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FRIDAY UPDATE - NEWS ODDS AND ENDS


Looking out for you!!

This has been a hectic week for NAUTICAL LOG because at the last moment arrangements were made for travel overseas.  Next week we leave for two weeks in Ireland to visit fellow seafarers and go to Waterford, my birthplace, for the Waterford Sail Training Festival (there is a link in 'My Link List') over the weekend of June 30, to July 03, 2011.


If any readers are also going to be in Ireland and would like to meet up please leave a message:

Attention of : CAPT. D. Peter Boucher

Royal Marine Hotel
Dún Laoghaire
Co. Dublin.
From: June 22, to 25, 2011.


The Tall Ships Race Office
41 The Quay
Waterford.
or
The Granville Hotel
Waterford.
From: June 25 to July 05, 2011.


Perhaps we can meet up for a 'pint' and "Talk of many things, Ships, Sails, Sealing wax, Cabbages, Kings".   Should be a fun trip and NAUTICAL LOG is quite excited going home after all these years.


The next item is the publication of STCW 2011 which we wrote about previously.  Setting the requirements for coverage when training seafarers is only a step in achieving the aim, that is to make these people into seamen.   The fact is that the training can only be as good as the Instructor.  If you are an Instructor you MUST absolutely follow STCW 2011, make sure each and every student clearly understands the subject matter.  It may well be that some will have difficulties, remember not all of us have the advantage of a good education.  Also your students will have differing levels of comprehension and processing the data you are teaching.  It is NOT the students duty to understand you - you MUST understand your students - find a way to make sure they know the class material.   As an example NAUTICAL LOG in one cruise ship alone trained 600 seafarers of 35 nationalities, speaking 8 languages and while the ships working language was English it had 600 different levels of usage and understanding !! 



USACE Potter

Here in the United States the U.S.Army Corps. of Engineers (USACE) has been charged with maintaining the inland waters of the country since the War Between the States also known as the Civil War.  In the 1930's a series of dredges were built known as 'dustpan' dredges to accomplish this mission.   The USACE Potter is 79 years old and like NAUTICAL LOG still going strong and doing the job it was made for !!  She works on the Upper Mississippi River.


Good Watch

Please remember the seafarers held captive by pirates off Somalia.  Frankly NAUTICAL LOG is beginning to lose faith that anything very much is being done for them.  Someone out there in the maritime world please prove me wrong!!

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