[QUOTE=Esp1;170050]Why would they sail into dumb shit like that. During my 5 yr tenure sailing for oil companies, it was the great captains and there great decisions that is 50% the reason I’m still alive today besides own personal skill set. Never jeopardizing the crew and if we’re caught in something that gets drastic we turn around. None of this shit is worth our lives. My heart is heavy tonight and my prayers are going up in hopes of blessings coming down for the families involved. All that macho rahrah lets take on a storm shit is bullshit. Delivering the product in one piece and making money for the company and family SAFELY, is the objective.[/QUOTE]
Have you looked at the reports and the details of the route? We don’t know the decisions made by the Captain and certainly can’t say they were of the nature you describe. I would be careful of making assertions so quickly.
This is the time for us to stick together and hope for the rescue of survivors. Not the time for second guessing.
[QUOTE=z-drive;170007]Why promote this like you are, you keep insisting on a certain outcome like its the 3rd quarter and a team’s losing so fuck it, you’re going to leave early and beat the traffic. sometimes there’s a 4th quarter comeback, you ought to be rooting for your team until the final whistle.
we’re mostly professional mariners with serious sea-time and know the circumstances, but keep the faith.[/QUOTE]
you know me sir, you know my manner and how I think, you know that I do not equivocate my words but you should also know that I do not believe in Unicorns or Fairies or Pots of Gold at the Rainbow’s End. I have become hardened after all these years and with that armored shell I simply cannot play along when literally, deep in my gut, I believe the ship to be lost. Each day here I have stated that nothing will make me happier than to be wrong with the call I have made but I know you will agree that there are times that we know something innately and viscerally deep inside…such a gut feeling is hard to not go with. Maybe it is because I have only very narrowly missed being in the shoes of the master of the EL FARO that I have had a great sense of what I believe transpired last Thursday morning and I can vividly imagine the sequence of events that took place which I am not going to try to describe here. They are quite horrific to contemplate.
Know that throughout these past days, I have not called out anyone nor tried to pass judgement other than my very early comment at my surprise of the ship’s track in relation to Joachim but no words of blame from me in anyway towards the people who sailed that ship on her fated voyage. I sadly must add that I do not believe there will be any survivors found either and for that I feel profound sorrow for their fates and for their families.
[QUOTE=greatlakesmaster;170053]Ive been on 10 different unlimited tonnage ocean going vessels with 6 different major US companies and have never seen one that didn’t have an excess of Immersion suits on board. This would be the first.[/QUOTE]
immersion suits are not required when trading below 35 degrees latitude…doesn’t mean they weren’t carried but just not required to be. Also, any immersion suit is not any guarantee that one will survive. I cannot imagine being afloat in one in 50’ seas and 100kt winds. You still must be able to breath air with your head above the water but with seas breaking on top of you and the spray, I can easily see drowning even when not submerged.
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[QUOTE=c.captain;170057]you know me sir, you know my manner and how I think, you know that I do not equivocate my words but you should also know that I do not believe in Unicorns or Fairies or Pots of Gold at the Rainbow’s End. I have become hardened after all these years and with that armored shell I simply cannot play along when literally, deep in my gut, I know the ship to be lost. Each day here I have stated that nothing will make me happier than to be wrong with the call I have made but I know you will agree that there are times that we know something innately and viscerally deep inside. Maybe it is because [B]I have only very narrowly missed being in the shoes of the master of the EL FARO[/B] that I have had a great sense of what I believe transpired last Thursday morning and I can vividly imagine the sequence of events that took place which I am not going to try to describe here. They are quite horrific to contemplate.
Know that throughout these past days, I have not called out anyone nor tried to pass judgement other than my very early comment at my surprise of the ship’s track in relation to Joachim but no words of blame from me in anyway towards the people who sailed that ship on her fated voyage. I sadly must add that I do not believe there will be any survivors found either and for that I feel profound sorrow for their fates and for their families.
immersion suits are not required when trading below 35 degrees latitude.[/QUOTE]
Scooter, I don’t think anybody here cares about your opinion on this tragedy and stop trying to glorify yourself.
I’ve been in your situation as a too young master in cold waters in the winter, on a shit box boat that’s almost gone down. I know the deal. Maybe on Tuesday or Wednesday I’ll agree but in the meantime I’m hoping they’re floating in the debris field.
I’ve been in some bad situations on the water and experienced death a few times for a youngster, if like to hope this isn’t the case at least for a few more days.
