Sweet & Sour – with some ginger as well !

As the social backgrounds of the serving merchant-seafarers changed, so did a lot more too!

A modern day sailor ….

• Well educated
• well informed
• well provided with high tech ships
• well provided with high standards of shore supports
• well trained
• well rested
• well protected
• well recognized socially
• well-connected in real time
• well paid
• in good health
• high in safety
• saves the environment
• saves the undue expenses
• saves well for himself
• under the constant threat of sea-pirates
• under the constant threat of criminalization
   
  But (indeed no one likes a ‘but’ interrupting the list …)
   
• not able to command the crew in emergencies (see some of the recent marine accidents)
• not able to verify effectively
• not able to tie a knot with expertise
• not able to splice well
• not able to swim well (is it…? there are so many ..)
• not able to interrupt a wrong practice with self-initiative
• not believing in ‘command & control’ to run a unit that is designed for just that
• too many stories of Captains abandoning the crews and passengers and escaping themselves
• not knowing what is a seaman’s proverbs to predict the weather at sea (‘red sky at night sailor's delight ….’) !!
• not knowing the sea-creatures unless he sees the documentary
• can not describe the sea and swell
• doesn’t bother to top up the wet bulb thermometer
• doesn’t really check the time error
• can not predict the weather ahead  

Do the pros have to be countered by the ‘cons’ is it..?!!

Whatever – as long as the cargoes are shipped safely and timely, seas & environment are kept clean & lovely, freight earnings are plenty, the world doesn’t really mind how the man at the sea commands! 'Command' is old fashioned anyway!!  


What are the far reaching effects of this change already happening at sea? In part we can anticipate and in part it will be what we do not foresee now ... the time will tell .....unless of course the 'command' is ashore by men & women in shifts controlling the futuristic unmanned ships !!
 

Safe sailings!

Astronomical awareness – what’s that? ..can we discuss it later please …?

 

The world of sea navigation has moved from a constant human awareness of the astronomical situation & skills to a very low level. While the availability of the accurate astronomical situation is far higher than the pre-internet era, generally the ship’s navigator’s personal day to day astro awareness & manual astro navigational skills have sunk to low levels – does it matter? ummm .. not really unless the electronics breaks down and the navigator doesn’t know how to navigate..! can it happen …? Well you better don’t get caught when your ship’s navigator opens the basic navigational academic books or looks for a search-engine that is now off-line to take your ship to a safe location or you see a giant ship grounded on your beach causing pollution just because the electronics on board failed and the navigators could not calculate accurately where his/her ship was ….. is it possible? … yes it is … no matter what the superficial statistics says …

 

Ironically the astronomical aspects of marine navigation (2D) can never become irrelevant – ‘time’ ‘declination’ ‘orbits’ even ‘satellites’ are all astro! It is just that instead of humans the electronic systems use them to resolve the patterns, employ mathematical arguments and display the ship’s positions in the digital form on the screens of the instruments!!

 

Astronavigation is never gone – it is just that the current day navigators cannot use it with expertise because of the human brain’s habit of ‘use it or leave it’ for skills keeping! The once always-aware sea navigators no longer even bother to look up in the almanacs or look up in the sky – lucky they do look in their watches though not realizing that ‘time’ is astronomical anyway!! It is now the electronic navigation systems who care instead of the human navigators !!

 

So human sea-navigators, we are the electronic-navigational-systems, move aside please, it is our turn now to be in far more constant awareness of the celestial stuff, while most of you not don’t even understand the Navigational criticality in starting to say ‘8 o’clock’ for a ‘20-hundred hours’ time (current sea style seen far too often) because it is our concern now and not yours!!  Your weakness is our progress!!

 

Sarcasm aside – Navigators! Be alert, never over rely on the electronic navigational systems, they are as accurate as the human user’s settings, interpretations and verifications !! You have to use them but not by losing the Celestial Navigational Skills.

 

A whale with unused weakened fins cannot go to the sea again !  

 

         So, what time is it mate? How is the weather? when is the meridian passage today …?

 

         

Sail Safely!

20Nov2014

It was time to learn and update myself - so I was busy - will be back with posts between ships as I resume the sea-tours soon and remain dedicated to the excellence in sea skills at sea !

Till then - Sail safely !

 

Grooming of deck Cadets – 13                                                                                                

It is very sad that while I am writing so much about the aspects of Cadets’ grooming – deck Cadets in MN – that I have to go and investigate the accident of a Cadet meeting with a deadly fall in the cargo hold……..  Extremely ironical in a sad sense!

What about his dreams of a great future..?

