Italy is treating the cruise ship Costa Concordia stranding as a national disaster and it is important for other nations to stand back and be rational. So noted an industry technical expert.
Royal Dutch Shell announced that it was losing $1 billion a year due to drilling delays since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
How many seaports and their terminals will be able to handle the larger bulkers of the near future? We’re talking about ships of 200,000 dwt and more. The paucity of such ports and terminals will limit the available options for shipowners.
“Automation is not something that scares us, as long as employers take us along with them,” announced a California labor leader with regard to plans to introduce automated straddle carriers at one container terminal at the Port of Los Angles. (Such automation is common overseas.)
Thin Places and Hard Knocks
In thick fog in the Dover Strait, the gas tanker Gas Arctic collided with the cargo ship Spring Bok. No “boom” and both ships, although damaged above the waterline, proceeded to Portland for inspection. At Belfast, at the harbor entrance, the 21,800-ton ferry Stena Feronia was hit by the small coaster Union Moon. The little one‘s bow took a beating, its master was found to be under the influence of drink and faced a possible two-year sentence, and he was fired.
In Danish waters, the combined chemical and oil tanker Terry ran aground off Drogden. Reason why? The master tested quite drunk. In Scotland, the Dutch-registered coaster Flinterspirit became stuck on Flodday Mor Island on its way from Sweden to Belfast. The second mate felt a judder and rushed up to the bridge; there was no one there. The second mate called the chief mate to the bridge and together they sounded the general alarm. When the master still did not appear, the second mate went down to his cabin where he was found in bed. The vessel was refloated on the next high tide. The Russian master fined £3,000 for failing to alter his course and prevent grounding the vessel, and additional £300 on another charge for failing a routine breath test three days after the grounding. (Life for the two officers on a coaster is brutal. Full-time work in port for both – mate loading cargo, master handling shoreperson interactions – and then they alternate on-duty watches with inadequate rest breaks when finally underway again, all repeated frequently. Drinking and misjudgments often result.)
The 2,000-ton coaster Carrier was loading limestone at the jetty of a North Wales quarry when it began to blow. The skipper tried to break away but the vessel was blown ashore against nearby riprap alongside dual-lane highway A55. As waves broke over the vessel, a Royal Navy helicopter hoisted five and lowered them to the highway (which had been closed to traffic) until the winch cable caught on a light on the ship. The chopper aborted, leaving a winchman on the coaster. An RAF chopper later rescued him and the last two crewmen.
An explosion wracked the chemical tanker Royal Diamond 7 near Mumbai, injuring seven, one of whom later died from his burns while being transferred from one hospital to another. On Lake Ontario, the newly purchased tug Patrice McAllister was steaming on its way to new owners in New York City when an engineroom fire gutted the vessel and burned the chief engineer seriously enough that he died in a Toronto hospital. An EPIRB was used to alert Canadian and US rescuers. Two Vietnamese fishermen got into a fight as the fishing vessel Jung Woo was leaving Montevideo. The fight caused a fire in the accommodations area and the FV had to return to port. Off the coast of Brazil, a tug towed the container ship Buenos Aires Express towards the Dominican Republic after an engineroom fire off the coast of Brazil. The 20-day tow probably meant that the powerless-ship’s cargo was a total loss.
On Denmark’s North Jutland island minutes before a train was to cross a bridge at Aalborg, the Finnish coaster Ramona struck it and put it out of commission for six months. The coaster was undamaged and neither the master or the bridge tender were drunk so they may have just miscommunicated. Trains stranded north of the bridge were sailed to Gothenburg from Fredrikshavn and returned to Copenhagen via the Øresund link.
On the Outer Weser, the engine of the container ship MSC Frederica failed and the vessel drifted on the German river for some time. Eventually, two tugs towed the vessel back to the quay. In New York, a crane on a barge towed by the tug Thomas Dann tore a fifty-foot hole in metal sheathing under the Brooklyn Bridge. The sheathing protects passing boats from anything dropped during painting operations.
