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| Seaspan's Brian Carter received a token of appreciation for his update on NSPS from MC Malcolm Barker |
As I type this, we are sailing across the Gulf of St
Lawrence, having discharged a load of aggregate in Summerside, where I joined
the ship. We are proceeding to Sept Iles
to load Aluminum, bound for Oswego, via the St Lawrence Seaway. What a treat it
is to continue to explore the numerous aspects of Canada marine scape from
coast, to coast, to coast.
I am actually glad to be back onboard, the predictable pace
of onboard life is quite the change from my last time at home. This past time
home was a bit longer than usual, as I had booked off time to attend The New
Wave, a marine engineering conference, I volunteered to assist in delivering.
It was not first conference that I’ve assisted with, the
local chapter of the CIMarE has hosted several of these types of conference
since 1999, but for some reason this one was particularly tedious. It was very
taxing on my relationships with my spouse and kids. The numerous meetings,
seeing me at the computer working out bugs on the website, on the phone
answering questions, or designing signage and such were encroaching on our
family time. To be honest, the Domestic Operations Control Unit (DOCU) errrr,
my spouse, was probably more relieved that the conference was over, than I was.
My web “properties” suffered as I spent a considerable
amount of time on the project, but there is only so much time in one day. After
such a long hiatus of looking after the Dieselduck domain, I am kind of missing
it, and I am looking forward to nurturing my baby” again. I enjoy total control
of my websites which is incredibly satisfying; after working in committee for
the last year, this is quite evident to me now.
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| Great to meet some exhibitors |
The New Wave was well received, and I think went very well,
if I do say so myself. As a “ship” guy, the general feel of the conference was
more cerebral than the topics I am usually involved in. Delving into the
renewable energy sector and those many facets were a bit of a new area for us
as a group. The majority of the projects presented may have been in their
infancy, but it certainly highlighted the need and opportunity for the ship
guys and the theoretical guys to get together and actually do some really neat
things.
We had very strong support from our traditional sponsors and exhibitors, I must say, which was really good to see. As for numbers - we had about 115 attendees, 21 sponsors, 22 exhibitors, 24 papers, 2 guest speakers, 1 social event. All made for a very packed two days!
For me, this represents a commitment of more than one year, 20 organizational meetings (in Victoria, a 300km round trip), 1600 emails received – not counting the replies. A huge semi-custom Wordpress website built, including online registration and payment; 22 blog posts. Not to mention 150 tweets and a newfound addiction to micro blogging – there goes more of my time!
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| Gold Sponsor, SSI's Denis Morais listens attentively during technical presentations |
Why I did it? Well, to be honest, I doubted the benefits at
some points. After some time to reflect, you tally up the knowledge base
absorbed, meeting current peers, and future peers, getting out in the community,
and at the end of the day it’s an overall benefit professionally. Plus, it
benefits our local branch of the Canadian Institute of Marine Engineering – a
non profit organization.
It’s been a time consuming affair to say the least, so I
apologize publically to my spouse for the intrusion into our daily lives, and
appreciate her patience in this, another one of my “projects”.
Unfortunately, I
have another project on the go, which will bring more stress into our lives –
sorry honey.
I am hoping to start building the new Dieselduck empire
world headquarters. Yup, that’s right. The plans have been drawn up, and the
subcontractors lined up; when I get home from sea, we start building the
headquarters – a one car garage in the backyard.
Hey, gotta start small right; mmmmm, didn’t Apple start that
way.You can view all the pictures i took of the event on www.seafarermedia.com. See you all in a couple of years,
when we again play host to Maritech, the national Marine Engineering
conference.