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Via Makezine

From waking up and tying your shoelaces to riding a bosun’s chair, learning how to handle line aboard ship is a steep curve.  One of the most difficult tasks for apprentice seamen to master is mooring ops and we are here to let all new sailors know there will be few moments less embarrassing then totally missing the mark with a heaving line. So pay attention. The American Merchant Seaman’s Manual tells us:

In heaving, the right arm should be held straight, and the line in the left hand allowed to run out freely. Frequently the problem in not getting a long heave is that the coil in the left hand is not arranged clearly for running. Prewetting the line is done to improve distance and handling. To become proficient in heaving, you must  practice  frequently.  Every  Seaman  should  practice making casts. A poor cast is always a reflection on the ability  of  the  Seaman.

The ultimate embarrassment (for both the ship and yourself) would be making a mistake in full view of the Captain, Pilot, Mates, Crew and the grammatically challenged longshoreman gang waiting to tie up your ship. To prevent this many Bosuns hold basic line handling contests while the vessel is at sea. Here’s an example, watch one minute into the video for an excellent example.

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While the technique you develop to heave line is important it all starts with a good Monkey’s Fist. This is not the easiest knot to learn but it’s important. To learn the technique be sure to watch the video below then visit the Monkey’s Fist page of our favorite resource Animated Knots by Grog.

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You have a PASS Device for your shipboard fire team..right?? Why not break it out of the gear locker during confined space entries?

For those who have never seen one, a PASS device (sometimes called a Man Down Alarm) contains a motion sensor and high pitched alarm. The firefighter clips it on his bunker gear and if he passes out the motion detector senses his lack of movement and sets off the alarm. It also has a panic button that can be pushed to inform the scene leader the team is in trouble or to help the back-up team locate a lost firefighter.

We all know how unreliable UHF radios are during tank inspections. While the old trick of banging a wrench 1 time to signal OK, 2 times to signal GET OUT and 5+ times to signal SEND HELP works inside the tank it won’t an unconsciousness victim. At a cost of around $225 these devices are an inexpensive way to protect your life.

Still doing tank entries without a personal O2 meter? Sniffing the tank at the point of entry is no longer enough, instead bring along a Personal Gas Detector

*Note read more about this tip in the Confined Space Entry Handbook

Here is a video describing the P.A.S.S. device including it’s shortcomings:

I don’t have many pictures of my father but I recently ran across one posted on the website of his fire company “Rescue 3“. Following Vietnam and the Physician Assistant program at Cornell he joined the Fire Department of New York and was soon accepted into the department’s elite company Rescue 3.

These were the “War Years” and the Bronx was burning. He didn’t talk much about the fires so when he did I hung on every word. One day he was discussing the severity of the situation in the Bronx with an out of state firefighter and said “How many massive, fully engulfed fires with multiple casualties have you seen in your career? There were weeks I saw 5 or 6 per night!”.

What does this have to do with Marine Firefighting? [Continue Reading →]

Catching a flight to your ship soon? Here are the best websites to help you get there on time:

• FAA’ s Real Time Flight Delay Status Map: LINK
• Seat GURU, pick the best seat for your flight: LINK
• Track your flight with FlightAware: LINK
• Or track flights with Google Earth: LINK
• Get Flight Status SMS on your cell phone: LINK
• Enter your plane’s Tail number into google for a maintenance / safety history report
• Find what you can carry on: LINK
• Arrive awake with the Jet Lag Calculator: LINK

Planning a trip of your own:

• Predict the best time to buy your ticket: LINK
• Search all the travel sites with kayak.com: LINK
• Find the vacation spot to fit your mood: LINK

Let’s face it, mariners need to be experts in sleep. From split watch schedules to operations requiring “All hands On Deck” sleep not only comes at a premium but is a critically important factor in accident prevention and remaining healthy. To highlight these issues we have brought you many articles on the subject including the popular “Night Shift A Cause Of Cancer” and “Get Some Sleep! Accident Photo Of The Week“. This week we will continue the series with tips on how to cheat sleep.

Editorial Note: Sleep loss and driving ships is a deadly combination. We don’t suggest you ever attempt to cheat sleep, we simply hope to broaden your knowledge in the subject.

The Basics Of Sleep

Quality not quantity. No matter how much your mother tells you that you need eight hours of sleep, if you’re not tired and you can’t truly relax, your sleep time will be worthless.
The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes:

• 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep
• 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream)
• Final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep.

Source: CentACS

00-04 Watchkeepers: Maximize “Core Sleep”

“Core sleep” is a variant of Uberman sleep that adds a block of sleep, usually several hours, to the Uberman schedule, replacing one or two naps. (This term is also sometimes used to describe accidental oversleep by someone following Uberman, though one will more likely see the term “crash”, and occasionally “reboot”.) Another variant is called Everyman sleep schedule. Buckminster Fuller advocated Dymaxion Sleep, a regimen consisting of 30 minute naps every six hours. A short article was published about this schedule in the October 11, 1943 issue of Time Magazine. According to this article, he followed this schedule for two years, but after that had to quit because “his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men.”

Source: Wired How-To

Keys to the Midday Nap

A successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.

2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you’ll get what’s known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.

3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.

Source: Wired [Continue Reading →]

Looking for a good knot tying tutorial? Then Animated Knots by Grog is the place to visit. While SUNY Maritime instructor GPS is famous for saying “You can do anything with these two knots…” there are others I tend to use a lot including the rolling hitch (aka timber hitch), figure eight and square knot. Grog has the knots you need in an easy to learn format.

Bonus points to the commenter who correctly identifies GPS’s two favorite knots.

After my last Fire Team meeting the 2nd Mate said: “you must own stock in the Halligan Tool Company”. Well I don’t (such a company doesn’t even exist) but I am a big fan of the Halligan and insist that it’s carried on each vessel I work on.

Invented by Deputy Chief Hugh Halligan of the FDNY, it is the multipurpose tool of choice for firefighters around the globe and is used for tasks ranging from forced entry to overhaul. It also has some ISPS uses not disclosed by any manufacturer.

To give you a better idea about how it’s used watch the video below then view our pdf slideshow for the shipboard uses of the tool.

gCaptain Slideshow: The Halligan Tool

When interlocked with a flat-head axe they become “married” and are called “The Irons”:

Safety First - Container Terminal In Hongkong - Click here for another funny movie.

Safety Reminder - Never stand under the load of a crane… you never know what may happen!

Photo by christinepilote

Can you starve to death sleep?

We have highlighted national sleep week, showed you how to cheat on sleep and even provided outrageous photos of a sleep realted incident but today’s post tops them all. Apparently our bodies have two internal clocks, one based on light and the other based on food. Lifehacker tells us:

Normally, the body’s natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travelers adjust to new time zones.

Granted, fasting is certainly extreme for just a few hours worth of jet lag, but the article points out that an 11-hour time change—like one an American traveler might experience when flying to Japan—would take the average person an entire week to adjust to. In such cases, a fast-before-you-fly policy could do wonders. The article is iffy about the effectiveness of this method, so if you’ve ever tried it, let’s hear how it worked in the comments.

If this interests you be sure visit NPR’s Science Friday post on the subject (audio file in upper left corner).

911 Dispatch brings us this map of International Emergency phone numbers. Click HERE for the latest version.

For more time zone and international dialing secrets click on out post titled: +34 45-434 2958 …how do you dial that number??