The Perfect Storm??

[John Pruden]

new yorkers are very resilient people they will be back on their feet soon salt water will play hell with metal though ground zero took a hammering all the read bar will have to be sand blasted before any concrete laid for the rebuild. they were moaning about $3.00 a gallon petrol they are lucky?jp

[Tony Morcom]

Courtesy of ABC News:

HMS Bounty Survivors: Crew of Ship Sunk During Hurricane Sandy Speak of Lost Shipmates - ABC News

[happy daze john in oz]

ivan i watched it the other night the magnetic field is shifting{what ever that means} but once you understand that very interesting you never know a few years we will be fighting the germans for deckchairs in the artic circle

John, this is part of a natural change in the magnetic poles and it has occured before. Millions of years ago the north and south poles were at the opposite ends of the earth to where they are now. Millions of years ago countries such as Ireland were tropical, that is how it all works.

[Tony Morcom]

Courtesy of our friends @gCaptain:
Bounty Hearings Begin – Chief Mate Testifies

By Mario Vittone On February 12, 2013



Photos of the HMS Bounty replica sinking during Superstorm Sandy Image: USCG

With bruising and cuts to his face, broken bones in his hands, chest trauma, a twisted knee, and a dislocated shoulder, John Svendsen swam toward a strobe light. The tall ship Bounty had just sunk underneath him. It was early in the morning – just after midnight really – of October 29th, last year. He was likely the last person to see the ship’s captain, Robin Walbridge, alive as both men crawled across the foundering ship. Several hours (and probably miles) later, Svendsen – the last Chief Mate of Bounty – was pulled from the Atlantic by a Coast Guard MH-60J – lucky to be alive.
Read: Day 2 of Bounty Hearings – Rotted Frames on Bounty
This morning he was sitting alone at a desk at the Renaissance Hotel in Portsmouth while Commander Kevin Carroll – the man assigned by the U.S.Coast Guard to investigate the incident – engaged him in hours of Q & A. Today’s testimony – that included the details above – ended at about 4:00 PM Eastern. By the time I drove home from the hearing, local reporters had already misrepresented Svendsen’s testimony.
The first time I weighed in about the Bounty sinking I said that if “I’ve learned anything in my career, it’s that speculation rarely lines up with facts.” It turns out that facts rarely line up with facts, either. My own local paper – The Virginian Pilot – reported that Svendsen stated that he “twice urged Walbridge to abandon ship before Walbridge agreed,” and later in the same article report that “Svendsen twice told Walbridge they should abandon ship before Walbridge agreed. The boat rolled before an orderly evacuation could happen, spilling crew members into the ocean.” The Pilot left out that the time between his first urging and Walbridge’s agreement was two minutes. Sincerely – there was a time for an “orderly evacuation,” and it was long before Svendsen first urged his captain.
What was made clear by the Chief Mate was that crew members did, indeed, have concerns about leaving New London with Hurricane Sandy on the loose. The Chief Mate brought those concerns to Captain Walbridge before they left port, offering up other options for mooring up-river. The captain held a meeting telling the crew they could stay behind with no hard feelings, but that Bounty was safer at sea than in port, and that he was heading out, according to Svendsen.
Testimony today including a number of things far more concerning than a two-minute dissonance between the mate and the captain. Svendsen testified about alterations to the ship’s construction arrangement in the yard period just prior to sailing that including the moving of fuel tanks and the addition of other tanks, new hatches, new tonnage openings and ladders, and all of it without Coast Guard or class oversight. The ship routinely sailed – according to Svendsen’s comments on Coast Guard evidence – with sails not in Bounty’s approved sail plan and carried removable ballast forbidden by the ship’s stability letter. Caulking on the ship’s plank seams and the replacement of planking raised eyebrows as well. But without access to all the evidence, it was hard to draw conclusions about what Svendsen was commenting on. There was a picture that none in the gallery could see and a reference to DAP and the number 33. Did the crew that caulked the seams of Bounty in the yards prior to sailing use house-grade DAP sealant on the planking seams? I don’t know. It seems more likely that they were bottom coating with Interlux 33 – but these are facts that were alluded to, not verified.
One rumor confirmed by Svendsen was that Bounty routinely needed bilge pumping in normal conditions. “We had to run the pumps once or twice during every four-hour watch.” Bounty made water – lots of it. During his last watch on the morning of September 28th – less than 20 hours before she went down – Svendsen said, ” the bilge pumps were running constantly.” Perhaps he attributed that to the sea state and water coming down from the weather decks, but he hit the rack just after noon thinking the ship was in good shape. Six hours later he was convinced that the ship was taking water through the planking at two spots on the port side (according to his testimony today). Six hours after that, he was alone in the Atlantic and swimming for his life.
After Svendsen’s testimony was finished, Carroll and the panel discussed a piece of evidence (CG-12) – a 2010 survey report from the American Bureau of Shipping – that outlined 19 deficiencies requiring attention if Bounty was to be issued a Load Line certificate. The issues ranged from weather-tight fittings and missing hatch gaskets to improper drainage and problems with watertight bulkheads. The Coast Guard investigator kept repeating the phrase “that repair was not done” when referring to an interview with the ship’s owner following the sinking. The load line certificate was never issued.
There are seven days of testimony left and I intend to be there for all of them. You can be sure that I’ll only tell you what I know for certain based on what I see and hear and I’m not willing to draw conclusions just yet.
It turns out that an investigation is no place for absolutes either – at least not from the press gallery.


