[QUOTE=Colston1285;170272]If I were on that ship and knew we’d be going near a storm like that I would have my suit unrolled and on my bunk ready to go in case I needed it.[/QUOTE]
I was on the Marine Princess shortly after the Marine Electric sinking. I kept my survival suit out of the bag hanging on a hook. Some days I thought about greasing the insides for easy donning. I’m amazed I never needed it.
A longtime friend and chief I worked for just missed getting a job on the Marine Electric at t he Baltimore MEBA hall before it sank. “Sometimes it’s shit lunch k we’re alive”. That chiefs brother sailed into a typhoon on the Denali and saw 80 foot waves heading at the ship from on the bridge, (he was chief on the Denali). He ran to his room and donned his survival suit. He told me they hit 4 80 foot waves then the seas calmed down. We only know these stories because these people lived to tell them.
Please review the Joaquin predicted path as published by the NHC.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2015/graphics/al11/loop_3W.shtml
A post a while back asked if the ship could be accessed in such deep water. I was involved in a deep water investigation in the same geographic area and we had no trouble getting the customers ROV to 15000 ft routinely, and finding what we needed to find. The SONAR was amazing picking up teacup sized objects at several hundred yards. So once a good side scan plot is complete and a transponder field laid, ROV access to the site and external parts of the ship is a cinch.
That all said, as a long ago grad of Camp Castine, we are deeply concerned about all the crew and their families and urge all posters here to be respectful and avoid uninformed speculation. My island is a small place with many many employed at sea for long time. Thxs
[QUOTE=The Commodore;170281]Don’t let him get you twisted up. Your statements do show a lack of knowledge of the industry, but maybe you will learn something here. Certain folks figure they have the only authority to post the negative while looking down their noses at the rest of us. Thanks for not questioning the integrity of the Master, unfortunately he is the one the public will want answers from. We continue to do the only thing many of us can, which is to pray for the sailors and their families.[/QUOTE]
I have been online since 1992, I do not get intimidated by anyone. Threats do not impress me, and show a lack of character. I explained to him that I am not questioning the Master of the ship but he failed to see that I guess. If he read what I said, it’s clear I was upset with the company who might have been pushing unrealistic schedules. Besides, the search is active for people alive in the water. It’s strange he is assuming they are all dead. Anyway, this is NOT about me, or him. This is about the crew of the El Faro, who put out to sea. It does not matter if you are on a 1000 foot container ship, or a 35 foot sailboat. ANYONE who puts out to sea is my brother and I deeply care about them by default c.captain, I implore you to keep the focus on the crew of the El Faro, and not myself. Please use private messages to contact me if you have issues. Thank you.
[QUOTE=MariaW;170337]Would you put it on (not just get it ready, put it on) just because you’re scared, if not directed to leave the ship? That seems like abandoning your fellow crew.[/QUOTE]
In this situation most of the crew is not essential to restoring propulsion and electrical power. I believe the captain would have put most of the crew on deck or in a position to quickly get out on deck. He new best of all how dangerous the situation was. He would not let his crew simply lounge in their state rooms and wonder why the direct tv was down. They would be standing by waiting for the word to abandon ship while the engine department worked to restore power.
I have sailed through tropical depressions on tug boats. I have sailed through a hurricane on a container vessel. I have been through 40 seas off Washington state on an ITB and suffered a crack in the port pontoon taking green water into the engine room.
That being said, if they had not lost propulsion and steering they would have been in port a couple days late with some good sea stories. This is a stout boat and an experienced Captain.
Should they have had better life boats? I think so. Should they have stayed in port or diverted? From my lowly (engine room) opinion, the captain made the correct call with the information he had.
Lets please stop all of this bickering and focus on supporting the families of this tragedy.
I’m a newb, and apparently not at all as qualified as the rest of you salty sailors out there, but I do have a question.
Why was El Faro so old and still in service? The average age of the world’s container ship fleet is 11 years, and it was what, 40 years old? I don’t care how well you maintain a ship, shit breaks when it’s that old.
[QUOTE=texasshipagent;170235]this one not bad article, think it underscores the sentiment in this thread
Max again? That guy is a phony and never sailed as Master on a real ship. . . . now we will see so many unqualified consultants crawl from under every rock. Kind of like all of the posters in this thread that just joined. . . . sigh. . . let’s just give some thought to those onboard and their families. . . .