[QUOTE=AHTS Master;170058]Scooter, I don’t think anybody here cares about your opinion on this tragedy and stop trying to glorify yourself.[/QUOTE]
poor child, why are you having a tantrum?..do you need soothing? if so call 1-800-HUSHBABY
[QUOTE=z-drive;170059]I’ve been in your situation as a too young master in cold waters in the winter, on a shit box boat that’s almost gone down. I know the deal. Maybe on Tuesday or Wednesday I’ll agree but in the meantime I’m hoping they’re floating in the debris field.
I’ve been in some bad situations on the water and experienced death a few times for a youngster, if like to hope this isn’t the case at least for a few more days.[/QUOTE]
as is your right but I can’t hold you hand while you wait…sorry
[QUOTE=Lone_Star;170054]Have you looked at the reports and the details of the route? We don’t know the decisions made by the Captain and certainly can’t say they where of the nature you describe. I would be careful of making assertions so quickly.[/QUOTE]
Dude, with the bare minimum of info, Uncommon sense tells me that’s what happened. They left port with a fucking storm in front of them. END OF STORY. No need to play this PC shit.
So much bickering, so many taking comments so personal…Grow Up!!! And to WVD, I have a great psychiatrist that can help with that need for recognition, that is more meaningful to you than 33 lives.
I will not try to guess what the Capt. was thinking. But, having lived most of my life in PR, and having sailed most of the Caribbean, I can tell you that in the past years weather patterns have changed dramatically and what seems like a low pressure system can become a Tropical Storm or Hurricane in a heartbeat. And, a Hurricane can downgrade to a low press system also really quick and before expected. The reality is that Joaquin is a very non-typical storm that none of the experts at Miami Hurricane Center predicted it’s path or intensity, it had everyone guessing. Weather radars, sat pictures, and other electronics are only as good as those humans who interpret the information obtained. Interpretation of data for Joaquin was very difficult for the experts, I’m sure that almost impossible for other marine pros.
[QUOTE=Esp1;170050]Why would they sail into dumb shit like that. During my 5 yr tenure sailing for oil companies, it was the great captains and there great decisions that is 50% the reason I’m still alive today besides own personal skill set. Never jeopardizing the crew and if we’re caught in something that gets drastic we turn around. None of this shit is worth our lives. My heart is heavy tonight and my prayers are going up in hopes of blessings coming down for the families involved. All that macho rahrah lets take on a storm shit is bullshit. Delivering the product in one piece and making money for the company and family SAFELY, is the objective.[/QUOTE]
I think this is going out too far too early with too little to support yourself. It may have simply been a decision to take a route very likely supported by the storm track information available at the time of sailing but quite possibly it was when it was realized that circumstances had changed negatively and the decision made to come about and make distance away from the circulation that everything cascaded into the tragedy which ultimately unfolded. Quite possibly the plant was lost when trying to come head to seas. Maybe that is when the flooding and the list occurred as well. Maybe not prudent to get drawn so close to the eye but there is no reason to believe we are witnessing the BOUNTY debacle all over again. Flawed judgement perhaps but not false bravado.
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[QUOTE=dbperry;170024]. It doesn’t appear that they went 'straight into the path of the storm."
Dave[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately that’s exactly what they did.
I believe that they departed at about midnight on Tuesday 29th, at which time they would have read the 11pm NOAA Advisory #9 for what was then Tropical Storm Joaquin.
It is unambiguous:
"WIND: Tropical storm conditions could reach portions of the CentralBahamas by Wednesday night, with hurricane conditions possible by late Wednesday night or early Thursday."
In that same advisory there is a Hurricane Watch for the central Bahamas.
If you sail in the knowledge that you could be sailing into hurricane conditions on a lee shore, then I would expect you would be monitoring the movement of the storm to see if it continues it WSW or SW track, or does turn and begin to head north as the models were incorrectly suggesting.
If you were getting updates en route you would have seen that the storm was NOT altering its course and was in addition intensifying.
At that time you would have had to consider plan B.
As the course of the ship shows they did not alter from the initial course of SW until they were already in the heart of it, it suggests it was a calculated decision to go for it, and sail through the storm.
I can’t really see any other way of interpreting it.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2015/al11/al112015.public.009.shtml?
I am asking the forum administrators to please block the posters who are making personal attacks and bickering. let’s please keep this professional and on point as it relates to the loss of the EL FARO. There is probably quite a few people who are reading this forum who normally would not be reading this type of forum.they are seeking professional knowledge,not petty bickering
FFS! Can’t you stop your bullshit for at least a few more days? Most of us here have had the same gnawing feeling you have for days now. Let’s just wait and see for once. You’ll have your chance to beat this to death soon enough.
