Friday, January 7, 2011

Other Shores - January 2011

In 2009, there were 74,951 merchant ships, totaling 853,276,000 gross tons.
One in three shipowners feels the worst is over. In fact, some containers lines look forward to being quite profitable soon.

Look for Ghana to become the next major oil-producer. Its Jubilee Field, which went into production on December 1, holds an estimated 450 million barrels and it is only one of a series of crude-bearing formations.

The use of LNG as a fuel for ships is gaining momentum, partly because of its lower polluting emissions and partly because there seems to be plenty of LNG available at relatively low prices. About twenty ships, mostly ferries in Norway, are currently fueled by LNG but some experts expect that nearly half of all new ships will use LNG by 2020 and it will fuel the entire world fleet by 2050.

A design team of thirty, all under 34 years old to eliminate traditional prejudices, have come up with a concept they call Triality, the world’s first gas-powered (ie, LNG), ballast-free VLCC. If such a tanker is ever built, the team predicts that the daily fuel costs ($32,260) would be lower than for an equivalent vessel using current marine fuels (($37,000). That should save the owners a minimum of $24 million over the 20-year life of the tanker.

Some shipowners believe they can prove that the reduced fuel consumption from slow steaming saves money but one owner believes any savings are eaten up by the need to build intermediate distribution and storage facilities at waypoints to compensate for the increased transit time of cargo.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks
Off the Peruvian port city of Callao, the Chinese fishing vessel Fuyuan 3 capsized and four of the crew of 19 fishermen went missing, presumably trapped inside the overturned vessel. Off Vietnam, the 34-year-old handysize bulker Jianmao 9 sank for reasons not given. It usually carries sand. Also off Vietnam, the steel-carrying Jian Mao 9 sank and its crew of 26 were rescued by the Panamanian-flagged container ship NYK Aquarius. They were then turned over to provincial border guards and later turned over to officials at the Chinese consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. The big tug Fairplay 22 inexplicably capsized in outer Rotterdam harbor in clear weather and 25-mph winds with gusts to 60 mph and the master and chief engineer both died. Quick work by other tugs stabilized the capsized vessel and it was taken into calmer waters where the sheerlegs crane Taklift 7 carefully rolled the tug upright. The company announced that the name Fairplay 22 will never be used again in the Fairplay fleet.

In strong winds, the 3,000-ton cement-carrying Arklow Raider ran aground while leaving Drogheda, County Louth. (That’s in Ireland.) In Norway while traveling from Oslo to Fredrikstad with cargo, the 4450-dwt ro/ro Cometa went aground on a small spit of land called the Fugletangskjaer, which is somewhere near Kirkeoy.

In the Black Sea, the general cargo vessel Karaiml (Karim 1?) sank after colliding with the empty chemical tanker Alessandro DP about 20 km south of Emine Cape and five crewmen went missing. Near Hong Kong eight of fourteen mariners on the sand barge Runze001 died after it collided with the small (164-foot) container ship Huijinqiao 08.

Fires and explosions took a toll: At Montevideo, the South Korean squid-fishing vessel Seo Gin 11 caught fire and one of the crew of twenty-three was found dead in the engineroom. It was the fifth ship fire in the port this year and authorities are concerned.

At Bremerhaven, vehicles were being routinely unloaded from the car carrier Don Pasquale when someone noticed that the vessel’s stern was about 15 meters from the pier and the stern ramp was about to plunge into the water. Strong winds had broken mooring lines. A tug pushed the ship back into position. North of Adak in the Aleutian chain of islands, the 738-foot bulker Golden Seas reported supercharger failure and its engine was capable only of marginal power output. The 18,300-hp offshore anchor-handling tug Tor Viking II was working in the general area for Shell Oil and pushed through high seas to take the big vessel in tow for the 500+ miles to Dutch Harbor where repairs could be made. During the tow, the two vessels threaded the Aleutian Islands to get to their south side and somewhat-calmer waters. (The average speed during the tow was about 8 knots, a tribute to the tug and its four engines.) At Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), Malaysian logs were being unloaded from the Kyaukpyu using equipment (the crane’s boom or a sling, it is not clear) rated at a 14-ton capacity when a 30-ton load was tackled. Something snapped and the logs fell into the ship with an almighty crash. The vessel was somewhat damaged but, luckily, that was not true for bystanders or stevedores, who escaped unharmed.

