What is your area of expertise? The five year old son of a mechanic aboard my ship is a true prodigy of the arts. The stick figures I have spent over 30 years perfecting are effective at getting a basic message across but those drawn by young Evan, who is still in preschool, have depth and character. Is his ability genetic? His father certainly can’t draw. Is he just naturally gifted? Probably not.
Evan’s ability comes not from a gift of birth but from the gift of his father, encouragement and repetition. Because each time Evan draws a picture his father smiles broadly and suggests an improvement. He then runs back to his room to test a new method and try again. In doing so, Evan learns new methods to improve his skill.
Each of us have certain skills aboard ship and one or two areas in which we excel. And many of these traits, whether it be knot-work or ship handling, stem from the encouragement or envy of a former mentor who took the time to show us the ropes and pushed us to find incremental improvements.
As Master’s it is our responsibility to push the crew to develop skills they will carry for the remainder of their careers. In doing so we not only develop their abilities but, by joining our knowledge with their discovery, we also develop ours.
For me one passion has always been emergency response and, in particular, marine firefighting. Over the years I have challenged my crews to innovate and improve their performance at every drill then, during the debriefing, look for new ideas which we can test at the next drill. The results have been impressive. [Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · emergencies, marine-firefighting
Panbo brings us a peek inside the secret underground bunker of SPOT Messenger. They write;
My PMY March column about SPOT is now online, and you’ll see that I gave the company guff for what I thought was “hyped-up fear marketing.” But in fact they’ve toned that down quite a bit recently. The “Live to tell about it” tag line is still around, but the home page closeup of the toothy, drooling bear and the lame homilies—like the one about coming home in coach instead of in cargo—have vanished. I’d like to think I had something to do with it, but more likely is the marketing realization that Spot’s real draw is its ability to do tracking and non-distress messaging.
It’s easy to make the argument, as I did, that a PLB is a more reliable distress device, and costs about the same over time. However, there’s an interesting exception for people adventuring in the third world. That’s because Spot’s private rescue center operator, GEOS Alliance, can purportedly help you out in ways that many official third world SAR operations can not. Like helicopter extraction! Plus it’s only another $8 on top of your annual $99 Spot subscription to get $100,000 worth of such private rescue service.
Be sure to read the rest of the article located HERE. Also be sure to check out our previous SPOT Messenger and EPIRB articles.
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Tags: · emergencies, epirb, sar, spot messenger
The SPOT Contest is now closed, but you can keep commenting as if it were open. Thank you everyone for your participation. We will have the winners announced shortly!
gCaptain has teamed up with the folks at SPOT to bring you this exclusive contest! The rules are simple. Each comment posted on any gCaptain blog post between now and October 1st will be entered in a random drawing to win one of 5 units and a gCaptain T-Shirt.
Rules:
- No purchase necessary, just your thoughts entered at the bottom of any blog post.
- As always, we reserve the right to pull inappropriate comments
- Comments that don’t add value to the conversation (e.g. “Love the post” or “Great Idea Guys”) will not be entered into the drawing.
- A free entry will be given to those who register and upload a photo or avatar.
- Winners will be responsible for SPOT’s annual subscription fee.
- Winners will be contacted via email by October 15th 2008.
- Limit: 3 Entries per day
What is SPOT? [Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · emergencies, epirb, gift ideas
If we only had one technology related wish for 2008 it would be that every mariner watched this video. Reminder: This is important people!
FROM WIRED:
While micro-messaging service Twitter may be one of the best tools for citizen reporting in emergencies such as the Southern California wildfires, the service’s real usefulness is its ability to get messages to users’ friends and family and provide evacuation updates — even when cell networks are overloaded, according to homeland security consultant W. David Stephenson.
As important as the updates you wrote about, they’re nowhere near as important as using Twitter to let your family know you’re ok (instead of cell calls, which every time they’re used in disasters end up crashing the network — and don’t get through, either): because they’re packet based, they’re cued up until they can route around obstacles or gaps in the network, and the 140-character limit means they take up a tiny amount of bandwidth, leaving it for those who need it most.
Even cooler, Stephenson tells THREAT LEVEL, are the Red Cross’s Twitter channels.
* The redcross channel lets them push information during a mass evacuation. Since cellphone customers can sign up for Twitter ‘on the fly,’ they will encourage evacuees to text ‘FOLLOW REDCROSS’ to 40404, and sign up for updates. The messages will include information about where the shelters are, distribution sites, and other contact info.
* The safeandwell channel is used more for inbound communication. Those who text ‘FOLLOW SAFEANDWELL’ to 40404 will automatically be followed back. That means they can send their private information as a Direct Message to the American Red Cross. (’D SAFEANDWELL Larry Melman, 205-xxx-xxxx, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Bay Minette, is safe in a shelter.’) That maintains the privacy of the individual, and also serves to funnel the information to a centralized database.
Stephenson shows how to use Twitter in emergencies in this episode of his video series 21st Century Disaster Tips You Won’t Hear From Officials:
Thanks to Jesse Robbins for the find.
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Tags: · Communication, disasters, emergencies, hurricane, Maritime, pownce, preparedness, red cross, twitter, wired
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