Nothing a new CFR couldn’t cure. If regulations can be adopted to substitute a program with 180 days of seatime, instead of 1080, for 3rd mate, which they were, then regulations can be adopted to authorize a tankerman program with less seatime too.
Hahaha man they can’t get more than a Lego replica built of the training ship platform. Who’s going to insure a bunch of barges or mini tankers with cadets at the wheel?
Are there unicorns in the fantasy world you seem to be in? It took 15 years to get regs that implemented STCW 95. Weren’t you among the ones who bitched about how long it took to get the radar renewal reg that Congress mandated?
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I have a modest proposal I’m sure you all will agree with. MARAD should build a small tanker with berthing for a few hundred cadets, equipped with DP and tow gear, along with a small tank barge, for King’s Point.
The cadets would spend a semester (or trimester) living on the tankship. Every afternoon it would tow the tank barge a few hundred feet from the wharf and DP overnight. In the morning it would tow the barge back to school so the cadets could go to class. On weekends the cadets could take turns transferring a few barrels of light oil and a few CZ of propane back and forth between the barge and ship.
Problem solved! Every graduate would have full DP, PIC and MOT at what I’m sure would be a very reasonable cost to the taxpayer.
“I have a Modest Proposal,” said Tom Swiftly… 
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That would be the ugliest ship ever devised and therefore not befitting a scale model worthy of MARAD’s offices. A non starter for that reason alone.
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You jest, but I actually do wonder if the National Security Multi-Purpose Vessel scale model has already made its way into MARAD’s office? With self-congratulatory plaque lauding their accomplishments?
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There is definitely one made from legos so chances are there is a really nice one as well.
You are a genius.
Apparently you haven’t heard of “Great Expectations?” All they’d have to do is throw some tow gear on the back deck.
https://www.workboat.com/archived-workboat-magazine/fuel-station/
I am a SUNY graduate of the limited license program. I graduated with Tankerman-PIC (barge) on my license.
I cadet shipped at Bouchard for a summer and spent most of my time up on the barge.
It paid off as I was immediately hired by a local harbor company as an AB Tankerman. I found it to be a dead end job at that company, and had to leave to get into the wheel house.
I was called back to SUNY to advise cadets who were going out as cadet observers. I advised them among other things to try and get a tankerman endorsement, as it will open doors at petroleum companies.
The small bunkering tankers are gone outta NY. I retired the last one in 2015. The Chandra B is strictly for bunkering dimmer boats, ferries and whatever else they can sell. It’s not designed to service ships. Harbor Petroleum has a couple of tank ships doing lube oil, but I think it’s only 2 man crews on them.
There are only 3< 10,000 barrel barges left in the harbor for creek work and small jobs. That’s where you go if you need tankerman quick. You can do 10 loads and discharges on a 2 week hitxh.
As far as SUNY getting a tanker. It has been discussed before. However there exists a horrible relationship between the Marine Transportation department and the training ship. It’s almost like two different schools.
There really is no budget for any kind of floating assets. I have seen boats sink at the pier and rust away. The water barge they had was supposed to fill this role with mock seawater transfers but that never happened. So even if someone gave them a tanker, they couldnt manage it. I’ll just mention the SUNY Maritime (Ship) disaster as another example. To go into it would require another post.
I am presently master of a tug pushing a 10k tank barge, we would gladly accept motivated, non smoking individuals into our training program.
Use of that barge was only approved for two of the 10 required cargo transfers. The Coast Guard won’t approve simulation, including transfers of water, for any more than two of the cargo transfers. Unless they were transferring dangerous liquids as part of an actual cargo transfer that barge would not have been enough for cadets to graduate with PIC endorsements. They would still need to do what you did, get time as a cadet on a tanker or tank barge.
When an industry, and a federal Government, and six states, are spending hundreds of millions running seven academies, including a fleet of new, expensive, unnecessary “national security” training ships for the academies, but they cannot see the advantages of tankerman training for their students, or figure out how to provide it, something is very wrong.
Implementing STCW was a very expensive regulation, requiring new training, and new schools, it affected the entire industry and 50,000 mariners. It was also controversial. No wonder the regulations took a long time.
