Queen Mary 2's arse end

Queen Mary 2 - The Arse End

Glenpark sails "doon the glen" that is Otago Harbour...

NZMPA article March 2018

NZMPA Pilot 

March 2018

I was a bit weary in the small hours of the other morning as we headed out to the awaiting 4-metre post-Gita swell and my next inward job, having had only just over 4 hours rest from the last job. I thought I might have a little whinge (you can’t take the Pom out of the boy…) about it to anyone interested in listening, until I realised that the other occupants of the pilot launch only had half as much sleep in the bank as me. Which is odd since everyone on board was working a 1:1 work ratio, so one would tend to assume that fatigue wouldn’t be an issue, but it evidently sometimes can be.

Port Otago Ltd company policy regarding servicing marine customers is, like most or all non-tidal constrained ports in New Zealand, to provide a 24/7/365 service and that is what both management and marine department workers have come to expect. Also, most workers realise that a 1:1 work ratio, albeit 24 hour on-call, is not at face value all that onerous, but in the case mentioned, had he known the circumstances, the master of the inbound vessel that my colleague was about to pilot would likely have had have serious reservations as to his pilot’s ability to do the job safely. It probably would not have complied with many shipping company Hours of Rest Regulations. Port Otago has a self-regulating but rather ad hoc system for fatigue management and company management probably assumes that it works well since no ships are delayed and apart from the odd gripe, everyone gets on with the job. Other than having a whinge, which on the morning in question, was to be my preferred method, the way to indicate fatigue via this system is to decline to do a job when one deems oneself too fatigued; the worker should walk away from the job and a replacement should be found. This is also in-keeping with company Health and Safety policy whereby, “no job is too important that it can’t be done safely”. Nice idea, but in practice it involves the admission that one cannot cope and a background fear of sanction for delaying shipping. These fears and ideas are less rational in today’s “less blame” culture, but still exist and have not been completely expunged from the workers psyche. Moreover, there’s that early hours decision-making process, and we’re all subject to the normal human behavioural practices; declining a job, especially in the wee small hours involves calling out an off-duty colleague often at short notice, and even that is based on the assumption that they are available as there is no specific call-out roster. Failing that, it’s a case of delaying a shipping movement or two, and whereas this would instantly focus management minds on the issue, it’s not done because it is anathema to our embedded culture which, despite the exhortations of BRM, thankfully in my opinion, remains that which embraces the “can do” attitude. There’s much merit in the “can do” approach but it does need managing. 

It could be argued that management abrogate responsibility by having workers self-manage their fatigue, but then if management try to micro-manage they are often then accused of excessive interference, but fatigue management plans (FMP’s) have been around for many years and give both management and workers a template to work from and specify actions to take when FMP alarms are activated.

Like many professionals, pilots often find that they are subject to criticism by people who can’t actually do the job; it’s well known that some of the best ship-handlers are standing on the quayside. Likewise, managers of businesses are too frequently derided by workers who would fare dismally if placed in a management position.

However, if company policy is to provide a 24/7/365 service then manning (and womaning? Non-gender specific peopling?) for the peaks and enduring the over peopling of the troughs is inevitable. In small ports, the big shipping companies seem to dictate that this full service is required, so it’s up to port management to manage and workers to assist in implementing safety management policy and practice on fatigue. On such important safety issues no-one should lose sight of the fact that working together, walking the walk as well as talking the talk is the way forward.

Tired of reading about fatigue? Then get this? We had a visit from Royalty at the end of February as the Queen Mary 2, having bypassed us last year, decided to call in this season having seen the Ovation of the Seas do it a few times already. “What a beautiful ship!” I heard a lot of people say as she transited the harbour. So is it just me that thinks she’s as ugly as a bulldog licking piss off a nettle? The freeboard, designed to make her extra stable during her North Atlantic ferry duties, and the charcoal, so dark blue it’s black, paint, make her look like a pot-bellied old codger with his trousers pulled right up into his crotch. And the stern? What happened there? I know she’s been designed with more than just a nod to the old Queen Mary with a couple of azipods slipped in where hopefully no-one notices, but the referendum as whether to fit a cruiser or transom stern must have been closer than Brexit because it’s resulted in a 50-50 split with a cruiser stern hanging off a transom. Ugly as… but that’s what you get when you build a Cunarder in France and they base the design on a Citroen 2CV. The original, launched in 1934 at John Brown’s yard on the River Clyde, would never have been allowed out the naval architects office looking like that. The original basso profundo steam whistle was impressive though, even on compressed air.