[QUOTE=Reginald Strainworth III;170034]For the poster who asked what is normally carried in the shipping containers on deck:
TOTE verified 391 containers were on board, but did not distinguish between 20-foot, 40-foot or 45-foot containers (standard ISO sizes). Capacity is 600 FEU (forty-foot equivalent units).
As to what’s in the cargo, it would be what you find in your grocery and department stores, basically foodstuffs, clothing, appliances. Both dry and refrigerated. Also everything else that involved in daily life in Puerto Rico. Auto parts, construction materials, chemicals, agricultural items (fertilizer, feed), and personal household goods (for people moving to PR). Also, pure containers-worth of rice, beans, and beverages.
I believe this vessel carried all containers above deck, and trailers and vehicles below deck, with loading through a dock ramp.[/QUOTE]
Thanks, i was wondering about what types of cargo they could have been hauling in the containers for a couple of reasons, such as… maybe there were heavy weight loads higher up on the upper deck level, that could have raised the metacentric COG to the point that it could have possibly made the ship rather unstable, or top heavy for such foul weather conditions. Also i am curious as to what manufactured goods are actually still being exported from the USA to PR, that they could not get shipped directly, and lower cost items from other direct sources, as most of the USA’s heavy manufacturing industries are now sadly all gone for the most part.
I am sure that the containers must be well secured to the deck in some fashion, but is it possible that during such heavy weather that something could have let go, and the containers on the top deck could have shifted catastrophically ?.
I guess i am just like everyone else that is just trying to piece together some ideas or possibilities of what might have happened.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;170067]FFS! Can’t you stop your bullshit for at least a few more days? Most of us here have had the same gnawing feeling you have for days now. Let’s just wait and see for once. You’ll have your chance to beat this to death soon enough. [/QUOTE]
But reality is not bullshit sir and there seem to be many here who have great difficulty facing it, but fine, have it your way. Time alone will tell how this terrible situation concludes but as far as I am concerned, it ended Thursday morning sometime shortly after 7:20am.
I do promise that when the final curtain rings down, if it is as I prophesize there will be no exalting from me. I am just as heartbroken over this as everyone else here…these men were my brothers too and I feel a profound loss tonight. Collectively, we have not been faced with digesting a tragedy like this since 1983 and it is difficult to swallow now. I just know that taking palliatives and bromides may make one feel better in the tummy for a time but one can’t take them forever. I just know how sick mine has been feeling for three full days now and it only feels worse each day.
In deep solemn sadness
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[QUOTE=c.captain;170070]reality is not bullshit and there seem to be many here who have great difficulty facing it but fine, have it your way. Time alone will tell how this terrible situation concludes but as far as I am concerned, it ended Thursday morning sometime shortly after 7:20am.
I do promise that when the final curtain comes down, if it is as I prophesize there will be exalting from me. I am just as sad and heartbroken over this as everyone else here…these men were my brothers too and I feel a profound loss tonight. Collectively, we have not been faced with digesting a tragedy like this since 1983 and it is difficult to swallow now. I just know that taking palliatives and bromides may make one feel better in the tummy for a time but one can’t take them forever.[/QUOTE]
Are you talking about the Golden Dolphin tanker
No, he refers to the Marine Electric.
[QUOTE=Dawn patrol;170066]I am asking the forum administrators to please block the posters who are making personal attacks and bickering. let’s please keep this professional and on point as it relates to the loss of the EL FARO. There is probably quite a few people who are reading this forum who normally would not be reading this type of forum.they are seeking professional knowledge,not petty bickering[/QUOTE]
I’m late to the thread and didn’t read it all, but I will say that there is nastiness going on in other forums, too. There’s a facebook page for mariners that I just left because some sonofabitch made a nasty comment to me about something that other engineers in my company did and I’ll tell you, had he said it to me personally he would have been removing bar stool from his teeth. I won’t put up with it. It was in a discussion about EL FARO. No place for that crap.
I’m getting underway tomorrow and our internet here is shitty so I probably won’t be around much the next two weeks.
Anyway, I’m with you, there is no room for obnoxious behavior especially at time like this when we should be unified.