The Department of Homeland Security does not seem to have much of a problem fast tracking new immigration regulations of questionable legality (which they know will be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court).
One would think that the Department of Homeland Security should not have much trouble following a simple legislative directive from Congress to eliminate the radar renewal requirement either. Obviously, it’s just not a priority for the “deep state” bureaucrats who apparently can get away with ignoring a Congressional mandate.
I do not think that a proposal by one or more academies to issue a new regulation to authorize academy training programs for Tankerman-PIC would elicit a lot of opposition or controversy, or pose any great expense or administrative burden. Even if it took a few years for our ineffective government to accomplish such a simple thing, so what? They’d eventually get it done.
Without any regulation change, it would also be quite simple for an academy to build or buy one little harbor tanker inspected under Subchapter D. The little tanker could do actual small loads and discharges of heating oil between itself and an oil truck parked on the dock. Better yet, do the transfers between a small tug and tank barge, and the harbor tanker. That way the kids could get both tug and barge seatime, and their tanker seatime. Also, good shiphandling practice for the kids putting the tanker alongside the oil barge, or landing the barge alongside the tanker. More likely than not, a clever academy could partner with a small local oil company and put a harbor tanker to productive academic and economic use, and provide a good service to the community.
Many years ago, I fished out of a port where there was no fuel dock. There were a couple of small harbor tankers that came alongside and fueled us right at out berth. Back then many of the fishing boats were tied up at docks would not have supported a fuel truck. At that port, there are a lot less fishing boats now, and it’s done by trucks, or a visit to the fuel dock.
There are ports where I still see a few small harbor tankers in use.
Can’t speak in regards to any academy other than TMA, and maybe CMA, but I don’t think there’d be much community use in that in Galveston or Vallejo. Besides, if a cadet is really that interested in that, there’s always the possibility of doing it over Christmas Shipping… or is that still a thing at state academies?
Certainly, experience on an active commercial ship is always best, if you can get it. That’s why I think the academies should use cadet shipping and not bother with training ships and silly cruises to nowhere doing nothing.
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My tongue in cheek joke about giving academies a training ship had another meaning: school training only gets you so far. School is only the starting point. Real life experience matters.
Let’s say an academy got a tanker and the kiddies transferred oil back and forth five times under the watchful eye of their teachers. Would you say they would be fully qualified and experienced to get on a real tanker and load a few hundred thousand barrels of crude all by themselves?
Say the schools got a little tug and the kids pushed and pulled a barge around the bay. Would they be experienced enough to push a bunch of barges down the Mississippi?
Hell no. Absolutely not.
Anyone who wants to do something more than the basics should go out and learn. In real life.
Hey, academy kids:
Do you want to work on tugs but don’t want to learn as a deck hand? Go fuck off. Want to work on tankers but don’t want to learn as an AB? Fuck off again.
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I don’t know what your background is, but I think anyone that’s attended any of the academies in the last decade would agree there’s a real lack of hands on training. Small boat handling was limited to one freshman class and if you were lucky fast rescue class as a senior. Rigging and crane ops was limited to loading pallets of food into the forward holds of the training ship. There’s plenty of other areas where I was unprepared once I hit the real world. So before we worry about giving the nice cadets as many endorsements as possible, let’s make sure the basics are covered?
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What percentage of academy graduates are going to work on tankers? I don’t think you’ll get a very favorable cost/benefit analysis when only a small percentage of the trainees will use the training. I am also less than convinced that the academies want to add anything to their curricula, they were quite outspoken about “10 lbs in a 5 lb bag” when they had to meet STCW 2010, and before that, STCW95.
Note your toy tanker idea only gets them transfers. How do you plan to provide the equivalent of 90 days on a tank vessel? One hour of lab a week for a semester playing junior tankerman isn’t going to provide the same experience as working on a (real) tanker.
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Sorry to report this but none of the academies could be trusted to own/operate a training tanker of any size. It would be an auto-cluster****. The people running them, and the cadets training at them simply can’t be allowed to transfer actual pet in any volume that would come near actual experience. The schools can barely manage the training ships they have. Just forget about it
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