Hey 18 wheeler, the Fork Tail Doc may have few spare GPS units that'll fix that problem for ya!

And on that regard. 30nm off after some 4000nm....not bad shootin, pard:ok:

EDIT TO ADD- in the same comparison, if 18wheeler was piloting said carrier they would be less than 2000ft off course for a similar error.

And that would be the equivalent of 15km off track during an instrument approach below MSA!

Love the comment on the ABC yesterday:

"Investigators say that the ship that ran aground shouldn't have been where it was".


Similarly, whenever an aeroplane crashes....''preliminary investigations reveal the aircraft was flying too low in the area where the accident occured''

I heard an ABC report, at the start they had someone saying that the planned route was okay to use, they then waffled on for a while, then they had the 'exclusive' from a fishing charter operator saying that he has seen shipping use the route, on several occaisions.
Wow, so this guy has actually seen ships using a shipping route? amazing....

Farce on the Reef
 

Walter Starck with some interesting comments -

About once in a decade a ship runs aground somewhere on the Great Barrier Reef. Although this has never resulted in other than trivial damage to the reef, a three ring media circus always unfolds. Politicians posture in mock displays of righteous anger or feigned concern. Environmentalists emote predictions of dire consequences. Bureaucrats blather about protocols and procedures. Various “experts” exude impressive displays of ignorance. Sundry “stakeholders” slither forth declaring an interest in something they have never seen, have nothing invested and know nothing about. Although somewhat predictable, this farce remains perennially popular.
A performance cycle usually runs for several weeks ending in a.... continues - Quadrant Online - Farce on the Reef




.

This voter is getting heartily sick of Anna and Co. being flown around the state to gawk at disasters. Any time there's a head on collision you get Anna in one chopper, Kevvy in another and three busloads of spin and makeup people along for the show :ugh:.

Apparently the Moreton Bay oil spill clean up costs blew out in a huge way due to the number of beauracrats and hangers on that demanded to be 'on the scene' and were either put up in splendour (well, sort of splendour :}) at Tangalooma resort or taken to and fro in helicopters. Second hand info, but it was from a person involved in the clean up.

In general, a little more science and a little less PR spin would be both welcome and unexpected from the current Qld government.

The problem is that coral doenst grow back after severe damage.

To cut a long story short, have a look at Truk on google earth, where channels were gouged and blasted in WW2. Id expect the Chinese ship to have gouged huge sections out of the reef and pulverised the rest it came into contact with.

Its sad to think of how unguarded and unmonitored our coast line is. Theres 36000k of it, we need a coast guard.

mickk I have dived Truk and all over PNG - dived MANY reef passes that were created by the use of explosives during WW2 - yes the reef pass doesn't 'grow back' in a human life time although it will on longer time scales - but the coral that forms the sides of the reef pass is anything but dead. And do you think they blew out a passage from solid coral or widened a natural existing passage? I can assure you it was the later.

I have seen huge brain corals terribly damaged by vandals carving their name/date into them and gone back a year later and the damage is repaired - we swam around certain we had the right coral formation but unable to see ANY evidence.

Its a stupid analogy anyway - a ship running aground is nothing like VAST amounts of high explosive blasting a passage through a reef 100+ feet deep and 1/2nm wide.

A better comparison would be what Truk Lagoon looked like after the US finished wiping out the Jap fleet there in 1945, a real mess that was NEVER even looked at from an ecological damage point of view. Never any attempt made to clean up all the oil spilled from bombed ships laying on the bottom - and now its a pristine environment with numerous 'artificial reefs' covered in colourful corals and teeming with fish.

By 1950 you'd have been hard pressed to see any signs of the battles of 1945 from a boat crossing the lagoon. Oil spills are an ecological non event but a political opportunity that cannot be missed.