Good one Canada

[FZR1KG]

Just dump a 300 foot passenger liner in the ocean and let it float around when you could have salvaged the ship and made some money. Lyubov orlova

Speculation is varied from it's still out there and heading for the coast of England to it sank due to the number of big storms the Atlantic has seen.
Here's some non speculation though, that was a really fucking stupid idea Canada.

[The Supreme Canuck]

As I understand it, the ship broke its moorings during a storm. It's not like they just kicked the thing out to sea on purpose.

[geonuc]

Yeah, I don't think Canadian maritime authorities just towed it out to sea and abandoned it. Two attempts were made to tow it to a southern salvage port. I guess they gave up after that. Ghost ships are not that unusual.

[FZR1KG]

The article I read is that it broke free the first attempt and on the second they towed it far enough for it to not be a threat to Canadian oil rigs then let it loose.

[FZR1KG]

The biggest issue I have is the way people think like they are in the damned dark ages and these are the people making big decisions.

Ok, here we have a ship that they can get $1000,000 for as salvage.
So what do they do?
I'll tell you what they didn't do.
They didn't bother to stick a $1000 GPS tracking device on the ship before starting the towing process.
If the ship breaks loose, they can find it.
They get their $1000 plus the $1000,000 they now don't have.

Who leaves a ship floating around in the oceans unmanned and no one knows where they are in this day and age.
Totally incompetent morons considering the money they would save and the reduction in risk if they put a little thought into it.

I can just imagine a storm and another ship/yacht getting hit by this thing. Canada would be wondering, hey, how could we know. There was no way to prevent that. A tragic accident.
It's a load of crap. This is not 1814, it's 2014. Put a low cost tracking device on the damned thing. It's not that hard or expensive or even difficult to obtain.
People put them on smaller yachts for fucks sake. We have a GPS tracker so people know where we are and can follow our trip.
But hey, what would I know. I'd be the one willing to risk $1000 to make a million. Big risk taker I am. Totally off the mainstream. lol

So sorry, I don't agree with you two.
Canada screwed the pooch on this by not only losing money when they didn't need to but putting out more pollution into the seas that could possibly injure someone.

And while I'm on a glorious rant about people doing stupid shit, stick an AIS on board the thing as well. A couple of grand more and it will ensure all other vessels within 50 miles know it's position and heading. It's mandatory for almost all countries no that larger ships (>60 feet or so) have them fitted to prevent maritime accidents yet they think it's acceptable to just dump a passenger liner and let it float around in stealth mode.

If we get hit by this thing I'm suing the Canadian government for billions. And suing you TSC for thinking they did an acceptable thing. No they didn't.

[SciFi Chick]

I feel bad for the rats.

[The Supreme Canuck]

I wasn't aware that the ship had been set adrift. I was under the impression that the ship broke its moorings, drifted, and was lost. This is a different situation.

[FZR1KG]

I'm just having a fun rant TSC. Hope that was obvious. Put in smilie's and everything.

I am however still dumbfounded that people will hook up such a heavy vessel to tow it without bothering to put tracking devices on it.
That just oozes incompetence and stupidity that I can't even understand.

Countries really do treat the oceans like a dumping field. Cargo containers regularly fall off.
Then some float about just under the surface ready to sink boats because boats are designed to be hit by waves of water not waves with 40 foot containers embedded in them. Wasn't too long ago a yacht sank in the Bass Straight after a collision with a container during a storm.
The companies are claiming very small numbers going overboard but given the small numbers of yachts sailing the oceans, the size of the oceans and the number of reported incidents and actual sinkings some involving deaths I'm going to go with the odds and claim the companies are full of shit. Their figures statistically wouldn't really even register if true.

Again, the problem is easily solved if people wanted to solve it.
containers in the ocean

But it's the ocean, you can do anything you want, other than have an unregistered boat because having an unregistered boat is so dangerous, that all counties must unite to fuck the owner over using archaic pre 1540AD laws of the sea for our protection.

[geonuc]

But it's the ocean, you can do anything you want, other than have an unregistered boat because having an unregistered boat is so dangerous, that all counties must unite to fuck the owner over using archaic pre 1540AD laws of the sea for our protection.

Aha! And now we get to the real reason for the rant!

FZ - I know you've done a lot of things in your life, but I suspect not heavy maritime salvage. You may be tossing around terms like "stupidity", "incompetence" and "easily solved" a little too casually, don't you think?

[geonuc]

I feel bad for the rats.

Yeah, what did they ever do to deserve this?

