I was living the dream. The wind was twenty knots, but it was perfectly aligned for my approach to the berth. The late evening sun was low enough in the sky to bring a golden glow to every surface and relax your skin with its blanket warmth. But not so low that its glare would interfere with the move. A 40 m space on the pontoon between two ships. Just large enough for our 33.5 m vessel to sit nicely between them, but small enough to make the manoeuvre challenging and fun.
Two harbour pilots came on board. One had been on holiday in Fort William recently, so we spoke fondly of Scotland. They relaxed while I drove the boat around Eemshaven harbour, and slid her nicely into our allocated slot for the night.
“Well done Captain. Like a glove”!
When you do a good bit of ship handling, there is nothing like it in the world. And when another good ship handler compliments your work, well, that’s about as good as it gets around here.
When you are in the moment, nothing else exists. Total focus. Tiny movements. Massive forces.
It’s great fun.
When you have two or three moments like that in a day, you don’t mind getting up at 4 am and dealing with all the chaos of a crew change in the middle of a busy project. And pulling up in front of my old boat – the vomit comet – and catching up with the Master I trained as my relief just added to the pleasure of my day yesterday.
But today.
What a difference a day makes.
6.55 am from the client: ‘Why haven’t you sailed yet? The weather is down’?!
I look at the forecast. Wave heights increasing all day until 9 pm. Completely unworkable, with tide, wind, waves and current against us.
‘Are we looking at the same forecast’?
Meetings. Client reps. Project managers. Teams calls. Health and safety managers. Works managers. Surveyors. Agents.
‘I understand this is a complex project, but it is not the correct decision to sail until the weather is coming down tonight’.
I explain myself in person, in writing, over the phone and on video conference calls until my head is splitting and I am literally dizzy.
After three or four hours of this, I was almost in a rage. These absolute cretins in the office pump their gums all day long about safety but as soon as they have to explain to their supervisor why weather exists and why physical reality has intervened to turn their over-optimistic Gantt charts into liars, it’s back to the old Yiddish motto: ‘On your ass, the beating doesn’t hurt me’.
I copy in marine control, each of the charterer’s, clients, our owners, and everyone else I can think of and send the kill shot email:
Good morning again XXX,
At the moment the maximum wave height is forecast to increase all day, from now until 1800 hrs (see below image [I included a weather chart coloured bright red with maximum wave heights starting at 1.9 m and increasing steadily to 2.4 m all day. Our boys working on deck are only 1.2 m above the sea and are expected to stand next to an 8 ton hook and chain that swings back and forth on a crane while waves crash over their heads in these conditions]). I don’t believe it is sensible to head into an increasing forecast.
While I appreciate that the project limit specifies a limit on significant wave height only, maximum wave height must also be taken into consideration at all times. Our experience of the past few days has shown that this is the most important factor.
Additionally, we will be punching into the weather on the way out, as the waves are from the west. Leaving earlier will reduce our speed anyway, and make the passage longer.
The tide is flooding until 2000 hrs tonight. This means we will have 1 to 3 knots against us between 1400 hrs and 2000 hrs. The distance to sail is 49 NM. Based on experience of this river [The Ems] it does not matter if we leave at 1500 hrs and achieve 5 knots, or leave at 1800 hrs and achieve 7 knots, we are likely to arrive on site at the same time. However, at least I will be more certain that the weather is reducing as we head out into it, and we will burn less fuel, and have safer conditions on deck.
Sailing earlier than 1900, against the tide, into increasing weather, is not the right decision for safety or for the commercial side of the project.
Sailing at 1900 hrs is the right decision based on the information we have now. Of course, we will monitor the forecast throughout the day in case it drastically improves.
We are now shifting berth at 1200 hrs. When cargo and stores are complete I will arrange for a pilot between 1800-1900 hrs, at their earliest availability.
I hope you understand my reasoning?
Best,
Scott.
They left me alone after that.
I left the eight disappointed project people on the bridge and went to lie down in my cabin. The only place I can be alone on this ship is my bunk.
Luckily I got to speak to my wife and kids on a video call for a few minutes. That uncurled my stomach and made everything ok again.
I went back to the bridge magnanimous in a hollow victory.
‘I understand these client’s point of view. But they are looking at the same forecast with different eyes’.
The rage subsides. I get to shift the boat around the harbour again and have some fun, but the morning has left me feeling untrusted and unsupported.
Being in command means that if I sail into a worsening weather trend, and someone slips on deck and gets seriously injured, I will be the one to blame. But making the right call means that I need to fight.
Better safety cultures and better managers understand that each part of the enterprise has its own purpose. Each man has his own calling. (No, I have not personally seen a woman in this sector of the industry, yet).
Some people are of course not to be trusted. You need to remove those people from your business as soon as you recognise that they are working at odds with the ethos. There must always be a balance between the self-interests of the employees, and the interests of the ship and the project. One sustains the other.
When you have a squad of self-serving spreadsheet monkeys trying to micromanage from afar, you end up with the opposite of trust. You have a culture where the noise-to-signal ratio is unbearable, and middlemen treat every interaction as means to their own advancement. No matter what you do, you are blamed by a filtering middle manager in a way that makes them look good for everything that goes right, and you look bad for everything that goes wrong.
This is what happens when society becomes utilitarian. When occupation and politics and pride take the place of virtue and honour in the human heart. When we see others as instruments to be used for our own advancement, rather than opportunities to prove that we care.