In the case of the master of the Moldova-flagged Carina I, he died at sea near the port of Kalmnos while en route to Syria, and officials want to know why he died. (He was sixty years old.)

Gray Fleets
The US Navy set a world’s record of sorts when an experimental electric railgun sent a 20-pound projectile rocketing through the air at seven times the speed of sound. The trailer-sized weapon generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy. (One megajoule is roughly equal to the energy generated by a 1-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph.) And the Navy’s Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System, which will be used on newer carriers, should shoot an actual F/A-18E Super Hornet into flight in mid-December. The test was eagerly awaited although the EMALS has already made 722 dead-load launches at speeds up to 180 knots.

The US Navy informed all hands that from now on the Persian Gulf is to be called the Arabian Gulf. This mightily irked the Iranians, who think of themselves as Persians and the gulf as theirs. The Navy’s Facebook page – yes, even the Navy has a Facebook page – was quickly awash in thousand of pro-Iranian messages that denied service members around the world of opportunities for posting their own messages.

You have to watch advertising agencies like a hawk. The Indian Navy had a nice public-relations campaign going until someone noted that some special advertising supplements showed India’s Jaguars and Sea Harriers flying over what was supposed to be the Indian aircraft carrier INS Viraat. Unfortunately, someone had substituted an American carrier, complete with non-Indian aircraft on its deck! And another triumph of Indian advertising showed a miniscule Viraat streaming between two gigantic American carriers. (The Viraat displaces a mere 24,000 tons and carries most of India’s remaining dozen of Sea Harriers plus several elderly Sea King helicopters, while an American carrier displaces between 80,000 and 100,000 tons and carries several dozen aircraft.)

The White Paper “Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review” issued earlier this year announced a number of cuts to the Royal Navy’s surface fleet, including scrapping the four Type 22 frigates, HMS Ark Royal, a Bay-class RFA ship, and either the light aircraft carriers HMS Illustrious or HMS Ocean. Now it has been decided that HMS Ark RoyalHMS Illustrious will be withdrawn from service at the end of this year, will be withdrawn from service in 2014, and HMS Ocean will be retained to provide a Landing Platform Helicopter capability for the longer term. (Hopefully, it will be supplemented by at least one of the two large aircraft carriers under construction.) The Bay-class amphibious support ship RFA Largs Bay will be withdrawn from service next April along with the Auxiliary Oiler RFA Bayleaf and the Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment RFA Fort George. The head of the UK’s armed forces admitted that scrapping the Sea Harriers and aircraft carriers was a risk to national security but that “can be managed.”

The Royal Navy is hoping to sell the 1977-vintage light aircraft carrier HMS Invincible for as much as £2 million but don’t expect to operate it if you purchase it. It’s been pretty well stripped (the engines have been removed and the generators and pumps are “generally unusable”) but if you do buy it, rest reassured that it is towable.

The Canadian Senate enthusiastically passed a motion urging the federal government to change the name of Canada’s naval force from Maritime Command to something with the word “navy.” The naval force already refers to itself as “Canadian Navy” but some senators and MPs want a return to its pre-1968 name of “Royal Canadian Navy.” “I myself would quite prefer to have it called Royal Navy,” said one member of parliament. “We have the RCMP, Royal Canadian Legion, why not Royal Canadian Navy?”


White Fleets
The 100-passenger, 290-foot Clelia II is perhaps the most elegant cruise ship that sails in Antarctic waters but it is accumulating a reputation for giving its passengers perhaps more than they bargained for. In 2009, most of the season was cancelled after stronger-than-expected currents pushed the vessel onto rocks and damaged one of its propellers This year, in the Drake Passage, the five-story vessel was hit by a 30-foot wave that broke a window on the bridge, damaged electrical circuitry, and slightly injured one crewman. Both engines suffered damage but kept running and the ship crept back at five knots to Ushuaia for repairs and cancellation of its next voyage. The similarly sized expedition ship National Geographic Explorer accompanied the vessel on its slow voyage to Ushuaia and several passengers took dramatic video footage that can be found on the Internet of the ship laboring in massive seas.

