Comment by Tomte 18 hours ago
Learning the fundamentals.
Germany puts all aspiring naval officers through a tour on the Gorch Fock.
It‘s kot just culture, although those ships also serve as excellent ambassadors to far-flung countries.
I suppose "not hitting bridges" is part of the fundamentals
But it's really curious how it seems those collisions have been becoming more frequent (or only our awareness of it?)
Another alternative is "the sort" working better than ever which means that maritime employment in some places does not attract the best professionals
With the case of the US Navy and the well-publicized collisions with civilian vessels, it's happening more because the organization is trying to run more ships and more constant operations with fewer people than are actually required.
And that's on top of scheduling practices that are fundamentally negligent and dysfunctional to start with, like watch standers (whose job is to watch for and react to dangers to the ship) trying to perform duty shifts on 4 hours of sleep a night for months at a time.
To be fair "can this ship clear this bridge given it's height, the time of day, the general broad area tidal conditions and the specific hyper local variations" is fundemental but far from basic.
It also raises a question as to whether the fault lies with the ship crew or with a local pilot who had local control of the ship.
On the videos the ship is drifting backwards, from wind and/or currents (are currents the East River dominated by tides?). I don't think that they ever intended to clear the bridge. The fundamental they missed was keeping their maneuvering engine up and running (or calling in some tugs).
Tugs were nearby; one had helped it back away from the pier it had been docked at, but none were hooked up at the time of the collision.
Sal Mercogliano — a maritime historian at Campbell University - saw indications that the ship's engine may have been stuck in reverse.
See video edited from his livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p9bYfFhHE
Damn.
My bad for getting the full details .. I came to this story via a chain of bridge clearance fail stories and jumped to the assumption this was another intended passage clearance mistake.
There are some knuckle chewing engineering videos of planned water transits of "big loads" timed happen for a still water king low tide .. fast work with tiny clearances and major downsides on failure.
The fundamentals have obviously changed. At no point in any serious engagement will it ever be important to have experience with sailing. This ship should have been dry docked and turned into a museum years ago. Two people are dead.
That sail-trained sailors make better sailors than engine-trained sailors is similar to how glider-trained pilots make better pilots after transition than engine-trained pilots. They typically acquired a better understanding of the medium they're evolving in, giving them a deeper understanding of the dynamic situation of their craft.
There’s a lot more to seamanship and crewmanship than propulsion methods. Cuauhtemoc is a training ship designed to teach that, not primarily how to work sails. Also it was built in 1982 so I fail to see how it should be a museum ship since it’s not that old or historic.
Yeah, well, if you've invested 135 million euros into repairing a sailboat, you might as well put it to use...