{"id":810,"date":"2012-01-14T09:53:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T13:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=810"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:39:43","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:39:43","slug":"on-the-impossible-at-sea-01142012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=810","title":{"rendered":"On the ‘impossible’ – At Sea – [01\/14\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

In every age mankind attempts to fabricate great works<\/em>
\n At once magnificent<\/em>
\nAnd impossible<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>On the very very small chance that someone reads these pages who does not know me, who has stumbled across this in some other manner – I feel compelled to remind everyone that I do not work for Costa.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t make this morning\u2019s events any less poignant.<\/p>\n

Newspapers are reporting that the Costa ship had disorganized evacuation processes, that she didn\u2019t have a scheduled drill until the next day and so her passengers didn\u2019t know what to do with themselves. For us, our passenger drill is held the day we leave port, before we even haul anchor to start our journey. The passengers moan about it, but they do it.<\/p>\n

So do we. We sit through the safety videos, we watch the shipwrecks of history (the second ship I was on they showed us the hour long presentation on just that right before we went into our transatlantic crossing, the morbid irony of the deck department at its best). We run our drills (and complain about them being on a port day when we want to get off the ship), but in the back of our heads all the time are two thoughts: \u2018it will never happen to us\u2019 and \u2018but\u2026what if it does\u2019.<\/p>\n

Because sometimes no matter your safety precautions, the unthinkable does happen. We\u2019re only human after all. We owe our security aboard these \u2018floating palaces\u2019 to forces that are sometimes out of our control just as much as we do to our drills and our HESS procedures.<\/p>\n

For decades man has been trying to conquer nature, our buildings get higher and our ships stronger and more massive. I\u2019m not saying that the Costa Conquordia<\/em> deserved what happened to her \u2013 no one deserves that \u2013 I\u2019m merely saying that eventually, somehow, someway, nature will always win.<\/p>\n

As with all of my ship-board companions in my own fleet and others, my thoughts are with the Conquordia and her crew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In every age mankind attempts to fabricate great works At once magnificent And impossible On the very very small chance that someone reads these pages who does not know me, who has stumbled across this in some other manner – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-grand-world-voyage-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-d4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2209,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/2209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}