eSea

MAERSK TRAININGS v e n d b o r g ’ s emagazine

June - July 2012

dome takes off

luxury learning

family time who to promote $15 million question

Olympians visit

MOSAIC II uncovered

editorialSea

We’ve simplified eSea for this the ninth issue, crisper and easier to navigate, we hope. And a very eclectic issue it is with MOSAIC II passing a milestone, significant developments in training planning and guests at the hotel visiting in search of gold.

The headline boxes act as the contents page, a click will take you there and the little arrows in the top right corner are primarilly for iPad users. They will take you forward and back page by page - the home button takes you to the front page which reintroduces you to the headline boxes.

Diverse though the topics might be, it is strange how a theme gradually occurs in the process of putting eSea together. What evolved in this issue was the strength of the computer in terms of what simulators can do for us, on many levels.

Computers can take us into areas we can’t even imagine in real life. From saving an estimated $15million in a single rig operation to being a team-builder for an Olympic team we are constantly reminded of the power of the microchip. Then there was the ‘test flight’ of the new dome in MOSAIC II, the drilling simulator complex. A visual journey round a rig from a seagull’s point of view right down to the drill bit is impossible – except here.

Svendborg, June 2012

North Sea Agreement

Dubai100% tale

PoopDeckDo you think this could happen today?

Dome wasn’t built in a dayOf course it wasn’t, to date

the project management alone would have had one man working constantly every night and day for a year, but it is remarkable how the piece of grassland much loved by local dog owners has been transformed.

June 22 was the day the building was due to be completed and it still looked as if much needed to be done - that is until you went through a temporary door into the southernmost part of the building. The transformation was like going from the aftermath of a student rave and stepping onto the flight deck of StarTrek’s Enterprise. The last technician from Drilling Systems had just left the building and instructor Martin Adamsen was doing his own bit to tidy up. The Dome was all lit up and ready to go – to an outsider bewildering, to an insider apparently very impressive.

Today the temptation to live in an unreal world is dazzling and that is

exactly what they are trying not to do with MOSAIC II. ‘We can’t be ahead, we are trying to replicate what the industry has now,’ explained Martin.

The Dome can offer things which are not available or possible but these can only be used in strict moderation. For instance a screen on the back wall can show the drill head as it progresses. ‘That will be turned off during training because we don’t want the participants to have anything available that they can’t get in real life. We can go back to it and look at it and it will be a useful learning tool but not an operational

one.’ he added. Similarly the fly over (see the video) gives you a tour of the rig that only Peter Pan could expect.

INTERCHANGABLE ARMSThe Dome has been set up with a number of pre-loaded rig scenarios – it has no limits beyond a matter or programming . . . and consequently money. The two driller’s chairs have interchangeable arms so that they can be easily adapted to different operating systems. ‘Regardless of what we have up here, the physics of drilling remain the same so it is straightforward to change operations,’ said Martin.

‘We aim to train in teams of four, two drillers, two supervisors, replicating the drill crew. These team-based courses are supposed to be two teams, eight people on a course – swapping between off-line and training in here,’ he explained. The arrival of MOSAIC II when she gets fired up in September for the first courses, will mark a major development in training for the industry – not just in the sheer simulated reality that is available but that here the trend will be for team training and not targeted at the individual. ‘As a team they will opt for the least risk and highest chance of success,’ said Martin.

who to promote

MOSAIC IIsees light of day

Beer and hot dogs capped the day, another

milestone in the MOSAIC II project as brick layers, electricians and office staff took a break to mark the Topping Out of the building. It’s been a hectic few months, battling against a dry winter which suddenly decided to catch-up on the rainfall charts, with building and installation going on simultaneously in an effort to meet the deadline of conducting courses by the end of the summer.

It’s been an international affair with the British, Germans and Danes all working beside each other, installing the technology which will make MOSIAC II the world’s most advanced training facility for drilling teams.

May - Under wraps

June - MOSAIC II emerges from its cocoon with MOSAIC I in the foreground

November - Groundbreaking December - Snow business January - Walls arrive

March - On top April - Awaiting dome

Angola‘Phone a Friend’

If the weather had improved he might have

taken his vintage sports car out for a Saturday run, but the occasional showers at least had kept him from hedge-cutting duties. At 9.02 the phone rang. Within twenty-one minutes Tonny Moeller had set in motion an unplanned project which would consume the rest of his and colleague Karsten Haegg’s day and end by putting the mind of the Maersk Deliverer’s OIM, Adam Kobren at rest.

