Vinalhaven ferries face diminished capacity, thanks to TSA

"Notification will be given when this action needs to be taken." Who is going to be notifed and do they care?

Security mandate bafooy. Like having one more deck hand on board is going to make much differance. Knowing Maine passangers they will just toss any threat overboard and keep on sailing.

Effective immediately, all American citizens are required to just stay home until we tell you otherwise. You are not permitted to leave the yard, and we highly recommend that you don't leave the house. We, your humble public servants, just want you to be safe. You'll thank us for it later.

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Sounds like what many Kennebunk/Kport residents heard from the Secret Service, all the years both Bushes were in office. The TSA must be taking their cues from the other public servants.

I've heard vague rumors that there was a time, way in the dim past, when government existed to serve the people.

Great Story! Except they left out the part that would explain why and under what authority, the TSA has concluded the ferry needs extra people.

Here is why and under what authority..

A complaint was received via text message regarding possible sighting of the SS Minow in operation with only two employees. Determined that a crew of two was not enough as same ship was lost on a desert island for years. While lost they also came in contact with various foreign nationalists that would have been eligible for inclusion on todays no-sail list. It tiggered the following....

1. A committee to identify necessary committees
2. A sub-committee to check the work of the first committee
3. A legal committee to ensure compliance with local culture and political correctness
4. An exploratory committee to examine if interpreters are required due to heavy downeast accents
5. A recruitment committe to locate somebody in DC that has 1, set foot on a ferry, and 2, is immune from seasickness
6. A cheat sheet committee to come up with a hand out to translate nautical terms, ie starboard=right, stern=rearend of the boat, and so forth.
7. An operations committee in charge of assigning a name to the undercover operation for intelligence gathering. Operation Gilligan's Island is the code name given.
8. A committe to reserve two weeks of training at Quantico for learning the proper way to put on a life jacket.

At this point a report has to be sent to the DOJ, Atten. Eric Holder, via carrier pigeon to avoid any possibility of e-mails being handed over under threat of contempt of Congress.

Once approval is received via another carrier pigeon, the next steps are authorized...

1. An in-house TSA diplomat is dispatched to the federal building office in Portland to borrow government approved field maps, including one to L.L.Bean.
2. A courtesey call to ICE is required to see how many Columbian nationals are in Maine and thier location. Said areas will be off limits to all TSA employees.
3. A Registered Maine Guide is hired for the trek from PWM to the ferry terminal in question.

Once on board, various tracking and monitoring devices are attached throughout the ferry. Data will be acquired as to location at any given time, the speed of the ferry empty and loaded as well as the operating parameters of the deisel propulsion system. Tracking and voice recording devices will also be assigned to each crew member. Said data will be downloaded via satellite communications to Area 51 for anlaysis by an efficiency expert. Paying customer data wil be sent to the Federal Reserve.

The report generated is not available under a Feedom of Information request due to executive privledge, however it can be viewed on Wikileaks.

A previously fired and rehired unnamed TSA employee is promoted with great fanfare due to the fact that never before has anybody in the agency thougth of putting agents on island hoping ferries.

And thats the rest of the story...

Well played, BC-SPM.

How's that for job creation! Now the ferry needs to hire more deckhands.

Don't you think the captain is quite capable of determining how many deckhands he needs?
If not, should he be captain? Time to tell "higher-ups" to stuff it.

It was the Coast Guard that made the determination.

The Coast Guard is under Homland Security, but the determination was due to safety regulations, due to the size of the vessel and passenger capacity. The Coast Guard claims they could not do do a pre determinaton of crew sizeuntil the ferry was actually built and they could do an onboard inspection.

Last ship I worked on we had a crew of 21, ship 658'x 106', automation is a wonderful thing.