This week I read ‘The First 90 Hours: What New CEOs Should and Shouldn’t Do to Set the Right Tone’.
I can’t remember where I found this, but it probably came from Steven Wilkinson’s Good and Prosper newsletter. That and Tim Price’s Stack are the only two that never fail to complete reading these days, so it’ll likely be from their recommendations.
A sort of ‘rule of nineties’ occurred to me after reading this article about John Quelch, who argues that the first 90 hours that a CEO spends when they take control of a new company are the most critical to get right. His thoughts were in response to an older book by Michael Watkins, called The First 90 Days.
I haven’t read that best-selling business book, but the sentiment of the title, and the article by John Quelch immediately struck me as true. The article is short, punchy, and immediately applicable to freelance Merchant Navy Captains everywhere. (And CEOs). Very worthwhile.
The life of a freelance Master Mariner is an interesting one. Working primarily in the offshore energy sector you never know what the day will bring. Going from ship to ship, and company to company, the variety of management problems you encounter can be disorienting at times. And the sheer number of human beings who pass through the ranks beneath you, or who come and go passing through your wheelhouse as law enforcement, charterer, client rep, project manager, port state control, service engineer, technician or surveyor, is staggering.
When you are at sea and your radar screen fills up completely with targets that present a risk of collision, it doesn’t help to panic, or freeze, or to describe the injustice of the situation aloud with great eloquence. There is no higher authority to pass the problem to. You are still Master under God, out there away from communications. Once you are underway on a voyage, there is no getting off. No quitting. No escape.
So how do you deal with the challenges that come your way, when setbacks and problems build up and threaten to overwhelm you?
Simple.
Zoom in.
When things are hard, and things are tough, and things are scary, you can’t stop the boat and get off. You need to find balance in each moment and keep going.
My method for achieving that kind of focus does seem to come down to ‘the nineties’.
My maritime experience has spanned almost every size and type of ship that there is, in one capacity or another. In that time, I have found that it does indeed take three straight months, or ninety working days, to truly master every element of a modern ship. But, in Pareto principle style, the first ninety hours are definitely the most urgent and critical for getting the broad strokes right.
Furthermore, to add my own experience to the mix, I would say that breaking down your challenges into ninety-minute periods is a useful way to properly manage people and projects. And more specifically, use ninety seconds as a good base unit of time when conducting maritime operations.
90 minutes is enough time to get the gist of any new activity or piece of equipment. It is usually enough to make a plan, revise a plan, or gather consensus on a plan. And it is certainly more than enough time to explain a decision, once it is final. If you have your facts straight.
90 hours consists of 6 and a half 14-hour days. This is probably how you will spend your first week on any new ship, with a new crew, in a new port, on a new project, with a new client and a host of other unknown variables.
And each of those 14-hour days will consist of about nine 90-minute chunks. And each of those 90-minute periods is made of sixty 90-second moments.
My arithmetic is approximate, but trust me, it works well enough.
The point is that if you want to put your ship master’s license in your hand and use it to make as much money as possible, you need to be able to adapt to change and Master each situation as it comes, faster, better, and safer than the other guy. And being able to make assessments and decisions in dynamic circumstances requires attention to detail, focus and effective judgement.
The rule of nineties is not for the stopwatch or the schedule. It is an internal instinct that you will develop as you develop in your career at sea, as you begin to recognise patterns in physical, commercial, and social situations. The rule of nineties acts as a guide, setting expectations, and limiting hesitation. It can be a standard to set yourself, and a self-corrective when you go adrift. Use it as a tool for focus, productivity, and command.
Your entire life boils down to these little moments, so it pays to think on the scale of moments.
You maybe have 90 seconds to catch some mistake before it goes catastrophically wrong. Or 90 seconds to figure out if it’s worth putting out that fire, or going to abandon ship.
It takes 90 seconds to ask the deckhand how he spent his time off, or what he thinks about the next work activity. If you do that, he will be that much more on your side when you need him.
It takes 90 seconds to teach the second officer how to plan a manoeuvre, or how to interpret a situation on the radar.
It takes 90 seconds to devastate a man when you tell him what he has done wrong, and how he has failed to perform correctly. Or alternatively, those same 90 seconds can reveal that he doesn’t care about his transgression, and show that this is not a responsible person.
And I’d say you have about 90 seconds after you do that to someone to repair the relationship, and to show them some other kindness, and in so doing prove that you have corrected them not to gratify your ego and hold them down beneath you in contemptuous superiority forever more, but in order to build them up and save them from themselves. Or 90 seconds to decide whether or not you will ever trust them again.
And it takes 90 seconds to make someone’s expertise feel seen, known and appreciated.
Anyway. Departure is in about 90 minutes (well, 77), and we don’t have internet here, so I’ll say goodbye for now.
I’m fairly certain it’s a weather day on Sunday and Monday as well, so we’re going to have the exact same fight on Monday morning all over again. If I’m doing my job correctly, I will always be disappointing someone. But once you make the right decision, you need to become as hard as Sisyphus’s rock in your resolve.
Nobody will ever thank you or notice the accidents and incidents you prevent, because they didn’t happen. Like the invisible hand or opportunity cost, this is the humbler part of a life worth living. The thankless task of making sure you and others around you arrive alive.
It’s less dramatic than dedicating yourself to a political cause or hauling teenagers off to be executed on the Ukrainian border, but it is meaningful.