gCaptain.com

Introducing gCaptain’s Google Toolbar buttons.

How do you get them?

• Click on one of the images then…
• if you already have Google’s Toolbar installed then a small anchor button will be added to it.
• if you don’t have the Toolbar then you will be allowed to add it to your browser.

Once installed, how do they work?

• Clicking on the anchor will bring you to our Maritime Industry Custom Search Engine (CSE) or our google powered site search (depending on which you install).
• Clicking on the arrow next to it will display the tiles of our latest blog post OR the latest Maritime News from Discoverer.

Our suggestion:

• Try out the Google CSE button first. If you like it then return and install the gCaptain site search button.

SF’ist blog has sent us this breaking news item: The Cosco Busan is now departing shipyard in San Francisco.

UPDATES:

Our friends at Jakota and BoatingSF have cleaned up the popular flash based track of Cosco Busan’s fateful voyage.

View the animation HERE

The International Herald Tribune tells us;

The Hong Kong-based owner of a ship that spilled oil in San Francisco Bay has paid the federal government nearly $80 million (€55 million) as bail of sorts while U.S. officials seek a civil judgment, the Justice Department said Friday.

The government asked for and received $79.5 million (€54.8 million) — the full value of the ship — as the maritime equivalent of a release bond, said Andrew Ames, a department spokesman.

The deposit eliminates the government’s threat to seize the vessel, which could have cost taxpayers significant money, Ames said. The threat was part of a lawsuit filed last month by the federal government against the ship’s owner, Regal Stone Ltd.; Capt. John Cota, the pilot; and Regal Stone’s insurance company. Continue Reading…

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The Coast Guard has asked Cota to voluntarily deposit his federal merchant marine officer’s license with the service on grounds he is not physically competent to maintain it.

Cota, however, has turned his license in to his lawyer. According to Coast Guard spokesman Dan Dewell, the service has accepted this arrangement with the stipulation that Cota will not sail with the license.

Cota, 60, has 26 years experience as a San Francisco bar pilot. Continue Reading…

Fred Fry brings us news that “Over 100 liable for COSCO BUSAN Oil Spill“;

In addition to financial compensation, the suit seeks an injunction requiring defendants to implement a plan to assess, monitor, and remediate all damages caused by the spill. Defendants include the owner, operator, manager, pilot, and John Does 1-100.

You can find a copy of the suit here. (Direct Pdf link here)

He’s not kidding when he says that they are suing everyone. Of note is this comment about 100 John Does who the City of San Francisco also named as defendants:

The true names or capacities, whether individual, corporate, associate, or otherwise, of DOE I through DOE 100 are unknown to plaintiffs, who therefore sue such defendants by such fictitious names, and who will amend this complaint to show their true names and capacities when ascertained. Continue Reading…

We reported last week the Board Of Pilot’s decision to formally charge Captain Cota for a list of safety related infractions. Today we have received copies of the official accusation;

At about 0600 on Wednesday, 07 November 2007, Captain Cota boarded the M/V COSCO BUSAN at Oakland Berth 56 to act as its pilot for its transit from Berth 56 to sea. The vessel was scheduled to sail at 0630.

[Continue Reading →]

Youtube commentary;

While sailing on San Francisco Bay we had a close encounter with a container ship. The container ship honked at the other sailboat. We had space to turn…but when we tried the container ship blocked our wind. That captain was a hell of a driver! He threaded between our two little sailboats.

I don’t think I need to comment on these boaters but I will say if you’re a boater and sail in an area of heavy ship traffic head over to the Bitterend End blog an soak up some collision avoidance knowledge. You can start here: VTS - Working with large vessels

Some of you may remember a cartoon which appeared during World War I, a drawing showing an inquisitive stranger talking with the gateman at a railway crossing. The gate was painted with the usual black and white stripes, and lying on the river beyond the tracks was a steamer painted with similar markings. The stranger asked, “Why do they paint the stripes on the gate?” And the gateman answered, “Oh, that’s to make them more visible.”