What about his parents’ condition ….?

What about the condition of his colleagues on board?

What happened to grooming at all in his case?

On a cargo ship – barely in his third week, he becomes very confident (in an unsafe sense) … the Bosun would later tell me during the investigation that the Bosun had been humiliated and rejected by so many young cadets and younger ratings & officers about safe actions at sea these days that he had gone into depression and stopped telling them much … his immediate bosses were complaining about the high degree of knowledge shallowness …. And so on … too many complaints about the deceased but neither a ‘system’ nor the ‘industry’ nor the ‘old sea dogs’ telling their stories could stop a life from failing so sadly …..

At the end of the investigation, making reports and explaining it to scores of the connected people – I came to the same conclusion again and again that whatever I have posted so far stands good to the dot and may be taken further for making it more effective in practical deployment but not for a single omission !!

I have no proof in my hands but I would tell the younger Cadets, officers and ratings that the animated characters in the computer games you play fall and jump and crash and yet get up …… in real life even a meter of fall on the steel plates can be debilitating !

Do not lose awareness of the real life impact, do not be adventurous in an unsafe sense – even the greatest of wars are won by great risk analysis, survival techniques and highest levels of situational awareness ….

May the should of the dead rest in peace and his loved ones have the strength to take this shock and loss with a strong heart …. Though it shouldn’t happen to any one else at sea or elsewhere !

Failing to stop wrong is same as facilitating the wrong!!  

 

Safe sailings!

 

Grooming of deck Cadets – 13

 

Just the way as the birth rate in a country defines the continuation of the country’s cultural heritage and social survival in the colossal world, the MN operating standards remain dependent heavily on the quality of Cadets enrolled in the career, their grooming and the attitudes they develop and their survivability in the career.

 

The cadets acquire academical portion of the knowledge through land based institutions and training facilities, while the practical operational skills are honed on board during their sea service.

At least to start with one needs to understand that the Maritime world today is at a juncture when the day is made when an enrolled cadet understands the key difference between a handheld web-search machine that is largely driven by marketing gimmicks and a purposeful commanding operation through the screen on board in a control room that is meant to achieve the navigational and engineering actions still based on the basic scientific operational principles that remain intact!

Having said all this and discussed so much about the grooming of the MN cadets, the fact is that every seafaring officer in the MN is directly or indirectly always grooming the cadets – the Cadets- like children in a family -  watch the seniors at work and learn, adopt or also decide not to follow something – there is no way out ….

The maritime world is a going through the transition on all fronts, from the way the ships are made, managed & operated at a pace that was never seen in the history. There is no way for the senior generation at sea at the moment except to be good at the traditional hands-on skills as well as the electronically controlled operating skills both and ensure that the cadets receive proper on-the-job grooming!

The clock is ticking before it is too late and the onus of developing future underdeveloped, unskilled officers will be on the current day serving officers of the MN !!

Safe sailings!

Grooming of deck Cadets – 12

The defining Moment!

The MN cadets – deck, engine, electrical eventually get groomed – many reflect the styles and the qualities of their mentors picked up along the way to becoming a watch standing officer and eventually the Master in command.

The international regulatory bodies, industry regulations, the trading patterns and the economic cycles of booms and recessions largely define the Cadets’ shaping – add a portion of their own initiatives in that. But does the industry get the officers that was intended? No matter how much one may argue the answer is a flat NO! The reason being the career itself being full of extra ordinary numbers of variables.

Can one search for a defining moment then? Indeed can …. Take a number of samples from across the world and you will find very interesting defining moments in the Cadets’ lives, the most frequent ones being…

• Shear survival moments – learning, adopting in order to survive in the current situations
• Opportunistic viewpoints
• Career or family decision moments
• Financial goals in personal lives
• Not coping up with the rigorous of the given trade type and switching over
• Not coping up with the academical demands
• Criminalization of the seafaring career by popular shore based trends
• Family demands – spousal demands
• Having no choice – certain trade type simply getting washed of
• Careers being taken over by other mediocre – cheaper workforces
• Having to work with low standard crews and teams
• Security issues – piracy – exposures to war zones and having no special protection of recognition
• Peer pressure – peer trends on mass scales
• … and rarely – occasionally a small number succeeding in having a trade of their choice, having a planned career-path to master the skills and actually doing so.

Consequently in this centuries old career, in spite of pumping in thousands of Cadet level entrants – there are only a few hundred highly skilled industry experts who at any moments call can operate the MN ships at the highest levels even when there is no quality demand or even when the wages are down …

Safe sailings!

