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.

Photo by Oneeighteen

In October of last year the Shipping & Transport College of Rotterdam held the International Maritime English Conference. A key topic of debate was the IMO’s current review of the STCW Convention and its focus on global assessment goals for non-native english speakers. This is of particular concern considering the growing shortage of qualified mariners combined with the unusually high incident rate seen in recent months.

Clive Cole of World Maritime University and Peter Trenkner of Wismar University have proposed implementing a Yardstick “against which student performance can be measured while at the same time providing goals for the tasks and requirements of the seaboard ranks”. Here is the plan as laid out in their position paper:

>The Yardstick >

>When developing the Yardstick below the authors deliberately did not include the identification of Maritime English communication requirements of the different shipboard rating ranks, i.e. the STCW95 Support Level, but restricted themselves to the personnel covered by the STCW95 Operational and Management Level educated and trained at higher MET institutions. >

>The shipping industry, however, may wish to have a Yardstick available for shipboard rating ranks, too. In this case an appendix would need to be developed together with the industry as the Maritime English requirements set out in the STCW95 (Part A, Chapter II, Table A-II/4 and A-III/4) regarding ratings are comparatively vague and need to be considered in the review of STCW95. >

>Furthermore, requirements concerning general English language proficiency have not been included > >expressis verbis > > as in the authors’ understanding a certain command of general English is a basic prerequisite in this respect (cf IMO SMCP 2002). >

> >

> > >

Click HERE to download the full report.

The data visualization above represents the worlds 10 largest container shipping companies by TEU capacity. We created this chart using IBM’s Many Eye’s project which we enjoy using since it gives us a clear, easy to understand and interactive picture of numeric data. Plus it looks pretty cool.

Want to know which company has the largest number of ships or the highest percentage of the overall market? If so then click on the picture above for the interactive version.

For those who prefer more traditional data:

(Source: 2006 BRS Report)

Earlier this week I received a request from our friend Ben Ellison at Panbo to poll our readers on the use of AIS. He was especially concerned with the upcoming release of AIS-B, vessel tracking system for boaters, and how the watch officers of large ships expected to process the increasingly large amounts of data on their radar screens. You can read that post HERE.

While writing the post I was curious about the other side of the equation namely, what do experienced boaters think about us? To answer my questions I contacted our friend Richard Rodriguez of BitterEnd blog, an experienced vessel assist Captain on one of nation’s busiest inland waterways; the Puget Sound. Here is his reply;

1) What should ships worry about when interacting with boats?

That most boats have no clue as to how to interact with ships. In the Licensing Courses I teach, I used to be surprised when folks indicated that they didn’t know ships do not guard channel 16. Ships should be afraid, very afraid, as most boats don’t have a clue, as to what to do or how to do it when they encounter a ship. Easily 1/3 of the boats I tow in the season, can’t give their Lat/Long, even though the have a GPS, let alone know about what to do related to ships. Boats usually run the other way; expect the unexpected.

2) Top 10 things I wish ships did to make boating safer?

1. Call a Securité, on channel 16, to announce a departure from norm.
2. Slowed down, when transiting congested waterways.
3. Occasionally use channel 16 when unsure of a boat’s action.
4. - 10. I’ll let readers fill in the blanks in the comment section.

3) Top 5 close calls I’ve had with ships.

1. Hiding out in the Sep Zone as I was waked by ships on either side of me.
2. Being in restricted visibility with out a radar, before I knew the rules and almost hitting a CG Cutter off the Columbia Bar.
3. Attempting to beat a 900′ USNS RoRo across the lanes. - I lost.
4. - 5. I’ll let readers fill in the blanks in the comment section.

4) Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range… how to tell if a boater is unable to get out of the way.

CBDR - now there’s a concept. Joe Blow thinks that if he bumps the throttle a few hundred RPM’s that he can beat you across the VTS lanes. He has no idea that you’re pumping 20+ kts, five to seven miles away when he starts across the (1.25 nm) lanes at 5.5 kts.