22 years later in 1956 and just upstream from John Brown’s, Charles Connell & Co’s men would have been building the original Glenpark for J&J Denholm Limited, the Glasgow based family firm with whom both your esteemed editor and I served our time. Ed went on to sail as Cadet Training Officer on the sister ship Wellpark (built at Mitsubishi in Hiroshima in 1977) where I did two trips as cadet, although our paths never crossed at the same point. Having sailed as cadet on the previous Glenpark, imagine Ed’s paroxysms of delight as he piloted Glenpark’s latest top quality Naikai Zosen (Innoshima) built manifestation into Port Chalmers; and in the office, much to the bemusement of those present, we spontaneously broke into verse commissioned by J&J Denholms spirtle-whittler and penned by Bardy McBardie, an under-appreciated and often under the influence prodigy of Robert Burns…

“Doon the Glen came the Denholm’s men

Like a line of ballet dancers

Two in ten were time-served men

And the rest were fucking chancers!”

 (CH)

NZMPA article Maintaining High Professional Standards in Maritime Pilotage

NZMPA Pilot Dec 17

Maintaining High Professional Standards

Unfortunately, despite the title, this is not an article about West Ham United Football Club as we seem destined for another dire season in the relegation zone. Likewise, if we are not careful, professionalism in NZ pilotage.

Most readers will be aware that our Marine Manager, posing a simple question stemming from purely altruistic reasons, asked the powers that be whether or not a Foreign-going Masters certificate was required in order to start training as a pilot in a New Zealand port. He was apparently informed that it was not a requirement, which turned out to be news to the rest of the New Zealand pilotage and indeed marine community as a whole, almost all of whom reading Rule 90 concluded that it was indeed a requirement. The simple question has now been raised to a legal one and since the wording of Rule 90 is seemingly a lawyers’ delight of ambiguity, it is only right that it should be questioned.

Certainly, in many parts of the world it is not a requirement to hold a Foreign-going Masters ticket before embarking upon pilot training and even in New Zealand, once qualified as a pilot, rather oddly there is no need to maintain the licence for the purposes of doing the job. This Foreign-going master level entry requirement indicates, but certainly does not guarantee, a high base-level of maritime competence prior to a candidate embarking upon such a training regime as port pilotage. The training regime can then be pitched accordingly to reflect this apparent higher base-level.

Where no specific entry requirement is made, many foreign ports with a high professional training ethic reflect this with training regimes that are consequently far more onerous than those requiring a Master Foreign-going entry. Most often they have a bolt-on academic qualification, the acquisition of which acts as a safety net in cases where candidates fail to meet the required practical standards.

Older pilots seem rarely to have considered pilotage until late in their careers, maybe because life at sea a couple of decades ago was more rewarding socially and financially; it wasn’t where I was but who knows? Nowadays, anecdotally at least, it seems that young New Zealand seafarers aspire to the pilotage profession from very early on or at the start of their careers and by this latest interpretation of Rule 90 are at once disenfranchised, which may well have repercussions for the recruitment of New Zealand Merchant Navy officers in the future.

By way of a spanner in the works of the professional argument for maintaining the apparent Master Foreign-going ticket status quo, it seems that some New Zealand port pilots accept that a Foreign-going Masters certificate is not a requirement, highlighting the fact that the profession is not united in its view …not that has it ever been and why indeed should it be? It can be easy to divide and rule diverse and free-thinking groups of which maritime pilots are but one, however maybe this issue can serve as a catalyst to unite professionalism within New Zealand pilotage in a way that the Hammers never seem to have achieved in the East End of London.

                                                                                                   CH.

Hong Kong to Sydney

I wondered why the ship was so quiet on the way down to Sydney. 10 days at sea through the South China, Flores, Celebes, and Timor seas, through the Torres Strait and inside the Great Barrier Reef. Interesting places for the navigationally-minded but at the time I knew the barest basics of maritime getting about, so was clueless as to where we were most of the time. The reason for the ship being quiet, I was later to find, was that since we "drank ourselves stupid round the Aussie coast and shagged ourselves stupid around south east Asia", the trips from Hong Kong to Sydney and Fremantle to Singapore were the only rest and recuperation periods we got.