[FZR1KG]

But it's the ocean, you can do anything you want, other than have an unregistered boat because having an unregistered boat is so dangerous, that all counties must unite to fuck the owner over using archaic pre 1540AD laws of the sea for our protection.

Aha! And now we get to the real reason for the rant!

LOL
This whole situation with the boat has me pretty peeved off really.

FZ - I know you've done a lot of things in your life, but I suspect not heavy maritime salvage. You may be tossing around terms like "stupidity", "incompetence" and "easily solved" a little too casually, don't you think?

Well, I have to look at it from an outsiders view and I see basic issues easily resolved.
1) They put no form of tracking on it.
2) They put no form of AIS on it yet they insist that all large ships carry transmitting AIS types to ensure maritime safety.
3) Everyone now wonders where the ship is and there are companies trying to find it to salvage it not only making the seas safer but recycling a valuable resource but they can't because it's missing.

I don't need to be an expert in salvage to understand that (1) would have easily and cheaply solved (3) and since that's a very cheap cost effective solution the fact that it wasn't done is incompetence or stupidity.
(2) is a hypocritical position to take and when safety practices are hypocritical then that is stupidity and incompetence.

R.e. the containers falling off, there are reputable companies that haven't lost a container in years because they secure them properly.
Their ships are designed to be able to secure the loads and they load them correctly.
The reason we have containers floating about is poor practices and no one to enforce them. That's not any great difficulty to enforce.
lose a container, get a $50,000 fine.
When there is financial incentive to do the right thing it works. When there is financial incentive not to do the right thing as is the present case, the result is poor practices and containers falling overboard as well as safety violations. You've been in the industry long enough to know that correlation. Good regulation works. Poor unenforced regulation is toilet paper.

I don't see anything that's not easy to resolve since some of the more reputable companies already have and they obviously are still in business so it's not that expensive.

If this was the pre GPS and satellite era I could understand it. There would be no real choice. But now for any company or government to tow a ship worth millions as salvage without putting on a GPS tracker considering that the cost for sending a tow ship, manning it and fueling it for the trip is not small. Probably in the order of high tens of thousands minimum up to hundreds of thousands depending on the size of the vessel and the distance. The decision to not fit a GPS tracker is nothing short of gross incompetence both from a financial and safety aspect. The technology has been around, is cheap and easy to install. They put trackers on wildlife now to study migration patterns and these yahoo's can't think to put one on a 300 foot steel passenger vessel they have invested a lot of time and money into salvaging?
Please. Someone screwed the pooch big time.

[FZR1KG]

Oh yeah, the most important reason to blame Canada is because the USA cops so much shit it's only fair that Canada gets a bit too! lol

[Rommie]

I think we are overlooking the most interesting thing posted here- where do I go during your trip to track your boat, as that sounds really fun?

[FZR1KG]

I think we are overlooking the most interesting thing posted here- where do I go during your trip to track your boat, as that sounds really fun?

rofl

Well, someone noticed

We have a EPRIB that we manually can activate during the trip and it will send emails to up to five separate email addresses.
Right now as we're on land we obviously aren't using it as it shows nothing and just uses batteries.

We were hoping to setup a web page with a global map and have someone input the data they receive from the email onto the map.
I was going to volunteer squid to do it because, well, he's freaking awesome when it comes to this kind of stuff and knows his way around computers like sniper knows his weapon, every curve, every ripple and scratch of the stock and slick smoothness of the bolt...*cough*...but I didn't want to ask him as he's also pretty busy.

Just know when it's setup we'll have a webpage or at the minimum someone from FWIS that will get an email with our coordinates on a regular basis that they can relay to everyone here. It's a pretty basic email, a preset message with grid coordinates.
I'll probably put something like, "Don't call anyone, we haven't sunk yet, made it to here:"

[FZR1KG]

This is what we have

[SciFi Chick]

Rommie - you're elected. I'll be putting you on the list of five people that get notified.

[FZR1KG]

Elected?
the correct term is she got volunteered. lol

[SciFi Chick]

Elected?
the correct term is she got volunteered. lol

Same difference.

[SciFiFisher]

Elected?
the correct term is she got volunteered. lol

Same difference.

In the military we call that being "voluntold".

[Rommie]

Dude, you can't voluntold someone who really wants to do it anyway cause she's a geek who likes maps and coordinates and her friends.

Will set up a thread to update the troops here of your positions, maybe a Google Map thingy if I get around to that too. Hell I'm kinda tempted to buy a giant paper one of the Pacific for my own amusement.

[geonuc]

Ooh! I want a giant paper Pacific too!