5) Lessons learned from my years boating the Puget Sound.

Conditions change - be prepared for the worst case scenario. Always have a plan B and a plan C.

Practice, practice, practice. Can you navigate with traditional tools? If you’re a sailor - can you make it to your slip under sail? When was the last time you did a man overboard drill?

By all means remember that S**T HAPPENS. If you think that something is about to happen, it is “Deemed to Exist.” Don’t put your head in the sand and boldly keep going.

Also be sure to read his related articles:

• AIS - A Mixed Blessing

• VTS - Working with large vessels

Photo By James Rajotte for The New York Times

The New York Times has an interesting article on the desperate situation in the Great Lakes. Rainfall shortages have caused unusually declining water levels in the countries largest lakes. Low levels are bad news for ships designed and built with a draft meeting operational needs and having tight Under Keel Clearances. The problem is causing each ship to take on less cargo thus increasing the number of ships needed to satisfy the regions transportation need.

The NYTimes continues;

“What we need is some rain,” said Mr. Daniels, director of the Port of Oswego Authority, one of a dozen public port agencies on the United States side of the Great Lakes. “The more we lose water, the less cargo the ships that travel in the Great Lakes can carry, and each time that happens, shipping companies lose money,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s people like you and I who are going to pay the price.”

Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons — or 540,000 pounds — or risk running aground, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo companies.

As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs, experts in maritime commerce estimate.

“When a ship leaves a dock, and it’s not filled to capacity, it’s the same as a plane leaving an airport with empty seats: It cuts into their earning capacity,” said Richard D. Stewart, a co-director of the Transportation and Logistics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.

“Because it’s mostly raw materials we’re talking about, the average consumer may see an increase in pennies in the price they pay for, say, a new car or washing machine,” Dr. Stewart said. For major manufacturers or firms managing big projects, however, the increase in transportation costs “is much more significant,” he said.   Continue Reading…

The upside for us mariners could possible be more jobs the downside… increased pressure on the Jones Act.

We know that NORAD, the U.S. Air Force’s North American Aerospace Defense Command, tracks nuclear missile launches, enemy infringement of air space and even Santa Clause but did you know they also track ships?

That’s right, after 9/11 NORAD decided to close the blast doors at Cheyenne Mountain began opening it’s doors to other government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security the Coast Guard and Navy. As part of the new joint operations initiative NORAD’s new, significantly less impressive, home near the famed mountain became the primary location for tracking Maritime Threats. In fact from 2004 until just this March the commander of NORAD has been a Navy Admiral.

Why track maritime threats from an Air Force base? In an interview with The National Defended NORAD Commander Admiral Timothy J. Keating answered the question:

U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) is a completely different command with a somewhat similar mission. It’s a much newer command however. We’re only in existence for a couple of years now following the attacks of 11 September. Our task is, very simply, to defend our country against external threats. We have another important mission, and that’s in the event of some catastrophe—if the secretary, for instance, decides that the Department of Defense contributions to the support of civil authorities is appropriate, we provide that support, whether it’s the state, local, federal requests, we are positioned and trained and equipped to provide that support to those civilian authorities in the event of a disaster.

Two commands are co-located, building on the excellent command and control systems in Cheyenne Mountain Command Center and our headquarters building and leveraging 47 years of NORAD experience in defending the continent...

In today’s world it makes sense to discuss potential cooperation in other domains––particularly maritime. Expanding NORAD’s charter beyond aerospace would be a decision to be made by our respective governments.

Currently, however, Northern Command, supported by the Navy and Coast Guard as our primary maritime combat capability, has the lead for maritime homeland defense. Since 9/11, the Coast Guard has created maritime safety and security teams––federal maritime SWAT teams––highly trained, strategically located and specially equipped to provide an extra layer of security to key ports, waterways and facilities.

