Bad Captain!
NTSB is begining to hone in on a possible cause of the Selendang Ayu disaster - just hours from the massive Aleutian storm that eventually drove her aground, the Captain TURNS the still nominal engine OFF.
Take some advice from First Sea Lord, who has months of experience on lakes in 14 foot sailboats: if your 738 foot bulk carrier is navigating the Aleutians, which can make the Grand Banks look like Monaco with 40 foot waves and 80 mphs gust coming your way, keep the engine ON, even if it is running a little funny.
The 90's wreck of the New Carissa in Oregon (the peek-a-boo, exploding, split in two logger wreck) was also caused by underestimating local conditions off an legendarily dangerous place, the notorious Columbia Bar, the lee shore of lee shores. All I can think is that the massive economics around freighters, where moments lost are hundreds of thousands of dollars, lead to weak decisions time and time and time again.
A side note is the recent problem of bulk carriers suddenly splitting in two for no good reason, a brittle metal problem shared by the Liberty ships of WWII, except that 80's and 90's designs were of course CAD based, with la-di-da optimism about ocean states built right in.
Speaking of which, here is the Russian Icebreaker I'm trying to get on for a September arctic climatology cruise.
posted by JAB at 10:17 AM
1 Comments:
I defer to the Sea Lord's opinion in all things wet, but I am just thinking this one through.
Everything I learned from seamanship, I learned on the History Channel, but it seams that sailors fear fire (silly sailors). Perhaps it is that once there is a fire onboard, it is usually time to leave.
If the choice became turning off the engines over a fire in the engine room, then I would have to roll the dice and hope that the guys with the autocad built a strong hull. That or hope that the rescue tug from Dutch Harbor was very close by. Also, if I am a crusty sea dog on some rust-bucket freighter, what do I care if I create an environmental disaster to save my skin.
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