Stimulus Money to Fund Construction of Arctic Research Vessel

OK, so this smacks a little of pork barrel spending and government waste.

Here's the story: SFOS News University Research Vessel.

What I would like to know is the following: Why are we (the taxpayers) building a $200 million ship in Wisconsin if the ship is to be used exclusively in Alaskan waters? There are plenty of qualified builders on the west coast. Why do we have to build it in Wisconsin and then pay to have it delivered through the Great Lakes, the Saint Lawrence, down the East Coast, across the Gulf, through the Panama Canal and all the way up the West Coast?

Also, look at the photo above. Why are we installing unprotected azimuth-type propulsion pods on a vessel designed to break 2.5 feet of ice? I realize these propulsion systems provide excellent maneuverability and efficiency in ice, and I realize they have been installed with success on very large icebreakers, including the new Mackinaw, but has anyone conducted research on the collateral effects of breaking ice on pod-mounted propellers? What are the maintenance and repair issues with the pods and the propellers on these types of systems?

The following is an 2007 excerpt from a icebreaker design assessment provided by the Polar Research Board and the Marine Board.

Propulsion Plant Design

Icebreaker propulsion plants have changed dramatically since the first sail-powered icebreakers. Steam and later diesel engines drove power through reduction gears to fixed pitch propellers. Those systems were prone to mechanical damage as the propeller struck ice chunks broken at the bow. Later, controllable pitch propellers were tried.

The current systems use electric drives that decouple the propellers from the prime mover to reduce ice impact damage. (Consider that some of the ice chunks moving under and along the icebreaker’s hull are the size of a school bus). The electric drive systems use propellers connected directly to an electric motor. The electricity to drive the motors is produced by onboard generators. Those generators can be driven by diesel engines, gas turbines, or steam turbines (with either nuclear or conventional fossil fuel boilers). The electric drive systems also give greater flexibility for engine room design and eliminate the need for shafts and reduction gears.

To further protect the exposed propellers, nozzles or ducts were installed around the propellers. These had the added benefit of increasing thrust by improved water flow. The current state of the art in icebreaker electric drive with power units is considered to be azimuth pod drives (as installed on the latest U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker MACKINAW); however, some consider them to still be in the developmental stage and unreliable. An azimuth pod drive is an enclosed unit that hangs below the hull and contains the electric drive motor attached directly to a propeller. The azimuth pod is capable of being rotated 360 degrees, enabling full thrust to be applied in any direction very quickly. Azimuth drives have been used extensively on cruise ships and other commercial vessels including ice-strengthened ships.

I believe we have been choosing these systems because of the multi-mission tasks of the new icebreakers. In addition to their icebreaking, these ships are required to perform station-keeping jobs such as Nav-Aid Service and research. The 360 degree azimuthing pods are excellent at keeping a ship on station by providing highly quantied thrust in a specified direction. But are the propulsion systems truly robust enough for the job of icebreaking?

Manufacturers and multi-mission advocates point to the performance benifits these systems give to icebreakers, e.g. more icebreakeing capability with less power, being able to widen channels in the ice by moving the ship sideways, and being able to break ice astern. However, are these performance characterstics that were intended from the start, or are they qualities the crews discovered after the fact? More important, how often are these vessels out of service due to propeller and/or pod damage?

~seabgb

Should A Government Agency Have My Email Address?

In the event you're on the fence as to whether or not you should provide your email address to a government agency, here's something to help you decide. It's an email notice I received from Maine Fish and Wildlife. Although it doesn't say what organization requested the info I called and found out it was the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, specifically George Smith, the organization's director. I wish George would have kept his greedy little hands out of the Attorney General's Office and away from my records. I have a hard time understanding how this isn't a privacy issue, or how the A.G. can grant SAM's request. One thing for sure will come out it. From now on, George and the state can be sure I will not provide any more personal information to the state than is required by law. I urge all Mainers who are annoyed by this development to voice their dissatisfaction and let the Maine Sportsman's Alliance and George Smith know you don't appreciate this kind of interference. SAM's email is members@samcef.org. They can also be reached at the following address and telephone numbers:

205 Church Hill Road, Augusta ME 04330

Telephone: 207-622-5503

FAX: 207-622-5596

Email Notice from Fish and Wildlife below:

As you know, the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife periodically sends out
informational emails to our online customers. We only send these e-mails out to
customers who have indicated that they would like to receive them.