Our partners in the Coast Guard have also boarded and inspected over 10,000 ships to search for threats and confirm the identity of those aboard. They’ve developed special “sea marshal” boarding procedures where armed Coast Guard personnel were onboard certain ships entering and leaving U.S. ports to ensure they stay safely on course. We continue to work with them to establish and enforce naval vessel protection zones around U.S. Navy vessels in U.S. ports. They have enforced over 100 security zones around sensitive maritime areas and facilities.

A maritime NORAD is a nice concept, but the maritime domain is very different from the air domain. There are no flight plans along predetermined routes, no air traffic control. So we think that it may be unnecessarily restrictive. That is to say we want to be able to work with other partners, principally Mexico, as Mexico reaches their own decisions on the degree to which they want to participate with information sharing. And our good friends in the Southern Command and throughout the hemisphere and then throughout the other geographical combatant commander areas of responsibility, we share information and a common operational picture.

We think maritime NORAD under the construct that we have enjoyed the aerospace NORAD would be unnecessarily restrictive, though that is not to say we would discount Canada’s participation in a maritime NORAD. And the negotiation is ongoing with the State Department in the lead. In the meantime, USNORTHCOM coordinates with National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa for critical bilateral maritime defense response. Read More…

gCaptain friend and Head Designer over at Digg.com, Daniel Burka, bumped up our number of friend request for the social networking / messaging site Pownce.com. Invites will go to the first 25 readers who submit comments below.

What is pownce? The New York Times tells us;

JUST now, the hottest startup in Silicon Valley — minutely examined by bloggers, panted after by investors — is Pownce, but only a chosen few can try out its Web site.

Kevin Rose, the co-founder and chief architect of Digg, a hugely popular news site, announced in late June the introduction of Pownce, a social-networking service that combines messaging with file-sharing. Mr. Rose immediately endowed his latest venture with some mystique by declaring that, for the time being, only those with invitations would be permitted to test his new site.

Within days, invitations were selling on eBay for as much as $10. Mr. Rose has declined all requests to be interviewed about the service, including my own. But as a consolation, he sent me a coveted invitation. I enjoyed the rare thrill of cyberhipness — and got to experiment with the site.

You can also send your friends links, invitations to events, or files like photos, music or videos. Of course, you can already do that on a multitude of file-sharing Web sites. It is the combination of private messaging and file-sharing that makes Pownce so novel.

Om Malik, the author of the technology blog GigaOm, is an enthusiast. “I love it and use it constantly, ” he said in a message sent to me on Pownce. “I like it because it lets me share a lot of different things with the networks of people I really care about.”

Read the full NYTimes article titled “A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope” then comment below for your invitation.

Pownce Profiles of Interest:

• Captain John Konrad’s Pownce Profile
• Unofficial Network’s CoFounder Timothy K
  
• Sea Fever’s Peter M
• Top Digger MrBabyMan - Andrew S
  
• Pownce Designer Daniel Burka

Related Link:

• gCaptain on Digg.com
• gCaptain’s Maritime Facebook Group

In “Refrences to Joseph Keefe”>another excellent article, Maritime Executive’s managing editor Joseph Keefe is dead on with his assessment of salary (find the article HERE) and working condition improvements in this tight labor market. The following comment in response to a discussion with one Captain sums up the discord between shore side managers and shipboard personnel perfectly;

Gathering that he was earning well in excess of $100,000 per year with about six months vacation, I chided him for complaining about a job situation that a lot of people would kill to obtain. My comments were NOT well received.

Well had Keefe called any member of gCaptain’s staff we could have gently clued him in on the likely response. The reason? Well he lays out all the major points but let us add a few minor ones. Mariners currently in top positions aboard ship are loyal to their profession. We have seen tough times and stayed at sea to the protest of loved ones and in doing so have payed the price. From high points to low a mariners life is one of hard misses. Personally I’ve sacrificed being with my family on the day of my father’s death and missed the birth of his namesake, my first child, Jack. Mine is one of the least troubling stories but the hardships are not the primary reason for the discord; it’s the rewards, or lack there of. To show my point I offer some examples;

