After a long hiatus, here’s the new Fall 2010 issue of QSE Solutions’ Safe Voyage e-magazine. As has been the case since it began, Dione and Dean Lee have gone above and beyond to produce a high-quality publication that deserves the attention of your eyeballs and gray matter. In particular, this issue’s opening Letter from the Editors hits home with force and it would be really nice to think that the members of the Coast Guard marine safety community, particularly the people involved with mariner training & licensing and the STCW juggernaut, will read it and realize that “honoring the mariner” deserves far more than lip service, which is mostly all it has gotten so far. We at the MTVA appreciate a great deal the focus placed on describing the frustrations experienced by the working mariners trying to salvage our own profession from a bureaucratic nightmare that is not of our own making. Reading it, I couldn’t help but think that it honors the spirit of our recently-departed Executive Board Chairman Capt. David Gore. Rest easy, Dave, we’re all still working on it. It’s just gonna take awhile.
Next in line, the article from Capt. Jeff Slesinger, the safety & training director at Seattle’s Western Towboat, is spot on as usual. This time he deftly captures the yin and yang of the challenges of on-the-fly risk assessment that are a regular part of our jobs. It’s a very compelling read, and you might want to check out the back issues for more of his fine writing. Capt. Slesinger is also the author of
MTVA Executive Board Chairman Capt. Doug Pine’s treatise on sleep apnea, which originally appeared here in this forum a year ago, could be a life-saver for those who suffer from this serious malady. For those who want it, here’s the original, uncut version of Sleep Apnea & the Professional Mariner, one of our most popular and widely read articles ever. Many thanks, again, Capt. Doug! You’ve done your fellow mariners a big service in highlighting this problem and telling the story of your struggles with it.
Finally, in Hybrid Training Tug: Bringing Hands-On Training Back Aboard, MTVA Co-Director Capt. Jordan May explains where we’re coming from as an organization: our firmly held belief, based on what we think should be obvious reasons, that classrooms and reams of paper cannot substantially substitute for real on-deck, in-the-engine room, and wheelhouse training. To that end, the proposed MTVA hybrid-powered training tug may be the first big step in returning the most important aspects of training back to where much of it belongs: out on the water. We sincerely hope that our industry understands what’s at stake and is willing to work with us on this vitally important endeavor.
The rest of the issue is worth your time too, and the MTVA leadership looks forward to working with Dione and Dean in the future to help improve our industry and hopefully once again make it an attractive profession for young people with an itch to experience life outside the cubicle.
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