[QUOTE=Tugboater203;100598]A big issue I have is having my boat get remeasured and suddenly all the ATBs are over 1600. They would need to find a way to keep the guys who have been running them for years in the wheelhouse. I’m pretty much locked in right now. My boat is under 200t so I can’t use the time to upgrade. I’m worried about my job getting taken away and given to guys with no practical experience but possessing a large UL license that I’m prevented from getting. Then if they do keep us on after we the boat is remeasured now none of our recency trips will count. We’ll need to take pilotage tests for every port or pilotage waters that our boat transits. That is a massive load that would be nearly impossible to achieve in a timely manner.[/QUOTE]
Regulators lean heavily towards the companies. I can’t see anyone creating major problems.
I don’t think there is any question that the people running the ATB today are qualified to do it. If you are running an ATB now aren’t you also qualified to run a ship the same tonnage? I can’t see why not.
If the regs did change people working now should get grandfathered in. For example the pilotage, seems like if your running in now you should get credit.
I actually have my 3m Oceans (yes way back when I was an academy guy). There weren’t any US shipping jobs when I got out of school and I was more interested in actually driving the boat. I would need more stuff to get my STCW up to specs for deep sea but I could do it. I have carefully documented every single trip I have made in pilotage waters so when we get audited I can prove my recency. I would say I have a great bit of local knowledge for the areas I work, but I haven’t memorized every detail and done the chart reproduction that is currently required. It would take changing or ignoring a lot of current regs to make it work like that. More likely is it would be used as a lever to say there aren’t enough qualified people and take a stabbed a the Jones Act with it.
My somewhat uninformed opinion about this is that the Coast Guard made an error when the ruled that the first ITB was a tug. The C.G. should now undo that error.
The regulators should, as policy, encourage the replacement of older ATB with newer coast wise U.S.built vessels for the same trade.The mariners currently working that trade should be allowed to continue working it. This should be done over a period of 10 to 15 years so that eventually everyone has shifted over to the more conventional ship.
Companies run ATBs for competitive cost advantage over their business rivals. The higher construction costs of ship would be faced by all the companies and the slight rise in total costs would be easily absorbed by adding a few cents per bbl of transportation cost.
The unlimited/limited line is more of a problem now than it may have ever been. Short of creating a license tonnage bracket to make it work, like say 15,000 tons (just for arguments sake), I don’t see it happening.
You’d basically have to meet all the STCW/nonsense requirements and sea days for the full unlimited license (Master/CM and 2ND/3RD) but if the time is only on units over say 1,600 tons it would be limited to the max tonnage of the largest ATB’S out and about. Now you’d have a ligitimate tonnage license meeting all of the international requirements short of having sea time on an unlimited ship. You have sea time on the relevant tonnage you are licensed to operate. If you can operate a 15,00 ton ATB no reason you couldnt run an “unlimited” tonnage dredge, osv, or small ship in that tonnage range. Licenses would be reverse compatible for one grade lower on the next highest tonnage category. A 15,000 ton chiefs license would get you a second entirely unlimited.
I just can’t stand the nonsense of requiring people to have an unlimited license for non-unlimited tonnage though. I can see requiring a 1,600 oceans license for ATB’s as its the highest limited license proving mastery, but when a company won’t hire you because you don’t have an unlimited license it gets under my skin to the point sometimes I want to call about a position and give them shit about it. Don’t get me started about requiring an unlimited ticket or having “gone to an academy and been in the regiment” for a shoreside job. Maybe singling out people that will just do what they are told?
We need less special license categories, not more. Its long past time for the USCG to cut the crap, and just accept tug time toward unlimited licenses. The Brits, the Canadians do, and other STCW countries do it. We need a level playing field.
The USCG could just grandfather in existing ATB guys to unlimited licenses. Even if the ATB guys wanted to, and were authorized by an unlimited license to do so, there aren’t any US flag ships left for them to sail on anyway.
[QUOTE=Tugboater203;100598]A big issue I have is having my boat get remeasured and suddenly all the ATBs are over 1600. They would need to find a way to keep the guys who have been running them for years in the wheelhouse. I’m pretty much locked in right now. My boat is under 200t so I can’t use the time to upgrade. I’m worried about my job getting taken away and given to guys with no practical experience but possessing a large UL license that I’m prevented from getting. Then if they do keep us on after we the boat is remeasured now none of our recency trips will count. We’ll need to take pilotage tests for every port or pilotage waters that our boat transits. That is a massive load that would be nearly impossible to achieve in a timely manner.[/QUOTE]
No one is preventing you or anyone for that matter from getting an unlimited license, all you have to do is get time on such a vessel and you qualify.
