Oil Up? What's that?

He was kind enough to name it, made looking it up pretty easy

I would just like to point out that this guy is the marine operations advisor to the Blueseed project.

From their website:

International entrepreneurs in international waters

Blueseed will station a ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters. The location will allow startup entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to start or grow their company near Silicon Valley, without the need for a U.S. work visa. The ship will be converted into a coworking and co-living space, and will have high-speed Internet access and daily transportation to the mainland via ferry boat. So far, over 1300 entrepreneurs from 67 countries expressed interest in living on the ship.

Hurray! Another way to screw Americans out of work in our own back yard!

Some of their vessel concepts:

This Hardberger guy is the only real maritime experience they have working on the project, and from the looks of things that’s not saying much. The Blueseed project website directs readers to his Wikipedia page for more information about him, because as we well know, Wikipedia has never been used for self-aggrandizing purposes.

To think, I thought “Oil Up” was some kind of kinky sex game ~
Oh silly me ~

[QUOTE=Sweat-n-Grease;109453]To think, I thought “Oil Up” was some kind of kinky sex game ~
Oh silly me ~[/QUOTE]

Well, yeah, there is that, too. . .

[QUOTE=PaddyWest2012;109429]I would just like to point out that this guy is the marine operations advisor to the Blueseed project.

From their website:

Hurray! Another way to screw Americans out of work in our own back yard!

Some of their vessel concepts:

This Hardberger guy is the only real maritime experience they have working on the project, and from the looks of things that’s not saying much. The Blueseed project website directs readers to his Wikipedia page for more information about him, because as we well know, Wikipedia has never been used for self-aggrandizing purposes.[/QUOTE]

One word: Blockade.

Max is a friend and helped me with as issue I was having when I wrote my book. He has also been a long time supporter of gCaptain.

But, to answer your question, yes Max is the real deal.

As for the boat size I can tell you that 25 years ago publishers had an army of fact checkers who verified every fact mentioned in a book… today authors are lucky if the publisher does anything more than have a 22 year old copyboy run the manuscript through the spellchecker.

The problem is that when you write it’s important to maintain flow, meaning, once you get going, you don’t stop putting words on paper until you loose steam. Then, after it’s written, you go back and check all the facts. The problem is it’s often hard to find your own errors… especially when your novel, like Max’s, contains more than 50,000 words.

So an error in boat size is understandable.

You also have to realize there are three basic types of books:
Fiction: A made up story
Memoir: A story based on your memory of past events
Non-fiction: A story that has been researched

People often assume that Non-fiction is the hardest because of the intense amount of research involved but that’s not so. Fiction is just as hard because you still need to get your facts straight… no one can write a book (at least not one that will convince any professional mariner) about ships if he doesn’t know anything about them… so, for example, Tom Clancy had an incredible amount of “stuff” he needed to learn before he even started to write about life on a submarine.

Even more difficult than fiction, is a memoir (like Max’s). These are the hardest to write because you have still have to get the facts straight but very little can be researched, you only have your memory to rely on … and human memory is notoriously untrustworthy.

In response to this I understand why you are leery but… you should know… that the publishing company spends hundereds of thousands of dollards printing/distributing a book so, in order to sell those copies, they always try to make the author out to be a superhero in the jacket copy, in interviews with media and in press releases. Max is a competent captain with real experience but he’s not a “super captain” who can grab the helm of any ship. No Max would be the first to tell you that he’d be totally lost behind the screen of a modern DP console.

These are just some of the “tricks” of the book trade but I gotta tell you it’s a constant battle. With my book I put my foot down and refused to allow the editors to “embellish” anything I wrote… But I couldn’t stop them from embellishing my résumé on the inside cover which reads “John Konrad, veteran oil rig captain”… which is BS considering, when I wrote the book, I only had my unlimited master’s license for a few years and had only “commanded” one drillship… which was in shipyard at the time :eek:

The problem I faced was a couple guys I had worked with over the years read the word “veteran” on the inside cover, got angry, then started telling people the book was BS and that I’m a hack without having read one page of the book. Is the book perfect? No, like every book it has minor errors (e.g. I wrote that Capt. Kutcha was a Maine Maritime Alumni…he went to Mass) but no one has yet found a major one (if you did find one, let me know and I’ll post a correction).

The bottom line is that Max’s book isn’t 100% accurate and he’s not the “super captain” that articles (fed by his publisher’s PR machine) about him will lead you to believe… but he does have more experience sailing as a captain than most (not all!) on this forum (including myself).

That said… Don’t take my word for it, readone of Max’s books and find out for yourself :wink:

[QUOTE=PaddyWest2012;109429]I would just like to point out that this guy is the marine operations advisor to the Blueseed project.