Maersk Training has a long and growing relationship with Maersk Deliverer, one of Maersk Drilling’s expanding fleet of semi submersibles, and the connection was about to be strengthened over the next ten hours. The semi’s crew, both sets, had new building training at Svendborg and some had undertaken dynamic positioning training in preparation for this particular job. In shallower waters than she’d been designed for, the semi-sub would be anchored for the first time whilst working, thereby saving on thruster fuel.

Operating off the Angolan coast what Adam Kobren urgently needed to know was what the consequences would be of a mooring failure, such as an anchor cable snapping. Also at what point should they run DP or put it on standby. He turned to the person he thought most likely to ‘know someone who can’, Jens Christian Rise, Maersk Deliverer’s rig manager and he turned to the people he thought best equipped to provide an answer. He picked up his mobile - this was potentially the multi-million dollar Phone-a-Friend question.

Seven and a half thousand kilometres away from the rig, Tonny and Karsten meet up at MOSAIC fed with the information that the semi-sub was in 271 metres of water, rig depth 20.5 metres and 52410 displacement, all eight anchors and chains set up as in the mooring analysis, each with 159 tons and no current. Over the next few hours they would simulate a variety of different conditions, monitoring the effect on the semi-sub before forwarding a list of conclusions to Adam.

/contd over

The$15millionPhone Call

A total of seven scenarios were programmed into the computer and monitored, but the most dramatic findings came with the computers’ contradicting a long held miscalculation. The figures in the mooring analysis for what is called The Ten Year Storm showed with wind at 33 kn a wave height of 1.22 metres, however the simulators put the wave height at four metres.

‘So in the end of the day, what you did down there (in MOSAIC) convinced the client that we should just be in moored mode and not use the DP system before we have made a further risk analysis. So in the end of the day it allowed us to continue operating,’ said Jens Christian Rise.

And in money terms? ‘Ooh I

mean it is about $½million a day and we could take a month to make a FMEA – Fail Mode Effect Analysis - so 30 times $½million, we are talking $15million,’ he added.

‘It really impressed the client that first of all we have that kind of technology in our company. Nobody I know of has these kind of simulators and the fact that we could have this done in less than one day is a great service to be able to provide to our clients,’ said Jens Christian who pointed out that competitors seeking riser analysis would normally pay up to $70,000 for such information.

SOURCING ACTUAL PLANS

Since MOSAIC can call up the actual architect drawings of Maersk Deliverer, Tonny and Karsten were able to produce findings with guarded accuracy. In their recommendations for using DP they forwarded the following:

The DPs in normal Auto position is not designed to operate in DP while moored wherefore this operation mode should be carefully considered. If Position Reference system drifts this might cause high thruster force. According to above simulations the DP model reacted quite quickly with thrusters disabled and enabled by DPO when

mooring broke, and we believe that this is a safer operation mode than using Auto position mode with thrusters enabled.

All in all it wasn’t a wasted Saturday for Tonny and Karsten, they received thanks and feedback from the semi, but more than that - they had further proved that in MOSAIC they have a unique tool which can contribute to safety beyond the bounds of training courses.

Semi

questions

Fully

answered

So how effective can simulators be?

See over

Tonny Moeller and Karsten Haegg relive the $15 million moment

This is the print version.In this space on the electonic version is placed a video.Vidoes are also attached to the Dome and Olympic stories. You can generate the electronic version by visiting our website.www.maersktraining.com and clicking on the Svendborg box.

That will bring you to an eSea box with starts the magazine.

Earlier in this issue perhaps you saw the new

dome in action in MOSAIC II and a few pages further on you’ll see the Danish Olympic badminton team ‘playing’ on the maritime simulators. Normally our simulators are serious tools and as Tonny and Karsten proved, capable of ‘$erious’ work.

There’s a growing family of simulators and soon we’ll be capable of creating a whole offshore environment. Here maritime instructors Michael Toftelund and Chris Hansen show us how Bridge A operates in anchor handling mode. Firstly they display the correct operation and then re-progam to show how things can go wrong.

Creating

reality

at the flick

of a switch

North Sea Agreement

Maersk Drilling have become the first company to sign

up to the North Sea Agreement and in doing so will have all their training needs coordinated in a central system for the next five years.

