Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola once said:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop any one of these, they will be irrevocably damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. "
Once upon a time riding off on a horse to conquer new lands or collecting pots of gold made you famous. Perhaps you'd even get a name in history if you were politically savvy.
Going away on a long voyage was a thing of courage that only the select few undertook! You were greeted off with really really warm hugs and kisses and good wishes from every one!
Today things are very different.
SUDDENLY THOSE HUGS AND KISSES ARE NOT SO WARM AS BEFORE!!
You are not at fault.
You are just the mouse whose cheese has moved!
Remember spending the evenings sitting by the fireside, sipping a glass of scotch and your friends hanging on to each word that you uttered while they drank your whiskey?
Today, who cares if you've been all over the world! They get the same thing in a syndicated fashion on the TV.
Does anybody care for you? Or for that matter do you care for them?
WHO CARES?
And that is fine. Unfortunately that is where the problem starts. What used to be "Success" in others’ eyes and "Satisfaction" to you earlier, now do not mean either.
Things have changed.
Information Technology has opened up our societies as never before. Some changes are good but some are surely not!
There is email to keep in touch with family. Telephone to talk to your friends, but the same instrument rings whenever Boss decides to have a chat.
The net helps us to maintain relationships with friends and families. Some of us find relief in taking a break from the daily work to browse. Looking for humor or satisfying a hobby. Thus stop deterioration of our mental health. On the other hand we could simply become an addict.
Just one decade back we felt exhilarated when Sparks could tune the HF so that we could make that important call from sea. Modern communication has shrunk the world into one single global village.
Suddenly there is no demand for mariners like us who could bring back tall tales of the sea and our exploits in distant shores.
You were a provider for your family. You were very caring and loving not just to your own family, but also to your extended family. To your friends you were the "greatest guy on earth". You provided for a home, and filled up that home with the comforts of amenities that kept your loved ones comfortable.
But something happened while you were away.
Each member of the family got their "Own Space" they wanted.
You Provided. But they forgot you.
Globalization hit you smack in the face. You tried hard not to slip off the edge as the world got flatter and flatter!
Economies have improved and there are lots of opportunities other than the sea. That's where the rub is for a middle-aged seafarer. Who is looking for a job ashore in another vertical specialization that will give him a comparable salary. Unfortunately the "past experience", certification and credibility in that new industry do not matter. With diminished opportunities some mariners choose to stay back at sea.
How does a seafarer address the problem of work-life balance that Brian Dyson advised? For a seafarer it's more like work on Mars (sea) and life on Venus (ashore)! How can they balance the two?
What a joke! Please take away ALL work from me and let me take my Sailboat to the Caribbean and just leave me alone! I'll take the life, you take the work! Please don't ask me to balance work and life! Where the boundaries of work and life do not meet how can one define which is work and which is life!
They talk of Compensation. There is an easy fix to many problems - throw money. Then there are some problems which no amount of money will solve.
Excerpts from an email posted in the Merchant Navy group. It reminded me of the times I used to sail. It is difficult to compare the life-style of a shippie with those who are ashore.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Navigation Made Easy
“I envied the navigators on big ships who work out the time on the Local Apparent Noon beforehand, at the proper time pick up their sextant and go out on the bridge-wing and shoot. Then back to the chartroom and in a minute have their latitude. Sometimes I wondered which was harder about my noon sights – the actual taking of the sight on the tossing deck or keeping my balance. Any slip on deck, especially with seas coming over, could mean a broken sextant. A few times I had taken a fall on my elbow and once I thought I had broken the instrument. It frightened me a little and I pasted a warning on the box
Thus wrote William Willis fifty years back describing his epic voyage all alone across the Pacific on a balsa raft. Willis hadn’t seen modern navigators with accurate GPS position being plotted real-time on electronic charts. The guy would had probably gone into a shock.
The old school of navigation is a dying art. When I started my career in 1979 the sextant was the most important tool in a ship. How many of the current crop of mariners have heard of sounding sextants. It is built specifically to measure horizontal angles. Two such angles taken simultaneously would give an accurate fix plotted with a station pointer.
Those days coastal navigation was an interesting subject. Taking over a watch meant we had to study the chart carefully, pick up the binoculars, go out on the bridge wing and for the next 10 to 15 minutes identify all the important coastal features. We learnt practical geography in a way which no classroom could match. The colour of the sea, the smell in the air all those things had some clues for us. Today, with GPS, the charm of navigation is no more there.
Hyperbolic position fixing systems were developed just after WWII. Decca was the one most commonly used by the navigators.
They laid various chains all over the world but mostly in Europe and Australasia. In India we had the Calcutta chain in the east and the Salaya chain in Gujarat. When the coast dipped out of visual sight the radio receivers helped us to fix our positions till about 300 kms from the stations.
The chains ceased to operate in March 2000 finally bowing out to satellite navigation. Terms such as hyperbolic fixes, lane slips and decca charts disappeared from our vocabulary.
In the early eighties the transit navy navigation satellite system (NNSS) appeared on the scene. We were witnessing a revolution in the making. Satellite navigation would shortly eclipse all other types of navigation.
The NNSS however, was not a threat to terrestrial navigation. We got one Sat fix during a four-hours watch. Acquiring the satellites was a long drawn out process. And it wasn’t always that one could get an acceptable fix. An accuracy of 1 mile was considered to be good. Apart from ocean navigation it was not of much use. Transit NNSS was retired in 1996.
By the nineties the GPS had become an integral part of our bridge. With the deliberately induced Selective Availability (SA) we got a fix accuracy of ± 100 metres. The best part about GPS was that it gave us continuous fixes. With GPS position systems Electronic Charts became a meaningful system.
