Thursday-Friday Reading

Tax dollars at work - The Skeptical Bureaucrat: This is Not a Joke

Fred Fry's Maritime Monday 171 (hey, I was busy) featuring Mystic Seaport in photos and a pair of cute kids and a lot of other great maritime related stuff. Enough to hold you until- well, next Monday.

Betsy Newmark on the myths of the Health Care Debate.

Why did Asian Forest sink? Here's a report:

A China-bound cargo ship rolled abruptly, injuring 18 crew members, after it hit rough weather in the Arabian Sea. The ship tilted to about 30 degrees throwing almost everything that was not nailed to its deck off Mangalore coast.

The ship, Asian Forest, was carrying 13,600 tonnes of iron ore from New Mangalore to China. There were 22 people on board when the incident happened.

Ship officials blamed the mishap on cargo loading error. The coast guard managed to save about 18 crew members including the ship's captain Yang Seng Yang. They have been brought to Mangalore and are receiving medical treatment."The ship, which had sailed out Thursday, sent an SOS to the new Mangalore Port saying that that they were coming back after they hit bad weather. That's when the ship tilted," chairman of the New Mangalore Port P Tamilvanan told DNA.

According to the marine engineers, the ship will sink sometime on Saturday as the listing was severe on the starboard side and the cargo will only get more wet and gain weight which will hasten the final plunge.

Bryan has thoughts:

The reporter has the story a little lopsided – what he does not know is that the cargo was rejected by another vessel who’s Owners had employed a qualified surveyor.

This cargo was wet, showing signs of liquefaction.

The crew is lucky the vessel was narrow and that the free surface effect in the weather conditions did not overwhelm the vessel right away. This is what enabled the crew to be rescued by the ICG SANKALP.

The sad fact is that the suppliers will cover up and the real perpetrators will continue to do the same thing until the next hapless vessel sinks.

Sooner or later this will happen to a more visible vessel – perhaps chartered to a major name – and the repercussions will be more serious.

There has to be accountability at some point.

A little about the free surface effect.

UPDATE:
Interesting graph: