Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Say what?

If you want a great reason to enact revenue tariffs to rein in the abuses of international shipping, the sad case of the collision of the container ship Dali ought to give you a good one.  It appears that the ship had been having major electrical issues for a while, but the owners decided to go to sea anyways.   

Interestingly, the ship has redundant power generation capacity with four diesel generators and a bow thruster, so what apparently went on is that whatever electronics control those generators had difficulties.  Redundant, but not redundant enough, and it suggests that ship safety needs to go a step closer to what we're trying to do with airliner safety--but maybe failing there with Boeing these days, of course.  

(sad to say, we have some suggestion that the intestinal fortitude of some regulators and inspectors needs an upgrade as well....from personal experience doing quality and reliability work, it can be hard to be the guy saying "no" to people who are several pay grades above you)

On the light side, I'd suggest sending the Dali to the Kerch strait and see if it can do the same trick again.  Slava Ukraini!

No comments: