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Unfathomable Decision

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Joaquin

The news that the El Faro went down hit me in the same horrible place that the sinking of the Bounty did.

Pretty much everything I said in my post about the Bounty stands here. Why did he do such a thing? Was it pressure for money, for schedule, was it a lack of understanding of the threat? We’ll never know. All aboard are lost, and their tale with them.

I think there are some really important questions to ponder for mariners here, though, despite the lack of answers.

If you’re a mariner of any kind, or know mariners, or are human, you should donate something, regularly, to the Coast Guard Foundation. If you can’t see why, then just consider it a Black Box activity. But do it.

Storms are changing. Climate change is a real thing, and a lot of the rules for engaging with heavy weather are being rewritten in the schools of hard experience. I find myself wondering if the Captain, using his long experience of storms in that area, thought that Joaquin was going to behave differently than it did? If you aren’t already in the habit of it, please start really engaging with weather prediction services. I check Storm and the NOAA pages twice daily on my iPhone, and then the Hurricane Prediction Centers every other day, for both the Atlantic and Pacific. Here in Texas, the Texas Storm Chasers site has been an invaluable resource for weather learning. And of course, there’s always the Alan Watts prediction books. But whatever resource you choose, get in the habit of checking the weather, making a prediction, and then following up to see how accurate you were. Getting that level of skill in observation going will be valuable to you as climate continues to change.

With Joaquin, there were actually three things going on that were impactful, but the news mostly focused on the hurricane, not on the other stuff. If you need or want a total picture, you have to get good at blending your sources.

First… there was already rain happening, and flooding, due to the jet stream, which was swooping south, picking up moisture, and then flinging it at the northeast. This means the area was already heavily wet, and trending towards flooding.

Second… there was variance in the models, about whether Joaquin was going to go out to sea or crash into land, but mainstream weather news was doing a lousy job of explaining why.

Third… the only folks seriously predicting large waves and storm surge were the folks concerned with surfing, like the MagicSeaweed team.

NOAA is always solid, but understated. I love the bit where they talk about “flooding could complicate preparation.”

One thing about this that particularly struck me was the Captain’s decision to set out to sea rather than getting trapped between Bermuda and Florida. I’ve made a similar decision a few times myself, assuming that heading out to sea would be safer than potentially getting smacked into unforgiving land. Generally, that’s a good decision, unless…

I was taken up short in my own mind by the fact that as a small sailboat of relatively shallow draft, I have a lot more options at sea than a giant ship like the El Faro. They can’t heave to. I don’t think they’re equipped with things like drogues. If their engines go, they’re lost, whereas on the Excellent Adventure, our engines aren’t really taken into consideration until way, way down the list of heavy weather coping strategies.

Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance, and backups/redundancy/resiliency. One of the things that delights me about being on a catamaran is the fact that we have two of everything, and in  most cases, if one thing breaks, we can get by on the other thing. Also, things don’t wear out at precisely the same rate, so if something goes wrong on one side (like say a water pump), it’s a clear red flag to go examine the one on the other side for signs of potential failure. But in an ideal world, you just examine and maintain everything, all the time. I find myself wondering, on a ship like El Faro where they only have one main system, and no redundancy, what went wrong with the engines, when so very much depends on them being functional?

I’m also wondering intensely about the El Faro‘s cargo. What’s going to happen to all those containers? Will they sink? Will they float? What’s going to happen in the way of navigation hazards?

Because living on a boat, and being a sailor, is sort of my normal, I forget, sometimes, that the sea sometimes makes us make hard choices; choices that are unthinkable and unfathomable to those on land. In the search (have I mentioned yet about how very grateful I am to the men and women of the United States Coast Guard yet? So very grateful), a body was found… and then had to be released back to the sea, because the point of the mission was to find survivors, and the choice to retrieve the body would have possibly meant not finding someone still living. In the words of the ever-insightful Mario Vittone,

Finding a single body in a survival suit means the Coast Guard has to assume that 32 people are somewhere in the open water and spread out over hundreds of square miles and getting farther apart every hour. The El Faro case has gone from a search for a single big thing to 32 very small things. This isn’t a needle in a haystack. This is 32 needles in an ever-growing hay field. This search has become more complex than any in recent memory.

I have to wonder what went wrong in their abandon ship procedures; 33 individual people all floating alone can’t possibly be procedure. I have to wonder why open lifeboats were considered OK. I have to wonder… and go right on wondering. And just like I incorporated certain maintenance routines on EA in honor of the Bounty, I’ll be thinking of the El Faro crew as I think about our searchability, MOB, and bailout drills.

No answers here; probably none forthcoming. I’m hoping to spark some discussion, maybe, and some remembrance. At the end of it all, it always does come down to the individual sailor, and the sea. So in that spirit, farewell to the crew of El Faro: To Fiddlers Green, where there is many a lass and many a glass, and never a stormy sea.

ElFaro

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