The agreement is built around the simple geographical fact that Maersk Training has facilities strategically positioned around the North Sea and those who sign up are able to draw upon the considerable and various resources in each of them. Beyond booking the agreement also tidies up invoicing and how to make any necessary changes.

It also helps tidy up the logistics and paperwork. One phone call

can sort out an individual’s or team’s requirements by putting the training demands into a structured plan which is built around the most convenient training location.

But location is a relatively small factor in the equation. After Macondo and Montara the number of companies just looking for certificates greatly reduced, the demand turning towards relevant sustainable training programmes.

COMPENTENCIES COME FIRST‘There are companies still just looking for certification, but that is decreasing and there’s a much larger focus on getting quality training especially competencies and competency assurance, so by assessing that people get the right stuff you get a long way and to do

that you need the right training,’ says Maersk Training Sales Executive Sten Frydensbjerg.

NEW OGP RECOMMENDATIONSThe agreement is timely coming as the Oil and Gas Producers, (OGP) produced recommendations on well control training, organising it on five levels to cover the vital three areas of Prevention, Intervention and Response. Maersk Training’s Oil & Gas department already has programmes in effect which respond to these recommendations.

‘The oil companies are putting a much higher focus on quality in training and that is where we have always been,’ added Sten mentioning that BP visited Maersk Drilling recently because they have a four-year contract north of Egypt.

‘The same with Chevron, they have a project off West Africa and they want all locally employed staff by the contractor to be trained so we developed a basic well control course fulfilling OPG level 1. The course allows the contractor to use their own rig personel to perform the training on board, saving time and money,’ said Sten.

The North Sea Agreement links the mainly hands-on resources at Stavanger, Aberdeen and Esbjerg to the new drilling simulators at Svendborg - regardless of location courses are conducted drawn directly from industry itself. As with all areas they must have walked-the-walk before they are allowed to talk-the-talk. They are drillers to the core.

Ten ‘water cooler’ facts about the North Sea• The North Sea is in the Atlantic - it wasn’t always so.• The present coastlines of the North Sea were probably not established until

some 3,000 years ago.• Around 184 million people live in the catchment area of the rivers that flow

into the North Sea. • The first records of marine traffic come from the Roman Empire in 12 BC.• The North Sea is Europe’s main fishery accounting for over five percent of

international commercial fish caught.• The sea rotation is anti-clockwise. • North Sea waves are slower and broader than those of the Atlantic.• The North Sea is important for marine traffic and its shipping lanes are

among the busiest in the world. The Dover Strait sees more than 400 vessels a day.

• The mean depth is 90 metres with the Norwegian Trench being the deepest part at a maximum of 725 metres. Dogger Bank is the shallowest at 15 metres.

• In 19th century “German Sea” or “German Ocean” were the names used in English. In Danish, the term “Vesterhavet” (Western Ocean), is used as frequently as is Nordsøen (North Lake).

Stavanger

Aberdeen

Esbjerg

Svendborg

click on the location to see available courses

Maersk Drilling Take 5 Year Training Package

North Sea Agreement

FindingTomorrow’sLeadersToday

‘There’s no such word as Promotability, but there

ought to be.’ That’s how senior People Skills consultant Morten Kaiser kicked off the one-day workshop which brought together leading HR figures from 23 different and prominent companies. The aim was to pool and share resources and knowledge at a high level.

The Leader Promotability Assessment workshop asked the delegates to think about how do we measure leader potential and readiness for promotion? However over the course of the day the forty or so participants listened to four main speakers and such was the workshop nature of the programme that there was a constant flow of ideas and opinions. These broadened the platform but never so much as to fog the central issue.

For instance the question of what ROI you get from long term training provoked a number of relevant points. Outside of local government

it is rare today for someone to celebrate a 40 year anniversary working for the same company - in the future despite retiring later, it will be very rare. Today’s young people see a strong CV not as one marked by loyalty, but by variation – three four years with a major company embellishing their career path which they are eager to extend. Those labelled as ‘jumpers’. From the floor came the observation that losing someone you’ve trained was not the end of the world, rather they could be seen as representatives of just how good your company is, a form of employer branding.

PAYBACK TIMEAfter all you only train those who you believe have something to give back. One company cited that through a training programme it took them seven years to develop someone, against ten years for someone to reach that stage naturally. Both groups had a 40% fall out factor, but the bonus with the training route was that they saw a noticeable

improvement in managing skills which they reckoned to be about 10% - this alone was payback.

