DISQUS

A copy of the article can be found here:
http://www.bookofjoe.com/2007/08/meet-f-max-har...

The "read more" link doesn't work.

So who will provide these expert inspectors? The Coast Guard? Please.

I can't wait to see the director's cut!!!!

I'm just here for the great photos. :-)

Thanks for the kind words about the time lapse experiment. I'm going to keep working on it as I get the opportunity.

You sounded surprised at the number of ships in Houston. We've been the busiest port in the US for foreign ship traffic since 2004. We're averaging over 50 transits a day here.

Keep up the good work.

Sorry. I meant a chart or diagram for us readers who aren't real familiar with the area so we could follow your narrative better.

A chart or diagram would be helpful.

"managers and supervisory persons must be held responsible to verify that the requirements of the regulations, rules and procedures have been met"

Oh, boy. Another ream of paperwork to be filled out by the mates and captain.

One of the problems we face in the industry today is nonsense requirements from a host of people who have never navigated a vessel in their lives and who are trying to cover every inch of their ass with a memo and a signature.

An example: On many ships a mate is now assigned to record in a logbook the number and time each buoy in the channel is passed. With over 50 pairs of beacons in a 30 mile stretch of Galveston Bay the mate is constantly engaged in this task and unavailable for anything useful. He/she is not effectively monitoring the progress of the transit, is not learning any shiphandling skills, and (at night) is a nuisance running around turning on and off lights, parting darken bridge curtains, and generally preventing everyone else on the bridge from fully becoming adjusted to night navigation.
Safety would be better served by having a mate doing his duty "in the ordinary practice of seamen" instead of complying with a CYA requirement from some distant dock-wholloper who has never been to sea.

One would think not, but when lawyers start naming plantiffs reason and restraint are not the bywords. Even if a party is innocent of wrongdoing it can be very expensive to defend your position in court.

Good observations about VTS strengths and shortcomings. Here in Houston the pilot's association was approached about taking a more active role in VTS including possibly administering the service instead of the Coast Guard or assigning pilots to stand a watch in VTS as advisors. It was never done. The major hurdle was liability issues for the pilot's association. The government enjoys lawsuit immunity, the pilots do not. I remember reading about a similar issue in NY harbor.

It's a beautiful image, but it wasn't taken from a ship. The photographer's own web page says it is a photo of the moon that was treated with a software program that creates the reflection.

Ah! Let's make people do something unnatural (stay up all night) and punish them when they act natural (get sleepy). What's wrong with this picture?

I'm thinking if it's absolutely important that we have no accidents we need to look at the need to move ships in the wee hours. It's incredibly illogical to say that any chance of accident is unacceptable, but let's do the work in the dark and after midnight.

Why do you think this advice was for mates?

I agree with Fred above. As long as you're not an anchored drill ship, just alter course while the guy is still over a mile away. I always figure the rules of the road are for assigning blame after a collision. Use common sense to avoid collisions.