• Mariners in the first Gulf War bravely supplied the troops in countless runs to the war zone and in return received “all you can eat” overtime pay and handsome bonuses. For my wife’s 30 days in the war zone she received little more than a medal.
• Mariner’s salaries are just recently breaking above the levels (not adjusted for inflation) of those in the same position 30 years ago.
• Sailing 30 years ago was an enjoyable experience that did not entail constant communication with management. Email and “real” phone service didn’t exist.
• Port time is currently non-existent.
• The U.S. mariner has historically come at a premium to their foreign conterparts but the gap is closing fast.
• With the decline in the dollar we are suddenly being recruited be European companies that are offering considerable bonuses. U.S. companies are not following suit.
• Specialists in support roles, mostly from Europe, freely share their salaries which can be considerable higher than an American Captain’s.
• The majority of mariners live in areas (New England, Florida, California) of skyrocketing housing expenses.
• Mariners are now getting arrested for incidents that, as CAMM (The Council of American Master Mariners) put it, “were at one point considered mistakes”.
• Today civilians are more likely to ask you how you can work for an Oil Company than reply with a statement once heard often; “Wow, what an interesting job”.

In addition to these points the personnel shortage in our industry is not only a concern of company, it’s a concern for the shipboard management. The simple fact is positions are being filled by people who five years ago would not be considered ready for the job. In the past twenty years crew levels have been brought down to record low levels but overqualified crews “stuck” in positions they long ago mastered have kept the ships running smooth. Today an alarmingly high number of vessels list 100% of their officers as short-service employees (in the position for less than a year). This is not only a problem for officers but also for those on shore. Ships rely on a foundation of support from town that increasingly comes from managers lacking experience due to the same stratospheric rise in the number of promotions. These two factors equate to rising difficulties for Captains, Chief Mates and their counterparts in the engine room.

A manager recently asked a good friend of mine if he was ready for the big promotion to Captain, his response angered the boss. I can only assume the anger derived from the fact his statement was both accurate and troubling. He replied, “Hell no, I have no business being Captain. Professionally I’m not close to being ready but if I’m not promoted in the next few rounds you’re making a big mistake because I can run circles around my competition!” Not a good sign for those who need to trust the next man in charge of a 500 million dollar asset.

What he did not tell the manager is also reveling, “Why take a promotion for a few extra dollars and have to sit at a desk filling out paperwork, answering phone calls from town and dealing with petty squables. The captain use to have a stateroom twice the size of a seaman’s and fly to work in first class, now he just gets paid more.”

While the article was impressively accurate the following comments are not entirely correct;

His pay had been augmented three or four times in the past 18 months and his employers had confirmed that pay scales had at least doubled during that period.

While it’s conceivable that the payroll has double I’ve witnessed between 10 and 40% increases in senior mariner pay.

Gathering that he was earning well in excess of $100,000 per year with about six months vacation

“But you get Six Months vacation” is the first thing mariners hear during salary negotiations but it’s a misnomer. I don’t personally know a mariner who took less than 4 weeks of training classes last year and know many Chief Mate candidates who took between 12 and 16 weeks of class… that brings us down to 5 months “Vacation”. Subtract travel days, visits to the Coast Guard and days spent at the union hall and your down to less than 4.5 months (139 days).

The average American takes 15 days vacation, 8 personal days and 10 holidays. Add this to the number of weekends and (if my math is correct) shore side personel have 137 days off or only 3 days less than the mariner. Ever leave the office early on Friday or take a long lunch to visit the dentist? Mariners work 12 hours a day, every day which equates to nearly double the number of hours a “40-hour per week” American works during the year. Now I can begin to understand why gCaptain’s email box gets flooded with shore-side job related questions.

The number one reason for the discord is rooted by Keefe’s statement;

It is tempting to dismiss this as seafarer whining, but maritime executives everywhere had better strap on their hearing aids and listen to what their employees have to say. To do otherwise will only exacerbate the current crisis.