If sea-time means seeing plenty of sea then I certainly got some in that trip. Due to a major fault with the auto-pilot, we spent most of the time hand steering and to save paying a quartermaster 4 hours overtime a day, I was put on the wheel on the 4 to 8 watch and racked up over 200 hours steering in a very short time. The requirement for a steering ticket was 20 hours, so if I learned nothing else that first trip, I learned how to steer. There's a certain zen to steering the same course for a full hour and trying not to deviate more than half a degree off the course line. The ability to focus the mind whilst steering is an art form that I accidentally acquired and still have when it comes to steering ships but only recently have I started to try to apply it to other aspects of life.

My opposite number (oppo) on the 4-8 was a Hong Kong Chinese quartermaster called Chiang Kai Shing whose English vocabulary consisted of "Fack", "Fack off" and "Faaackin' bastard", all delivered with a broad, slant-eyed, big teeth smile. Despite the obvious shortcomings in the communication field, Kai Shing and I had some full-on discussions over the relative quality of our steering ability as we examined the course recorder at the end of the watch. He'd look at it and  if he thought I'd done better than him, which was rarely the case, he'd point at the recorder and say "Fack off!", point at me, wag his finger and say "Faaackin' bastard!". On the far more common occasions when he had faired better, he would again look at the recorder, say "Fack!" then thumb his chest and declare himself the "Faaackin' bastard!" for the previous watch.

He took great pride in his ability to communicate with me and would often greet me with a friendly "Fack off, faaaking bastard" when he was in the company of his crew-mates on board ship or ashore. This would always be accompanied by the big smile, a handshake, slap on the back or combination thereof. Ashore, especially in south East Asian ports, I could never buy him a beer no matter how hard I tried whilst he, and to be fair most of the Chinese deckhands, put their best efforts into getting me pissed and laid before I returned to the ship. These guys were well paid by Hong Kong  standards at the time and they were prepared to invest heavily in the life education of a young man that obviously needed it. Regrettably, I resisted or avoided both temptations since due to an accursed Catholic upbringing, I could both take my drink and maintain high moral standards at the same time. Much as I now regret the missed opportunities, I probably avoided a few interesting medical phenomena of the genitalia in the process.

Still haven't got to Sydney yet, have we?

Advaran origins

So this is advara's first blog post. Whoopee fuckin' doo...

What's an advara anyway? Well, it's an m.v. Advara, as it happens, and she looks like this -

...or rather she  looked like this. She's doubtless long since been converted to razor blades. The snub-nosed old girl was my first ship ...and you never forget your first ship. So said, Hamish Main, the other, more senior cadet on board at the time. No idea where he is now, as I have never heard of him since he left the ship. If you're still out there Hamish, I owe you a beer. Likewise, Roy Usher, the Geordie second mate, who took me under his wing and fended off for me both the sadistic cunt of a Captain (also a Geordie) and amorous queen of a second engineer. She was a lumber carrying ship originally called the Kyoto Forest and she was converted to carry containers around Australia and south east Asia. At 15 knots downhill with the wind behind her, she was never going to be an ocean greyhound but she did have some interesting ports of call. I joined her at North Point in Hong Kong on 27th December 1976, having just flown in to the old Kai Tak airport from having left childhood behind in Heathrow.

This was another world and a not altogether too comfortable one. Having been brought up in the not-so-wilds of Didcot, in rural Berkshire (now Oxfordshire post-174 reshuffle), this was just a bit different. The mate of the ship met us when we arrived and he was sporting a shining black eye, courtesy of the aforementioned cunt of an Old Man, who had, understandably perhaps on this occasion, belted the Mate for making indecent advances to the missus, who was on board for the duration.

After a couple of days we moved across to the Kwai Chung container terminal, where we exchanged cargo and I made a couple of homesick calls home: one to Mum and Dad telling them how much I was (trying) to enjoy life and one to my girlfriend telling her how I was in the process of conquering the Far East. I felt like shit, of course but it's one of the rites of passage, I guess.

Next port of call Sydney and another whole New World experience...