I logged in with the intention of commenting on the 60 Minutes update; but as I am now acquaintanced with some of the family members, I’ll keep my opinions to myself. Just know that there is a lot of pain, a lot of raw sorrow and emotion. That should be respected. Let’s keep the opinions of the actions of this or that person low key at least until the final report comes out.
Meanwhile, examine the evidence, and ask yourself how you think you would act under such circumstances. Talk about it with your family, friends, and most importantly, your shipmates. The sea does not love us. The sea is a wicked ass motherfucker. It will kill any one of us without a second thought. Remember that when you lay your head down in your bunk and think nothing will hurt this boat I’m on. It feels solid when you lay down and the boat rocks you to sleep in your nice room with all your stuff around you, but that’s an illusion that can be upset by any one of a number of factors. We make our living on the sea, but it’s not our Best Friend Forever. It’s that psycho bitch we have a love-hate relationship with. When we venture out to sea to make our daily bread, we are truly rolling the dice.
This can be a real turning point for the industry, or it may not amount to much of anything. I think a lot of that depends on us, the mariners who live and work today, because the EL FARO had no survivors- and we the living must take up their torch and move forward.
[QUOTE=catherder;195863]I logged in with the intention of commenting on the 60 Minutes update; but as I am now acquaintanced with some of the family members, I’ll keep my opinions to myself. Just know that there is a lot of pain, a lot of raw sorrow and emotion. That should be respected. Let’s keep the opinions of the actions of this or that person low key at least until the final report comes out.
Meanwhile, examine the evidence, and ask yourself how you think you would act under such circumstances. Talk about it with your family, friends, and most importantly, your shipmates. The sea does not love us. The sea is a wicked ass motherfucker. It will kill any one of us without a second thought. Remember that when you lay your head down in your bunk and think nothing will hurt this boat I’m on. It feels solid when you lay down and the boat rocks you to sleep in your nice room with all your stuff around you, but that’s an illusion that can be upset by any one of a number of factors. We make our living on the sea, but it’s not our Best Friend Forever. It’s that psycho bitch we have a love-hate relationship with. When we venture out to sea to make our daily bread, we are truly rolling the dice.
This can be a real turning point for the industry, or it may not amount to much of anything. I think a lot of that depends on us, the mariners who live and work today, because the EL FARO had no survivors- and we the living must take up their torch and move forward.[/QUOTE]
Christopher Lloyd Helstrom wrote in his book The March:
Nature is nasty. Nature will freeze you to death without thinking. Nature has no conscience. It is a brute, uncaring force. Only Man has conscience. Caring is a concept in the human realm, not in nature. Nature is beautiful but only we see its true beauty.
Or as the hitman said: It’s nothing personal, it’s is just business!
[QUOTE=Urs;195846]Is BVS really the right instrument when inside a rapidly evolving situation like here?
[/QUOTE]
The weather programs are an excellent tool but it shouldn’t be the only one. It’s standard procedure on many ship to keep a separate plot in the wheelhouse based on the NHC/NWS updates. Ships that encounter frequent TCs sometime keep an area chart under plexiglass and use a grease pencil to plot.
When the captin mentions that there is not agreement as to the location of the center he uses the analogy of having more than one GPS causing non-agreement in the ship’s position information. That’s not a good analogy. A better one would be postion disagreement between the GPS receiver and a navigation equipment that uses a data feed from that GPS.
For example the position data on a radar. If there is a difference between the GPS receiver and position data on the radar almost certainly the error is with the radar data. Most likely Joe Fingers got into the menu and changed a setting.
Same with the weather data, because the BVS system is using NHC/NWS data. The path is: NHC > BVS > Email packet > Captain’s computer > Bridge computer. The NHC > Sat-C > paper plot is the faster (by about 3 hr) more reliable path.
As a ship approaches a TC the NHC information can be compared with actual weather observations, the most important and reliable being wind direction.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;195869]
Same with the weather data, because the BVS system is using NHC/NWS data. The path is: NHC > BVS > Email packet > Captain’s computer > Bridge computer. The NHC > Sat-C > paper plot is the faster (by about 3 hr) more reliable path.
[/QUOTE] Makes sense.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;195869]
As a ship approaches a TC the NHC information can be compared with actual weather observations, the most important and reliable being wind direction. [/QUOTE]
Another one being the ship’s bearing to clouds:
[RIGHT](Adapted from “Mariner’s Weather Handbook”)[/RIGHT]
El Faro’s loss will definitely be one of those events that changes things for mariners, even if not on an official level (though I suspect & hope it will), certainly on a personal level.
