wmoser

All of the ships that I have been on have the overlay feature on the ECDIS turned off. It tends to make the screen too crowded in busy ports. If the mates need to look at someone's name they just compare the reported position from AIS to position on the RADAR/ECDIS of the ship they are trying to contact.

Also, the AIS data is self reporting so if they forget to change the information then it's useless anyways. I've seen 'anchored' ships driving away at 10 knots.

I know that for me, the time schedule is a deal breaker. I work in the oil industry on a ship. I started mitx electronics but had to go back to work for six weeks. Our Internet is frequently just enough to send email out. It would have been nice to pick up where I left off when I got home but I had already missed so many assignment due dates. I may go back and still watch the lectures but would have been nice to be able to complete the certificate.

Sorry that was meant to be a reply to G-Garon, fat fingers and iPhones.

Honestly, the aspect that originally drew me to Facebook was as an online address book that everyone updated themselves so I always had their most recent phone, email address, etc. Unfortunately now, because of all the privacy concerns most the time I can only send a message asking for their phone number or begging them to call me. A lot of people don't even have email addresses up anymore. I think the change came about around the time they let everyone have an account.

At least one. Trimming is also the term we use when adjusting the ballast or cargo so the ship floats differently in the water. Never heard of a bloated ship before.

Well I suppose it depends on your intention? I mean scientists are dropping buoys and AUVs and what not in the water all the time, you might be able to convince one of them to toss it overboard for free. Also, there is a fairly big sub-industry of weather routing which have very sophisticated meteorological models and what not to help shipping companies route their ships around crappy weather to avoid losses to cargo and damage to ships. Some of the new ships though are so large that for the most part they're able to weather even the larger storms a bit better so they're just going through instead of around. Save some fuel, lose a container, probably an environmental tie.

I'm an engineer on a ship and while I don't work on a container ship, I took a cargo class in college. There are other considerations too, the software frequently accounts for things such as not putting chemicals that react poorly with each other near each other or things that may be hard to put out if they catch on fire near the top of stacks on the outside so they can be jettisoned in an emergency. Also, while no one weighs each container, its part of the process for people doing the shipping to say what is in it and how much it weighs. They can probably fudge the weight a little but the software takes into account the reported weight to make sure the ship has safe stability. Containers stored inside are dryer and less likely to be lost overboard which normally is a premium price for shipping too. Plus as you mentioned the logistics problem of not putting all the new stuff on top of stuff that gets taken off at an earlier port.