28 April, 2008, San Diego

San Diego is a port that every Holland America Line navigator knows even without ever having been there. Reason is that it is one of the standard ports that we get trained on during our Simulator courses. We call those BRM trainings, which stands for Bridge Resource Management. Every 5 years or less each navigator undergoes a weekly training. During that week several scenarios are played out on a ships simulator and marine accidents are scrutinized to learn lessons from.

A simulator is basically a fully operational bridge on dry land. The bigger ones look a bit like an Imax theatre. We train normally in Rotterdam where they have several units available and the biggest bridge can also roll and pitch as a ship in real life does. Using a simulator gives the option to try things without the danger of it going wrong with disastrous consequences and it is a great tool for building up routine. Normally there are two groups during a week and while one group is preparing an exercise the other group is doing it. Each group is accompanied by a captain who acts as an assessor to evaluate the performance of the juniors. That takes half the day; the rest is spent on discussing accidents and incidents that took place in the industry. Almost 80% of incidents in the maritime industry are connected to human mistakes. By using case studies we train ourselves to recognize where an error chain started and how to break it so that the incident does not occur.

Approaching the Port of San Diego is one of the exercises. It is not a difficult port so the sailing in does not take all the focus of the bridge team, but it is a navy port and the navy does not always play according to the normal rules. As they are almost constantly in training, they are not always part of the “normal” world of shipping. The simulator exercise is based on having to take action when suddenly a navy convoy comes down to sea and has to be met in a narrow part of the fairway, with wind and current adding to the difficulty. Together with “navy speak” on the VHF it is enough to distract a bridge team and mistakes are starting to be made. The idea is that the team is so aware of each others actions and responsibilities that they recognize where the pattern of making mistakes starts and that it get instantly corrected.

So when we arrived in the early morning it was as if the whole exercise was played out in front of us in real life, only difference we now had a pilot on board. We had a navy ship (Nbr 4) coming down to sea and Navy ship (Nbr 100) was making noise on the VHF while conducting exercises off the sea buoy. The exercise turned into real life.

The weather turned out to be a lot warmer than predicted, as the Santa Ana was blowing. This is a wind that comes from the desert and brings hot air and a lot of dust to the sea. Thus it was not 73oF and sunny but about 95oF and also sunny, while a brown cloud of dust was hanging over the port. We docked next to the Carnival Elation but we had the terminal while they had to make do with an open pier and some tents. San Diego still has some ways to go with getting proper cruise facilities. The good thing is that the terminal is located in the middle of the city with a shopping centre nearby. The moment the ship had been cleared, there was a wave of crew rolling ashore straight for the shops to stack up for Alaska. Alaska prices there are a lot dearer and the crew knows where the best deals are to be gotten.

We disembarked over 700 guests here who preferred not to do the last three, maybe wobbly days, and fly home from Vancouver. 300+ guests came on board for these few days. Some of them long time mariner repeat guests, some of them new to the company and here to sample the HAL product, without having to commit to a longer cruise to do so. We pulled out on time and indeed it will be wobbly tomorrow. There is a gale blowing off San Francisco and we are going to meet it had on.