Captain's Log

DATE July 11, 2007

Days at sea are consumed by routines of standing watches on the bridge and in the engine room, performing maintenance ship wide and practical training. In this log, we will look at some deck practical training.

Since many of the students have never been involved in what it takes to tie up a big ship, we practice tying ourselves up prior to the first port where the students will have to do it for real. Here we can see the foredeck set up for this training.

This process includes sending our hawsers ashore via messenger line, then pulling them taught with our winches. Here we see instructor Scott Saarheim instructing the use of the gypsy head of the anchor windlass to heave in on a hawser.

Once we have them nice and tight and they are holding the ship alongside, we have to figure a way to transfer that hawser tension from the winch to a set of mooring bitts without losing any of the pulling strain we just put on it. We do this force transfer via another line tied to the bitts where we make the hawser fast to. This smaller line is called a stopper (noun). We stop off (verb) the hawser to the bitts with a stopper line. There are several methods to wrap the stopper around the hawser such that it temporarily takes the strain we put into the hawser from the winch. Here we see a cadet holding a practice stopper.

Once the stopper is passed, the hawser strain is slowly slacked from the winch side of the pull until the force that was in the hawser is transferred to the stopper instead of the winch head. This gives the fellow crewmen behind the stopper holder the slack necessary in the hawser to take it off of the winch and wrap it in a set of deck bitts as we see Captain Jack Smith from Texas showing students how to do here. Every senior and sophomore deck cadet is given this refresher instruction prior to our first port.

The next two pictures highlight another training module where students are taught the proper safety procedure for enclosed space entry. Ships contain many tight and enclosed spaces in which work or inspections must take place. The ship uses OSHA procedures to prevent mishaps to crew before they enter potentially hostile environments. The students are also taught how to use atmospheric testing equipment to sniff tanks for sufficient oxygen content or the presence of harmful gases before allowing any entry into that space.

Here we see a cadet making entry into salt water ballast tank 5-15-0 as practice for this important safety procedural training.

 The second picture here is a look inside that tank

Since carrying dedicated radio officers has become a thing of the past, those duties now fall to the traditional deck officers. With the automation of satellite and automatic tuning radios, large compartments filled with CW radio equipment sometimes seen in the movies are a thing of the past. There is a new worldwide emergency communications system call the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. It is a comprehensive network of satellites, radio stations, ships and rescue coordination centers all monitoring the high seas for anyone who might be in trouble. Here we see two cadets learning about one of our two GMDSS consoles. Within this small console is a satellite system, high-frequency and medium frequency radio and telex capability. It is all automated and menu-driven. We can communicate anywhere in the world through publicly switched data and phone lines. Not shown in this picture is another satellite system that gives us instant voice and fax service.

As a backup, cadets are still required to learn Morse code, so that if they ever had to communicate by the old fashion blinking light method, they could. Here is a practice telegraph key that the cadets are issued to practice with.

As the long sea days enroute to Subic Bay slide by, we shall bring you more of the life aboard the GOLDEN BEAR.

Captain Leyda

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