 

Grooming of deck Cadets – 11

Typically a Deck Cadet is introduced to the principles of Navigation during his/her pre-sea training academically. This is complemented by the ‘practical navigation’ as a separate subject. Once the cadets go on ships they have to fill in a “cadets’ record book” for the practical work they do on board under the supervision of the senior officers. Upon completion of their cadet time on board they appear for the examinations for their ‘license’ which is based on the syllabi contained in the STCW code. This STCW code is set by the IMO which is a body of the UNO. Ideally this should bring a uniform way of navigation at sea – but it doesn’t happen that way – practices in certain countries are based on only taking a single position line and estimating a position – while the British Admiralty oriented Navigational tradition involves a complete day’s work using all the means of celestial navigational techniques.

During the coastal navigation a combination of the Celestial Navigational instruments and the visual bearings and usage of the electronic instruments can produce position fixing opportunities.

Whilst practicing the traditional celestial and terrestrial navigational methods – or the ‘manual’ methods, one is also continuously availed of the electronic navigational systems at hand that are based on the Doppler shift (GPS) or the radio navigational systems based on the ‘parabolic’ navigation principles. While at these Navigational works the art of Dead reckoning, using the ‘sounding’ line and so on cannot be ignored.

As such a cadet must have a daily ‘navigational’ plan ahead of the day or rather ahead of a voyage and go on executing it under supervision.

In today’s world many seniors too discourage the cadets from practicing this so that they are available as administrative assistants for the mountain of paperwork on board at the cost of their training – and there are too many cadets willing to skip this practice at sea ….

 

Safe sailings!

Earth Quake:


A powerful earthquake struck when my ship was tied at a bulk cargo berth.
The jetty shuddered. I heard sounds and vibrations that resembled a strong astern main-engines-kick. A ship Captain's mind has to handle the unforeseen. The phone network got jammed, normal communication became impossible. Frankly, no checklists was of real use to first understand what was wrong and how to respond to the unique emergency on hands.


It was time for going back to basics, using the Master's command skills, leadership and common sense.


Here I had to face the following at once:

• Determine what was wrong - I had to convince my fellow senior staff that it was an earthquake _ I took help of the USGS earthquakes site to confirm this as soon as one of the smartphones got the internet going.

• I had to assess & respond to:

                 - the damage from within
                 - the damage from the jetty ('the land')
                 - the damage & changed topography due to buckled sea floor
                 - the damage from the falling debris / objects from the bulk    
                   handling tower cranes
                -  the damage from other ships / crafts
                - the damage from panicked actions of the distressed persons

• I had to call the emergency stations to assess and respond to this unusual emergency.

I had seen the Tsunami catastrophes on the videos and many times wondered how to respond to an earthquake while on a ship but this was an experience that demonstrated how vast is the list of factors to face and a need for a profound command and technical skills base needed in responding to emergencies with a major change of normal working conditions to prevent injuries, pollution, damages and losses and the human morale in an emergency. 


Safe Sailings!
                

Grooming of deck Cadets – 10

Navigation

With traditional disciplines absorbed in the current day regulations and standards – the deck cadets take up the Deck officers’ careers and the Engineering Cadets take up the Engineering officers’ careers. The Deck officers are mainly responsible for the Navigation, Cargo operations, Stability calculations and executions, Ship’s electronic navigational systems – usage and upkeep, weather routing, collision avoidance, operations & upkeep of the radio communication systems (GMDSS), practical structural maintenance, seamanship aspects, mooring equipment  handling, trade specific skills such as oil-chemical-gas tanker works, container carrying practices,  Ship’s safety, security & environmental protections operations, emergency response, presenting the ship for a number of inspections & surveys, ship’s commercial business related administrative work, ship’s hygiene and catering management (using the skilled catering crew), ship’s accounting and paper work and so on including handling of the human resource on board on a day to day basis ….

The Cadet’s introduction to all these subjects in theory and practice, a number of tests and examinations he/she has to appear for and clear with very high passing percentage requirements and undergoing continuous experience concurrently during the sea-service and further enrichment is what effectively ‘grooms’  the Cadets.

Navigation at sea is about constantly being aware of one’s position & the route to the destination, being aware of means available to fix the positions and being able use all the means of the position fixing – conventional as well as modern.

The Deck Cadets need to start interacting with the world around them differently as they begin their path in the MN career and climbing the career ladder ….

>> When they look at the time they understand its co-relation to the earth’s motion.

>> When they look around they understand the compass cardinal points.

>> When they look at the morning sky they think of the twilight calculations, the amplitude of the rising Sun and a position line that they would obtain as well as the compass error check!

