I was speaking with McManus the other day. Rumor has it that the new ship will arrive in time for SST 2023, and the present training ship will babied until then.
The captain is pushing the school for a few changes: no more split cruise, one 75 day cruise for all cadets. Abolishment of the Corpsman Rate, adding a health and safety rate, which will not involve watching movies all day in the sick bay. Teaching GMDSS on SST instead of a 3 credit class ashore.
There is some motivation to move the GMDSS because there is supposed to be parity among SUNY schools, you should be able to transfer anywhere in the system in your first 2 years and keep all your credits. The only way Maritime can do this is by getting rid of a few license classes or moving them around.
Apparently the charter flight to change out cadets is up to 500K which the cadets pay for. This will also give all cadets the exact same SST experience, instead of wishing you had 2nd half ports of call on your cruise.
2 Likes
I’m onboard with shit canning the Corpsman rate. LONG overdue. I was for that a long time ago for two reasons:
1.) They have a doctor and Navy corpsmen or nurses as it is. The cadets offer nothing being in sickbay. In the event of a real medical emergency the BMOW can call for help and bang on doors.
They only select this rate because they can sleep all day, sit in air conditioning or carry out the arduous task of organizing the shelves in the medication lockers. Wow. Really preparing them to go into the Merchant Marine, right? Every Corpsman I ever came across was a lazy slug. Last year a cadet passed out on the outbound transit and slammed his head against the corner of a chart table. When a nearby Corpsman rate was summoned for help, she threw her hands up and said “I don’t have my medical kit. What do you expect me to do?” She should have been sent home right there with the goddamn pilot. Useless as a rate and a shipmate.
2.) Many of them have access to the medical logs and personal medical info of cadets and staff visiting sick bay for various reasons. I have seen it firsthand. That is simply unacceptable, if not illegal.
It is and always was a useless rate. Good riddance. Next they need to stop having cadets working in the galley helping serve food or assist in meal prep. They are not trained or qualified as Food Handlers and once on one of my training cruises a cadet cut himself and did not report his injury. Who knows if the blood ended up in the food? Chartwells strong armed the school into creating that “watch” to slash their own costs. Scullery is one thing, the serving line and meal preparation areas must be manned by qualified staff only.
2 Likes
But the real question is will they go to more than one foreign port in the future? I would have been livid if I had to go on SST '19.
I hear it’s mostly foreign this year; Tenerife, Cobh, Mallorca and The Azores. I think the domestic port is Philly.
He said Philly is not happening, something about dock space.
He mentioned that there will be a lot of cadets on restriction after Mallorca:)
2 Likes
So my next question is how is this McManus fellow compared to Rick Smith?
Much more approachable. More jovial. He seems genuinely concerned with his cadets experience. Completely different vibe than I got with Rick Smith. I cannot make a true comparison because I have not interacted with Smith as an alumnus and am not a cadet under McManus.
With all that said I was really impressed with the guy.
BTW if you guys are in town show up to the next alumni gathering. Pay the membership dues and you will get an email announcing the event. They are worth going to.
2 Likes
He also has way more industry experience, and recency than Smith ever had while running the show… he is more in touch with what’s going on “out there” and can better relate to the cadets who are looking to sail.
Some of the things Smith said and did were frankly out of touch with reality.
I’ll also add as an edit, he did toss a lot of dead weight off that ship in the form of certain watch officers who offered nothing to the cadets or license program in general. Two thumbs WAY up.
Speaking of watch officers He said he needs engineers for SST, deck side is covered.
How’s the deckside gang looking? I hear they have a consistent lineup these days. Guess he is content on that front.