Guest speaker Mads Vitus Grønlykke, Head of Development DK, MAN Diesel & Turbo, said that although everyone in the workshop came from a different or diverse background they were all competitors, not in sales but in the search for the best people. Mads put forward his belief that when you get to the job interview, you are in a false world. ‘What you see is the Ideal I rather than the Real I – assessment at work, on site is much more practical. You don’t put a car into a garage to see how good it is, you take it out on the road.‘

The ideas and opinions flowed, one of which was that this won’t be the last of these such workshops and the delegates were left with the invitation over the next few months to throw more thought processes and problems into the hat. It is probable that out of that will emerge a further workshop.

learningei s ure

&

Story over

Whilst dad goes back to ‘school’the children get a school break in Svendborg

Normally if they wanted to see a seal or a killer whale

they’d turn off the tv and go for a walk to the beach; they wouldn’t travel across half the Atlantic to look at a stuffed seal, but this day was different. Five members of the Thorkildhøj family were in Svendborg’s much vaunted Naturama - the sixth was in classroom 201 at Maersk Training.

Home for them is in the Faroese capital of Torshavn but as a family they’d taken the opportunity to mix pleasure with business, mum Elsa taking time off from the bank, nine year old Fia and the seven year old twins Mia and Sanna getting an early school holiday, whilst one year old Hakun stayed in his pram. For dad, Chief Engineer Frodi, it was a leadership course with instructor Morten Kaiser.

It is families like the Thorskildhøjs that has inspired Maersk Training Svendborg to look in the summer towards a Learning and Leisure programme. Whilst one parent increases work capabilities and career prospects, the other chills out, with or without children.Currently working in Brazilian

waters, Forbi flew diagonally across the Atlantic, to meet up with the family who’d taken the two night boat journey to Hirtshals.

‘It was a great opportunity and one which benefits us all. With Frodi away for six weeks at a time and then home for four to five as a full time dad, it’s an all or nothing situation. Here for the first time the girls felt part of his work and part of his working day. Surrounded by so much Maersk blue has made it special for them.’

Selling the attraction that is the South Funen archipelago is not the most difficult job in the tourist board’s portfolio, but it is something that we as residents have maybe undervalued. Many course participants have not been so slow in recognising the potential for enjoying the area. However even the most exciting of marketing people in the tourist board missed the potential as spotted by the girls.

NOTABLE ‘FIRSTS’Elsa unsettled by the ‘busy’ roads of Svendborg, drove properly through five sets of traffic lights – there are only three sets in the whole of the Faroes, but the fun really started at the entrance

to Naturama. ‘The girls love those doors, they’d never seen a revolving door until now,’ said Elsa.

They also loved what was behind the doors, a strange mixture of familiar everyday life, the puffins and seals, made static and the huge, the unfamiliar and exotic – there was a Karen Blixen Out of Africa exhibition. ’Africa would be too hot for us, if we go anywhere hot it has to be in their winter, Denmark is perfect, but maybe with a little more sun to give the girls some colour,’ said Elsa.

NO RONALDS IN FAROESHaving met up with Frodi in Aalborg and made their way south for four days in Rantzausminde, they were going to complete their journey with a slow drive back to Hirtshals, about a fortnight in all – ‘Frodi’s keen to get back home, he always is, but this arrangement meeting up on his way back from Brazil worked out fine, there’s a lot to see and do around here, castles and beaches and shopping, but there’s one thing we’ve got to do before we go. We have no revolving doors on the Faroe Islands and now we’ve done that . . . . but also no McDonalds.’

A thank you to Naturama for looking after the family.

Forbi , right, at a lecture

The girls and a walrus

Learning & Leisure

Svendborg Gets Seal of Approval

There are two sides to every argument. With

regard to whether or not it is good to bring your partner or families with you whilst on a course, it is very much a personal matter of what you can gain from it. For some mixing business with pleasure is an out and out no no, for others it adds to the learning experience by families and couples get more out of shoretime. It is for this second category that we’ve launched a Leisure & Learning programme.

The hotel at Maersk Training has seven suites and very often these are sought after by families who see the trip to South Funen as an extra holiday break. There is much to do in the area. Many weekends over the summer months have some feature theme in the town and for those who like the outdoor life, the area provides

easy walking and cycling amid abundant nature.