Rotted Frames on Bounty

By Mario Vittone On February 14, 2013



Commander Kevin Carroll, USCG (AP Photo)

The witness, Todd Kosakowski, looked at Coast Guard’s evidence # CG-41: a series of 29 photographs he had taken of Bounty during its most recent yard period. Mr. Kosakowski – the lead shipwright and project manager for Boothbay Harbor Shipyards - was in charge of the last maintenance project ever to be done on Bounty.
The pictures were of rotted frames and fasteners (trunnels) he found under the planking during repairs. Kosakowski told NTSB investigator Captain Rob Jones that he believes 75% of the framing above the waterline on Bounty may have been rotten, but that the ship’s representative in the yard, Captain Robin Walbridge, declined any further search for rotted wood. He convinced Kosakowski that they would make the repairs before their next Coast Guard hull inspection. The final witness of the day and the discussion of the evidence was stunning those of us in the crowd.
He had given the photos to the USCG Investigator back in December. That same Coast Guard investigator – Commander Kevin Carroll – was on the other side of the table today, asking questions.
Carroll: “And you had a conversation…did you tell Captain Walbridge?”
Kosakowski: ”Yes.”
Carrol: ”What did he say?”
Kosakowski: “He was also concerned. I told him I thought that he had to pick and choose his weather… he said that he was terrified of what we had found.”
Kosakowski said that he didn’t voice his concerns to anyone other than Captain Walbridge of Bounty and his own boss, Eric Graves, telling Carroll, “I believe that the owner’s rep is the extent of my debt to notify.”
Looking around to see if anyone else looked as dismayed as I felt, I didn’t have to look hard. What we were hearing from Kosakowski came at the end of a long day of testimony that painted a picture of maintenance and management of Bounty that was suspect at best.
Todd Kosakowski with Chief Mate John Svendsen after the second day of testimony into the sinking of Bounty. (Photo M. Vittone)

