Friday, November 4, 2011

Other Shores - November 2011

According to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, morale of seafarers is at an all-time low due to: piracy, fatigue, denial of shore leave, visa problems, the ISPS (International Ship and Port Facility Security Code), and lack of communication facilities while on board. Add the criminalization of seafarers. (A tank-truck driver can have an accident that spills thousands of gallons of oil without the law stepping in but let a vessel create an oily sheen...)

The Southern Africa country of Mozambique has the world’s last major untapped coal reserves but needs heavy investments to get coal to a port for export. The Brazilian mining company Vale has bee making such investments and the first export shipment, 35,000 tons of thermal coal for Lebanon, recently left on the bulker Orion Express.

In its relentless pursuit of a cleaner environment, California passed a law requiring vessels to switch from heavy oil fuels to fuels with less than 1.5% percent sulphur as they approach the state but there has been a 100-percent increase in engine failures and blackouts since the law went into effect in July 2009.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks
A British report revealed details why the feeder container ship K-Wave ran aground at full speed thirteen miles east of Malaga last February while the bridge was unmanned. The vessel’s Voyage Data Recorder preserved sounds of a very boozy party on the bridge involving many ”toasts” and most of the ship’s officers. The festivities broke up after several hours when the second officer announced he needed to carry out his duties as officer of the watch. But he left the bridge at some time in the next four hours, the course was changed, and the ship ultimately and gently ran aground. A local fishing vessel notified the Spanish coast guard that the ship appeared to be aground and about the same time the chief mate found the bridge was unmanned. Efforts by the master to free the ship were unsuccessful. Interestingly, the report noted that the course change was due to a deliberate manipulation of the autopilot controls.

On the Columbia River, an electrical failure put the vehicle carrier Luminous Ace ashore somewhere between Portland and Astoria. No leaks, not much excitement, just the non-routine deployment of a precautionary anchor and the tedious wait for high tide and some tugs. On the Westerschelde, the largest channel leading to Antwerp, the container ship MSC Luciana ran up on a sandbank near the Belgian border. One observer commented, “The ship is well and truly stuck.”

At Hamburg, the container ship Charlotta ran into the stern of the cargo ship Hanse Confidence at high speed. The Hansa Confidence suffered a hull crack that threatened for a time to sink her but fire-brigade pumps barely kept her afloat. Near Singapore, the Singapore-flagged cargo vessel Xetha Bhum collided with the Vietnam-flagged tanker Dainam. The tanker ended up in a drydock while the other vessel anchored with severe damage to its portside. Off Mangalore in India, the fishing vessel Ocean Fisher-2 hit a sunken ship and capsized. The skipper was saved but six others went missing. At 53 12.15 north and 005 18.19 west (that’s near Wicklow harbor, Ireland), the crude-oil tanker Ocean Lady hit the fishing vessel Bridget Carmel in the early morning hours. The FV suffered damage to its topside and derrick. In Sweden at Tjorn in the Bohusian archipelago, some bunker oil spilled after the bulker Golden Trader collided with the Belgian trawler Vidar. Off Pulau Tioman in Malaysia, the smallish chemical tanker Cendanawati sank after being in a collision with the smallish asphalt tanker Cosmic. One master lost his ship and suffered head and neck injuries. In the Kiel Canal in Germany near the Brunsbuttel locks, the tanker John Essberger collided with the German dredger Wilhelm Krûger. The dredger suffered severe water ingress and needed a prompt pump-out.

Ordinarily, pulling a 3,000-ton Coast Guard training ship off a pier is routine work for two tugs, even when waves are 3 meters high and the wind is blowing 10 meters per second. But the 19-ton tug Kita Maru No. 12 capsized while undocking the Miura at Wajima Port in Japan and both tug men died.

Off Jakarta, the FSO (Floating Storage, and Offloading) vessel Lentera Bangsa caught fire and one man was missing. The converted tanker stored crude oil from the Widuri field of Java Sea until shuttle tankers could take the oil ashore to be processed. The damaged FSO was towed away to be repaired and the product tanker Galunggung took its place so production could resume.

