Real Life at USMMA

I love watching these, but know I lack the discipline to record the snip-it daily.
 
One second every day. Very impressive. I agree with the recruiting video value of this. The shots of life at school are great along with a few note worthy scenes such as at 3:19 and I'm not sure if that is a CHT or a lube oil spill. Or something else. The old fella doing fingertip pushups. The chow and of course life at sea. I loved being at sea.
 
Uncanny how similar it looks to my experience decades earlier. The most "real" of the real life: it appears he went right from Academy, to a ship, then finally getting home Feb 22. March 9 is then a return to the Academy after a couple weeks at home. This is the life you are choosing!
 
This exacerbated my Adult Onset ADD. Kinda cool for about one minute :cool:
 
Christ someone didn’t give him the memo about taking pictures of customers cargo. My chief mate senses are burning.
 
Looks like he spent Christmas in Singapore.. What's with the 'Red Hand' on the mooring line at 1:59?
 
beyond said:
Christ someone didn’t give him the memo about taking pictures of customers cargo. My chief mate senses are burning.
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This might be one reason why it's not on the web site. Cool video though.
 
The reason given was the live firing of weapons by the trap and skeet team...
 
kpmom2013 said:
The reason given was the live firing of weapons by the trap and skeet team...
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Whatever the reason they give, on the ship side I saw several safety violations, and if any of the cargo quality people see this video heads will roll. Mid who made this video violated all kinds of company and customer policy. That video gave me enough information to figure all kinds of customer information that really shouldn’t be public. Head of trade will get a pissed off phone call from a customer at some point and this video will get yanked fro YT.

You don’t touch ro ro cargo, you don’t sit in ro ro cargo, you don’t take pictures of ro ro cargo. It isn’t that hard.
 
beyond said:
You don’t touch ro ro cargo, you don’t sit in ro ro cargo, you don’t take pictures of ro ro cargo. It isn’t that hard.
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I used to get in and on RoRo cargo all the time when I sailed on the Matson RoRo's.. It was the mates job [a lot of times with the help of the cadet] to make sure that the brakes on the cars were set, the radios were off and that they out of gear and secured.. To do that you had to get in the cars. Same went for the larger rolling stock. We climbed all over that stuff making sure it was secured.. I also never saw anything in company policy that prohibited photos of any of the cargo. Even if there was such a policy, good luck enforcing that with the longshoremen in Hono, Brah..

As a matter of fact, once when I was Mate on a Matson RoRo, the Oakland longshoremen asked me to park a classic Cobra 427 owned by Carroll Shelby.. The First, who happened to be up on Second Deck, asked me if he could do it and I let him have the honors.. When the First lit that thing off, the whole deck rumbled.. The L/S sent me a picture afterwards. I don't think any of us will have to worry about Carroll lodging a complaint with customer service.. He past away in 2012..

PICT0319.JPG
 
deepdraft1 said:
I also never saw anything in company policy that prohibited photos of any of the cargo.
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Different era, with the rampant drug use, keeping prostitutes in your state room in foreign ports, and throwing what ever you wanted over the rail. I've got access to the policies for Hoegh, ARC/WWL/Eucore, Daimler, and Ford they're all explicitly clear on this. If cars are in the stow loose enough that you can open doors, someone has screwed up. Also, holds as pictured there with the scaffolding and the trash on deck would be a huge cargo quality issue. Customers don't screw around with this stuff. The future is now.
 
beyond said:
Different era, with the rampant drug use, keeping prostitutes in your state room in foreign ports, and throwing what ever you wanted over the rail. I've got access to the policies for Hoegh, ARC/WWL/Eucore, Daimler, and Ford they're all explicitly clear on this. If cars are in the stow loose enough that you can open doors, someone has screwed up. Also, holds as pictured there with the scaffolding and the trash on deck would be a huge cargo quality issue. Customers don't screw around with this stuff. The future is now.
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Indeed it was a different era.. but I wouldn't say drug use was 'rampant' as you've characterized it.. Did it happen? yes. Drinking was probably more of a problem, but that started to change after the EXXON VALDEZ incident in 1989. The other stuff pretty much went away years ago with the advent of 'fast turn around' ships, MARSEC and the MARPOL regulations.. As far as the condition of the cargo deck in the picture, that's probably pretty standard even nowadays on a Matson RoRo. We carried a lot things besides just cars that made it challenging to keep the decks looking spiffy. We had everything from retrograde bulldozers and backhoes, to road graders and farm equipment. All of it was secured with chain binders and was blocked and braced with dunnage. We also carried livestock trailers as well.. If you think that deck is an issue, just to the left and forward in that picture [outboard of the ramp] is what the Mates used to refer to as 'Pig Alley'.. That's where the pig containers were stowed on Second Deck, along with all the effluent hoses and couplings. A container of pigs accommodates about 450 head.. and do they ever stink.. Also, Second Deck on those ships was a shelter deck with sideports open to the weather. Normally in the winter I had the deck gang put 4x4 battens in across the openings to try and keep spray off the cars and the rolling stock.

That scaffolding just forward of the companionway was secured to the bulkhead and posed no threat to come adrift and damage any of the cargo. It was needed fairly often for maintenance of the sprinklers in the overhead and to change out lights. I, as well as my relief, wasn't about to have the deck gang set up scaffolding every time it was needed and then break it down afterwards. I had a budget to keep and SUP sailors get 'high cargo rate' for putting up and taking down scaffolding.. I probably wouldn't have had to worry about any of that if I had an SIU gang that works on the cheap, or if I had a manlift, which we had repeatedly asked for and been denied.

By the way, I just texted my son who has sailed 2nd Mate with Central Gulf. He said he wasn't aware of any prohibition on taking cargo photos or, if you had a good reason to, getting in the cars. When he was Chief Mate with Waterman/Seacor he knew of no prohibition there either.. but of course, you know what they say.. 'different ships [or companies], different long splices'..
 
@deepdraft1 the two pictures that jump out at me are the one of the guy climbing down the pilot ladder without a life jacket and the guy closing the door to the car. With WWL or Daimler cargo that would be an instant, unapologetic **** canning.
 
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