An explosion on the Queen Mary 2 while approaching Barcelona last November was more serious than first thought. One of twelve capacitors in a harmonic filter exploded, doing severe damage to neighboring equipment and buckling frames and the door to the compartment. Another capacitor was bulging badly and may have been about to explode. Any fire was quickly extinguished by activation of two hi-fog fire outlets. The ship was blacked-out for 29 minutes but the ship was underway again in less than an hour. (A harmonic filter attenuates harmonic currents in AC current that may damage equipment.)

The elderly (1981) Indian cruise ship Ocean Life, on its first voyage for new owners, was between Goa and Mumbai with 250 passengers when the master radioed that the ship had developed a 5-degree list and water was entering through a crack in the hull. Three tugs arrived and the Ocean Life was towed to a shipyard. Strangely, workers there could not find any crack. At sea en route to Florida, an intoxicated male passenger on the Ryndam thought it would be helpful or funny or something if he dropped the stern anchors “just like he did on yachts.” No damage was done.

Cruises can be safe but watch out for those shore tours! Four passengers from the Norwegian Sun were injured when brakes failed on the taxi van bringing them back from a Bahamian casino. They later explained they hadn’t used the seat belts because the ship was nearby. Without travel insurance and a medical plan with no coverage outside the US, one badly injured woman’s family was forced to dig up $9,000 for the local hospital’s care and $21,000 for an air ambulance to take her home to Massachusetts for further treatment


Those That Go Back and Forth
In Sydney Harbour, a wooden party boat crashed into Pyrmont Wharf, injuring nine people, some seriously. (A passenger with multiple broken bones and head injuries was standing on the top deck and fell over the rail when the boat hit.) The boat’s skipper blamed equipment failure but reluctantly admitted that there had been some “agrro” (aggravation or aggression) as the vessel hit the sea wall and four other vessels. It turns out he was being violently assaulted by some passengers as he tried to fix the faulty equipment and make the landing; authorities decided that, under the circumstances, “the skipper did a good job.”

While en route from Oslo to Copenhagen, the Pearl of Scandinavia had a fire on board. The 490 passengers were mustered but there was no need to evacuate the vessel. However, clean up of fire damage took longer than estimated and voyages were cancelled for the next several days. The fire started in a defective lead to a battery charger in a Nissan Qashquai (a British-built compact SUV) that had been converted into an “electro-car.” The car’s owner had been charging the battery using a regular extension cord but he admitted maybe it hadn’t fit the special recharge socket tightly. Three vehicles and a truck were destroyed. Last month, the company’s Lisco Gloria caught fire somewhere between Germany and Lithuania. The fire, which totally engulfed the vessel and forced evacuation of the 236 persons on board, started with an explosion in a trailer on the cargo deck. Fire broke out in the engineroom of the Stena Pioneer while it was 12 miles off the UK’s Lancashire coast. Twelve passengers, mostly lorry drivers, remained calm and the ship’s crew extinguished the fire without outside help. While being extensively upgraded at a shipyard in Gdansk, the Britannica (ex-Stena Britannica) caught fire and suffered undetermined damage. At Aberdeen, the Shetland and Orkney ferry Hrossey was docking when it was hit by the oilfield supply boat Maersk Finder. As a result of the damage to the ferry, bread, fruit, vegetables, and the like became in short supply in Shetland shops. Finally, while en route to Ancona from Corinth, the Colossus went aground on rocks in Vassiliki Bay, the impact cracking a ballast tank. The tug Hector went to the rescue but no results were reported.

In Prince William Sound in Alaska, worsening weather got a kayaker into trouble but the fast ferry Chenega was not too far away and launched its fast rescue boat with good results as far as the kayaker was concerned. But at Mukilteo, in Washington, matters were less straightforward. A man called a crisis hot line to announce he was suicidal and was going to jump off the ferry. Police and a Coast Guard helicopter were unable to locate him but a motorist called in about two hours later to say he had seen a young man in his underwear near the water. He was actually wearing swim trunks and said he had jumped into the water for fun. “He thought it was a good joke,” explained a fire official.

