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Originally Posted by Spaghetti Legs
Thanks for posting. Will get time to read all the way through later.
One thing jumped out in the first part. "Ships Navigator had to use hand held GPS and paper charts to navigate back to port". Do they not use sextants and regular charts anymore? I was a ship's nav and the younger quartermasters would sometimes grouse about it, but that's why I insisted on traditional AM and PM fixes in good weather. GPS wasn't as reliable either when I did that.
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Paper charts are going the way of the buggy whip, replaced by ENC's (Electronic Navigation charts). An ENC is used with an ECDIS which is a complicated name for an electronic chart display. On commercial vessels, the ECDIS is integrated with most of the other navigation systems on board, allowing for one stop shopping for the mate on watch. They are good but could be better. Right now, they tend to have way too many alarms.
The NAVY dropped celestial navigation a couple of decades ago, but part of the fallout from the McCain and Fitzgerald incidents was reintroduction of celestial navigation. In the Fitzgerald's case, they were too close to land at the time of the collision for celestial to be of use anyway.
What totally blew my mind, was that the destroyer's bridge lacked the basic surface search radar and ARPA capability (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid) that would have allowed it to track and plot targets. Modern ship's radars are easily integrated with AIS as well, so even though the Fitzgerald wasn't broadcasting on AIS, they could have used it to "see" the merchant ship.
On top of all that, the officer of the watch had less watch-keeping experience than a newly minted Third Mate, meaning she had no business conning a ship through such a busy seaway.
In this incident, the Captain was guilty of the exact same crime that Capt. Hazelwood committed (imho) when the Exxon Valdez went up on Bligh Reef: He wasn't on the bridge when he should have been, and left the bridge under the charge of an officer who didn't have the experience necessary for the task at hand.
CaptStash....