The midnight of 31st December 1999 was a defining moment as far as celestial navigation was concerned. The techies had somehow managed to create the Y2K scare. As the roll-over to the new millennium approached closer the mariners showed an earnest interest in astro-navigation. I remember we were instructed by our superintendents to practice star sights as ‘GPS might not be available wef 01st Jan 2000.’
That particular night whilst the whole world was merry-making and ushering in the new millennium, I was on the ship hunched over the GPS and other equipment keenly awaiting the chaos predicted to descend on the earth. In the event nothing happened. It was the last time deck officers would seriously consider celestial navigation.
When the SA was discontinued in May 2000 the GPS dramatically improved its accuracy to ± 15 metres. Those who wanted still better accuracy could always install a Differential GPS receiver (± 5 mtrs).
In the quest to continuously improve the accuracy the agencies have come out with the Satellite Based Augmented Systems (SBAS).
Some of the SBAS are the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) operational since 2003 in US, European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) which was commissioned a few months back and the MSAS in Japan. India (GAGAN) and China (Beidou) also have plans to provide such systems for both aircraft and marine navigation.
The WAAS has an accuracy of ± 1.5 meters depending on your geographic location.
In SBAS there is no need to carry a separate receiver to receive the satellite corrections. The same GPS receiver is good enough to get the corrections. No additional cost involved here. The other thing is that DGPS works quite close (150 miles) to the land-based reference station. Unlike in SBAS the coverage in DGPS is very limited.
Good news for mariners is that all these SBAS systems – WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS are compatible. One receiver is good enough. In the recent future I expect most ships to have augmented GPSs. With the cost of a receiver less than 50 dollars shipowners can place a number of augmented GPS receivers at strategic points of a big ship. All points of a vessel will be accurately traced in a tight maneuver. It would be very useful when entering docks or navigating in narrow rivers.
BUST YOUR BONE BUT SAVE THE SEXTANT.
Thus wrote William Willis fifty years back describing his epic voyage all alone across the Pacific on a balsa raft. Willis hadn’t seen modern navigators with accurate GPS position being plotted real-time on electronic charts. The guy would had probably gone into a shock.
The old school of navigation is a dying art. When I started my career in 1979 the sextant was the most important tool in a ship. How many of the current crop of mariners have heard of sounding sextants. It is built specifically to measure horizontal angles. Two such angles taken simultaneously would give an accurate fix plotted with a station pointer.
Those days coastal navigation was an interesting subject. Taking over a watch meant we had to study the chart carefully, pick up the binoculars, go out on the bridge wing and for the next 10 to 15 minutes identify all the important coastal features. We learnt practical geography in a way which no classroom could match. The colour of the sea, the smell in the air all those things had some clues for us. Today, with GPS, the charm of navigation is no more there.
Hyperbolic position fixing systems were developed just after WWII. Decca was the one most commonly used by the navigators.
They laid various chains all over the world but mostly in Europe and Australasia. In India we had the Calcutta chain in the east and the Salaya chain in Gujarat. When the coast dipped out of visual sight the radio receivers helped us to fix our positions till about 300 kms from the stations.
The chains ceased to operate in March 2000 finally bowing out to satellite navigation. Terms such as hyperbolic fixes, lane slips and decca charts disappeared from our vocabulary.
In the early eighties the transit navy navigation satellite system (NNSS) appeared on the scene. We were witnessing a revolution in the making. Satellite navigation would shortly eclipse all other types of navigation.
The NNSS however, was not a threat to terrestrial navigation. We got one Sat fix during a four-hours watch. Acquiring the satellites was a long drawn out process. And it wasn’t always that one could get an acceptable fix. An accuracy of 1 mile was considered to be good. Apart from ocean navigation it was not of much use. Transit NNSS was retired in 1996.
By the nineties the GPS had become an integral part of our bridge. With the deliberately induced Selective Availability (SA) we got a fix accuracy of ± 100 metres. The best part about GPS was that it gave us continuous fixes. With GPS position systems Electronic Charts became a meaningful system.
The midnight of 31st December 1999 was a defining moment as far as celestial navigation was concerned. The techies had somehow managed to create the Y2K scare. As the roll-over to the new millennium approached closer the mariners showed an earnest interest in astro-navigation. I remember we were instructed by our superintendents to practice star sights as ‘GPS might not be available wef 01st Jan 2000.’
That particular night whilst the whole world was merry-making and ushering in the new millennium, I was on the ship hunched over the GPS and other equipment keenly awaiting the chaos predicted to descend on the earth. In the event nothing happened. It was the last time deck officers would seriously consider celestial navigation.
When the SA was discontinued in May 2000 the GPS dramatically improved its accuracy to ± 15 metres. Those who wanted still better accuracy could always install a Differential GPS receiver (± 5 mtrs).
In the quest to continuously improve the accuracy the agencies have come out with the Satellite Based Augmented Systems (SBAS).
Some of the SBAS are the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) operational since 2003 in US, European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) which was commissioned a few months back and the MSAS in Japan. India (GAGAN) and China (Beidou) also have plans to provide such systems for both aircraft and marine navigation.
The WAAS has an accuracy of ± 1.5 meters depending on your geographic location.
In SBAS there is no need to carry a separate receiver to receive the satellite corrections. The same GPS receiver is good enough to get the corrections. No additional cost involved here. The other thing is that DGPS works quite close (150 miles) to the land-based reference station. Unlike in SBAS the coverage in DGPS is very limited.
Good news for mariners is that all these SBAS systems – WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS are compatible. One receiver is good enough. In the recent future I expect most ships to have augmented GPSs. With the cost of a receiver less than 50 dollars shipowners can place a number of augmented GPS receivers at strategic points of a big ship. All points of a vessel will be accurately traced in a tight maneuver. It would be very useful when entering docks or navigating in narrow rivers.
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