Hell yeah minimum 2 hour OT callout, 4 hours on the weekend? Call me to change that light
Sounds good chief. I’ll also write in for misassignment.
[QUOTE=MFOWelectrician;132565]Sounds good chief. I’ll also write in for misassignment.[/QUOTE]
Remind me to buy a headlamp before I go back to work.
Out in the deep water ships I have been on the Deck Vs Engine never really goes beyond the typical banter that starts all the way back to academy days. Yes deckies stare out windows and do nothing and engineers play in poop…back and forth we go. However we all have a common job to do and that is to move cargo from A to B. It’s always been the top 4 who are the senior officers. Capt/Cm and CE/ 1st. The captain is the ultimate boss, but a good captain is not going to go against what his chief is telling him unless it’s an emergency. Even then he better have a good reason when ABS or Coast Guard comes on for an incident investigation because if it involves machinery failure, they want to see the Chief and get answers from him. My office is right next to the captains and he usually always comes over to talk about what’s going on and what’s ahead. He doesn’t keep me in the dark, and I don’t keep him in the dark…unless he doesn’t call me out to change that light…hahha
[QUOTE=brjones;132568]Out in the deep water ships I have been on the Deck Vs Engine never really goes beyond the typical banter that starts all the way back to academy days. Yes deckies stare out windows and do nothing and engineers play in poop…back and forth we go. However we all have a common job to do and that is to move cargo from A to B. It’s always been the top 4 who are the senior officers. Capt/Cm and CE/ 1st. The captain is the ultimate boss, but a good captain is not going to go against what his chief is telling him unless it’s an emergency. Even then he better have a good reason when ABS or Coast Guard comes on for an incident investigation because if it involves machinery failure, they want to see the Chief and get answers from him. My office is right next to the captains and he usually always comes over to talk about what’s going on and what’s ahead. He doesn’t keep me in the dark, and I don’t keep him in the dark…unless he doesn’t call me out to change that light…hahha[/QUOTE]
It’s natural that the Capt and C/E end up working together a lot, we both spend a lot of time in our adjacent offices as you say and we work together on the same problems (working major repairs into schedules, the logistics of operating in foreign ports, sorting out distances in ECA with 4 types of fuel, audits, PSC , dealing with crew problems and so forth). But keeping the C/M and 1 A/E in the loop takes a little more effort. Especially the 1 A/E as he can’t really leave the E/R unsupervised for too long.
A couple things led us down the road to seeing the value of the concept of the senior officer “team”(hate that word). For one it is required by the SMS. It’s been a requirement for a long time be we’ve always blown it off till an auditor starting demanding the documentation. The second thing was that my current C/E is my former 1 A/E. He thinks having the 1 A/ E more in the loop has many advantages. for one it keeps the ECR from spooling up too far on some BS rumor. It’s interesting in the bi-monthly meeting to see how close the C/E and 1 A/E are to being on the same page. Both the C/M and the 1 A/E sometimes inject a little dose of reality into the Chief and my plans.(No, that repair is not going to get done in 8 hrs).
Having the 4 people cuts down on information hording, maybe more importantly the suspicion of information hording. The crew figures they are getting the straight dope. When the crew sees that the C/M and 1 A/E are “insiders” it increases their credibility and they get taken more seriously by the crew.
We don’ t have a regular schedule, lots of uncertainly, information is really key, but there is a problem that you can’t give the crew “raw” information without context as they really are not experienced at interrupting the sometime ambiguous info we get and how the many various factors that have to be considered when making plans (weather, berth availability, crew fatigue, suitability of anchorages schedules, machinery status).
Sometimes we need the crew to preform at a high level to keep our safety margins where we want them. I want the crew to get where I am coming from. I can get my message across to the C/E and the mate. I also have good opportunities to interact with the bridge crew as I’m in the wheelhouse a lot. Seems like the only time I talk to the first is maneuvering and then it’ s on the phone. It’s advantageous to talk for other reasons then I want the bow thruster 10 minutes ago.
I had a bosn ask me to fix his needle guns. I told him if he did not know how to fix a needle gun go back to being an AB. Had a Steward ask me to sharpen his knives. I told him if he couldn’t sharpen a knife he shouldn’t call himself a steward. I never went topside and asked a deckie how to fix any problem in the engineroom. A mate never asked me how to navigate a vessel. We would work together rigging stuff in and out of pump rooms and dragging crude wash lines down to the engine room for me to weld them.
I was on an old Texaco T-2 and the whistle didn’t work. I went to the bridge and started opening a junction box in the wheelhouse which fed the bridge wing switches. The captain told me in no certain terms the problem is in the stack where the steam whistle was located I went back unhooked the coil megged it and ran a continuity test and it was all ok back in the stack. Three hours later back on the bridge I resumed in my initial place to troubleshoot it. I opened the junction box and saw burned wires leading to a grounded wing switch.
I was new aboard but had 5 years seagoing experience. The captain stuck his nose in a place where it didn’t belong. Some captains and mates are as good with tools as any engineer but this guy was know-it-all blowhard. Leave the respective jobs to the department entrusted to do do it unless the are endangering themselves or the vessel.
I like the Integrated Officer system found in the Dutch Merchant Marine. Academy curriculum consists of both subjects: Seamanship and Engineering. On board the ship the second and third officers spend alternating two weeks in the engineroom, and two weeks on deck. The “chief mate” or “1st Integrated Maritime Officer” remains the chief mate and 2nd in command and does not take any intervals in the engine room. The same goes for the “1st Integrated Engineering Officer” - he remains the functioning 1st Assistant Engineer for his tour. Eventual promotion to master comes only after a prescribed tenure in BOTH of the 1st Int.Off. positions.
Chief Engineers can enter that position and remain there as a career path if they wish. But these Dutch chief engineers are fading away by attrition and you will find the chief’s position sometimes just filled by, for example, a Russian chief engineer, just a license holder, completely outside of the Dutch system.
It’s a rigourous system, but you weed out a lot riff-raff early on I think. As an observer of this system in action, aboard the ship, I have to say, I don’t think the Dutch officers had a clue as to what a “deck/engine divide” would be. Another impressive feature of this system was the ship’s ability to throw maximum effort toward any problem whether on deck or in the machinery space.
There is something depressingly American about the deck/engine divide these days. I suppose it is something that could affect safety and efficiency aboard ship. But so can a lot of other things, like officers being completely lacking in any depth-of-knowledge about their chosen profession for instance. That is more of a problem that I see these days, where for so many, going to sea is just the best part-time job they’ve ever had.
[QUOTE=Too bad steam is gone;132616]… The captain stuck his nose in a place where it didn’t belong. Some captains and mates are as good with tools as any engineer but this guy was know-it-all blowhard. Leave the respective jobs to the department entrusted to do do it unless the are endangering themselves or the vessel.[/QUOTE]
What the eng bring to the table is technical expertise and experience. The capt n your story has it ass-backwards. As far as deckies turning wrenches; In the E/R Ive only seen it on smaller vessels, small F/V and tugs w/o an engineer. The times I’ve worked in the E/R with a chief (on small vessels) was rigging and moving heavy loads under the direction of the chief.
On deck however If there is relatively simple work to be done, say taking a brake off a winch and mate and the bos’n can do it I would say check with the chief first and keep him informed, If the eng dept has time to do it fine, but if not at least get a start.
Same thing with changing the lights, ask the chief or the first if it’s OK with them first . If the eng dept is at high work load they wouldn’t mind.
2 posts were split to a new topic: How to fix the Eng / Deck Divide part 2
Thread is from 12 years ago.