Car ships

Per today’s report on the origin of car ships: Before the dedicated car ship came to be, cars would be carried on cargo ships with all the other cargo.  Of course, cars were not being shipped from place to place in the high volumes they are now, and the U.S. did not depend so heavily on vehicles manufactured in other countries.  It’s interesting how the shipping industry is such a reflection of the global marketplace.

Joanne

Pacific trash vortex

I’ve been reading about the existence of a giant patch of floating garbage the size of Texas, located in the middle of Pacific Ocean, where it slowly spins around, caught by currents.  It’s a combination of things thrown overboard off ships and land-based trash. If you want to check out an online story about it, visit this link at the Greenpeace website:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-vortex

Yikes.

– Joanne

Ship Reports for Thurs and Fri

There’s been a death in my family and I’ll be out of town for the rest of the week. That means no ship schedule for Thurs and Fri. But there will be ship reports.

For diehard fans of ship traffic, you can go to www.columbiariverbarpilots.com and click on the arrivals and departures link. That will give you the bar pilot “dope sheet” of ships for the day. It’s updated around 9 am and 4 pm daily and sometimes more often if conditions warrant. Times are in 24 hour format, bar means the ship or tug is expected on the bar then.

I’ll be back Monday as usual on the Ship Report. Thursday and Friday’s shows are archives of a live show I did two years ago featuring fisher poets Gino Leech, Dave Densmore and Hobe Kytr. A delightful show with wonderful guests. A bit of the salty flavor of the Fisher Poets Gathering, coming up on its 11th year in Astoria this month, Feb.  22-24.

See you next week!

Joanne

Situational Awareness

This is from today’s Ship Report: it refers to the ability to think calmly in a stressful, especially an emergency situation, plan a strategy and see it through without panicking…. darn, I sort of like the option to panic…but it seems like generally a bad idea, as Captain Johnson explains…

Joanne

Efforts to reduce ship emissions

Feb 11 Ship Report:

Refers to stories from www.sustainableshipping.com

Go to the news tab and you can read more about efforts to make ships run cleaner.

California is taking steps to reduce ship emissions by 80 percent while in port; Seattle already has cold ironing in place to allow cruise ships to plug into shoreside power.

Joanne

Air pollution from shipping

Here are some of the stats I mentioned on Friday’s report about ship-caused air pollution:

• U.S. ports are among the biggest sources of emissions and pollution in the country
• Ships using bunker fuel emit more sulfur dioxide than the entirety of the world’s cars, trucks and buses combined
• The long term goal should be to replace bunker fuel entirely with an alternative fuel such as natural gas or hydrogen, which are already being studied for use on  board ships.

Source: www.sustainableshipping.com

Report:”U.S. Ports and Air Pollution: A Perfect Storm,” Energy Futures, Boulder, Colo.

– Joanne

Fisher Poets

For people who like music and poetry, the coolest annual maritime event in the region is happening this month — The 11th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering takes place in Astoria Feb. 22-24.

Organizers are looking for volunteers to help with button sales and door checking.  Short shifts, which leaves you plenty of time to enjoy the show!

Call Michael at 503-436-0971

Container Shipping website

In case anyone missed my reference to it on the Ship Report: the container shipping PR web site is: www.shipsandboxes.com

Lots of fun info about shipping containers!

Joanne

Hello world!

Welcome to the Columbia River Ship Report Blog! This is my second foray into the world of blogging… I started a blog for the report awhile back and ended up dropping it because I wasn’t able to keep up with daily posts. But I’m inspired to give it another try and will do my best to make daily additions to the blog.

I’d like to stay in touch with Ship Report listeners and share info, plus get ideas on what you’d like to hear more about. Listeners can also submit questions here that I will do my best to answer on the air.

Thank you for reading my blog; looking forward to hearing from you!

If you’d like to respond to this post, please click on the “Edit Comment” link below this post.

Joanne