At a Chittagong shipbreaking yard in Bangladesh, a worker died in a hospital after large steel plate fell on him. In the Philippines at Subic, at least five workers were killed and eight seriously injured when a 42-ton ramp collapsed. It had provided access to the British-flagged vehicle carrier Tombarra, which was undergoing repairs.

In Alaska, a Coast Guard chopper flew 345 miles to Sand Point, refueled, and headed out to the tanker Murray Star more than 500 miles southwest of Kodiak. There, the helicopter hoisted an unconscious 47-year-old man and flew back to Sand Point.

At Darwin, a container crane was seriously damaged by another crane in strong winds last January. Three months after repairs were completed, the repaired crane smashed into a crawler crane, twanging its cables with considerable ill effect but hurting no one. Elsewhere in Australia, Port Kembla was down to one unrestricted marine pilot and two restricted pilots due to sickness, injury, and annual leave. As a result, there was a stretch when no vessels were alongside and six others waited at anchor. In northwestern Germany on the Hunte River, the self-propelled barge Janine had steering problems at Neuenhuntorf and ended up with its bow on one bank and its stern on the other bank. When the tide went out, the ship broke in half and dumped its cargo of 1,100 tons of ore.

Gray Fleets
The US Navy failed to note what other US federal agencies were approving and now the service must accommodate encroachment by commercial wind turbines into the 47,000 acres of air space of its Boardman Bombing Range in Oregon.

Anybody viewing the flight deck of an aircraft carrier must wonder at its vastness. It looks big enough to house a major sports event. And such will happen in November when the basketball teams of North Carolina and Michigan State compete in a purpose-built, 7,000-person stadium on the carrier USS Carl Vinson, all at no cost to the government.

Iran will respond to the global arrogance of the forces of imperialism by having a strong naval presence near the US sea borders, probably in the Gulf of Mexico. So announced a top Iranian naval officer. But how this would be done has fascinated many. Iran has three inactive destroyers and its several light frigates have a maximum range of 5,000 nautical miles so refueling for a return voyage would be a problem, possibly solved by a cooperative Venezuela. By the way, US officials did not anticipate any port visits by the Iranians.

France withdrew its only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, from Libyan operations so the ship could start planned autumn maintenance. Once it enters maintenance, neither Britain nor France will have an operational aircraft carrier.

The Royal Malaysian Navy’s fast attack craft KD Pari nearly sank when one of its shafts pulled out. Fast work got the warship near a jetty, where it did sink. It was soon raised with the use of lifting bags. And the same navy has been a major contributor to the anti-piracy efforts by acquiring a small container ship, the Bunga Mas 5, and converting it into an inexpensive naval auxiliary. Recently, this impromptu warship drove off skiffs approaching the tanker Eagle Stealth in the Strait of Bab-al-Manden.

The firefighting vessel PGK-638, a minor member of Russia’s Caspian navy. collided with the Russian tanker Grigoriy Bugrov in the Volga-Caspian canal. The tanker received a large hole above its waterline but both vessels stayed afloat.

White Fleets
The Hurtigruten is the non-stop stream of about ten semi-cruise ships that serve the remote communities along the coast of Norway. Its Nordlys was about to arrive at Alesund when fire broke in the engine spaces, a fire that killed two and severely burned another two. The ship limped into Alesund, where its 262 passengers debarked and shore-based fire services boarded for what proved to be a difficult fight. At one point, the ship took on a severe list but was finally stabilized to where cars and passenger luggage could be unloaded. A few days later, fleetmate Nordnorge allided with the pier at Bâtsfjord. A hole was punched in the ferry’s hull well above the waterline. The municipality apologized for defects in equipment that let it jut several feet from the pier.

On the Danube, the river cruiseship Primadonna ran aground at low speed and all 150 passengers were evacuated to a nearby hotel.

Those That Go Back and Forth
A member of the British team in the Rugby World Cup took it particularly hard that his team was eliminated in the quarter finals by a French team that had lost two straight times. Perhaps to cool off, he jumped off a ferry in Auckland Harbour and swam to shore. Police warned him about his “disorderly behavior” and the Rugby Football Union fined him £3,000 ($4,660). He agreed that “it was a silly thing” before flying back to the UK.