Recently, we had a Freedom of Access Act request from an individual who represents
an organization for our customer e-mail address list. The Freedom of Access Act is a
statute that requires a state agency to provide public records to anyone upon
request. Our initial response to the individual was that our customer e-mail
address list was not a public record and was therefore not covered by the Freedom of
Access Act. The individual appealed our decision with the Maine Attorney General's
office that ruled in favor of the individual and directed IF&W to provide our
customer e-mail address list to the individual. Therefore, we have recently provided
our customer e-mail address list to the requesting individual per the direction of
the Maine Attorney General's Office.

The list contains only e-mail addresses, no other personal data is on the list. We
wanted you to know that we did everything in our power to protect your privacy and
apologize in advance for any issues this may cause you.

Somali Pirates Net Their Biggest Ransom

Story here.

Somali pirates released their latest prize yesterday after receiving a reported $7 million in ransom. According to reports the money, which was apparently dropped to the deck by a helicopter, sparked a deadly feud among the pirates. No further details have been made available. If I had to guess, I'd say some of the pirates wanted to keep all the money while others felt obliged to send a chunk to their Al Qaeda supporters.

Third world sympathizers and apolologists, insurance companies, and liberal intellectuals continue to deny the maritime industry a cohesive anti-piracy deterent. Until such time as mariners are allowed to defend themselves by any and all means available the pirates and their Islamic terrorist associates will have no incentive to stop their crime spree on the high seas.

~seabgb

Global Warming vs Plain Old Logic

Instead of wasting billions on an international marketing effort to convince people of the threat of global warming, why not just go out there right now and clean up the floating pile of garbage in the Pacific? It's right there in the ocean where everyone can see it and touch it. But no, that would be way too constructive. What we need are more meetings and conferences and accords and agreements and panels and committees and fact finding missions, all designed to appease the third world and level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots. Sure, hamstring American industry while the governments of South America, India, Africa and China exploit their natural resources without restraint. Create more legislation, more bureaucracy, more laws, particularly international ones, that can't and will never be enforced. If we can't stop piracy on the high seas because we're too worried about violating the rights of the Banana Republics, how can we make sure effluence and emissions in China and India are at maximum allowable levels?

Maybe I'm crazy, but if you want to stop pollution and "global warming" you simply have to look around you and take a few very simple steps. First, clean up that gargantuan floating barge (the size of Texas) of plastic flotsam and jetsam in the Pacific. Second, stop manufacturing or just stop importing toys and other items that come in plastic packaging. Before Christmas I bought a small compass for a friend's son. There was more plastic, metal and paper in the packaging than in the thing I was buying. How stupid is that? It's so stupid as to be its own joke. And, I guess, shame on me for buying it, except, in my defense, it was still a lot less wasteful than my other choices.

So, let me get this straight. Instead of cleaning up the pollution we've already created and reducing environmentally harmful emissions by NOT manufacturing packaging material we don't need or want, we're trying like hell to reach international agreement on reducing plant and other greenhouse gas admissions in order to reverse something a lot of scientists don't think really exists or can be reversed effectively by man. And we're doing this by trying to establish a set of unenforceable international laws. Wouldn't we accomplish the exact same thing by doing the former, by cleaning up the mess we've already made and reducing wasteful manufacturing?

Who the hell is in charge here? It's like the world is being run by The Marx Brothers.

Related Story Here

Why Save Loran?

Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut seem to think the Coast Guard and DHS should upgrade and save the LORAN Navigation System. They see the LNS as an important part of a mariner's tool bag and point to the economic advantages of keeping it operational. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is slated to decide one way or the other. The Bangor Daily News has the full story here.

While I can see the advantage of a land-based navigation system set on US soil from a security perspective, and I can see the point in keeping a system that costs as much to save as it does to dismantle, I can't see saving a system based on the needs of a handful of 2oth century navigators and manufacturers who can't leave the past behind.

GPS has been surprisingly robust and effective. It's expensive, and it has its vulnerabilities, including solar radiation, cosmic rays, weather, degraded hardware, and orbital anomalies. But LORAN isn't nearly as precise, and it has equally if not worse coverage and reliability issues. Moreover, if the point of technological advancement is to move forward and up, then I can't see saving LORAN. It has as much practical use for the modern mariner and/or pilot as the CB radio, which the vast majority of professionals had the good sense to toss in the drink 30 years ago. In fact, the country's entire navigational capability, in virtually every sector, commercial, industrial, and recreational, is based on the GPS. We've come too far to go back. We've passed the point of no return. LORAN is dead. Accept it. If you need a back-up to GPS, use a chart, your compass and a watch, which suggests something a lot of Loran proponents aren't mentioning.

