The US has plenty of roads going almost everywhere. Pallett are shipped by truck.
Almost all of the domestic pallet shipping by water is done by barge inside containers.
Alaska, especially Western Alaska is a special case. No roads. Very few, if any, ferries. Most places are only served by barge. Still, most pallets are shipped by barge inside containers.
Most of the fish plants production is shipped by container barge, typically Northland Services, to Dutch Harbor for transshipment on container ships.
Coastal Transportation serves a niche market — fish plants. Both shorebased and floating fish plants. They bring supplies that are needed more quickly from Seattle, and send frozen fish back to Seattle. Some of these fish plants are too small to handle containers or have more than a half dozen (sorry that’s not metric) reefer containers on the dock. Coastal Transportation vessels typically do about a 25 day round trip from Seattle to Western Alaska.
Some specs on Coastal Standard
Owner/Operator: Coastal Transportation Inc., 4025 13th Ave. W., Seattle WA 98119
Flag: USA
IMO# 9782493
ON # 1262996
Gross Tonnage 2451 ITC
Net Tonnage 735 ITC
DWT 2524 LT
Documentation: Uninspected Fishing Vessel
LOA: 242’
LBP: 225’
Breadth:54’
Fuel Capacity: 2875 barrels
Max speed: 16 kts.
Highly specialized ship. Built from the keel-up for maximum efficiency at her particular trade. Extra money devoted to building her to exacting design specifications now will save money over the life of the ship. Coastal just completed a brand-new cold storage facility in Dutch Harbor, which the new ship, in part, was designed to complement.
The decision to make her a palletized cargo ship has to do in large part with the peculiar economics of the Alaskan seafood trade, where cargo distribution means a lot more than just logisitics. An arcane trade. Plenty of container shipping options out of Dutch Harbor, and lots of container capacity, yet Coastal has been doing well against much larger competitors.
I’m surprised c.captain isn’t raging against the bullshit rules that allows them to do that. That’s more bullshit than OSV being its own category of COI.
[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;178639]I’m surprised c.captain isn’t raging against the bullshit rules that allows them to do that. That’s more bullshit than OSV being its own category of COI.[/QUOTE]
It’s a 100 year tradition borne of necessity. When the USCG started to crackdown in the 1980’s, Congress responded with the Aleutian Trade Act which authorized it. This fish freighter trade trained a great many excellent mariners, including a lot of Alaska and Puget Sound pilots.
46 CFR Part 28 has a whole set of very specific and rigorous CFRs for “ATA” (Aleutian Trade Act) fish tenders, which as other commentators have noted,were promulgated back in the 1990’s. An ATA fish tender is a very specific category of vessel, meant to do an unusual job in a very unforgiving part of the world (read “Kulluk”). “Uninspected” is a misnomer, as many readers of this forum know. ATA fish tenders goes through a mandatory USCG inspection process, carried out by a private marine surveyor, every two years. The crew undergo more realistic safety training than most any other company in the U.S.
Nothing rigorous about a Biannual inspection from a private marine surveyor. Everybody else has a real annual ABS and CG inspection done by the actual ABS/CG along with drydockings and UWILD inspections. Every other vessel in the US does weekly full dress out fire, MOB, and abandon ship drills. Sounds like Joe Boss bought himself a nice set up to get what he wants. I thought that only happens on the bayou.
So when Scooter graduated from (radio edit) he had a green 3M license he parlayed into a master of uninspected FV's AGT. He then used his trade restricted license to finagle his way through the back door to non trade restricted Master AGT. I knew there was something schtinky going on.
[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;178639]I’m surprised c.captain isn’t raging against the bullshit rules that allows them to do that. That’s more bullshit than OSV being its own category of COI.[/QUOTE]
I am very glad that all the old PIECE OF SHIT ex Navy YOs have all been retired and now the standard for the Aleutian Trade Act vessels is much higher today.
I certainly remember those bad old days although I never worked for Western Pioneer on their deathtraps. How they all managed to not sink with all hands amazes me to this day!
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;178648]So when Scooter graduated from KP he had a green 3M license he parlayed into a master of uninspected FV’s AGT. He then used his trade restricted license to finagle his way through the back foot to non trade restricted Master AGT. I knew there was something schtinky going on.[/QUOTE]
my 5000tons uninspected fishing vessel, 1600ton master and second mate all came together as a package. Also know that my seatime during the early years of my career included both inspected merchant ships and uninspected fisheries and towing vessels along the way to earning UL chief mate. My Master AGT came from sailing as chief mate in the first Gulf War and I sat for the exam in 1993 so have had that license for 22+ years now. That final upgrade to UL master came with 100% unlimited tonnage inspected seatime. It was fully and completely obtained with 12months as a chief mate of merchant vessels over 3000tons so put that in your smoke and pipe it…SIR!
now what is this ugliness about my being from KP? Alright, since it is now a pretty transparent secret for some time and that I knew that the day would come then I was outed here, so maybe I did graduate from that farcical waste of taxpayer’s money but I disavow being a KPee’er. I have come to LOATHE the place and have not set foot in the compound for more than three decades. Neither has one centavo gone to its Alumni Association nor will it ever! Of course, I still have a vendetta to take out Captain Kenneth R. Force, USMS. I was not in the band but there was something about that pompous joke of a man and his fiefdom there which made my blood boil. He personifies everything that is wrong with the place. KP should be a “maritime” school and all the marching and military charade has only gotten worse there over time. At least when I attended, the superintendent and his second in command were both WWII merchant mariners as was the head of MarAd who one could respect although most the rest of the Administration there was a pathetic joke. It has become far more pathetic as time has marched on and all I want is to see the place get forever shuttered!
