News on the Sunshine State?

The Crowley Tanker Sunshine State.

Yes I figured that.

Well it’s 600’ long and 106’ wide. Carries petroleum products.

oh i like Daytona. My daughter went to school there and she always told me that’s where the 80’s went to die. Guess that’s why we bought a retirement home there!

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My parents retired here, that’s why I’m here (actually next town over Ormond Beach)

No flies on you!

Apparently they tried to pull an El Faro and sailed right through the middle of the eye of Hurricane Ian.

I’d like to here more about the Florida waterfront and maritime infrastructure. Damage to boats and docks, shipyards, etc.

They sailed into the eye, did a bunch of damage, didn’t take storm ballast, didn’t fill after peak, crew practically mutineed at the next port, Captain relieved. Career over?

Lifeboat smashed
One guy on board had a brother on El Faro
Green water up to manifold on a light tanker

It was really really bad, I heard.

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Wow. That’s crazy. I wonder if it the captain had a big ego, or if he was lacking proficiency in wx monitoring, or maybe they failed to update bonvoyage…or maybe something else?
Glad to hear they’re safe, but man that’s unacceptable.

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This one. Only this one. All the mates told him he was out of his fucking mind. He told the company he was going to go offshore and then follow behind it. Why Crowley didn’t do anything about that is beyond me.

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They did. They fired him!

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Agreed.

With networked AIS capability and weather routing, the first thing a competent ship manager should do in these circumstances is to monitor and challenge the position and track of his vessel relative to the hurricane.

This is another example of the one person accident. Management performance, both onboard and ashore, putting lives at risk.

Yea of course they did.

But they could have avoided that.

So, we have such an antiquated system that allows one man to risk the lives of many others with no ability to overrule him, even from the office?

Practically speaking, what if the office and maybe some sort of authority (USCG??) told the captain to do something and he didn’t…could they authorize the mate to restrain him and take over?

This is crazy. If I were that man, I’d probably be in jail for mutiny or something?!?

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We also seem to have a culture of junior officers being afraid to call shore behind the Captains back. I would have been on the phone with everybody I could have gotten a hold of.

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Maritime is stuck in the past. Imagine how many planes would crash each year if the airlines continued to behave this way. Luckily for us passengers, the airlines realized the natural flaws of humans and designed a robust system to mitigate the ego/stupidity/assholes.

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This is very true. A little side story. Several years ago I was carrying a heated cargo on an ATB…Exxon required the captain to send in cargo temperatures every morning. Thus, on the 4x8 watch I had to send the tankerman down to the barge every morning around 06 to stick a tape in the tanks. One day it was super rough with boarding seas. I told the tankerman to not go down. Knowing the this @sshole captain would flip sh!t, I proceeded to take pictures and video of the barge awash with boarding seas.
0700 rolls around and he calls the wheelhouse screaming and yelling on the phone asking why I haven’t emailed the cargo temps. I tell him why and he loses his sh!t even more. I told him that I have video of the conditions and that it’s not safe and I’m prepared to send it in. That was the end of it. We used the temps on the tank radar screens instead. Why someone would sit down and think to themselves that someone like that should be the captain is beyond me. Edit: I hope that captain reads this.

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So much for Crowleys BRM in their SMS huh!

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Not good for a Junior Officer’s career in the long run.

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The alternative is being dead, so…

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