And then the stranger asked, “Well, why do they paint the stripes on the vessel out there?” And the gateman replied, “Oh, that’s to make the ship less visible.”

-Everett Warner [paraphrased from his lecture notes]

A ships in costume, gCaptain brings you Razzle Dazzle; history’s most unusually painted ship. What is Razzle Dazzle? GoTouring.com tells us;

During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing. Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship’s course. The British called this camouflage scheme “Dazzle Painting.” The Americans called it “Razzle Dazzle.”

Artists were enlisted to draw up the camouflage designs. Early in the war, designs were drawn for individual ships, with each ship having its own distinctive pattern. As the war progressed, standard patterns were devised and applied to large numbers of ships. Even the great passenger liners were camouflaged for the duration of the War.

It is unfortunate that there are no color photographs of these WWI ships. People who witnessed convoys of dazzle painted ships reported that the scene was quite dramatic. Imagine sailing across the North Atlantic surrounded by dozens of brightly painted ships, each in different colors and patterns. If you compare the colored drawing with the black and white photograph of the ship “War Clover”, you can get an idea of how much we are missing. Read More…

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The problem confronting a submarine, once his prey has been sighted, resolves itself solely into estimating course and speed of the target, in order to determine how the approach to torpedo fire position should be made. The “dazzle” system of painting is based on this one consideration and that is, of rendering the problem confronting a submarine more difficult, confusing him as to how his approach shall be made and thereby adding in some degree to the safety of the vessel attacked.

U.S. Admiral William S. Sims (1917)

Painting by Wendell Tatley

Camopedia has this amazing information on the World War I design team assigned to the project;

ONE METHOD camoufleurs might have used (but did not, apparently) to generate a large number of unique dazzle schemes is the stencil method.

It is indebted to American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), sometimes called “the father of camouflage,” who (circa 1909) devised a clever, easy way for individuals to design their own camouflage, using cut-out silhouettes.

Whatever the surrounding, said Thayer, a person “has only to cut out a stencil of the soldier, ship, cannon or whatever figure he wishes to conceal, and look through this stencil from the viewpoint under consideration, to learn just what costume from that viewpoint would most tend to conceal this figure.” However, the purpose of dazzle camouflage was confusion, not concealment, so, in the examples below, we have used the silhouette as a mask with which to “find” valuable dazzle designs in an abstract, geometric plan. In studies of human vision, Gestalt psychologists and others have investigated embedded figures or “puzzle pictures” (Wolfgang Köhler called them “camouflaged figures”) in which a simple shape has been adroitly hidden within a larger, more complex surrounding.

In pre-computer days, one could make arbitrary compositions in art by overlapping “systems” on layers of tracing paper, viewed on a light table. Today, it is ever so easy to do the same thing (and much more) by using the “layers” function in software such as Adobe Photoshop. This could have been useful as a way to generate dazzle designs, had all that been available in World War I.

This information is from gotouring.com and the amazing design site:

Camopedia

In London this week? Head over to one of gCaptain’s favorite places… the Imperial War Museum, for their exhibition on Dazzle (and other Camouflage):

If you are looking for more information on this topic be sure to read things magazine’s extensive ship camouflage links section.

Pieter Rijkaart, Holland America Line’s director of newbuilds, just provided this image of Eurodam’s recently installed Azipods.

Eurodam News, the official Holland America blog documenting the building of the cruise ship M/V Eurodam, gives us a sneak peak at the latest in propeller and bulbous bow design.

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic of discussion throughout the blogoshpere is the environment. There are many issues and environmental news stories worth addressing like alternative energy ideas, ship emissions, global warming, or hot topic of the month; the Hawaii Superferry. Considering we get to choose the topic of most interest to us… we bring you this video of the S/S Norway. It’s a look at her glorious past and sad future upon the beaches of Alang, the notoriously dangerous and environmentally unsound shipbreaking port in eastern India.