[QUOTE=cgsailor;170377]I’m a newb, and apparently not at all as qualified as the rest of you salty sailors out there, but I do have a question.
Why was El Faro so old and still in service? The average age of the world’s container ship fleet is 11 years, and it was what, 40 years old? I don’t care how well you maintain a ship, shit breaks when it’s that old.[/QUOTE]
Actually, just found out that the average age of Jones Act ships (excluding tankers and bulkers) is 20 years.
World stats here: http://unctad.org/en/PublicationChapters/rmt2014ch2_en.pdf
US stats here: http://www.marad.dot.gov/resources/data-statistics/
[QUOTE=catherder;170300]If it was the Capella in 2008, thanks for getting my motorcycle (and my ship) to Boston in one piece.[/QUOTE]
No, it was the ALTAIR. Towed it from Philly to New Orleans in the winter of 83 for conversion.
[QUOTE=Phil O’Connell;170358]I was on the Marine Princess shortly after the Marine Electric sinking. I kept my survival suit out of the bag hanging on a hook. Some days I thought about greasing the insides for easy donning. I’m amazed I never needed it.[/QUOTE]
I can imagine many people sailing for TAL would feel the same way. …
I’d be very curious to see what their weather reports said, if they sent them. You could build a time line and maybe see what conditions were like when they lost the plant. I’m sure TOTE knows when the plant failed.
Some google-fu with “Jones Act” will have you reading for days about this. The Jones Act has the laudable goals of preserving American jobs, both on ships and in the shipyards. Keeping old ships in service is one of the unintended consequences.
[QUOTE=cgsailor;170377]I’m a newb, and apparently not at all as qualified as the rest of you salty sailors out there, but I do have a question.
Why was El Faro so old and still in service? The average age of the world’s container ship fleet is 11 years, and it was what, 40 years old? I don’t care how well you maintain a ship, shit breaks when it’s that old.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=+A465B;170365]A post a while back asked if the ship could be accessed in such deep water. I was involved in a deep water investigation in the same geographic area and we had no trouble getting the customers ROV to 15000 ft routinely, and finding what we needed to find. The SONAR was amazing picking up teacup sized objects at several hundred yards. So once a good side scan plot is complete and a transponder field laid, ROV access to the site and external parts of the ship is a cinch.
That all said, as a long ago grad of Camp Castine, we are deeply concerned about all the crew and their families and urge all posters here to be respectful and avoid uninformed speculation. My island is a small place with many many employed at sea for long time. Thxs[/QUOTE]
I was involved in an offshore incident some years ago and we were able to use ROVs to retrieve an object on the sea floor in 8,500 feet of water. The object was only 4’ x 2’. . .
As far as hurricanes and their predictability, I am speaking more to the newcomers to this site, because those of us who have spent time at sea in the Gulf and western Atlantic know just how squirrelly they can be. In 85, I was Chief onboard the ATB SEA SKIMMER PLAQUEMINE and we left out of Tampa Bay, in ballast headed back to Texas (can’t recall the port any more)in late August. At that time, a disturbance that ultimately became Hurricane ELENA popped up down by the Keys. We diverted north and anchored in St. Joseph’s Bay to allow the storm to pass. Well, other than the semi protected and relatively shallow waters, it ended up being one of the worst places to hide. That storm swung north and hammered us for a couple of days as it kept changing direction between Apalachicola and Pensacola (St. Joseph’s Bay is between the two). Our anchor didn’t hold that well, but good boat handling by the Old Man kept us off the bottom. . .
As far as SOLAS requirements for the EL FARO, the ABS Record link provided by a previous poster shows that the SOLAS Safety Construction and Safety Equipment Certificates were up to date. . . (as well as MARPOL and ILLC, too).
