DISQUS

Here's the interesting part:

"The Orange Sun is owned by Arctic Reefer Corporation of Monrovia, Liberia. The Orange Sun had a local pilot on board at the time of the incident and a local tug on its port side. Visibility in the channel was more than one mile and the weather was partly sunny."

So we can assume that visibility was not an issue, language barriers were not an issue, and familiarity with the bay was not an issue...

Of course I hesitate to assume anything; we all know what assuming does.

Here is the press release posted today by Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corp.
http://www.pr-inside.com/great-lakes-dredging-v...

It does verify that the Orange Sun hit the NY, but not why. At least it gives a time-line to more details - 10 days or so.

I'll be keeping my eyes peeled... no pun intended. ;) OK, so the pun was intended.

Curious, has anyone heard any updates regarding this investigation?

Further research has verified that the New York is also compulsory equipped with AIS, and both the Melvin (not involved*) and NY are subject to even greater than usual position reporting requirements due to their extended presence in the Newark Bay...

I'm interested to hear what has been determined to be the cause of the collision. All articles I've found still just refer to the collision itself and not to who hit whom. It stands to logic that the moving Orange Sun hit the stationary New York, but I'd love to verify that somewhere.

(*Chalk up another point for media sensationalism - a collision involving three vessels, even if it didn't happen that way, must be more exciting to report than one involving only two.)

Something strange about this incident:
at least two out of the three vessels, the Orange Sun and the Melvin, are equipped with AIS; I found them on www.mmsispace.com. (which is a really cool site, BTW. Under utilized I think, under promoted perhaps.)

But, even though their last positions recorded by that site are well within the range of the current live coverage, no signals are presently being detected from them.

I wonder why not? Did they turn them off? I suppose it is possible that they are out of range, but current coverage of the Newark Bay area suggests otherwise.

It seems to me that the proper use of AIS could have been a major prevention tool in this incident - it's unfortunate that even though such technology exists, and is even compulsory for such large ships, it's not being utilized to it's potential.