PORT TOWNSEND — You’re piloting a ship. Suddenly 14 other vessels are coming right at you.
You roll right over a small sailboat but smash into a ship larger than yours.
“Olga” — a simulated voice which Carolyn “Ace” Spragg describes as “just like a James Bond villainess” — calmly informs you that your ship “has come into contact with the target” and a reset is needed.
“It’s very anticlimactic,” said Spragg of the pilot training simulator at the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend.
“The kids are always expecting a big crash. I sometimes think that I should bang around some pots and pans to make it more dramatic.”
Spragg, the center’s waterfront programs manager, supervises the simulator’s use.
The machine is designed to train crew members on large ships, but is available also to the public.
“There are only seven or eight of these in the country, and this is the only one that is accessible to the general public,” Spragg said.
“We allow recreational boaters and students to use it, along with professional crew members who want to add to their training and move from second officer to first officer to captain,” she said.
The public will get a free hands-on chance with the machine at noon Wednesday at the center at 431 Water St., Port Townsend.
The presentation will be in two parts: the first hour will be a discussion of how the machine works and the second will be hands-on contact.
The pilothouse simulator is in a small third-floor room overlooking Port Townsend Bay.
It consists of a four-foot high processing unit and three large screens that provide a wide view of simulations.
Seven scenarios are available: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Strait of Juan De Fuca, Prince William Sound, Seymour Narrows and the open sea.
A variety of vessels are available, from a Coast Guard cutter to a container ship.
Partially grant funded, the machine is worth between $1.2 million and $1.4 million, with software constituting about $600,000 of that amount, Spragg said.
The simulated training can be more educational than actually piloting a ship with an instructor, since the trainer can insert a variety of weather conditions, sea behavior and obstacles to which the operator must react, Spragg said
“Real sea traffic is boring,” she said. “There is usually nothing going on. In the virtual world you can do anything you want.”
The simulator may seem like a large, elaborate video game but it has more realistic elements than purely recreational computer applications, Spragg said.
“In a video game, someone has pre-programmed everything you can do,” she said. “When you play, you are just working your way through a decision tree.
“Here, the math is live. You can add waves and other elements in a way that makes the events real.”
The grants that financed the machine came with the condition that the control room will be pressed into service during a real emergency.
“There is an oil spill module,” Spragg said.
“If there were an oil spill in Puget Sound, FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] would come here, take over the building and manage the response from here,” she explained.
“After the [2001] Nisqually earthquake, sea traffic was handled in Victoria until we were back up again,” she added.
“Now we have a backup to running Seattle boat traffic that’s actually in the United States.”
The machine is not connected to the Internet so as to avoid viruses and hacking.
It connects to a radar unit on the roof that will be activated during an actual disaster.
Wednesday’s program is part of the monthly Wooden Boat Wednesday program that offers free programs on the third Wednesday of each month between September and May.
“This is a way to get people who don’t want to pay for a class or are just interested in what we are doing to come to the maritime center,” Spragg said.
“We like to highlight local experts year round and not just at the Wooden Boat Festival in September.”
The next program, “Travel Journal Sketching in a Maritime Environment,” is scheduled for noon Dec. 16.
For more information, go to nwmaritime.org or call 360-385-3628, ext. 104.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
