Tuesday 26 August 2014


Grooming of deck Cadets – 10

Navigation

With traditional disciplines absorbed in the current day regulations and standards – the deck cadets take up the Deck officers’ careers and the Engineering Cadets take up the Engineering officers’ careers. The Deck officers are mainly responsible for the Navigation, Cargo operations, Stability calculations and executions, Ship’s electronic navigational systems – usage and upkeep, weather routing, collision avoidance, operations & upkeep of the radio communication systems (GMDSS), practical structural maintenance, seamanship aspects, mooring equipment  handling, trade specific skills such as oil-chemical-gas tanker works, container carrying practices,  Ship’s safety, security & environmental protections operations, emergency response, presenting the ship for a number of inspections & surveys, ship’s commercial business related administrative work, ship’s hygiene and catering management (using the skilled catering crew), ship’s accounting and paper work and so on including handling of the human resource on board on a day to day basis ….

The Cadet’s introduction to all these subjects in theory and practice, a number of tests and examinations he/she has to appear for and clear with very high passing percentage requirements and undergoing continuous experience concurrently during the sea-service and further enrichment is what effectively ‘grooms’  the Cadets.

Navigation at sea is about constantly being aware of one’s position & the route to the destination, being aware of means available to fix the positions and being able use all the means of the position fixing – conventional as well as modern.

The Deck Cadets need to start interacting with the world around them differently as they begin their path in the MN career and climbing the career ladder ….

>> When they look at the time they understand its co-relation to the earth’s motion.

>> When they look around they understand the compass cardinal points.

>> When they look at the morning sky they think of the twilight calculations, the amplitude of the rising Sun and a position line that they would obtain as well as the compass error check!

 

>> When they see a GPS they think of the Doppler shift based ranging and fixing and factors that dilute its accuracy.

 

>> When they look at the beautiful sky they see the navigable stars and planets and one constellation leads them to the next around the sky and they think of the possibilities of obtaining the position lines by intercept …

 

>> They take care of their Navigational instruments and always keep abreast of the technological advances in the fields of Navigational instruments …

 

>> when they come on the bridge they check the Navigational lights, understand the circumstances the ship is in, verify the accuracies of the Nav equipment in use, plan a terrestrial or celestial position lines obtainment plan for the day … verify the magnetic compass and constantly keep obtaining fixes and comparing the views around in its context to verify that what they see around matches what is expected based on the positions they fix ….

 

If this change starts happening be sure the grooming is indeed happening ..!!  

Safe sailings!

Sunday 24 August 2014


Grooming of deck Cadets – 9

The deck cadets train to be not just any other officers of the ships but to become the future Masters of the ships under their commands!

During my travels recently – I came across a twelve year old boy spending his entire day of the summer vacation at a 4 star hotel that was being run by his father and was also owned by his grand father. During the day it was hard to distinguish him as a ‘boss’s son’ – he was totally involved in his observations and at times even giving hand to the front office staff ! A couple of days later his grandfather arrived and I heard the grand pop and the grandson discussing each other’s work areas with mutual respect! The hotel owner – the grandfather- was himself in his seventies & was in town to purchase some raw material for his carpentry project he had undertaken, the grandson intently listened to him, gave him report on how he was rotating himself within the hotel departments – a while later the boy’s father joined their discussion …  I realized this kind of mentoring that was going on in front of my eyes is what exactly is needed for the MN cadets grooming too – after all, they are to take a full charge of the vessel in future and that preparation is to start from day one !!

The companies that are successful in having mentoring the way I was witnessing in this hotel can be doing some real work in grooming and developing the MN cadets. Cadets who are groomed and trained this way have no fear, have no overconfidence but they are truly on-the- scene-commanders in the making …. These days we see the MN watch keeping officers busy filling-in endless number of records and checklists that even their supervisors have no time to verify and together they do not fully verify what is practically happening in and around the vessel, the assessments are largely dependent on the paper records rather than the physical presentations …. A future Master with such negligent foundation would be far less effective than the one who is groomed the way the two generations were doing in that hotel and with so much sincere effort by the learning youngster himself!! This can happen at sea too – it is not difficult..

Cadets – are you getting the message..? You need to take charge of being groomed in an all-round fashion because MN jobs are about being fully in charge of the ship’s functions and operations and that needs such in dedicated approach. The guiding books & programmes are good but their effectiveness is far enhanced by such approaches!!

Safe sailings!

Thursday 21 August 2014


Grooming of deck Cadets – 8

Since the time of the last sea-eagle post I witnessed something very shocking about the watch keeping by some of the newly promoted MN officers at sea – and that was scary indeed! They simply did not know what to do by standing a ‘watch’ either Navigational or Cargo Work related..! Unless there was something to punch in the keys boards of their PCs or the LCD screens they did not seem to see any point in keeping a ‘watch’, for utter four hours these young men would not keep a sea watch or a cargo watch as such – what they were doing was just the administrative work and some operations that were utmost necessary … but ‘watch keeping’ or interpreting – monitoring at all .. ….. this being a direct and bizarre outcome of the incompetent candidates being certified to stand watches on ships at sea as ‘competent’ …. Interestingly they all had undergone very lengthy college and examination times but were also the victims of slow employment – lengthy waiting periods and lack of motivation, lack of social prestige that the career once commanded etc. The irony is that their senior officers – the newly promoted seniors themselves did not see this gross negligence …. To explain an outcome of this to the non-mariners – it is a sure-shot progress towards accidents to the ships, ecological and environmental disasters and imprisonment for these young officers at some point when their ‘luck’ runs out ….. this may sound like a very hard language but this is exactly what it means….

