Maritime Recruits Practice on Dry Land : Navigation: High-tech ship-handling simulator allows cadets to hone skills under almost lifelike conditions. “They say the only thing it doesn’t simulate is the smell,” one student says.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — As the 850-foot freighter approaches a bridge, another ship veers into its path. In the pilot house, watch mate Nicole Runyan barks orders to wheelsman Mike Novak: “Left 10 . . . hard left!”

Too late. The vessels slam into each other--a maritime disaster.

“Slight miscalculation on my part,” Runyan says with a sheepish grin. “Well, I had to have one crash today.”

Luckily, it wasn’t for real.

The Great Lakes Maritime Academy here has installed a high-tech ship-handling simulator, where cadets can hone their skills under almost lifelike conditions.

The system consists of 10 classroom stations where students can practice piloting and radar plotting, linked by radio and radar. The computer software allows aspiring pilots to choose between more than a dozen ship types and different water bodies.

One room is equipped as a pilothouse with steering console, radar screens and other instruments.

A wall screen 14 feet wide and seven feet high displays images of other ships, harbor structures, onshore lights and buoys against a backdrop of gently flowing waves. In the next room, students at computer terminals complicate matters by creating fog banks or darkening the sky.

To an outsider, it looks like a life-size video game.

“It may not be the real thing, but it’s realistic,” said Runyan, 22, who is midway through a three-year pilot-licensing program.

“Your heart starts beating . . . the adrenalin starts flowing. They say the only thing it doesn’t simulate is the smell.”

Representatives of the federal Maritime Administration, the Coast Guard, and the Great Lakes shipping industry attended a recent dedication ceremony.

“We can provide a student here over the course of a few months with hands-on exposure to very realistic scenarios . . . challenging winds, restricted channels, complicated ship-handling maneuvers,” said Rear Adm. David Brown, the academy superintendent. “It might take several years to encounter all these things in real life.”

Early seasoning is particularly helpful for Great Lakes trainees, who must spend the equivalent of 270 days on the water, Brown said. Students at ocean coastal academies mostly practice in the open seas. In the Great Lakes, they operate in closer quarters with less margin for error.

Once the simulator wins Coast Guard certification, cadets can use it to earn credit toward the requisite piloting time, he said.

The $1-million system was developed by ECO Corp., a naval architectural firm in Annapolis, Md., with specifications provided by the academy. Most of the funding came from government grants, private donations and Northwestern Michigan College, with which the academy is affiliated.

Simulation, used for decades by the aviation industry to train pilots, is relatively new for shipping.

“We’re about 20 years behind, but we’re starting to catch up with the flight simulators,” said Virgil Keith, ECO president. Tradition-minded ship captains have been less receptive to simulation training than their aviator counterparts, but that’s changing, he said.

Better computer equipment and software are available nowadays. And the new generation of aspiring sailors is more familiar with computers than before, according to George Ryan, president of the Lake Carriers’ Assn., which represents most domestic Great Lakes shipping companies.

Shippers hope that simulation training will help crews better understand the machines they operate and make fewer mistakes.

“I’d say 90% of the accidents on board ship today are caused by human error,” Ryan said.