SMALL IS BIGSvendborg, often labelled as Denmark’s smallest large city and largest small city, is the fulcrum for island hopping, sailing and touring. Living here you get the impression that so many things are possible that they often forget to mention them, so if you have a particular interest, we will try and point you in the right direction. Good food, fairytale castles, golf, music, beaches, fishing, kayaking the list is long.

If you are visiting on your own and keep to keep in shape, beyond the gym doors in the hotel, there are a number of mapped runs which will perk you up for a day’s learning.

Cinema’s here are not ‘no go’ areas for non-Danish speakers since features retain their original dialogue in favour of subtitles. For Danish film fans there is the bonus

that South Funen is a constant hunting ground for directors and trips to places like Rudkoebing on Langeland, where Susanne Biers’ ’In A Better World (Hævnen) was shot, will be of particular interest.

Historians have chateau like castles to visit which in turn have specialist museums for cars and motor bikes, toys, dolls, sailing craft amongst others. Downtown there’s the award-winning interactive Naturama natural history museum.

ASK, WE’RE HERE TO HELPIf you can’t see it, ask, it’s probably out there somewhere. If not, Odense, Denmark’s third largest city and home of Hans Christian Andersen, is only half an hour away up the motorway.

We believe that good careers and happy families go together and will do everything we can to facilitate you.

Svendborg- a pretty busy little town

Mix learning with leisure

Their next stop is London where they take on

the world in the Olympics and if they display the competitiveness they showed for an hour in MOSAIC’s simulated bridges, the rest of the world has something to fear.

The Svendborg Kommune was looking after Denmark’s Olympic Badminton team for a weekend of

team-building and training prior to what will be the highlight of many of the team’s playing career. The weekend was centred around Maersk Training’s hotel. Just 400 metres from the sports facility they were using, the hotel by being less than a real hotel offers more. More in that they were the only guests so they could totally focus and bond, more in that as the only guests there were no interruptions or distractions.

It was rather like being given the keys to a modern country house, but even more than that. No country house retreat could instantly take you on a race round Hong Kong Harbour – that’s what they did in teams of three. The facility normally used to train crews in the serious business of safety was transformed at the flick of a button into a gladiator’s area; the contestants two supply vessels; the challenge, to be first round the island.

Maritime instructor Michael Toftelund explained the techniques and rules and then they ignored them. In a break from the competitive world of badminton they became ultra competitive in the offshore world. We can be thankful that these were not real ships. As they say in Hollywood, no vessels were injured in making this film.

The Olympic badminton schedule starts on 28 July.

Danish Olympians

exchange training

for ‘race’ round

Hong Kong

Harbour

Dubai100% tale

The last time maritime instructor Lars Bo Knudsen

appeared in eSea it was for ALMOST scoring a perfect five in his post course assessment in Dubai. He’s now back in, because he’s done it. Conducting a DP Basic course for Bourbon seafarers at Maersk Training Elcome’s Dubai headquarters, he got the perfect five.

‘I wouldn’t put any store by it,’ he humbly said, ‘I’ve found over time that different nationalities have different expectations and consequently different scoring systems – these Nigerians were very happy to be in Dubai and the score reflected it.’

Bo went on to say seafarers from Eastern Europe are also usually generous as are the British, although they’ll only give you top marks if you respond well to a bit of their cross examination. The Danes, Bo observed, are generally the hardest to impress.

Regardless of his thoughts on cultural effects in marking systems what Bo can’t argue out of, is the fact that the learning got across. One of the Nigerian captains scored a very rare 100% in the final test.

Dane

Pleases

Dubai

Participants

COURSE INFO

DP in Dubaiclick here

DP in Svendborgclick here

DP Sea Time Reductionclik here

Well somebody’s got to do it . . .

Postcard from Antibes

It’s a long long way from the smoke of Middlesborough

to the sun of Monte Carlo, but Maersk Training Newcastle’s Vaughan Lewis has made the journey several times. Not just Monaco, but to Antibe and Laciatate in the south of France and the slightly chillier German port of Kiel.

How did Maersk Training Newcastle arrive in this James Bondish world of luxury yachts and helicopters? Vessels differ, but regardless

of whether it is a super tanker or 75 metre yacht, crews need the educating and with the disappearance of the paper chart instructor Vaughan Lewis has been busy onboard luxury yachts doing ECDIS training. He’s also been carrying out Safety Culture Workshops and Risk Assessment in world where ‘how much?’ isn’t necessarily the first question.