[QUOTE=KrustySalt;170382]I can imagine many people sailing for TAL would feel the same way. …[/QUOTE]
I am sure they do. This is a tragic event. Those of us that have spent years on ships know that we are at the end of the day less than an inch of steel away from disaster and we know if the weather is really bad all the drills, life boats, life jackets and survival suits in the world won’t save us. But we go do our jobs, all of us for individual reasons. In my much younger years I have sailed on some real rust buckets because I thought I needed to but in reality I guess I just wanted to go have another adventure and be with people I understood which understood me. My late mother was really upset when she dropped me off at one particularly nasty example of ship and asked me why I was doing this. I told her that things would probably be OK and they need people that know what they are doing to make it on one of these pieces of crap, more so than some new shiny thing I wasn’t good enough to be on then. At any rate even if something happened causing me to never come back I will be doing something that I enjoyed and needed doing. Many people can’t say that in their vocation. I would probably want to be buried at sea anyway so if I don’t come back look at it as cutting out the middleman.
I am sure some of the crew on the Faro feel the same. There but by the grace of God go we all.
[QUOTE=MariaW;170334]From the Miami Herald: “Stephenson said the fact that the remains of a crew member were found in a survival suit also tells a story. “They knew the ship was going down.””
So no sudden catastrophic failure.[/QUOTE]
not at all…just because a person was able to don a suit does not mean that the ship did not roll over suddenly. That fact there was no distress tells me she went over very quickly
[QUOTE=bhgbay;170362]Please review the Joaquin predicted path as published by the NHC.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2015/graphics/al11/loop_3W.shtml[/QUOTE]
That track strikes me as highly unusual (perhaps unique) behavior for a hurricane. No one could have predicted that track.
[QUOTE=texasshipagent;170347]Ok man, I will take that on the surface and retract my comments if he was on the galaxy then can take it he’s just been out of service for a while, although I just read the wiki page on that ship and could come across pretty easy as an expert, but heck maybe he wrote the wiki page, but if consensus is he’s legit I am sorry
Hey man, lots of bullshit on the water people like to reinvent themselves can think Joseph Conrad for that ideology[/QUOTE]
you had better be sorry and better still try to use a bit of circumspection before shooting off your effing pie hole.
btw, Joseph Conrad was a mariner under sail before becoming one of the English language’s greatest authors. If my writing skill can make it to even 1/10th of his then I would be truly humbled and proud. I have venerated his words for more than 30 years and hold him as a pinnacle of the craft.
Has it occurred to anybody that they left port heading into a, at that time, tropical storm on only one boiler? Because it sounds like they were retubing at sea. I was on the Matsonia two years ago when one of the circuit boards for the boiler automation wiggled loose. That dropped the boiler off line PDQ, but that’s small potatoes…if you have a back-up.
You can’t come into port unattended with only one boiler, but I guess the USCG granted the necessary waiver to leave port in such a dangerous condition.
They quote Max Blowhard from a 2012 article. It reads like he was paraphrasing a textbook.
These masters of self-promotion and fiction writing that manage to turn themselves into false celebrity “maritime experts” are just another hazard of going to sea that we have to deal with.
[QUOTE=QuabbinHiker;170367]I do not get intimidated by anyone. Threats do not impress me, and show a lack of character.I explained to him that I am not questioning the Master of the ship but he failed to see that I guess. [/QUOTE]
FUCK YOU! I don’t give a FUCKING RAT’S ASS what impresses you or not! And as far as your “not questioning” the master of the EL FARO you say? BULLSHIT SIR! I demand that you retract this statement of yours you made yesterday.
[QUOTE=QuabbinHiker;170188]Finally had to make this account for this El Faro disaster. Here are my thoughts.
[b]Who the hell made the decision to sail directly into or near this hurricane?..I can’t imagine the Master would sail into this storm unless he/she was pressured to do so heavily with unrealistic schedules. Sadly,another thought is arrogance on the part of the Master. It has happened before where experience makes people take risks because they think they can get away with it. [/B][/QUOTE]
I will not allow some sailboat fair weather amateur make such aspersions against one of my fellow professional mariners. You have no basis at all to make such claims as yours and you are OUT OF LINE!
again, I call on you to CEASE AND DESIST!
[QUOTE=tugsailor;170392]That track strikes me as highly unusual (perhaps unique) behavior for a hurricane. No one could have predicted that track.[/QUOTE]
this is where there might have been a gaspingly huge error of judgement…when there is poor predictability then a far greater margin of safety needs to be applied. One should never steer any course which MIGHT place a ship within 200miles of a hurricane’s eye.