On the return trip for a promising shore-side job a prominent divorce attorney joined the discussion on NPR’s Fresh Air and said he often sits at the arbitration table looking at two people in love who share a life others only dream about and asks himself why. The reason is not that argued by either party, the reason is that neither listens to what the other is saying.

Mariners are being marginalized and management isn’t listening. Captains no longer have the power to solve problems aboard ship without approval from managers who frequently ask “Who died and left him in charge?”. This response filters down to the crew who justly assume their boss can not communicate their problems to distant offices ashore. This problem is exacerbated by the increased regulatory pressures, technological requirements, and industry opposition not to mention burdensome levels of training, paperwork and hands-on management from shore.

So while the “24/7 satellite television, e-mail, voice comms, excellent (but SSDD) food and media room” are nice do something that compensates me for the extra work I’ve taken on lately or double salaries instead of payroll.

What are management’s concerns? Not sure, I’m knocking on the divorce attorney’s door and just not listening!

-JD

This post is in response to Maritime Executive’s article:

Long-Term Neglect of Mariners Continues to Haunt Maritime Employers

Do you think you can name this port? If so visit HERE to vote. This google map is brought to you by World Port Source which provides interactive satellite images, maps and contact information for 2,626 ports in 187 countries around the world.

Also click HERE to quickly find any port using their regional map of the world.

More interested in finding maps for boaters? Panbo has many great tips in his charting category found HERE.

Related Links:

• Google Maps - Maritime Mash-up
• Google Powered Searches For Mariners
• Google Earth For Celestial Navigation?
• Using Google To Track Hurricanes

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 at the bottom of the right sidebar —>

Our first set of links in this series concentrates on sites devoted to large ships.

Fred Fry’s Maritime Monday

Fred Fry has a great set of posts on his blog called “Maritime Monday”. Fred is an avid reader and saves his favorite maritime related stories of the week and posts them every Monday morning. Along with our own Maritime News Discoverer it’s a must read for all in the shipping industry who need to keep up on the week’s news and interesting stories.

Maritime Executive Newsletter

Maritime Executive publishes a monthly magazine that I eagerly await. Of greater interest to the online community is their free weekly newsletter, a must read for shipping executives and sailors alike. I encourage everyone to subscribe to their MarEx Newsletter, it’s free and contains the best hard news stories delivered straight to your email inbox each week. If your interested in the magazine sign up to receive a trial copy HERE.

Council of American Master Mariners

A great resource from an organization devoted to the interests of the Master Mariner. They do not have a blog but publish stories on their homepage as well as a newsletter that can be read online.

Robin Storm - Severe Weather Blog

Robin is a Salvage Master, Licensed Chief Engineer and a Severe Weather Guru. We have collaborated on many stories including our series on the Sean Semour and a look into EPIRB failures. His blog contains mostly weather related stories and links pertinent to safety at sea. The blog is well written, thorough and is updated frequently… what more could you ask for.

Maritime Accident Casebook

If your a Ship’s Captain interested in keeping your crew safe Bob Couttie’s Maritime Accident Casebook should be your first stop. It contains detailed information, lessons learned and reports on maritime incidents from around the world. Bob is a talented writer and excellent investigator. Our favorite part of his site are his Maritime Incident Podcasts that can be downloaded to your ipod and listened to on those long flights to your ship.

Maritime Links Blog

Probably the best blog of the US Merchant Marine officer. Our only complaint is that the post are not as frequent as some of the other blogs we follow but this is because the Maritime Links editors are actually sailors with real shipping jobs. Many interesting stories can be found in their archives.

Unofficial Andes - Ski Travel Blog

Ok this blog link has nothing to do with maritime affairs but considering it (as well as Unofficial Squaw’s Blog ) was created by our company and is written by our chief editor’s brother, it gets a link. The blog follows the travels of Tim Konrad as he ski’s the Andes mountain range in South America. A good read.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this series and if you have a blog to suggest be sure to email it to our tip line; tips{at}gCaptain.com