peck, even a musical- Anchors Aweigh starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. Oldies but Goodies. Enjoy…
Jeezum Crow That’s a Weird Lookin’ Lobstah | gCaptain
Yeah, this IS pretty damn weird! I’ve never seen anything like this in nature. It makes me think somebody’s playing tricks. Anybody ever seen anything like this in nature?
Cargo Ships on Beaches…Really? | gCaptain
I always thought it would be so cool to drive one of these big ships up on the beach! I mean really, the whole point of shipping is NOT to run your ship aground.
I do understand that there are some horrendous working conditions there for these people. I also understand that the people who take these jobs are desperate for ANY kind of job to support themselves and their families. I know when you’re desperate, you might not want to be too picky about what you will and won’t put up with. Maybe people might want to figure out what is the reason why they are so desperate in the first place- someone mentioned that there were too many people (comments below article). Yeah, that is the bottom line really. These ship breaking jobs are actually good paying jobs for over there. Yes, I’m sure it could be made safer and would save some lives, but look at what we have done here as far as safety goes- we are regulated to death! I would love to see the comparison statistics on safety between those ship breakers and the ones here (IF we have any left). I don’t think it would really make ALL that much difference. I notice the people working all over Asia on bamboo scaffolding, no shoes, no safety belts, no hard hats, no nothing except the knowledge that if they get hurt, no one is going to help them. They seem to do just as good as we do on their accident rates. All without putting everybody in the “safety” straightjackets like they did here. We can’t do anything anymore without filling out reams of paperwork and dressing up like we’re going to outerspace or something 🙁
Maritime Monday for August 26th, 2013: Part VII; The Final Reel | gCaptain
This is the final installation of the series on maritime movies that gcaptain has been putting out in their maritime monday emails. They have sent out a huge listing of movies with pictures and short blurbs about the movies. I’ll have to go back when I get time and post the first ones since they came out before I started this blog (or you can go to gcaptain). If you’re at all interested in film, you might want to check this out, there are some good ones in there. Enjoy 🙂
Pirates Move Hijacked Fishing Vessel to Somali Coast | gCaptain
Its way past time we cracked down on these pirates. What the hell is wrong with our priorities these days. We go around the world bombing people all over the place who haven’t done anything and yet we can’t manage to do ANYTHING about these pirates???? What the hell? Pirates were one of the first things we attacked back in the early days of our country and if we had good enough reason then, we have good enough reason now. Stop droning the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and go drone some pirates instead!