In the Likoni Channel at Mombasa, the 1,550-passenger ferry Kwale collided with the freighter Sea Wind and then narrowly missed another vessel. Minor injuries to some passengers and the ships, and the ferry was withdrawn from service. In the Philippines, after the Weesam Express 6 had engine problems, the Coast Guard removed all crew and passengers about three hours later – the local Coast Guard had just received the Maritime Industry Authority’s suspension order stopping operation of the company’s five vessels because the Weesam Express 8 ran aground earlier in the month, an accident that left 208 passengers stranded for some time. (Its captain blamed a non-operational lighthouse.)

In Indonesia in eastern Java on the Barito River, the ro/pax ferry Marine Nusantara collided with the tug Pualuat Tiga 330/22 and that killed to least three of the 443 passengers and injured another 113 people. (Indonesia has the greatest number of tugs in the world, seconded by the US.) Elsewhere in the same country, fire broke out on the docked ferry Kirana IX at Surabaya and a resulting panic killed at least eight people and injured scores more. The fire was in a truck loaded with onions and, although badly scorched, it remained drivable.

Residents on Coochiemudlo Island, a small island near Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, depend on barges to carry vehicles back and forth. Last month, both the Sirenia and Megamia failed seaworthiness tests and a smaller barge, the Kooringai Trader, was hurriedly brought in to provide interim daytime service. “Everything that could go wrong has. When it rains, it pours and I can tell you it’s been bucketing down,” explained the ferry company spokeswoman. Also near Brisbane, the ferry Jumpipin ran upon a sand bar near Garden Island and it took about two hours to transfer 98 passengers onto another ferry for the remainder of their trip to the Redland Bay mainland. (The ferry’s name may be a misprint as a Google search failed to bring it up. But jumpinpin is a word of aboriginal origin that refers to the sweetened roots of the wynnum (breadfruit) tree or possibly the pandarus tree.)

Legal Matters
Malaysian authorities spotted the small product tanker Yong An anchored illegally in Malaysian waters. Compounding that illegality, the vessel was flying the Malaysian flag upside down. The master could face up to two years in prison if it can be proven that he deliberately flew the flag that way. (The Malaysian flag is remarkably similar to the US flag and has an unmistakable up” side.)

The owners and operators of the containership Cosco Busan that rammed a pier of the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge in 2007 and dumped much oil have agreed to a civil settlement. They will pay $44.4 million, $18.8 million of which is for lost human uses of the shoreline and Bay.

Four Somalis were sentenced to life in a US prison for their involvement in the hijacking of the sail yacht Quest in the Indian Ocean. The four Americans on the Quest were killed during the hijacking.

Nature
On the face of it, the news report simply stated that the fishing vessel Antonio 23 was overwhelmed by waves and sank while at the Payaw Artificial Reef in the West Philippine Sea and three fishermen were saved by the tanker Mahogany while another 15 were missing. But research showed a certain redundancy in the reef’s name because payaw is the native word for an artificial reef. Such reefs are not the usual collection of deposited junk on the sea bottom that attracts fish and divers. Rather, a payaw is a double-layered bamboo raft under which fish tend to gather to the ultimate benefit of fishermen.

The world’s largest sanctuary for sharks was created by the Republic of the Marshall Islands. No commercial shark fishing is allowed in 768,547 square miles of the Central Pacific, an area about four times that of California.

Heavy rains flood Bangkok and it would be nice if floodwaters passed through the city before the next high tide. One politician tried something novel. He had eight 400-hp tugs tie to a bridge span and then drop back downstream There, they operated at full power for a day. He claimed that flow in the Noi River increased by 57%.

Imports
In one week, Columbian police seized two drug-carrier submarines. The larger one, probably belonging to the guerilla group FARC, can carry ten tons and operate five meters deep for up to ten days. Authorities thought the sub had been used to carry drugs from Columbia to Central America, a transit point for shipments to the US.

