Grooming of deck Cadets – 13                                                                                                

It is very sad that while I am writing so much about the aspects of Cadets’ grooming – deck Cadets in MN – that I have to go and investigate the accident of a Cadet meeting with a deadly fall in the cargo hold……..  Extremely ironical in a sad sense!

What about his dreams of a great future..?

What about his parents’ condition ….?

What about the condition of his colleagues on board?

What happened to grooming at all in his case?

On a cargo ship – barely in his third week, he becomes very confident (in an unsafe sense) … the Bosun would later tell me during the investigation that the Bosun had been humiliated and rejected by so many young cadets and younger ratings & officers about safe actions at sea these days that he had gone into depression and stopped telling them much … his immediate bosses were complaining about the high degree of knowledge shallowness …. And so on … too many complaints about the deceased but neither a ‘system’ nor the ‘industry’ nor the ‘old sea dogs’ telling their stories could stop a life from failing so sadly …..

At the end of the investigation, making reports and explaining it to scores of the connected people – I came to the same conclusion again and again that whatever I have posted so far stands good to the dot and may be taken further for making it more effective in practical deployment but not for a single omission !!

I have no proof in my hands but I would tell the younger Cadets, officers and ratings that the animated characters in the computer games you play fall and jump and crash and yet get up …… in real life even a meter of fall on the steel plates can be debilitating !

Do not lose awareness of the real life impact, do not be adventurous in an unsafe sense – even the greatest of wars are won by great risk analysis, survival techniques and highest levels of situational awareness ….

May the should of the dead rest in peace and his loved ones have the strength to take this shock and loss with a strong heart …. Though it shouldn’t happen to any one else at sea or elsewhere !

Failing to stop wrong is same as facilitating the wrong!!  

 

Safe sailings!

 

Grooming of deck Cadets – 13

 

Just the way as the birth rate in a country defines the continuation of the country’s cultural heritage and social survival in the colossal world, the MN operating standards remain dependent heavily on the quality of Cadets enrolled in the career, their grooming and the attitudes they develop and their survivability in the career.

 

The cadets acquire academical portion of the knowledge through land based institutions and training facilities, while the practical operational skills are honed on board during their sea service.

At least to start with one needs to understand that the Maritime world today is at a juncture when the day is made when an enrolled cadet understands the key difference between a handheld web-search machine that is largely driven by marketing gimmicks and a purposeful commanding operation through the screen on board in a control room that is meant to achieve the navigational and engineering actions still based on the basic scientific operational principles that remain intact!

Having said all this and discussed so much about the grooming of the MN cadets, the fact is that every seafaring officer in the MN is directly or indirectly always grooming the cadets – the Cadets- like children in a family -  watch the seniors at work and learn, adopt or also decide not to follow something – there is no way out ….

The maritime world is a going through the transition on all fronts, from the way the ships are made, managed & operated at a pace that was never seen in the history. There is no way for the senior generation at sea at the moment except to be good at the traditional hands-on skills as well as the electronically controlled operating skills both and ensure that the cadets receive proper on-the-job grooming!

The clock is ticking before it is too late and the onus of developing future underdeveloped, unskilled officers will be on the current day serving officers of the MN !!

Safe sailings!

Grooming of deck Cadets – 12

The defining Moment!

The MN cadets – deck, engine, electrical eventually get groomed – many reflect the styles and the qualities of their mentors picked up along the way to becoming a watch standing officer and eventually the Master in command.

The international regulatory bodies, industry regulations, the trading patterns and the economic cycles of booms and recessions largely define the Cadets’ shaping – add a portion of their own initiatives in that. But does the industry get the officers that was intended? No matter how much one may argue the answer is a flat NO! The reason being the career itself being full of extra ordinary numbers of variables.