Morning testimony by Miss Tracey Simonin – the HMS Bounty Organization’s “Director of Shoreside Operations” revealed confusion about the ship’s status as it related to tonnage certificates and maintenance management, ABS and USCG notification of repairs, and who may or may not be in charge of repair work aboard Bounty.
In July of 2011, at the urging of USCG Activities Europe and MCA, Simonin walked through a new Tonnage Certificate issued by ABS that set Bounty’s gross tonnage at 409. During a visit, inspectors noticed a change to the ship’s construction – specifically the removal of a tonnage opening – that was not reported to ABS. The new assessment made the Bounty subject to SOLAS, and the HMS Bounty Organization appealed. A year later they changed the vessel back to its previous configuration and received a new tonnage certificate that brought them back down to 266 regulatory tons, but it would seem that for a year Bounty operated in violation of IMO regulations. Like so much of what I’ve seen so far in these hearings, there are more questions than answers; Simonin answered “I don’t know,” and “I don’t remember,” frequently.
In Simonin’s defense, there was someone in the room better suited to answer the Commander’s questions today, but Mr. Robert Hansen (Bounty’s owner) is asserting his fifth amendment rights and will not be testifying. Simonin did clear up a couple of things. We learned that the person who posted on Bounty’s Facebook page was Jim Salapatek. He – not the captain – was the one who posted that the voyage into the hurricane was a safe decision, that the Coast Guard had issued a UMIB (Urgent Marine Information Broadcast) for Bounty on October 28th but had rescinded it (they hadn’t), and he did all of that from his home in Illinois. His connection to Bounty? His son, Drew (29) was crew aboard Bounty. How did he get his information? “I don’t know,” said Simonin.
There was a break from strained testimony and nervous answers when Mr. Bert Rogers, the executive director of Tall Ships America, was called as a witness. “Bounty was the star of the show at our events because of her star appeal and we featured her as a headliner vessel at our events,” Rogers said. When asked about Walbridge’s competence, Rogers spoke well of the captain and his efforts over the past 17 years to “turn Bounty around.” He said complimentary things about Bounty’s crew and the ship’s relationship and value to his organization.
It was 20 minutes of good news about the ship and her performance from a respected and experienced leader in the tall ship community. And then Rogers – the first experienced tall-ship captain to take the stand – was asked by Carroll, “Would you have taken her out into that storm?” ”No, I would have sought safer berth upriver.” No one was surprised.
Carroll: “Do you think the ship was safer at sea?”
Rogers: “I don’t believe that a ship is safer at sea. It is circumstantial. There are cases where that is the example and cases where it is not.”
Carroll: “Is the crew safer at sea?”
Rogers: “That is absurd; they are of course safer in bed than at sea. But if you have to decide between crew safety and ship safety you would have to go to the crew.”
Rogers left before he could hear Kosakowski recount the condition of Bounty and the rotted frames. He didn’t hear about Walbridge’s decision to wait until the next yard period to get into extensive repairs. He didn’t hear about the shipwright’s warning to keep the boat out of heavy weather. If he had, I wonder what he would have thought about those “circumstances?”
The last to question Rogers was the attorney for the Christian family, Mr. Jacob Shisha. The Christian’s daughter, Claudine (42), was recovered by the Coast Guard on October 29th.
Shisha: “In late October – how many member vessels did you have on the Atlantic Coast?”
Rogers: “About fifty.”
Shisha: “How many made a decision to leave port in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy?”
Rogers: “None that I know of…besides Bounty.”

[Tony Morcom]

Courtesy of our friends @gCaptain





Images from Bounty

By Mario Vittone On March 3, 2013



Bounty – July 8th, 2008 – Port Angeles, Washington

In July of 2008, a photographer named Robert Demar took a two-day trip aboard Bounty from Port Angeles, WA to Port Albernie, B.C.; taking over 2,000 photographs of the ship and her crew along the way. With all the recent attention on the hearings and the discussions about what went wrong or didn’t and who was or wasn’t to blame, Mr. Demar thought maybe some would simply like to see the ship as she was: I know I did. Mr. Demar was kind enough to send me his favorite images from that sail and asked me to give them a home: here they are. It is very easy to see why her crew was drawn to her.
She was a beautiful ship.

[Captain Kong]

Thanks for all that Tony,
I was aboard the Bounty in Seattle, WA, in 1990, A lovely ship that was bigger than than the original, that was to house all the film equipment when they made the movie with Marlon Brando.
My only regret was, they would not allow me to climb aloft
Cheers
Brian.

[Ron Kendall]

Claudine Christian, lost on the Bounty, is apparently a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, of the Mutiny on the Bounty, escapade.