THE MIDDLESBOROUGH CONNECTIONThe introduction to this new area came in a roundabout way.

Svitzer some years back set up an operation in Monaco to do yacht management. They decided it wasn’t just right for them and pulled out. One of the team joined another yacht management company and when the question of training was raised he mentioned that when with Svitzer he went on a Maersk Training course in Middlesborough in northern England. He was so impressed he kept mentioning it and his new bosses said to contact the Newcastle centre to see if they could help out with the crews of the seven boats them looked after.

So for the past few months Vaughan has been packing lighter clothes and heading south to instruct deck officers. The trip to Kiel didn’t require heavy clothing since it was to a new vessel being built under cover in a shipyard. The newly instructed crew and the vessel set off on a maiden voyage in mid June – the vessel has the prefix MY – Motor Yacht - and the full name is MY Plan B.

‘It’s a Plan B we all dream about,” says Vaughan.

Dictionary

Language is a live beast, constantly being feed by

everything we do, invent and say. In the industries of oil & gas, maritime and wind the word factory is particularly busy, the problem being that how we say or spell the word is often determined by which door it leaves the factory.

Often this leads to different interpretations, leading to differing spelling or presentations, leading in turn to confusing search engines and potential loss of interest and business.

In order to create a channel so that these words are common in all our publications and presentations, we are keen to hear about words which perplex, mystify, confound, bewilder, nonplus, baffle, puzzle, bamboozle. There you go, eight words to describe a single simple situation of uncertainty.

The lack of clarity is further fogged by the sway towards American terminology. There is even confusion as to who best said it – was it George Bernard Shaw or Churchill? – but the observation ‘that Britain and the US were two nations separated by a common language’ grows daily more apt.

ON BOARD OR ONBOARD?Take ‘on board’. Now this one always confuses, but the Oxford English Dictionary does not agree with ‘onboard’ which the American dictionary Webster’s prefers. The OED will go as far as a hyphen when using it as an adjective, but no further. Hence, ‘We brought a radio on board so we could have an on-board radio.’

Personally I’m with the Yanks on this one; the hyphen is a transition tool marking the engagement of two words before common usage in time marries them together. Onboard to me is respectably married.

What other nautical words or expressions do you see as lacking uniformity? Post them here and we’ll batter them around and maybe, just maybe, come up with something which will help us all when we use the search facility

We would encourage you to contribute to this organic document by submitting or questioning any words or expressions you are unsure of spelling. For example do we have deep water, Deep Water or deep-water or whatever? We have opted for one non hyphenated word – deepwater. Similarly with Sea Time Reduction, what do you think, Sea Time, Sea-time or seatime?

In course names and areas where we wish to market products we prefer Train-the-Trainer, CraneSIM, MOSAIC, etc.

Please send any thoughts or queries to rli039@maersktraining.com.

eSea 1 Instructors’ back to sea programme - Sea Time Reduction announced - Vetting for Supply - New Deepwater Horizons open up

eSea 2New Towmasters’ course gets full simulation treatment - Deepwater course piloted - Wind industry - Drill instructor gets back to the well head

eSea 3MOSAIC II announced - Offshore wind, the new challenges - West African pilots use simulator to deal with the ‘big boys’ - CraneSIM in Vietnam - Piracy through the ages

eSea 4MT launches new website - Chinese in big safety push - Rig crane put in a box - Safety and People Skills build platform emergency course - how to communicate across cultures

eSea 5Maersk Training pennant raised in Dubai - Platform crews pilot Emergency Response course - How to be best in Vetting class - Danger of computer over reliance

eSea 6MOSAIC II, the ground is broken - Rig participants up to elbows in some very special mud - Semi-sub crew learns anchor handling - West African pilots start payback -

eSea 7Chinese Container crews look to safety - Rig crane simulator tested - Esbjerg’s new facilities - MOSAIC II update - DP sea-time reduction - Coffee Break with Bent Nielsen

eSea 8Titanic Edition looking back at 100 years of increased safety and improved training - the lifeboat revolution - man overboard - spreading knowledge - tomorrow’s seafarers

Library &Conferences

To go back in time and access articles from previous issues, simply click on the photo of the edition or use the QR code.

ONS 2012-06-29Confronting energy paradoxes

Stavanger 28-31 AugustDanish Pavilion, Hall J Stand 1006,

MSSM 2012Maritim Sikkerhed – Sundhed og Miljø

Nyborg 29-31 AugustHotel Nyborg Strand

We are out and about at the end of August at two important conferences. If you are also attending we’d

love to meet you.