The director of this documentary tells us;

This is a trailer of the documentary I am making about the last of the great 1000 foot ocean liners, The S/S Norway / S/S France. This ship has a story unlike any other. Built as a transatlantic liner and later being converted into a cruise ship the S/S Norway now rests on the beach in Alang, India. Here it is waiting to be dismantled. This unique footage from on board the ship in Alang will only be shown in this documentary. The documentary will be finished in 2007.

To see the troubling images of the ship’s destruction you’ll have to wait for the documentary but here’s a quick look at what we expect to see;

For more amazing but troubling images from Alang please visit our post; Edward Burtynsky - Shipbreaking Images

IF your looking for more environmental posts from this blog please CLICK HERE

In preparation for our announcement of 200,000 page views since launching gCaptain this May I wanted to share some of our user information with you. Of course we would never give away your personal data but I am willing to show where you are from. Below are two charts that show the locations of our latest readers.

This map paces a dot on the city of our latest readers. The dots range in size from 50 to 7,000+ visitors so we are, unfortunately, not able to show you a complete list of locations just the popular ones.

Here is a more complete list showing our readers’ home countries. The map shades each country with readers green with the largest contributing country (the U.S.A.) logging over 34,000 visitors.

I just thought you may be interested in seeing where other dedicated gCaptain readers are from. If you enjoy this blog and know anyone in Madagascar, Somalia, Ecuador or the handful of other countries we have yet to reach please pass on the link…. we’d love to have them.

I wanted to take some time and thank some of our partner sites; Maritime Experts from around the web. I also wanted to take the time to explain each one to our readers. The sites can be found on our blogroll page.

This is Part 3 of our series and concentrates on sites devoted to near coastal (boating) sites. When you are finished reading revisit Part 1; Big Ships and Part 2; Near Coastal

Sea Fever

I grappled with the decision of whether to categorize this site as “Big Ship” or coastal since it contains lots of interesting articles for us unlimited seafarers. The decision was made after reading the author, Peter Mello’s, excellent “About the Blog(ger)” section. To quote, “The Sea-Fever blog is a work in progress that will cover subjects that interest me, professionally and personally. Topics will include maritime heritage and cultural initiatives, corporate social responsibility”. A great blog that’s on my daily reading list.

Panbo

From the newest VHF radios to the latest AIS information if your looking for goodies for your boat Panbo is the place to visit. What I like most about panbo is they always consider unlimited vessels in their reviews of small boat electronics. If every boater was a reader of this blog I would certainly feel more confident brining my ship into places like Port Everglades, the Puget Sound or even San Diego. Highlights of the site (from the unlimited tonnage perspective) include Digital Charting, AIS and pilot ride-along sections.

Tugster

Tugs are marketed not by their available horsepower but by maximum Bollard Pull, the sheer amount of force the tug can pull on a line. Conversely blogs are measured in pageviews and click-thru rates but this blog, chronicalling New York Harbor’s working side, needs a new metric to define it. The site is filled with interesting pictures and commentary on the blue collar boats and ships that keep the harbor running. It’s a great site that first time visitors can spend hours reading, especially if (like me) you have roots in NYC’s maritime community.

Marine Firefighting Newsletter

Along with Tugster, Tom Guldner’s Marine Firefighting Newsletter has roots in New York Harbor. Tom was a New York City firefighter and worked a wide range of assignments including the FDNY’s fire boats and rescue trucks. This is not a blog, so it isn’t updated on a regular basis but it does contain valuable information that will help keep your crew safe in an emergency.

Telstar Logistics

What started as an ingenious parking scam has turned into a cult phenomena of interesting oddities and cold war relics. They also document really big ships which is why gCaptain will be first in line, looking like steve jobs in nikes, when Telstar I reemerges from deep space. Vodka anyone?

Honorable Mentions:

Navagear

Navagear gets left off our blog roll for the simple reason that it does not contain enough information relevant to our core audience; Ship Captains. Otherwise it is a great site that I read on a regular basis.

You can see the best stories from all the above blogs, as voted on by gCaptain readers, at our Maritime News Discoverer. Have a maritime blog post you would like to share, submit it now.