Let's say we save LORAN and keep it as a GPS back-up. How is it going to help a navigator who doesn't have a LORAN receiver on his boat or plane? Obviously, it's not. So what's going to happen? Will plotters and other navigation equipment have to be made with dual receivers? Will the Coast Guard require commercial vessels to be equipped with a back-up LORAN receiver, either as a stand-alone or as a dual purpose unit. Will we have to carry yet another piece of required equipment, like our AIS, which I assume will need to be integrated with the back-up LORAN. And what about our EPIRBs.

I remember when the Coast Guard and industry forced mariners to switch to 406 mHz EPIRBS. We all had to suck up and embrace the new technology even though many of us who fished inshore (inside 20 miles) knew our best chance for survival after a catastrophic hull breach was a continuous emergency tone transmitted over VHF Channel 16. Well, too bad. We had to trash our older EPIRBs and buy new ones that cost ten times as much. But hang on a second. Because we're allowed once again to transmit MAYDAYs on Channel 16. Manufacturers have reintroduced continuous tone MAYDAY transmissions over VHF frequencies in the form of an Emergency Channel 16 DSC. These MAYDAY transmitters are available in DSC-equipped VHF radios and Personal VHF-based EPIRBs known as VPIRBs. These MAYDAY transmitters send out a continuous digital call that includes, you guessed it, your GPS position. But if we have LORAN as a back-up, how is the back-up signal integrated into the VHF or VPIRB, or a similarly equipped EPIRB that also transmits a GPS location? And how does the transmitter know which signal to use and when? Hmm, sounds complicated, and expensive.

But that's just what they want. To pass the cost of everything onto us. First they'll stick it to us as the taxpayer, then we'll get it again as the consumer.

My vote is to say no to LORAN. The Coast Guard and the IMO picked GPS as the system of choice. Let's stick with it. If a back-up is necessary, it should be able to work with onboard equipment in use today -- not tomorrow, or worse, yesteryear!

~seabgb

Blue Sharks from Last Summer

More Pics from the Florida Keys

Sunset Over Cowpens Anchorage, Florida Bay

Robbie's in Islamorada

Relaxing in Islamorada

Portland Fire Boat Runs Aground

The Portland Press Herald has run a couple of stories about the new $3.2 million fire boat going aground during the rescue attempt of a stranded mariner on Saturday, November 7. I use the term mariner lightly because there's some question as to what the victim and his wife were doing out around Jewell Island. Was he bird hunting out of a kayak or taking a leisurely paddle with his wife in a canoe? Apparently, nobody knows which. However, we do know that going to Jewell Island in November in a canoe or kayak is certainly no picnic cruise. Jewell sits at the outer edge of the Casco Bay archipelago. In other words, it's out there.

Sometime in the afternoon the victim and his wife ended up on Jewell Island suffering from hypothermia. They built a fire and called for help and the USCG and Portland fire boat responded. Two rescuers in a skiff made it to shore and attended to first aid but the tide was ebbing and before they knew it their skiff was high and dry. The fire boat turned around and headed back to Portland for additional manpower and equipment and it was on this return leg that they ran aground in Whitehead Passage between Peaks Island and Cushing Island.

The Portland Press Herald article makes it sound as if an insidious rock jumped off the bottom and took hold of the fireboat. But if you look at the chart you will see a clearly marked channel holding plenty of water (four to six fathoms) for a boat with a 4' draft, provided you don't run straight courses between markers.

Portland Fire Chief Fred LaMontagne said that they would be retracing the fireboat's course to determine what it was the boat hit -- to determine the precise location of any navigable hazards.

I think it's safe to assume the fireboat hit a rock or ledge. And I would further suggest that spending taxpayer money looking for an unmarked hazard is not as important as determining the piloting and/or navigation error that contributed to the grounding.

I'm also curious as to why the fireboat was dispatched in the first place. The Coast Guard and the Marine Patrol are tasked with these types of rescues, and it was the Marine Patrol that eventually completed the evacuation in a small boat. So why did the fireboat go? I can understand dispatching the fireboat in a "standby and assist if necessary role." But when you have a call for help from a man who is not physically in the water, who is on an island with almost no easy landing or access . . . unless the fire boat was out there because of the small fire the man reportedly had started. Anyway, I think the Fire Department owes it to the taxpaying public to look closely at their response to this emergency so that some specific emergency response parameters can be established for the future.

Incidentally, the man who was rescued didn't require hospital attention. He and his wife were dropped off at a marina by the Marine Patrol.

~seabgb

Interesting Boats: Sailing/Flying Fun