Can one search for a defining moment then? Indeed can …. Take a number of samples from across the world and you will find very interesting defining moments in the Cadets’ lives, the most frequent ones being…

• Shear survival moments – learning, adopting in order to survive in the current situations
• Opportunistic viewpoints
• Career or family decision moments
• Financial goals in personal lives
• Not coping up with the rigorous of the given trade type and switching over
• Not coping up with the academical demands
• Criminalization of the seafaring career by popular shore based trends
• Family demands – spousal demands
• Having no choice – certain trade type simply getting washed of
• Careers being taken over by other mediocre – cheaper workforces
• Having to work with low standard crews and teams
• Security issues – piracy – exposures to war zones and having no special protection of recognition
• Peer pressure – peer trends on mass scales
• … and rarely – occasionally a small number succeeding in having a trade of their choice, having a planned career-path to master the skills and actually doing so.

Consequently in this centuries old career, in spite of pumping in thousands of Cadet level entrants – there are only a few hundred highly skilled industry experts who at any moments call can operate the MN ships at the highest levels even when there is no quality demand or even when the wages are down …

Safe sailings!

 

Grooming of deck Cadets – 11

Typically a Deck Cadet is introduced to the principles of Navigation during his/her pre-sea training academically. This is complemented by the ‘practical navigation’ as a separate subject. Once the cadets go on ships they have to fill in a “cadets’ record book” for the practical work they do on board under the supervision of the senior officers. Upon completion of their cadet time on board they appear for the examinations for their ‘license’ which is based on the syllabi contained in the STCW code. This STCW code is set by the IMO which is a body of the UNO. Ideally this should bring a uniform way of navigation at sea – but it doesn’t happen that way – practices in certain countries are based on only taking a single position line and estimating a position – while the British Admiralty oriented Navigational tradition involves a complete day’s work using all the means of celestial navigational techniques.

During the coastal navigation a combination of the Celestial Navigational instruments and the visual bearings and usage of the electronic instruments can produce position fixing opportunities.

Whilst practicing the traditional celestial and terrestrial navigational methods – or the ‘manual’ methods, one is also continuously availed of the electronic navigational systems at hand that are based on the Doppler shift (GPS) or the radio navigational systems based on the ‘parabolic’ navigation principles. While at these Navigational works the art of Dead reckoning, using the ‘sounding’ line and so on cannot be ignored.

As such a cadet must have a daily ‘navigational’ plan ahead of the day or rather ahead of a voyage and go on executing it under supervision.

In today’s world many seniors too discourage the cadets from practicing this so that they are available as administrative assistants for the mountain of paperwork on board at the cost of their training – and there are too many cadets willing to skip this practice at sea ….

 

Safe sailings!

Earth Quake:


A powerful earthquake struck when my ship was tied at a bulk cargo berth.
The jetty shuddered. I heard sounds and vibrations that resembled a strong astern main-engines-kick. A ship Captain's mind has to handle the unforeseen. The phone network got jammed, normal communication became impossible. Frankly, no checklists was of real use to first understand what was wrong and how to respond to the unique emergency on hands.


It was time for going back to basics, using the Master's command skills, leadership and common sense.


Here I had to face the following at once:

• Determine what was wrong - I had to convince my fellow senior staff that it was an earthquake _ I took help of the USGS earthquakes site to confirm this as soon as one of the smartphones got the internet going.

• I had to assess & respond to:

                 - the damage from within
                 - the damage from the jetty ('the land')
                 - the damage & changed topography due to buckled sea floor
                 - the damage from the falling debris / objects from the bulk    
                   handling tower cranes
                -  the damage from other ships / crafts
                - the damage from panicked actions of the distressed persons

• I had to call the emergency stations to assess and respond to this unusual emergency.

I had seen the Tsunami catastrophes on the videos and many times wondered how to respond to an earthquake while on a ship but this was an experience that demonstrated how vast is the list of factors to face and a need for a profound command and technical skills base needed in responding to emergencies with a major change of normal working conditions to prevent injuries, pollution, damages and losses and the human morale in an emergency. 


Safe Sailings!