I Spy with my little eye

[bingoking]

You have obviously switched on your transponder!

[Al]

Hi spy in the sky. Bloody hell! Talk about big brother! Well yes, we did switch on the transponder the other day & yesterday. I think for a test of our radars amongst other bridge gear! That position given is scarily accurate as well just off the berth those few meters there.

However although you may know Brian, for anybody else looking in, that is not my ship. That will be whatever was alongside this berth the day Google Earth took the photos years ago however it is almost our size. I would guess we are another 40m or 50m or so overall longer. We are 250m and I guess that is around 200m ish. We are also wider at 40m. I am actually really intrigued by the hull form of that ship as we have never seen a stern that shape on a tanker before. As a lot of military vessels use these lay by berths we are wondering........!

Also the Mississippi is right up at the moment and all that land on the starboard (right) side is well submerged presently right up to the levee which is top right. The river is 3.3m above datum and still rising with all the snow melt further inland and up in the Rockies in the river basin and it is running at about 4.5 Kts which is seriously impressive for a huge river. It is also about 24m deep even at the margins presently! It is also seriously difficult to keep tied up safely!

This whole area of Violet just S of New Orleans was one of the worst hit suburbs for flooding during Hurricane Katrina 5 Years ago when the levees were swamped and gave way. There is still huge devastation and many people are still living in trailer homes on the slab of concrete that was once where their house once stood. Not what I expected.

I have actually been trying to reply to this thread for over 24 hours but having big problems for some reason. Something about your post was freezing my downloading so I couldn`t get the screen to give me all the buttons. Nothing you did as it does it all the time when I am offshore. Probably something to do with the download speed and our effin net nannies.

Capt. Al.

[Bibs]

Al, why don't you use the mobile version of the site when you're offshore, it's a smaller page to load? Change your skin to ip.mobile or use the 'clean & simple' one.

[Al]

Thanks for the suggestion Bibs. I have just swapped over so will monitor how I get on. I am answering on IP Mobile.

Interestingly enough it is often your postings (70% maybe) that freeze the downloadings. Okay I know that you post more than anybody so some of it is that but what happens is I see that there is perhaphs say 20 replies to a post. Click on it and every time it will stop at the same place in the same post which will be at the bottom of a post maybe at 10 or something. Refreshing doesn`t help our coming out and going back in. Sometimes I can get to last post by clicking on the last post was at time on the front page but usually not. One way that so far seems sucessful is if I click on reply then I get to see all the posts (eventually) below my reply so gets past #10 then. Strange. It will just be this satellite system I assume as never happens at home. Anyway I`ll see if thse two lighter versions help.

On a thread hijack here but while typing anyway I assume the on line survey of 8 questions or whatever is instigated by you? At first I assummed it was Spam or similar and even clicking on 'Never' as an option it still came up. It might be worth alerting others that it is a valid survey. If I had been at home I`d never have entered it to find out just in case of corrupting the computer but figured at work it would be a job for IT to sort out resultuing mess if a virus or spyware!

[Scotty C]

we use this at work for tracking customers

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

[bingoking]

I have their iPhone app!

[Al]

Purely out of general interest what line of work are you in Scotty that you track poor Muppets like me?

It means we have nowhere to hide these days. As recently as the early 80`s the Captain used to receive a very brief few worded telegram or telex with something like LEFO and a date. This was Lands End for Orders so basically wherever we were in the world you would set courses for the end of English channel at a speed to make that ETA. Generally before you got there you found the destination and date. Meanwhile for the next 5 or 6 weeks maybe you were alone. Maybe sent off a noon position daily. This was when we still used Sextants which my kids asked me in the 90`s about why not in a museum. Sat Nav has not been around that long! GPS even less time.

Now every turn you make and alteration in speed is recordable somewhere. As we approached the mouth of the Mississippi in early Feb I had time in hand and in no rush and for various operational reasons I wanted to do a full 360 spin which I did at 0700 or something. Later in the day my manager asked me why I had been facing the wrong way at the wrong speed at 0715 when he had looked at this website. Damn

[Scotty C]

We are a supply company. Rope soap and dope as they say. We supply the rigs ( and FPSO, FSU's etc) and also do ship chandlery for the supply boats.

Gone are the days of waiting for the supply boats to come into the harbour before getting orders, 90% of the work is done via purchasing systems and emails before the boat comes into port. Some of the customers notify us when they’re coming into port, but we have to keep an eye on most and there movement. Aberdeen harbour website is good but only tells you when the boats are in harbour, Peterhead doesn’t have a website so we have to use the tracker to look for boats coming in there.

What rig/fpso/boat are you on?

Scotty