At last....

Light (ok no) blogging the last couple of weeks. I have been working on upgrading to Master 1600GT (O) from 2nd Mate AGT and finally completed testing on Friday. Got Coast Guard approval last year and actually took the the 2 required modules right before thanksgiving which only proved how woefully unprepared I was for the tests. Spent the last few months Studying up both at LAMPI in Houma, Louisiana with Capt. Bruce (money very well spent and quite cheap) also used Lapware to drill Rules of the Road.

The tests weren't that difficult but you definitely need to brush up on the basics. For myself my license was issued in 2002 and there was quite a bit of stuff that I just hadn't used. I used a couple of great books to prepare the best of which was: The Master's Handbook on Ship's Business by Tuuli Anna Messer for stability I started working with Stability & Trim for the Ship's Officer ed. by William E. George unfortunately the current edition is the 4th edition and it has been changed and for the worse in the new (2005) edition.

We will discuss "Ships Business" momentarily but first let's address "Stability". The 4th edition is in my opinion flawed as a text for the self taught mariner. The 4th edition has doubled in price but is much less useful. The new editions approach has omitted all the end of chapter exercises in favor of a chapter of Coast Guard questions in the back half of the book To the casual observer this may seem a good idea but the problems with this approach are many: 1) There is no review or reinforcement of each chapters material nor any way for the students to work key concepts before moving on to the next chapter; 2) there does not seem to be a directed approach to applying the material in the book to the CG test bank questions; and 3) useful as they are as examples given the long intervals between editions the CG questions will soon become obsolete as the Coast Guard adds and deletes questions from the test bank. "Stability" is a well written and prepared book but outside the context of a formal classroom setting it is no longer suitable for the independent student. Cornell Maritime Press produces excellent books and I generally recommend them highly but 4 ed "Stability" is not a book I can suggest. If Cornell wishes to improve the text restoration of the end of chapter exercises and better integration of the CG test bank would be useful to the student.

"Ships Business" was a well written and and put together book. I am still reading it now but having read the previous edition sometime ago can heartily recommend it.

I also used Lapware to drill Rules of the Road. I found the responses from Richard Plant to my questions to be timely and informative. In my particular case I run Vista 64 and was concerned that I would pay for the service an but be unable to use it due to software incompatibility. This was the case for disc based software I tried earlier in the year who's demo worked great but the software didn't run at all (because the copy protection wouldn't work with Vista 64). For me Lapware was perfect I was able to study Rules and then have reports that identified areas of weakness. As a result I managed to get a perfect score on Rules (on the 3rd try mind you). While I only experimented with the other modules they seemed to work well and had worked solutions for everything I tried that needed a solution. Highly recommended.

That's enough for tonight. Goodnight.

Hiatus

Off to work until Junish -not my boat.

Image shamelessly stolen from

Congratulations you may have already won....

See these guys?  They work harder than you ever thought of for about a dollar an hour.

When people ask me about working overseas I get the impression that they think that this some Dickensian horror where the employees are grossly abused and we are reduced to working with sharp stones and Swiss army knives. This is simply not true -at least in the countries of the far east. That doesn't mean there aren't substantial differences. And to be frank there are a lot of folks out there that don't treat their employees well. For the most part the most egregious abuses are to be found in Africa and the middle east. These are places where slavery is not far below the surface.  In the second world nations where I work the rule of law is for the most part functional in the small ways that make working less hellish and more livable.   The employees here are contract workers from India.  They work here 7 days a week up to 12 hours a day for 2 years at a time.  It sounds tough but at the end of 2 years they have gained valuable skills and made about 50% more money than they would have at home plus soon there after they will have made their 10,000 hours.  For young men from India this is a hot house for experience and job training.  Most likely it will be the making of them.

Safety gear who needs safety gear!  (oh yeah he's from the states)

Safety posters

No horror here

The same stuff is available everywhere. But the quantity and quality is can be considerably less than that of the US or even Japan or Korea. In the states you might go to a job and find 4 or 5 of a tool in good working order.  Except for the most expensive and unusual stuff it is typically owned by the workmen themselves.   Here it is common to find no more than one or two of a tool and no one owns their own gear -not even a flashlight or pocket knife.   And if a man can get the money together for a few simple tools it will very likely be the making of his fortune.  The young fellows here make only about $500 a month (still better than India where they would be making about $350/mo.) So it is understandable that they have almost nothing. So be happy Dear Reader because if you are reading this you won the freakin' lottery.

First use of a nuclear weapon against the US...

will not be against the US mainland (by a foreign power as opposed to terrorist organization).   Rather it will be used at sea against a carrier task force.  This article seems to indicate a conventional weapon but I will bet my licence on the fact it is capable of a nuclear payload.

Short extract:

Translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.

The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces.

The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.

Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.

The US Carrier task force is an unparalleled tool of state power.  It can go virtually anywhere on very short notice and deliver a serious blow to any modern state.  US air superiority is such that almost no nation can stand against even a single attack by our aircraft and standing against sustained attack is nigh impossible.  If you take out the carrier then you can by and large negate that advantage.  This makes a carrier battle group a high value target in a war against a great power like China or Russia.  First of all they are incredibly expensive to build  and operate (can't find the link now but something on the order of $1.5 Billion a year for the whole Battle Group).  This is an enormous sum of money.  Not only that it takes a long time to build capital ships of any sort and a carrier even more so, since we have limited number of ships available (12 or so) they are incredibly tempting targets.  Since  a nuclear strike can take out the whole group fast, with little chance of civilian casualties in a distant location with little or no physical evidence of the misdeed it is essentially a no lose situation for someone in a major war.   In the atmosphere these days what President is going to risk a general nuclear exchange?   This guy?  Doubtful.  So there you have it.  This is why a nuclear first strike against US naval assets is inevitable when we get into the next major war.

Created new site header

Little tricky getting the imagery just right.  Really wanted a picture of this, (specifically an aerial shot) but wasn't able to find a creative commons image.  I then wlooked around and found this picture by bitter girl.  Which then became the basis of the image in the header.

While this image may seem thematically linked to the name of the blog nothing could be farther from the truth.  One day I'll explain this but not today.