Search results for query: *

Note that the claim that not allowing Chinese ships will make clearing the channel take months instead of weeks do not appear to be credible; the current report is that the Army Corps of Engineers does expect to have the channel cleared in weeks. Currently, they've removed eight shipping...

The ban on cabotage actually came in two parts; passenger traffic cabotage was barred under the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886, but cargo traffic cabotage was not barred until the much later Merchant Marine Act of 1920. The dredging act restrictions came about because of a rather bizarre...

There’s a demand, but it’s not *enough* demand to push the market to actually create a surplus of dredging capacity. . . especially since the dredging projects require multi-jurisdictional planning and approval and that’s a very slow process. Also, different types of dredges are optimal for...

The penalty for breaking that law is flat out forfeiture and seizure of any illegal dredge in U.S. waters. No one has ever dared, and unfortunately it’s one of the major reasons so few US ports have been able to upgrade to post-Panamax ships. The domestic dredging fleet is pretty much exactly...

There is an actual law involved here, a 1906 act regulating dredges which states that all dredging ships operating in U.S. waters must not only be U.S. flagged, but built in the United States, owned by a U.S. citizen, and chartered by a U.S. citizen.

That’s because for reasons of stacking calculations, the maximum mass of a container is standardized at 67,200 pounds regardless of size. The physical shell of the 20’ container is about three thousand pounds lighter, hence its higher maximum mass. This works out in practical terms because the...

A small point of detail since I researched standardized shipping containers a few years ago (in the context of certain...debates people were having about Star Citizen). The MV Dali has a rated capacity of 9,971 TEU, which has led to many media outlets saying things along the line of it carrying...

And how do you suggest it could have been avoided in a manner practical for port operations? "Anonymous sources allegedly claimed that unspecified government agencies told them not to talk to the media" is at best an unprovably vague claim.

Also for the record, modern GMDSS emergency communications equipment is required to be connected to main power, backup power, *and* battery backup. It is also linked to GPS so that it will automatically transmit the position of a ship in distress, and semi-automated so that it will activate...

The old maritime emergency frequencies are no longer monitored, and have in fact been re-allocated for other uses. If you’re thinking of military guard and similar, those are entirely different frequency allocations. Channel 16 is still monitored as the emergency channel, but that is HF radio...

Carrier wave transmissions are dependent on the teaching of Morse code and active monitoring of old radio frequencies, neither of which exists in the modern world. Indeed, one of the biggest practical advantages of GMDSS is that it enabled slamming the door on this wasteful, old-fashioned BS.

Sure, that's why they were used back in the day. But technology has moved on, and GMDSS has major advantages.

That is unfortunately out of date. No one monitors for Morse code emergency transmissions any more, not even on the 500 MHz long range international distress band. It's been entirely replaced by GMDSS: the SOLAS rules were amended in 1988 to require all vessels under SOLAS to carry GMDSS...

On paper, a handheld 5-watt marine radio can reach up to 15-20 miles. In practice, it’s reliable for a mile or so, but in a big high traffic harbor it’s at serious risk of being drowned out by the numerous big ship radios transmitting on the same frequency bands.

Battery operated handheld marine radios are too short range to be relied on even for just in-harbor communications. There's a reason even small powerboats and sailboats have a full size mounted marine radio unit. The ship already has multiple levels of useful redundancy in the form of actual...

I'd venture a guess that the pilot was thinking fast and whipped out his cell phone for an emergency call while the emergency generators were firing up and he didn't have the ship radios back yet. It's a bizarre jerk move to try to blame him for doing something that was directly responsible...

Fifty thousand tons is her net tonnage, i.e. a rough measure of her cargo space. The actual ship tonnage is just under one hundred fifty thousand tons, i.e. half again the tonnage of a Nimitz-class supercarrier.

You'll note the Key Bridge *did* have protective dolphins and other retrofittable safety features installed. It's just that even the most extensive collision protections cannot just. . . no-sell a ship of that sheer magnitude. There's just too much kinetic energy. However, retrofitted...

Or Portland. Portland got *heavily* mocked (including by many of its own residents) for how badly things got shut down by unusually huge snowfall a few years ago; the answer is that the amount the city budgets for winter storm control is rationally based on normal trends. A city the same size in...

As I said, there’s a lot more to those islands than a bit of gravel. The collision resistant piers involve substantially deeper foundations, more flexible material composition, greater margins of structural redundancy, and other engineering features which cannot be implemented retroactively.