Forget about egos’, you chose the route you wanted, and now you think someone is going to take your job away. Think carefully about what you and some of the other limited mariners are saying. These unlimited guys had to sacrifice a lot of time away from home to get that time, while on the other hand limited tonnage mariners barely if at all never lose site of land, you can swim ashore if some great disaster were to happen to their boat, that’s just one thing, another is no limited mariner has a desire to go to sea yet they want to be called unlimited mariners. Believe me, there is a great difference in responsibilities between the two and the licensing authority know this. So lets leave our egos in the galley and do the jobs we qualify for.
I agree with eliminating the nonsense, but the way things go here like with the 6,000 Ton osv license I have more faith (still wont happen) in a big ATB license. Nothing will change but ideally you are right, count ATB tonnage time fairly.
Well that brings up another issue. An ITB and an ATB are significantly different. ATBs run all the time with out the barge, it is a functional vessel on it’s own. An ITB would probably capsize breaking out of the notch in anything less the perfect calm and only when at the shipyard. I believe the USCG saw that and thus you have the higher manning requirements for ITB’s. A lot of this should get cleared up with subchapter M regs whenever they get released. If they don’t address manning requirements and watch standing hours then they’ll be pretty useless. We still won’t have anything to base “Safe Manning” on other then past experience.
My main concern is that they don’t change anything other then the vessel measurement and then use the inevitable lack of “Qualified” personnel to take another run at the Jones Act.
[QUOTE=Tugboater203;100634]
My main concern is that they don’t change anything other then the vessel measurement and then use the inevitable lack of “Qualified” personnel to take another run at the Jones Act.[/QUOTE]
Changing regs which would cause a loss of American jobs is something that is easy to explain to the public and would be political unpopular especially now. I just can’t see that happening.
One could also argue that the same rigged system some people claim to be getting screwed by is also the one employing them and their limited license.
Is it something about the pin itself that makes an ATB mariner exceptional enough to qualify for an unlimited upgrade? I have to agree with seacap@large. My limited ticket does not deserve that just because I push around a 30,000 bbl barge whose gross tonnage when combined with the boat exceeds 1600 gross tons.
[QUOTE=flotsam;100667]One could also argue that the same rigged system some people claim to be getting screwed by is also the one employing them and their limited license…[/QUOTE]
I agree, mariners can’t have it both ways. It’s my view (FWIW) is the the ATB is a small ship and should be treated and regulated as such.
[QUOTE=flotsam;100667]Is it something about the pin itself that makes an ATB mariner exceptional enough to qualify for an unlimited upgrade? I have to agree with seacap@large. My limited ticket does not deserve that just because I push around a 30,000 bbl barge whose gross tonnage when combined with the boat exceeds 1600 gross tons.[/QUOTE]
The idea that ATBs are tugs is a legal fiction designed to avoid regulations. I think the regs should be changed (over time). However mariners now running these ATB presumably are qualified to run them. If the regs were changed to reflect the true nature of the vessel the mariners that man them now should not now be found unqualified.
As to exactly what kind of license they should receive,I don’ understand the thinking behind the various licenses. Maybe some kind of domestic license or ATB only.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;100671]The idea that ATBs are tugs is a legal fiction designed to avoid regulations. I think the regs should be changed (over time). However mariners now running these ATB presumably are qualified to run them. If the regs were changed to reflect the true nature of the vessel the mariners that man them now should not now be found unqualified.
As to exactly what kind of license they should receive,I don’ understand the thinking behind the various licenses. Maybe some kind of domestic license or ATB only.[/QUOTE]
If the people running ATBs now are qualified to do their jobs then why do the regulations need to be changed?
[QUOTE=PaddyWest2012;100673]If the people running ATBs now are qualified to do their jobs then why do the regulations need to be changed?[/QUOTE]
Licensing requirements are not the only issue. The ATBs are uninspected tugs (soon to change I understand) a ship of the same tonnage is under a much stricter regulatory regimen, for example vessel manning.
Don’t the Europeans have licenses specifically for certain types of tugs? Say operator of a voith tug, or z-drive tug. Here we are just general in that a tug is a tug even though some are remarkably different and require different skill sets to operate.
[QUOTE=rshrew;100680]Don’t the Europeans have licenses specifically for certain types of tugs? Say operator of a voith tug, or z-drive tug. Here we are just general in that a tug is a tug even though some are remarkably different and require different skill sets to operate.[/QUOTE]
I don’t know. Hopefully, some of our European friends on gcaptain can answer that question.
There is nothing like that in STCW. The whole idea is that STCW is supposed to set a respectable common worldwide standard and a level playing field for everyone. STCW has three levels: 500 I.T.C. (which is about the same size as our 199 GRT tugs); 3000 I.T.C. (about the same as our 1600 ton vessels); and unlimited for everything above that.
In general, the Europeans do require a lot more education and formal training for licenses with more rigorous exams than in the US. In the US no license at all is required to run a 125’ fishing boat, but in at least some European countries (and Canada) fisherman are required to have a license. Most of the the licensed Canadian, UK, and Norwegian fisherman that I have seen are well trained and highly qualified. But I wouldn’t say that about some of the Southern European fisherman.