 

>> When they see a GPS they think of the Doppler shift based ranging and fixing and factors that dilute its accuracy.

 

>> When they look at the beautiful sky they see the navigable stars and planets and one constellation leads them to the next around the sky and they think of the possibilities of obtaining the position lines by intercept …

 

>> They take care of their Navigational instruments and always keep abreast of the technological advances in the fields of Navigational instruments …

 

>> when they come on the bridge they check the Navigational lights, understand the circumstances the ship is in, verify the accuracies of the Nav equipment in use, plan a terrestrial or celestial position lines obtainment plan for the day … verify the magnetic compass and constantly keep obtaining fixes and comparing the views around in its context to verify that what they see around matches what is expected based on the positions they fix ….

 

If this change starts happening be sure the grooming is indeed happening ..!!  

Safe sailings!

Grooming of deck Cadets – 9

The deck cadets train to be not just any other officers of the ships but to become the future Masters of the ships under their commands!

During my travels recently – I came across a twelve year old boy spending his entire day of the summer vacation at a 4 star hotel that was being run by his father and was also owned by his grand father. During the day it was hard to distinguish him as a ‘boss’s son’ – he was totally involved in his observations and at times even giving hand to the front office staff ! A couple of days later his grandfather arrived and I heard the grand pop and the grandson discussing each other’s work areas with mutual respect! The hotel owner – the grandfather- was himself in his seventies & was in town to purchase some raw material for his carpentry project he had undertaken, the grandson intently listened to him, gave him report on how he was rotating himself within the hotel departments – a while later the boy’s father joined their discussion …  I realized this kind of mentoring that was going on in front of my eyes is what exactly is needed for the MN cadets grooming too – after all, they are to take a full charge of the vessel in future and that preparation is to start from day one !!

The companies that are successful in having mentoring the way I was witnessing in this hotel can be doing some real work in grooming and developing the MN cadets. Cadets who are groomed and trained this way have no fear, have no overconfidence but they are truly on-the- scene-commanders in the making …. These days we see the MN watch keeping officers busy filling-in endless number of records and checklists that even their supervisors have no time to verify and together they do not fully verify what is practically happening in and around the vessel, the assessments are largely dependent on the paper records rather than the physical presentations …. A future Master with such negligent foundation would be far less effective than the one who is groomed the way the two generations were doing in that hotel and with so much sincere effort by the learning youngster himself!! This can happen at sea too – it is not difficult..

Cadets – are you getting the message..? You need to take charge of being groomed in an all-round fashion because MN jobs are about being fully in charge of the ship’s functions and operations and that needs such in dedicated approach. The guiding books & programmes are good but their effectiveness is far enhanced by such approaches!!

Safe sailings!

Grooming of deck Cadets – 8

Since the time of the last sea-eagle post I witnessed something very shocking about the watch keeping by some of the newly promoted MN officers at sea – and that was scary indeed! They simply did not know what to do by standing a ‘watch’ either Navigational or Cargo Work related..! Unless there was something to punch in the keys boards of their PCs or the LCD screens they did not seem to see any point in keeping a ‘watch’, for utter four hours these young men would not keep a sea watch or a cargo watch as such – what they were doing was just the administrative work and some operations that were utmost necessary … but ‘watch keeping’ or interpreting – monitoring at all .. ….. this being a direct and bizarre outcome of the incompetent candidates being certified to stand watches on ships at sea as ‘competent’ …. Interestingly they all had undergone very lengthy college and examination times but were also the victims of slow employment – lengthy waiting periods and lack of motivation, lack of social prestige that the career once commanded etc. The irony is that their senior officers – the newly promoted seniors themselves did not see this gross negligence …. To explain an outcome of this to the non-mariners – it is a sure-shot progress towards accidents to the ships, ecological and environmental disasters and imprisonment for these young officers at some point when their ‘luck’ runs out ….. this may sound like a very hard language but this is exactly what it means….

When a person is trained through the CBTA and made competent – he/she understands in entirety – how that system or equipment or even a procedure works, how to start /initiate it , how to end it /stop it, how to trip it / suspend it , what are the performance indicators or the parameters, how to test it, what are the common short comings or breakdowns and how to address them, how to maintain it / revise – upgrade it and lastly but not the least how to answer queries about it …

When a person learns with a lot of practical experience in it – he never ends up with the situation that I witnessed among these few young officers: -  that of coming on the watch station and not being able to see anything to do and immerse oneself in some paperwork for all the 4 watch hours with overreliance on the electronics without understanding its limitations. I  found these officers so disinterested in watch keeping that they were not doing it at all unless there was an alarm to respond to or a breakdown to look into!!

