what is the inside scoop on big Baltimore bridge crash?

Might be cool if I could tell the cart what I like, and it tell me what didn't exist, then take me through the most efficient path through the store to pick up those things, and ding me when I reached each desired item. Though I admit you don't need AI for that.

For that matter, you don't need AI to ring up items in the cart - but what a nuisance either way if you decide to put something back.

 

Interesting idea!

Of course, I think Maryland pilots have to be licensed by both the U.S. and state governments. I doubt an AI pilot would be considered legal.

Also, I got the name wrong. It is the Association of Maryland Pilots.

I assume it is effectively a trade union whose function is to train and find jobs for (human) pilots, and would therefore discourage AI pilots.

But its website says

So it would be reasonable for them to be the first pilot association to select an AI pilot.

 

I don't know. I don't know if the tug boats would need to fit inside the deep water channel. I'm not sure how to find out. I tried to do a quick web search:

The Dali was pushed out after refloating by tugboats. But parts of the bridge (including a dolphin??? IDK) were removed first.

Not an authoritative maritime source, but
www.capecharlesmirror.com/assesvillains-the-dali-needed-tugs
says

Which implies the pilot thought tugs could have fit. But 4 minutes isn't much time. Things clearly happened much too fast for a good response. The original tugboats were the first to respond. So maybe the pilot(s) and crew really did all they reasonably could.

msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/port.html
says

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Dali says the Dali has a 158'2" beam (and a 49'4" draft - not a lot of vertical clearance for big wave sea conditions!). And AFAIK, the Fort McHenry channel is the relevant one. That sounds like there was lots of space - but I don't know how much space tugboats require alongside the ship.

Many sources say that if Baltimore requires tugboats as far as the new bridge, many ships will choose other ports, like Philadelphia and New York, to save money. I guess that puts Baltimore and Maryland in a very difficult situation, unless they push the federal government to require tugboats accompany ships past bridges in those ports too, or insurance companies decide to require them at those ports too.


The person I spoke to told me that there is a history behind the idea that people shipping goods should pay for their recovery cost. Apparently, when ships were much smaller, crew used to dump cargo in bad weather, and the people shipping goods often traveled on the ship. Fights would break out among them over whose stuff would be dumped. So this rule was to cut the fighting, by making them all share the costs of dumped goods.

 

With the way insurance works now, emphasis on all. Every container shipped in the world will share the costs - plus bulkers, tankers, car carriers - it's all shared.

I have to wonder how big the cost increase would be to add escort tugs for twenty minutes spread over 10,000 teus. I mean compared to going to another port and trucking them further? So I looked it up. https://www.morantug.com/Customer-C...le_of_Rates_Terms_and_Conditions_07_15_23.pdf
Looks like $1 per container should cover it. If you burn 10 tons of fuel oil/hour you're going to divert to another port to save tug fees? Really? The distance you can truck a 40' container for $1 is measured in yards, not miles.

 

Ture, but that is somebody else's cost; not the ship owners. A fuzzy recollection from my marine econ class was that profit in shipping was measured in cents per ton. Why do you think so many mariners have trouble collecting their wages? Nobody in trans-modal shipping looks at it from the outside costs; only their piece of the pie.

 

A ship coming from across the ocean would have little or no difference in distance for a course change of a few degrees.

 

A really, really good point. It reminds me of a physics theorem that shows that distant objects, like distant stars, are much more coherent (in light, radio waves) than nearby objects, because the distance of the observer to different parts of the surface of a spherical star are almost the same distance. Has major implications for long and very long baseline astronomy.

But: once an object (like a car or truck) arrives in port, it has to be shipped across the land to its destinations. Perhaps average distances, in time, cost and fuel might be more different for distant ports? Then again, I believe the U.S. federal government still subsidizes railway costs, and maybe some other transportation costs, like major highway building and maintenance costs.

Anyway, I don't know enough about shipping to discuss it intelligently. My main interest here is sea kayaks, and this is way outside that domain. Unless perhaps some of the sea kayaks get shipped this way.

 

There is a counter-point to that.

Say you measure the distance from Bermuda to the US coast. The two closest points are Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras. Using Bermuda as the center of your scribed circle, you get the difference between those two closer points and other points along the coast. It will show a concave shape making the coastline in between slightly farther away, but the curve of the circle scribed between fills inward to bow towards the shoreline. The difference is, of course, not a great distance, but in terms of money per meter, it can be a lot.

Now, imagine starting from a much farther point from the US coast than Bermuda. Say you place your compass on Gibralter and scribe a curve between the two closest points on the US coast to Gibraltar. Now you have a perimeter that, between two points like Cape Hatteras and Cape Cod, that is closer to a straight line. What this means is that the farther away you start from the coast, the greater the difference the distance a point like Chesapeake Bay is from the starting point than the two capes are.

 

I read that after going home from tearing down an old diesel with a bad governor - an old Kubota 1505 with 8300 hours on it. You gotta wonder how many people were saying "aw hell no" during that adventure. Should be an old piston pump unit, I think it's a little too old to be an ECM controlled common rail marine diesel. Sledge hammer and prybars should move the rack eventually. Not fun doing that on a runaway engine, though. Many suspect they chose to do nothing too creative until they cleared the bridge.

 

So we have a new NTSB update on the MV Dali investigation. The report is available here.

Dali Shipboard Machinery Examination and Record of Electrical Testing, April 1–29, 2024



In post 94, I wrote

 

Bridge communication on the Dali from the voice data recorder has been released.