From their website:

Hurray! Another way to screw Americans out of work in our own back yard!

Some of their vessel concepts:

This Hardberger guy is the only real maritime experience they have working on the project, and from the looks of things that’s not saying much. The Blueseed project website directs readers to his Wikipedia page for more information about him, because as we well know, Wikipedia has never been used for self-aggrandizing purposes.[/QUOTE]

The word on the street in silicon valley is that these idiots are throwing stupid amounts of money at this project and as a “maritime advisory” Max probably only has to do any work when they start building the thing (which will never happen!) . I can’t blame him for accepting a check in the meantime.

Hell maybe I’ll give Max a call and see if they need any more Advisors :wink:

[QUOTE=john;109563]Max is a friend and helped me with as issue I was having when I wrote my book. He has also been a long time supporter of gCaptain.

But, to answer your question, yes Max is the real deal.

As for the boat size I can tell you that 25 years ago publishers had an army of fact checkers who verified every fact mentioned in a book… today authors are lucky if the publisher does anything more than have a 22 year old copyboy run the manuscript through the spellchecker.

The problem is that when you write it’s important to maintain flow, meaning, once you get going, you don’t stop putting words on paper until you loose steam. Then, after it’s written, you go back and check all the facts. The problem is it’s often hard to find your own errors… especially when your novel, like Max’s, contains more than 50,000 words.

So an error in boat size is understandable.

You also have to realize there are three basic types of books:
Fiction: A made up story
Memoir: A story based on your memory of past events
Non-fiction: A story that has been researched

People often assume that Non-fiction is the hardest because of the intense amount of research involved but that’s not so. Fiction is just as hard because you still need to get your facts straight… no one can write a book (at least not one that will convince any professional mariner) about ships if he doesn’t know anything about them… so, for example, Tom Clancy had an incredible amount of “stuff” he needed to learn before he even started to write about life on a submarine.

Even more difficult than fiction, is a memoir (like Max’s). These are the hardest to write because you have still have to get the facts straight but very little can be researched, you only have your memory to rely on … and human memory is notoriously untrustworthy.

In response to this I understand why you are leery but… you should know… that the publishing company spends hundereds of thousands of dollards printing/distributing a book so, in order to sell those copies, they always tries to make the author out to be a superhero in the jacket copy, in interviews with media and in press releases. Max is a competent captain with real experience but he’s not a “super captain” who can grab the helm of any ship. No Max would be the first to tell you that he’d be totally lost behind the screen of a modern DP console.

These are just some of the “tricks” of the book trade but I gotta tell you it’s a constant battle. With my book I put my foot down and refused to allow the editors to “embellish” anything I wrote… But I couldn’t stop them from embellishing my résumé on the inside cover which reads “John Konrad, veteran oil rig captain”… which is BS considering, when I wrote the book, I only had my unlimited master’s license for a few years and had only “commanded” one drillship… which was in shipyard at the time :eek:

The problem I faced was a couple guys I had worked with over the years read the word “veteran” on the inside cover, got angry, then started telling people the book was BS and that I’m a hack without having read one page of the book. Is the book perfect? No, like every book it has minor errors (e.g. I wrote that Capt. Kutcha was a Maine Maritime Alumni…he went to Mass) but no one has yet found a major one (if you did find one, let me know and I’ll post a correction).

The bottom line is that Max’s book isn’t 100% accurate and he’s not the “super captain” that articles (fed by his publisher’s PR machine) about him will lead you to believe… but he does have more experience sailing as a captain than most (not all!) on this forum (including myself).

That said… Don’t take my word for it, readone of Max’s books and find out for yourself ;)[/QUOTE]

Max was known down in the Caribbean years ago running supply boats turned bicycle and mattress freighters into some of the worst shit holes on the planet. He is a master BS artist [can get his way out of most any pickle], knows how to turn a dollar and can run a boat made out of yellow hand, concrete and prayers. Knows the value of good rum also. Guys like Max used to be common but not so any more. The ones that remain don’t speak much English but many of them remember that pirate.

The only fork that uses oil is one that has oil damping. If this is not done the fork can fail.

Forks generally have a retardant with “hydrolocking” or “stiction” wherever it grabs or operates unpredictably. usually|this can be} often the results of the sliders (the smaller “tubes” of the fork) have an excessive amount of friction against the seals.

Some folks build the error of spraying the items with WD40 or victimisation gasoline to loosen them up however this simply causes the seals to fail and consequently causes the fork to prevent engaging at all.

If you have got a retardant with stiction, you’ll use one among a pair of lubes round the seals IF you do not need to construct the fork directly. One is TriFlow and therefore the alternative is DRY chain fill up. Use either one meagrely and build fully positive the sliders and seals ar clean before application.