Hopefully what I saw is only a minority and they would quickly – of their own – undertake the CBTA approach to the MN careers and discharge their duties as expected by the International Regulatory bodies and keep the seas safe – and their company’s business running!!

Safe sailings!

Grooming of deck Cadets - 7

Competent & Certified:

I was introduced to the Competency Based Training & Assessment (CBTA) concept when I started interacting with the Australian & New Zealand work cultures during my career.  On a lighter note, if you search for ‘CBTA’ on the net – you can be taken to a ‘Chinese Business & Technology’ group or a ‘Canadian Business Travellers’ group …or for that matter a Taekwando school or as is often confused one may think of CBTA as a ‘Computer Based’ Training… but NO! The CBTA as a concept is only about ‘Competency’ based training & and making the individuals ‘competent’ for job that is to be done by them!

Who would want to hand over his / her Mercedes to a drive unless the driver is competent and has been assessed after all?!!

Conversely speaking, this can also work as strategy for being excellent at one’s job if it has been adopted as a training strategy from its beginning! – mainly so from the cadetship itself!  

It is essential that there is a level of initiatives from the Cadets themselves when on board as well as when ashore about optimizing their training spells for the best results. The multiple ‘training facilitators’ and ‘training providers’ that they will encounter during their journeys as the MN Cadets – the CBTA concept will give a clear advantage in emerging as one the most competent future MN officers! And this need not be formulated by the authorities alone, this can also be one’s own learning & training style as well – why not?

When I take up the subject of Cadets’ grooming – it is quite a broadband in nature, covering all the aspects of their career phases that they are going to face once they start to stand the ‘watches’ and become accountable for their actions in operating the ships responsibly. This is way beyond the short term goals of certification alone. The certification / licensing system will test and check the Cadets / officers appearing for their exams basis of their curriculums – though it is exhaustive and always updated, the Cadets themselves have to be thoroughly competent and not just certified!  Post- Manila amendments to the STCW (standards of training, certification & watch keeping), many Port State Control inspectors seek to establish just that.

There is a remarkable difference between an officer who is ‘certified’ at certain date & an officer who is ‘competent’ at present. None can replace the other; these two are in fact ‘complimentary’ to each other ….

So, from the next post – let me share with you what the ‘CBTA approach’ can be as regards the Cadets’ grooming in the Merchant Navy as their own game strategy as well as that for their training facilitators ashore and on board.

 Safe sailings!

Grooming of deck Cadets – 6 (current situation)

8000 plus cadets waiting ashore, each of them only about 12 to 18 months of sea time away from being able to appear for their professional exams, but instead of getting an assignment on ship in standard 2 to 3 months they now having to wait for 12 to 20 months and some of them not even getting a ship at all, they look elsewhere for a job …..  is this scenario covered in any ‘curriculum’? Of course no! But that’s what happening in some of the major maritime manpower supplier countries right now …..

Today’s cadets also often get multi-national officers that are their immediate seniors on board  who may have just about scraped through to the careers themselves … and then there are those high up ‘senior’ multi-nationalities on board who spend much time preaching how ‘during their times’ as the younger Cadet officers they were much capable than today’s large percentage of Apps-dependent – vastly un-seaman like generation … all this being highly unproductive for the real grooming of the cadets on board !!

For this reason, as an example, for serious business such as the operations of the Electronic Chart Display Systems (ECDIS) – the IMO (International Maritime Organization) have rejected the ‘trickle down training’ on board as regards the operation of type specific ECDIS. Time has come when the cadets themselves have to keep in mind that ‘every senior’ is not necessarily ‘right’ but just doing in one of the many ways of ship operations. The first thing Cadets need to understand is this discrimination between the right-way & the wrong-way while they go on learning on board during their training.

Thus,

A cadet who is trained to understand or think as to –

• Appraise what the activities are for the day?
• the regulatory frame work for those activities
• the procedural frame work for it
• the ‘best practices’ for it
• the industry standards for them

at least for the planned jobs in that, because a ship’s work is always a mixture of planned, unplanned and emergency activities at any given moment… will be able to better optimize his/her time on board as cadet and work on it to learn while on land for the long breaks between shipboard assignments that now expected in the current situation ….

If the Cadets waiting for long durations on land away from the maritime environment due to the current ‘flooding’ in some countries – their future careers are at risks of being of mediocre working ability in general …. the ‘impact’ of this can be on global marine operations standards and the way the business is done in a longer run ….

Safe sailings!