When a person is trained through the CBTA and made competent – he/she understands in entirety – how that system or equipment or even a procedure works, how to start /initiate it , how to end it /stop it, how to trip it / suspend it , what are the performance indicators or the parameters, how to test it, what are the common short comings or breakdowns and how to address them, how to maintain it / revise – upgrade it and lastly but not the least how to answer queries about it …

When a person learns with a lot of practical experience in it – he never ends up with the situation that I witnessed among these few young officers: -  that of coming on the watch station and not being able to see anything to do and immerse oneself in some paperwork for all the 4 watch hours with overreliance on the electronics without understanding its limitations. I  found these officers so disinterested in watch keeping that they were not doing it at all unless there was an alarm to respond to or a breakdown to look into!!

Hopefully what I saw is only a minority and they would quickly – of their own – undertake the CBTA approach to the MN careers and discharge their duties as expected by the International Regulatory bodies and keep the seas safe – and their company’s business running!!

Safe sailings!

Saturday 9 August 2014


Grooming of deck Cadets - 7

Competent & Certified:

I was introduced to the Competency Based Training & Assessment (CBTA) concept when I started interacting with the Australian & New Zealand work cultures during my career.  On a lighter note, if you search for ‘CBTA’ on the net – you can be taken to a ‘Chinese Business & Technology’ group or a ‘Canadian Business Travellers’ group …or for that matter a Taekwando school or as is often confused one may think of CBTA as a ‘Computer Based’ Training… but NO! The CBTA as a concept is only about ‘Competency’ based training & and making the individuals ‘competent’ for job that is to be done by them!

Who would want to hand over his / her Mercedes to a drive unless the driver is competent and has been assessed after all?!!

Conversely speaking, this can also work as strategy for being excellent at one’s job if it has been adopted as a training strategy from its beginning! – mainly so from the cadetship itself!  

It is essential that there is a level of initiatives from the Cadets themselves when on board as well as when ashore about optimizing their training spells for the best results. The multiple ‘training facilitators’ and ‘training providers’ that they will encounter during their journeys as the MN Cadets – the CBTA concept will give a clear advantage in emerging as one the most competent future MN officers! And this need not be formulated by the authorities alone, this can also be one’s own learning & training style as well – why not?

When I take up the subject of Cadets’ grooming – it is quite a broadband in nature, covering all the aspects of their career phases that they are going to face once they start to stand the ‘watches’ and become accountable for their actions in operating the ships responsibly. This is way beyond the short term goals of certification alone. The certification / licensing system will test and check the Cadets / officers appearing for their exams basis of their curriculums – though it is exhaustive and always updated, the Cadets themselves have to be thoroughly competent and not just certified!  Post- Manila amendments to the STCW (standards of training, certification & watch keeping), many Port State Control inspectors seek to establish just that.

There is a remarkable difference between an officer who is ‘certified’ at certain date & an officer who is ‘competent’ at present. None can replace the other; these two are in fact ‘complimentary’ to each other ….

So, from the next post – let me share with you what the ‘CBTA approach’ can be as regards the Cadets’ grooming in the Merchant Navy as their own game strategy as well as that for their training facilitators ashore and on board.

 Safe sailings!

Wednesday 6 August 2014


Grooming of deck Cadets – 6 (current situation)

8000 plus cadets waiting ashore, each of them only about 12 to 18 months of sea time away from being able to appear for their professional exams, but instead of getting an assignment on ship in standard 2 to 3 months they now having to wait for 12 to 20 months and some of them not even getting a ship at all, they look elsewhere for a job …..  is this scenario covered in any ‘curriculum’? Of course no! But that’s what happening in some of the major maritime manpower supplier countries right now …..

Today’s cadets also often get multi-national officers that are their immediate seniors on board  who may have just about scraped through to the careers themselves … and then there are those high up ‘senior’ multi-nationalities on board who spend much time preaching how ‘during their times’ as the younger Cadet officers they were much capable than today’s large percentage of Apps-dependent – vastly un-seaman like generation … all this being highly unproductive for the real grooming of the cadets on board !!

For this reason, as an example, for serious business such as the operations of the Electronic Chart Display Systems (ECDIS) – the IMO (International Maritime Organization) have rejected the ‘trickle down training’ on board as regards the operation of type specific ECDIS. Time has come when the cadets themselves have to keep in mind that ‘every senior’ is not necessarily ‘right’ but just doing in one of the many ways of ship operations. The first thing Cadets need to understand is this discrimination between the right-way & the wrong-way while they go on learning on board during their training.

Thus,

A cadet who is trained to understand or think as to –

  • Appraise what the activities are for the day?
  • the regulatory frame work for those activities
  • the procedural frame work for it
  • the ‘best practices’ for it
  • the industry standards for them

at least for the planned jobs in that, because a ship’s work is always a mixture of planned, unplanned and emergency activities at any given moment… will be able to better optimize his/her time on board as cadet and work on it to learn while on land for the long breaks between shipboard assignments that now expected in the current situation ….

If the Cadets waiting for long durations on land away from the maritime environment due to the current ‘flooding’ in some countries – their future careers are at risks of being of mediocre working ability in general …. the ‘impact’ of this can be on global marine operations standards and the way the business is done in a longer run ….

Safe sailings!