I remember Hurricane Mitch and the sinking of the Fantome in 1998. After the book “The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome” was printed, I made a point of reading it before the start of every hurricane season, just to remind myself what can happen, and how unpredictable some storms can be.
While we await the findings of the inquiry, perhaps all mariners could do worse than refresh their knowledge of hurricane weather. Here are two pdf files available for download free that contain a wealth of information; I recommend every Captain prints out copies, studies them, and then makes them available to all deck officers. Maybe even prepare a special Hurricane Awareness folder which could be kept on the bridge, along with any other relevant materials and books. Accounts of past encounters are generally the best way to help others avoid experiencing those same situations themselves, situations that no one would wish upon anyone.
(1) Mariner’s Guide For Hurricane Awareness In The North Atlantic Basin: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/marinersguide.pdf
(2) Mariner’s Weather Handbook: https://www.setsail.com/mwh.pdf - Special relevance to Hurricanes: pages 316 to 416.
Another book which I often re-read is “The Hurricane Book - a sailing captain’s memoirs”. This recalls one particular captain’s experiences living through 18 different hurricanes, on land and sea. His catch phrase: “The only predictable thing about hurricanes is that they’re un-predictable.”
Buys Ballot is handy for reading the transcript. Face the wind the center is to your right and a little behind.
If the wind is just aft of the port beam, face the wind, to the right and a little behind is dead ahead, the center is just about dead ahead. If the ship is heading into the wind the center is a bit aft of the stbd beam.
It’s also easy to visualize how the wind direction is going to change as the direction to the center changes.
It’s hard to believe basic hurricane wind information is discussed as if it’s not Weather 101 for a competent mariner and that it seems to have been so spectacularly misinterpreted or ignored in the case of the El Faro.
Maybe it is off topic but today the tragedy is remembered that took place 30 years ago with the roll-on roll-off ferry ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’. The ship with her bow doors open capsized within 90 seconds after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the night of 6 March 1987, killing 193 passengers and crew.
Already years before this accident a well known Dutch naval architect characterized the roll-on roll-off carriers including ferries with a huge hangar deck, a completely open vehicle deck extending right from the fore to aft without any transversale subdivision bulkheads in between, as ‘floating coffins’. He was of the opinion that these ships were designed with a disrespect of the rules of sound shipbuilding and are a danger for human lives and that for commercial reasons only.
[QUOTE=Lee Shore;195883]It’s hard to believe basic hurricane wind information is discussed as if it’s not Weather 101 for a competent mariner and that it seems to have been so spectacularly misinterpreted or ignored in the case of the El Faro.[/QUOTE]
More basic weather 101:
Problem establishing wind direction due to a broken or inaccurate anemometer?
Look at the relative direction of the exhaust from the funnel. (Smoke stack to most here)
Even at ship speed of 20 kts. it is a good indication in a storm, with driving rain and little visibility.
[QUOTE=ombugge;195896]More basic weather 101:
Problem establishing wind direction due to a broken or inaccurate anemometer?
Look at the relative direction of the exhaust from the funnel. (Smoke stack to most here)
Even at ship speed of 20 kts. it is a good indication in a storm, with driving rain and little visibility.[/QUOTE]
Finding the true wind direction requires quite a bit of goniometric calculations. The easiest way is to use an online calculator like this one. However a satellite internet connection is required.
There are also Excel programs for Windows available as well as Apps for less than $2.- for an iPhone or iPad. And last but certainly not the least there is always table 60 of the good old Bowditch.
[QUOTE=Dutchie;195903]Finding the true wind direction requires quite a bit of goniometric calculations. The easiest way is to use an online calculator like this one. However a satellite internet connection is required.
There are also Excel programs for Windows available as well as Apps for less than $2.- for an iPhone or iPad. And last but certainly not the least there is always table 60 of the good old Bowditch.[/QUOTE]
When the wind speed is high enough to knock you down and/or give your ship a constant list, it’s not that hard to tell which direction it’s coming from.
[QUOTE=Lee Shore;195904]When the wind speed is high enough to knock you down and/or give your ship a constant list, it’s not that hard to tell which direction it’s coming from.[/QUOTE]
^ I agree with this statment 100%
Updated - - -
[QUOTE=Dutchie;195903]Finding the true wind direction requires quite a bit of goniometric calculations. The easiest way is to use an online calculator like this one. However a satellite internet connection is required.
There are also Excel programs for Windows available as well as Apps for less than $2.- for an iPhone or iPad. And last but certainly not the least there is always table 60 of the good old Bowditch.[/QUOTE]
You are 100% correct that converting from relative wind direction to true is a simple task.
