Christian

Merchant Mariner 🇺🇸

[Christian @bilgerat47]

Two years ago I bought a 1960s tug boat that had been sitting in some marina on Lake Ontario. My plan was similar, sail it down to NYC and turn her into a floating dockside air bnb. She needed a ton of work. But I was determined and had just gotten off a ship so I had all the time in the world. I spent the summer of 2023 sailing her down the Erie Canal (With the help of a few buddies).

For good reason or not, the amount of Coast Guard and EPA regulations for small vessels are overwhelming. I remember spending my nights after cutting and welding all day just reading through CFRs.

Unfortunately doing something like this is far from simple. There are costs you’d never think of that will eat you alive lol.

[Preston Tiegs @pmtiegs]

Instagram grifters just making stuff up at this point.

[Alexander Stahel 🌻 @BurggrabenH]

Nah. Defending groupthink by appealing to groupthink? Consensus carries weight when observations are independent.

Seaborne commodity trackers are a textbook example of a commodity product (nomen est omen). They rely on the same underlying AIS shipping data, while their methodologies were never designed for sustained dark-fleet tracking at scale. In other words, they share the same blind spots and, frankly, complacency.

Fixing it is an investment: one needs to basically rebuild the company at the core: fuse AIS with frequent satellite imagery, vessel identification, draft/loading changes and near-real-time route reconstruction, ideally in two-hour increments, across a lot of vessels. Success will require quality sector and tech team work to optimizing the algorithm over time.

Not doing that means one’s aggregate data has zero real time value left as revisions over weeks often more than double the original publication. 5mbpd can easily become 12mbpd in 7-14 days. Let be repeat: Zero real time value!

I interact with some of these firms and find their collective response function shockingly insufficient so far. The same goes for tracking Russian refining, which obviously requires massive adaptations to capture this new dynamic.the core mistake? They treat dark and drone activity as anomalies rather than structural features at scale of what I like to call the new war economy.

Little, if any, C-level attention. No profound discussion. No recognition of the gravity of the moment. Amateur hour from A to Z. Boy, are they ready for disruption.

So far, nobody offers materially better commercial data, as far as I know, so they get away with it. And of course it’s a lot more profitable to cheaply buy, reshuffle and expensively sell standardised AIS data, padded with B- and C-grade stuff, than to solve genuinely difficult problems with A-people on both the sector and tech sides, while having to buy high-frequency satellite imagery on top.

I don’t make the rules. Going dark is the new normal when the SoH, BeM and much of Russia are involved. Meanwhile, tracker errors run into millions of barrels per day and often resolve only weeks later, if at all. Their approach? It’s dark and what we show is the “floor”. It’s the cardinal sin in commodities which prices everything at the margin. Which part of that do they not understand?

The Buy Side does not have the luxury of complacency. So they do their proprietary models, comme il faut - no short cuts..! The first are now complete. And they make the traditional vendors I know look real bad. Given their price points, it’s quickly becoming an insult.

Gutsy, selling rubbish as real time insight in the age of AI. Good luck to them. The Sell Side will have to adapt or die over the next few months. My hunch is that AI-native models will offer vastly better data at a fraction of today’s cost, and soon. Let’s see. But here is your business plan if you are young & hungry: deliver robust commodity data in real time.

I cannot share my third-party proprietary insights, obviously, but my best advice to the blind at this stage is to keep an open mind instead of putting blinders on. Alternatively, build it yourself.

Where I sit, key shuttle operators such as ADNOC appear to be doing a great job. i cannot judge the job of the US Navy but there are now convoys with US guns patrolling them. I salute them 🫡 and sincerely thank them for their services.

For now, Iran has lost control of the Strait of Hormuz. If Team Trump turns that into a consistent long-term strategy instead of contemplating another Memorandum of Misunderstandings, the regime is hopefully in its endgame.

Early days, but it’s the first time since March that I’m cautiously optimistic here. For the benefit of humanity.

@POTUS @JDVance @SecRubio @USNavy @CENTCOM

[U.S. Naval Institute @NavalInstitute]

A shortage of credentialed civilian mariners is undermining U.S. sealift readiness, making retention—not recruitment—the nation's most urgent maritime workforce challenge. https://t.co/wv5AnViCkb

[Travis Hord @MAGTravF]

We are a Maritime Nation.

[Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴‍☠️ @mercoglianos]

First, X revenue is not that great, even with millions of views.

Second, the vast majority of anti-Jones Act posts get the fundamentals of cabotage incorrect.

Third, they operating on a strawman that repeal would magically reverse the issues in the maritime industry without acknowledging the damage it would do.

What is needed is a true discussion on what can be done to fix the American maritime industry and the issue goes a hell of a lot deeper than coastal trade.

[StupidMinotaur @StupidMinotaur]

@cremieuxrecueil disagree we should 10x that law..
also need to bring shipbuilding back to usa which is a good 100k+ job for men

[Christian @bilgerat47]

@bberenikes Sardegna? 🤨

[Jan Sramek 🇺🇲 🌁 ⛰️ @jansramek]

The biggest shipyard in China and the biggest shipyard in South Korea both fit inside the Solano Shipyard.

6.5 miles of waterfront on a federal deep-water channel used by Panamax class, destroyer-sized ships.

There are 365,000 skilled workers within 50 miles.

Just sayin'.

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

“Today in the United States there are only 188 US flaged merchant ships and 105 Navy @MSCSealift ships.

WE NEED MORE THAN THAT

In fact the Chinese have over 11,000 merchant ships,” said @SECNAV Hung Cao in today’s senate hearing.

The days of the US Navy ignoring the US Merchant Marine and ocean logistics are over.

“We need them to thrive as a nation,”

He also provided clarity on @MSCSealift hulls ordered in foreign yards and said he will require that those overseas yards invest in the United States which will create 540,000 shipyard jobs for Americans.

[Christian @bilgerat47]

The iPhotos Memories widget constantly reminds me that I need to devote my shipping money to buying land in Sardinia

[Christian @bilgerat47]

@bbedeutungg The only cruise ship I will ever get on is called Tirrenia and it is solely to get me from Genoa to Sardegna lol

[Christian @bilgerat47]

@DustinWalper Congratulations!

[Dustin Walper @DustinWalper]

Cameras, lasers, magnets...

It took a *lot* of work to get here, but as of this month we'll be producing real parts for a real ship.

Will start slow but ramp exponentially.

[Christian @bilgerat47]

Another old video, I took this on a night round (Slow speed containership). That engine is 4 stories tall!

[Christian @bilgerat47]

@AlanLevinovitz Boring for longer pieces and ineffective unless you really get the form down.

[Christian @bilgerat47]

Took this a few years ago, if anyone has ever wondered how much you roll on an empty oil tanker.

[Christian @bilgerat47]

3rd engineer after an 18 month Military Sealift Command hitch

[0ya Renegade Angel ✞ @x0yabun]

What jobs actually get people houses like these?

[Christian @bilgerat47]

@husafell_stone Dubbing “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in Italian has done wonders for me