I do hope now that is all that is divulged here now as I do not want everything about me to be made public. I hope you will respect that. Thank you very much
Here’s where the rubber meets the road: in 32 years of operation no one has ever died while under contract, for reasons of injury or illness, on a Coastal ship. No one has ever been put in a wheelchair permanently. No loss of limbs. The last time the company was sued for a bad back Clinton was president.
If you ran a 32-year long scientific experiment to see if the operation is a safe one, and were presented with all this data, what would be your conclusion? More inspections are necessary? The worst ship-casualty the company has had in those 32 years was a fire in 1997. No one was injured and the ship was salvaged with 90% of its cargo intact.
The company has its own USCG approved 5000 square-foot fire simulator. Not required by any regulations. Crews do realistic fire fighting training [I]every[/I] year, put on by active duty firefighters. By realistic is meant far more intensity than is provided by training schools. The simulator is not rented out, and was built with 100% company money. It is just for use by the 64-shipboard employees of the company. No regulation demands the training. It would be cheaper to send them to training schools, but not half as useful. The company has a 64’ steel training boat which they use, among other things, as a platform for yearly abandon ship drill, where crew members jump into the waters of Puget Sound in winter in survival suits, not a heated swimming pool. The experience of open water in winter is another thing altogether, in 36 degree air temps, cold water and 15 knot winds. They stay drifting in liferafts or floating free in survival suits for hours.
My point is, there is a difference between realistic training and drills. Drills, done on any basis, quickly become stale and rote. Another box to check of on a sheet. For example: in fire drills how many crews actually use the SCBA air in the bottles, runnin gup and down stairs, hauling hoses? If you are emptying an air bottle per fire team member per drill you are doing great. If you aren’t you are setting yourself up for failure in case of a real fire. Drills are important, but [I]realistic[/I] drills done every 24 days, and very realistic training done every year, is, in my opinion, after a lifetime of careful observation, far more effective than rote drills done on a weekly basis, and “somewhat realistic” training done every five years. I’m not saying the latter is the norm for the U.S. maritime industry, but it is not uncommon.
Sounds like you played the system well and it still smells…fishy.
This ATA business also stinks of a massive giveaway to Gunther Bawss and the other owners. I can’t believe something like this could even happen in the pristine lily white Alaska/PNW. It’s shameful how these owners would buy legislation to benefit their shipping interests.
FYI: There is only [U]ONE[/U] company that operates ATA fish tenders, of which there are a grand total of 5 ships, employing 64 mariners. It is a trade consisting of a [U]single[/U] company. There has been only one ATA fish tender company since 2005. So the company training regime is, de facto, the industry standard.
As for pay (numerical averages): experienced chief mates mid-$500’s. Experienced-in-the-trade ABs mid-$300s. Numerical averages again. Some higher. Some lower. New people coming into the system are paid much less than experienced people. That being said, low turnover operation for many years now. Not looking to hire more people.“Greenest” captain started with company in 2002. Occasionally hires a captain from outside the fold for a summer relief, but unusual now.
Specialized knowledge: how to load and stow everything from frozen pollock to automobiles. Also, navigating the Inside Passage and Peninsula Inside. Can only get that knowledge from years of experience working in the trade. Guess you can say that about any maritime trade, though.
Not looking to say the company is better than others. Have to state the truth: the safety record speaks for itself.
I have moved coastal boats quite a bit they are a great outfit and have a great wealth of knowledge and skill in what they do up north. Side note some of the stories I have heard from the Western Pioneer days should have been made into an adventure novel lol.
[QUOTE=freighterman;178661]FYI: There is only [U]ONE[/U] company that operates ATA fish tenders, of which there are a grand total of 5 ships, employing 64 mariners. It is a trade consisting of a [U]single[/U] company. There has been only one ATA fish tender company since 2005. So the company training regime is, de facto, the industry standard.
As for pay (numerical averages): mates mid-$500’s. ABs mid-$300s. Numerical averages again. Some higher. Some lower. New people coming into the system are paid much less than experienced people. That being said, low turnover operation for many years now. Not looking to hire more people.“Greenest” captain started with company in 2002. Occasionally hires a captain from outside the fold for a summer relief, but unusual now.
Specialized knowledge: how to load and stow everything from frozen pollock to automobiles. Also, navigating the Inside Passage and Peninsula Inside. Can only get that knowledge from years of experience working in the trade. Guess you can say that about any maritime trade, though.
Not looking to say the company is better than others. Have to state the truth: the safety record speaks for itself.[/QUOTE]
Dude, drink something other than company kool-aid for a change.
As per their hiring page, starting Mate pay is $350 - $380 per day. That’s not going to attract decent talent, but I guess they don’t need it right now.