Did anyone else see the 8pm story fox news did on the EL FARO? I feel they did a decent story on the possible situation that they could have been in.
yes, the 1980’s was not a good decade for the US flag
October 1980: the bulk carrier POET vanished in the Atlantic after departing the Delaware Capes for Egypt. All 34 aboard lost
March 1982: the tanker GOLDEN DOLPHIN explodes in the Atlantic and sinks. 9 of her 25man crew perished
February 1983: the bulk carrier MARINER ELECTRIC founders off the Delaware Capes. 31 men lost with only 3 survivors.
October 1984: the chemical tanker PUERTO RICAN explodes off the Golden Gate and breaks in two. only 2 fatalities
March 1989: the EXXON VALDEZ grounds on Bligh Reed in Prince William Sound. No souls lost but an industry forever changed.
I remember each and every one of them.
here is an oral history of the sinking of the MARINE ELECTRIC
Sep 8, 2014
by Johnathan Thayer, Archivist
based on an oral history interview conducted by Jennifer Frèmont
Last year, shortly after the Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) put out a call for participants in the American Merchant Marine Veterans Oral History Project, I received a phone message from Eugene Kelly, an alumnus of Massachusetts Maritime Academy living in Abington, MA. Gene told me he had a story he thought we might be interested in. Back in 1983, his ship, the SS Marine Electric, carrying coal from Norfolk, VA, encountered a massive storm off the coast of Virginia and sank. Gene, sailing as third mate, was one of just three survivors. Thirty-one of his shipmates died.
The tragedy of the SS Marine Electric prompted a thorough investigation that led to widespread industry reforms regarding safety at sea. More immediately, it left dozens of family members and friends to mourn for loved ones lost at sea. Gene recalls his own family’s reaction upon hearing news that he had survived:
The report on the news was that there were no survivors. So my family was notified that I had died. At ten o’clock in the morning … my first opportunity to pick up the phone, I called my ex-wife, and it was like a voice from the grave.
The trouble started soon after the Marine Electric left harbor in Norfolk on February 9 in the midst of a moderate storm. Overnight the storm worsened significantly and intensified into the next day. After responding to a distress broadcast from a sinking fishing vessel, the Marine Electric found itself rolling in 40*foot seas. Not long after midnight, the captain summoned Gene and all other officers to the bridge to inform them that waves had begun to break over the bow of the ship and across the deck. With the ship’s pumps failing, the Captain put in a call for help to the Coast Guard.
By the time the conversation ended with the Coast Guard—only a matter of minutes describing what we’re doing, where we are, who we are—the situation worsened to the point where the ocean was now coming all the way back to the house … so the front 500 or so feet of the ship was invisible—completely under water. And the condition of the ship just lent itself to a catastrophe at that point.
Soon thereafter, the Captain gave orders to abandon ship. Gene prepared his own life vest and gathered charts from his room before collecting life rings on the deck and tripping the distress beacon. With the ship listing heavily to starboard, Gene and his shipmates were unable to lower the lifeboats before the ship capsized. Left with no other options, the crew began to jump.
Gene found himself in the icy water looking up at the ship’s smokestack as it nearly fell on top of him. Miraculously, Gene survived, enduring several hours in the water clinging to a life ring while battling frostbite and the onset of hypothermia. By the time a Coast Guard helicopter arrived to rescue Gene and the other two survivors, he had lost eleven pounds, ingested gallons of oil, and witnessed the deaths of several of his shipmates as they succumbed to hypothermia.
The tragedy of the Marine Electric did not keep Gene from going back to sea. After an 18month leave, Gene worked on the SS Energy Independence and later went on to teach occupational health and safety. He was invited to speak before Congress, giving testimony before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries that led to sweeping industry reforms, including the adoption of survival suits and the decommissioning of WWII-era T2 tankers. Gene was also invited to a demonstration on board a Coast Guard cutter of the Coast Guard Helicopter Rescue Swimmer Program, which formed in direct response to the Marine Electric’s sinking. Gene gave speeches at Coast Guard events on the lessons learned from his experiences on the Marine Electric.
Gene continues to tell his story, delivering speeches at Coast Guard events and participating in SCI’s AMMV Oral History Project in hopes that it will continue to change things for the better:
A lot of things happened as a result—a lot of good things. A lot of good guys died that night. Like I say, if my being part of this [the AMMV Oral History Project] is going to bring some closure to it, all well and good.
[QUOTE=lobsterman;170013]but i can’t help but to think that … wouldn’t some speculation upon the possible events, risks, reasons, causes, and resulting effects, possibly help to piece together some possible scenarios of what may, or could have happened ?. [/QUOTE]
this will come in time and there will be many theories and scenarios put forth
I just do not believe we are in any way ready to start a post mortem examination of this painful loss