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives
Pirates boarded many ships, crews resisted in various ways, and quite often the pirates gave up and left. The crew of the tanker Northern Bell activated its Ship Security Alert System and successfully stayed in the (presumably locked) engineroom. The Pacific Express made evasive maneuvers and its anti-piracy measures thwarted several boarding attempts. As they departed, pirates fired several rockets rounds into the ship and it caught fire. Eventually, the Italian destroyer Andrea Doria came to the rescue and the ship made it to Mombasa. Among the fire losses were seventeen school buses. And in the same general area off Mombasa, anti-piracy measures kept the geared bulker An Ning Jiang from being boarded.

But in the Gulf of Aden, pirates attacked the French catamaran Tribal Kat, killed the owner and dumped his body overboard, and took off with his wife. Forces from the Spanish amphibious warship Galicia rescued her and seven pirates were detained.

Elsewhere, violence was at lower levels. In Sumatra, robbers boarded the tanker Fairchem Birdie in the Dumai Inner Anchorage, threatened a guard, and escaped with some ship’s stores. In Indonesia, robbers boarded the tugboat GM Shine and escaped with the crew’s personal belongings and the ship’s GPS. They disconnected all electronics before departing.

Off Nigeria, the 8,000-ton tanker Kemepade went missing from the Lagos anchorage. About a week later, the ship was found in a shipyard in Ghana with its IMO number removed.

In a move that dismayed many, Spain OK’d use of high-caliber weapons (such as tripod-mounted 12.7-mm heavy machine guns) by non-military vessels at risk from Somali pirates. The move was obviously aimed at protecting the Spanish commercial fishing fleet operating out of the Seychelles. About the same time, Egypt banned carriage of arms through the Suez Canal, and sensitive coastal ports may follow suit.

Odd Bits and Headshakers
Here’s how accidents happen. It was the master’s birthday and maybe everyone celebrated too much but the second mate ran the partly loaded container ship Rena onto Astrolabe Reef, a well-charted and visible danger off the New Zealand port of Tauranga, at 17.8 knots in the early morning. Reportedly, he spotted a radar beacon some twenty miles away that was near the pilot station and he aimed the ship for the beacon without checking a chart for possible obstacles such as Astrolabe Reef. (One is reminded of the stranding of HMS Nottingham at Lord Howe Island in the Tasman because somebody left a divider atop the chart symbol for Wolf Rock.) Soon, the fore part of the ship was hard aground and heavy seas progressively crushed the ship’s double bottom, breaking pipes that leaked bunker oil. The ship’s list increased and containers started breaking away. Then the hull split from one side, probably under the hull, and up the other side. As I write this, the list is 22°, the stern section is wagging like the tail of a dog but may now rest on the bottom, and salvage workers are fighting waves of bad weather in their efforts to remove more oil.

The 104,271-gt bulker BW Odel loaded a cargo of iron ore in Brazil, destination China. But back in May at Mauritius, water was observed pooling on top of the cargo. That could have led to liquefaction of the cargo and that could produce excessive and possibly fatal listing. Due to its deep draft, the ship could not enter Port Louis at Mauritius and must go somewhere before the cyclone season starts. (As this column is written, the ship was still near Port Louis.)

A report stated that the three-masted sail training vessel Concordia was overwhelmed and sank off Brazil last year due to inexperience and lack of action by the ship’s officers. The master claimed that the vessel was hit by a microburst, but the Canadian board decided it was an ordinary squall. All 64 students and staff were rescued well offshore after spending forty hours in a life raft.

The Fleet Air Arm’s Westland Wessex helicopter, XT468, that rescued troops from the fire-stricken landing ship Sir Galahad and went to the aid of the also-fire-stricken, helicopter-carrying merchantman Atlantic Conveyor during the Falklands War was sold to be used as a background prop for laser tag games. When the chopper’s history was learned, it was promoted to become a venue for children’s lunches.

Efforts to differentiate Somali fishermen from Somali pirates continue. The fishermen will be registered and will wear uniforms and carry ID cards.

A company in Sweden discovered that medetomidine, an exotic pharmaceutical usually used to sedate aggressive dogs and immobilize wild cassowary from New Guinea, causes barnacle larvae to go frantic. When small doses are added to bottom paint, the drug is not fatal to the larvae. It just jazzes them enough so that they start swimming whenever they settle on anything and that prevents barnacles from sticking to the bottoms of ships.