Legal Matters
A Wisconsin man was sentenced to fifty months in custody for sinking the pleasure boat Misty Morning in navigable Michigan waters and polluting the water. Before being sentenced, he explained, "I had a business and I couldn't keep up with technology." The sentence may seem stiff but he had been convicted in 2009 on three of four counts and failed to show up for sentencing. He was arrested eight months later in Costa Rica, thanks to help from Interpol. The vessel used to tow the Misty Morning was also confiscated and he lost his mariner’s license.

Longshoremen went out on a wildcat strike for two days so major shipping lines, terminal operators in New York/New Jersey, and the New York Shipping Association sued the International Longshoremen’s Association seeking damages of more than $5 million.

In Malta, a drydock employee who fell five stories when scaffolding gave way on the Lobo Elif was awarded 44,154 in actual damages and another 136,800 for loss of earnings but the court deducted 39,957 he had already received from his personal accident insurance. He has a 95% permanent disability.

Nature
Navigation on the upper Mississippi became difficult after early winter weather created much pancake ice, and crewmen were using long poles to push chunks of ice from between towboats and their barges. At Duluth, commercial tugs had to start breaking ten inches of prematurely early ice because Coast Guard icebreakers were caught away doing routine navigational-aids tasks.

Two American scientists who have been studying the cyclical nature of sunspots announced that the world could be headed toward another ice age. Over the last twenty years, billions have been spent on the assumption that global temperatures will rise but virtually no money was expended investigating the possibilities that global temperatures might fall and the implications thereof.

Metal Bashing
Prices for ships to be scrapped held up. A Chinese shipbreaker bought a capesize bulker for $448 per light displacement ton, a price comparable to those being paid on the Indian sub-continent.

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives
A US federal court convicted five Somalis of engaging in piracy and related acts, probably the first such US conviction since 1820. They had attacked the frigate USS Nicholas, after mistaking it for a helpless merchant ship, and now face life in jail.

Another Somali pirate was sentenced to thirty years in a US jail for attacking the dock landing ship USS Ashland. He also pleaded guilty to piracy against the Danish merchant vessel CEC Future and received a 25-year sentence.


Odd Bits and Head-Shakers
Sonar experts spotted a ship-like object on the sea bottom and a Finnish diver brought up 168 bottles of champagne, including some bottled by a firm that ceased operations in 1830. The wreck also holds many bottles of what may be the world’s oldest drinkable beer.

The US National Transportation Safety Board updated its wish list of Most-Wanted Safety Improvements, hoping that all motorcyclists will wear approved safety helmets but dropping recreational boating, which, it felt, had made substantial safety progress.

Many foreign ports are so littered with wrecked or abandoned vessels that navigation by larger vessels is difficult and cleanup is difficult to finance but the Liberian government seems to have struck a deal with a multimillion-dollar biomass-energy company that does business in that country. It is removing wrecks from various Liberian ports. Among the first seven vessels removed at the freeport of Monrovia were the Tom Alexandra, a freighter sunk at pierside while being unloaded in 2006 during civil unrest, another vessel named the African Style, about which about no information is available, and two tug boats.

New naval ships usually have teething problems and most are not too visible to the general public. But New Zealand’s new offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Otago was taking NZ’s Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand and wife Lady Susan and a Cabinet Minister to visit the sub-arctic Campbell Island 700 km south of New Zealand when it had electrical problems on one engine. The couple was transferred to sister OPV HMNZS Wellington (which was carrying a party of scientists for a three-month stay on the island) and the Otago limped back to Auckland for repairs.

That was the official story. But, according to a reporter on board the Otago, very heavy seas on the way south from Bluff had caused a spring on a switchboard to break, temporarily disabling one engine. The Governor-General-less OPV was then ordered to return to Auckland, which it did using both engines. Makeshift repairs had been made using duct or “gaffer" tape.