The bi-annual ONS for those involved in the energy business, starts on Tuesday 28 August in Stavanger. Well be at the Danish Pavilion, Hall J, Stand 1006. Sales and Marketing Manager Mikael Kofod and Sales Executive Sten Frydensbjerg from MT Svendborg and Managing Director Nikolas Grund Kristensen from MT

Norway will be manning the stand until the Friday

Sales Executive Kim Kristensen and Lead Instructor Bo Morgner Groenhoej will be at MSSM 2012 at Hotel Nyborg Strand, Funen from Wednesday 29 August,

again until the Friday.

conference dates

Bit of a year for jubilees. Dronning Margethe II hit 40

and then Queen Elizabeth marked 60 years on their respective thrones and both celebrated in some style. In the UK there were images of a reign started in black and white and blossoming into high definition and 3D. Here in Denmark sports fans have also being going back a while, another ‘round anniversary’ as they say, twenty years.

Watching the television the other night, the achievements of a group of fine young men who lit the fuse for what has become Danish dynamite were remembered. The sporting documentary encapsulated more changes than we might think. The most extraordinary of these I will reserve until last. To start with the footballers’ fairytale journey to the UEFA European Football Championship came out of the horror that was the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Denmark were knocked out in the qualifying stages and ‘knocked in’ by the war in the former Yugoslavia. For the last-minute-fans it was a ferry tale arrival, the championships being in Sweden. Invited simply to make up the numbers they hadn’t read the script and they swept aside sides that were there by footballing right, France, Holland and then a date in the final against the mighty Germans.

The two goals they put past the Germans without reply were remarkable in themselves, but what was eye-opening in the television documentary were the small things.

In the crowd sat a youthful Crown Prince Frederik, a cigarette hanging from his mouth like a fifties movie dude, on the touchline the assistant coach calmly smoked a pipe as if he were on a riverbank fishing, on the field the players were felling each other like trees, simply to wipe away the blood, stand up and get back at it without a word, at the final whistle they kept their shirts on and didn’t flash their underpants. But one of these is still not the biggest change.

I recall that day, the day the underdogs bit the legs of the Alsatian. It was at a time when televisions still seemed deeper than they were wide, when colour was soft, when the set was placed in a dark corner of the room to keep it out of the way when not on duty. The one we were watching with a Danish family and their German guests was in back room of a typical north London house – the front room was only for Sundays. The guest’s six year old son was in his full Beckenbauer football kit, until that is the second goal, when by virtue of a grand aunt on his mother’s side, he removed it to reveal a Danish shirt.

Nice though that moment was on that June evening it was still not the biggest change. Several months later in October, much of Denmark was still in dreamland, coming to terms with having defeated Germany and my wife to be was working for the Danish Tourist Board. Now each November in London they hold the World Travel Market, a massive convention not far down the scale from the Melody Grand Prix/Eurovision in terms of everyone trying to outdo everyone else.

In the blessed arena of free thinking, the pub, Britt asked, ‘What can we do to be different this year? How can we outdo the French with their free wine, the Dutch with their floral presentations, the Germans with their, with their, with their . . .’

Maybe it was the drink speaking, but the thought occurred that if only we could get Carlsberg to make a replica of the European Nations’ Cup out of old beer cans – from that came the concept of a matching Lego version. The brewers, with the help of an arts teacher, and the toy manufactures came up trumps. Life-size plastic and alloy cups were assembled and dispatched. Now we know they were life-size because the tourist board had phoned the Dansk Boldspil Union and asked for dimensions. The DBU went one better.

At the time we were house hunting and staying with our friends with whom we’d shared that moment of Danish football glory. Returning home from work we opened the door . . . and there at the top of the stairs, glowing in the light from the bathroom, was the actual European Nations’ Cup. Yes, the very same 60 cms of gleaming silver the Spaniard’s lifted the other day.

Using Maersk Air, Copenhagen to Gatwick, the DBU had sent the most treasured possession they’d ever had custody of, to somebody they’d never seen, living at a semi-anonymous address in north London.

Don’t you agree, times have changed?

Poopdeck

Over the past twenty years much has changed in terms of expectancy and trust, but do you think this scenario could ever happen in 2012?

Richard Lightbodyrli039@maersktraining.com