I didn't say that builders didn't use F-150s, just that a monster truck with a 6 liter diesel isn't necessary. It's far more a macho thing than anything else. If you need to haul a horse trailer or an excavator or something, then yes, otherwise it's excessive.

Hee, hee. My dad was a fanatical fisherman on the Great Lakes. I remember looking out on the whitefish grounds on Grand Traverse Bay one winter and seeing one black dot on the ice, which we knew was Dad, and an ice breaker with the oil company ship behind it. The reason that I had looked is because the ships were blasting their horns at him to get out of their way. Stubborn bugger that he was, he didn't and eventually the ships had to go around him. When we asked him about it he said, "The fish were biting, and I'll be damned if I'm going to move when they're biting!"

Really? That's the opposite of what I thought it would be. Thanks.

Amazon has had to pay employees for the time it takes for them to go through the security process at their warehouses, as do gemstone processing facilities. This is no different. It's disappointing that these people have to waste time and money in court, once the precedent has been established enforcement should be automatic.

Heh. Just needs the proper accessory holder so you can slam the handset in a telemarketers ear.

Actually the Russian Coast Guard also has extensive experience managing nuclear powered ice breakers (they run all of the largest ice breakers in the world.) Russian sailors are probably a lot cheaper than American ones. :-)

The Fitzgerald had to change course because of the waves, they wouldn't have wanted the waves, coming out of the north, on their port side. Taconite pellets (partly processed iron ore) can shift in the holds, and if part of the cargo moves and the other doesn't on a 1000 foot ore boat it could twist the hull (that may have actually contributed to the breakup, it's unknown). They knew they were near Whitefish Bay, but needed to head into the storm for stability.

Depends on crewing and the availability of customers who aren't in a hurry for delivery. One savings over a Panamax right off the top is the 40,000 or more gallons of fuel that it won't be burning every day. Another is that these ships apparently are exceedingly automated (in part because that's the only way to deal with sails that size), if they can reduce the crew size so that they're only paying 10% as many crew per ship as the Panamax it's break-even.

Ah. I grew up on the Great Lakes, where they're 'pilots'.

Yes, or a rowboat, or drifting debris, or . . .

The only thing that I can agree with in your entire post is the last line. It's pretty much a given that if they win employees will get pennies on the dollar, and the leeches will get millions.

Probably caught power lines on its way down. Planes don't generally dive straight down into the ground, in fact most can't.

Humans have been sailing since at least 60,000 BCE, since that was the only way for them to get to Australia (paddling rafts is remarkably slow, and there are some nasty currents in that straight.) Genetic studies came to the conclusion that rather than a single event consisting of a couple of possibly storm-tossed families (the old speculation) colonization was a deliberate efffort by hundreds of people over the course of centuries.

They'll know when a storm is coming before it gets there. Weather forecasting has come a long way since the 19th century. They may preferentially skirt the edge of storms for a speed boost.

Now they know when a storm is coming and what its probably path is. The pilot will have to take into account calm areas and avoid those as well, but satellite weather forecasting makes that possible now.

One really big technology change between the 1950s and today is the ability to know when, where, and in which direction the wind is/will be blowing throughout your entire trip. That's huge, no more Edmund Fitzgerald getting caught by an early storm or avoiding doldrums. Also according to sailing rules wind powered vessels always have the right of way, which might be important in straights like the English Channel or around southern Asia.