[QUOTE=Lee Shore;195904]When the wind speed is high enough to knock you down and/or give your ship a constant list, it’s not that hard to tell which direction it’s coming from.[/QUOTE]
I agree with this statement…knowing the true wind speed and direction is easily estimated by any mate. What is being missed is that it is not a mate’s duty to make decisions based on those estimations. The master should have been on the bridge through the night monitoring how the wind was changing so he would know the movement of the center of Joachim relative to the vessel’s track and then been there to immediately direct the vessel’s movement to keep in in a safe zone or as I say to decide when to proceed no further until the danger had passed. Relying on the broadcast information on a severe storm is folly when you ignore the conditions you are experiencing. That is the reality that needs to be monitored by a master continuously and then acted on especially if there is a conflict between the broadcast reports and what you are experiencing. The master leaving the bridge for so many hours as the vessel approached the center was unconscionable with so much at stake.
so with this said, do we know the magnitude of the wind’s shift the EL FARO experienced that morning and how quickly if shifted? I believe the wind was on the port quarter in the early morning which was consistent to the passing south of the center. we know they tried to come up to the wind at 060degrees before they went DIW so it might be deduced that it went from somewhere like 330 to 060 which would have meant from the port quarter to the port beam. if the storm eye was south of their position when they went DIW then the wind was pushing them right into the center of circulation. With loose water in the holds and all the windheel a highsided vessel like the EL FARO had, I can see her being blown right onto her beam’s end with deck edge immersion happening quickly. Downflooding was inevitable and there would be no recovery from it short of getting propulsion back and the ability to heave to head to sea. As Davidson so aptly stated in his words to the call center operator…“the clock it ticking” unfortunately, time ran out for them that morning before they could save themselves.
Why is the assumption being made that the list was entirely due to wind heel? Do we know for a fact that there was no water in #3 hold?
Again, it’s a little ironic that we say the mate shouda known wind direction and applied Buy’s Ballot even while we know in hindsight that the holds may have been flooding
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;195911]Why is the assumption being made that the list was entirely due to wind heel? Do we know for a fact that there was no water in #3 hold?
Again, it’s a little ironic that we say the mate shouda known wind direction and applied Buy’s Ballot even while we know in hindsight that the holds may have been flooding[/QUOTE]
The quote is from one of the hearings in May 2016.
The standard measure for figuring out a ship’s GM, which is the stability of the ship, is based on factors including the cargo loading plan, ship size and center of gravity. Due to El Faro’s size, a wind pressure of about 50 to 55 knots, or 58 to 63 mph, was taken into account. So as long as El Faro didn’t lean more than 14 degrees with a wind speed of 58 to 63 mph, it would have met the Coast Guard’s minimum standard for stability in high winds.
But when the Coast Guard asked if Herbert takes into hurricane force winds into account, like a Category 3 with 125 mile per hour winds for example, the company confirmed there were no calculations done to determine how far the El Faro would lean to the side. The Coast Guard does not require calculations for that wind speed.
It looks like that a heel of 15° or more with Joaquin’s wind speeds close to the eye is easily obtainable, although the smaller sail area due to such a heel would mean a little less pressure. Also there is the fact to consider that the wind force is somewhat less because it is not entirely perpendicular to the sail area any more and is partly deflected.
[QUOTE=Dutchie;195920]…although the smaller sail area due to such a heel would mean a little less pressure. Also there is the fact to consider that the wind force is somewhat less because it is not entirely perpendicular to the sail area any more and is partly deflected.[/QUOTE]
Keelboats sail in another category, in a squall they may heel 90°, recover and continue sailing the regatta.
A thin wall with a height H, heeling 15°, will have a height Hheel = H * sine(90° - 15°) = H * 0.966.
A wide ship will then probably have her windward wall rise this bit…
And where is the force, compressing and deflecting the airflow upwards, coming from?
Yes, from the windward wall of the ship!
Confused 30 foot seas would likely toss a dead ship 10 degrees to either side of the reported 15 degree list and rapidly accelerate the ingress of water. A very fast pace of events from then on.
[QUOTE=Dutchie;195920]It looks like that a heel of 15° or more with Joaquin’s wind speeds close to the eye is easily obtainable, although the smaller sail area due to such a heel would mean a little less pressure. Also there is the fact to consider that the wind force is somewhat less because it is not entirely perpendicular to the sail area any more and is partly deflected.[/QUOTE]
Confused 30 foot seas would likely swing a dead ship past 10 degrees to either side of the reported 15 degree list, rapidly accelerating water ingress. With the thunder of loose cargo slamming around in the lower decks adding to the madness, it may be a blessing that the nightmare ended quickly. RIP brothers and sister.