Rubber tires make great fenders in port but are noisy seamates offshore. The New Zealand tug Tuahine used its EPIRB to request help when its steering broke down off Australia’s Cape Moreton and couldn’t be repaired. A report on the incident revealed that the tires had been stored in the lazarette and, during rough weather, one had chafed through a hydraulic hose, disabling the steering.
The container ship Gati Pride had been anchored off the Chennai coast for three months after the vessel was arrested on an order from the Madras high court because its previous crewmembers had not been paid. The ship was released after its owner paid up and hired a new crew. The new third officer fell into an empty hold and was killed. His widow promptly had the ship arrested, claiming it was unseaworthy due to long neglect. In Georgia at Savannah, a female dockworker was killed when struck by a forklift. She was a retired postal worker who had become a full-time member of the longshoremen’s union. An explosion in the engine of a tugboat in the Suez Canal killed three and injured a dozen others. Four Chinese college students were killed on Taihu Lake when a drunken boat operator tried cutting between a tug and barge. The towing hawser cut off the motorboat’s roof, which collapsed onto the students.
A muttonbird in New Zealand is usually the sooty shearwater (Puffinus griseus) or tītī (Maori), and muttonbird young are caught and preserved by Maori families for later consumption. Helicopters are often used to get to the remote muttonbird islands off NZ’s South Island during each two-month season but boats, often rickety boats, are still used. The 40-foot Easy Rider, without much in the way of basic safety equipment, set out with a family group in bad weather and was capsized by a large wave. A sole survivor was found clinging to a barrel in the ocean after enduring 18 hours in the dark, rain, and cold but eight others, including a 7-year-old, had died.
About 400 miles off California, the USCGC Bertholf took the two most-seriously injured crew off the 68-foot racing sailboat Geraldton Western Australia, one of ten yachts competing in the biennial Clipper Round The World Yacht Race. A big wave overwhelmed the boat, snapping off the steering-wheel pedestal and injuring four of a crew of eighteen. And, at the request of the US Coast Guard, the California National Air Guard dropped four paramedics and a Zodiac near the Chinese fishing vessel Fu Yuan Yu 871 some 700 miles off Acapulco. Then two special-ops helicopters, refueled in flight by a special-ops MC-130P tanker aircraft, arrived and took two badly burned fishermen to Acapulco where another MC-130P flew them to a San Diego burn treatment center. It was a mission the Coast Guard can’t do with its current equipment but, luckily for the fishermen, southern California is host to an Air Force air-rescue wing.
Gray Fleets
The British helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious was participating in Exercise Cold Response in Norway when one of four tugboats escorting the carrier into port at Harstad punched two sizable holes in the thin-skinned warship. After minor repairs, it continued on with the exercise in blizzard conditions for the next five days but then authorities decreed that the ship had best return home.
The large offshore multi-purpose oilfield support vessel Skandi Bergen was purchased by the Australian Navy but it will never see combat unless special insurance is purchased for its civilian crew. The 6,500-ton ship might be very useful in Australia’s humanitarian and disaster relief efforts but critics say the $130-million vessel was purchased for the Border Protection and Customs Service, is of no use to the Navy, and the purchase was a public-relations stunt anyhow.
In about a year and a half, the US Navy will test a humanoid robot firefighter named Octavia (why a female name here?) that can walk onto a fiery, smoke-filled compartment and throw extinguisher grenades or "man" a hose. She will also provide feedback to human firefighters safely outside the compartment.
Scotland votes next year on separation from the UK so should the Royal Navy place ship orders with Scottish yards in the meantime? One political party is calling for a ban until after the referendum. (It should be noted that the Royal Navy will have two replenishment ships built in far-off South Korea.)
White Fleets
In thick fog off Vietnam, the cruise ship Silversea Shadow T-boned a smallish Vietnamese container ship in Ha Long Bay in what the cruise company described as “a minor incident.” Both vessels were damaged and some on the other vessel, whose name was never publicized, may have been injured.
In Philippine waters, the Azamara Quest had an engineroom fire and smoke drifted into dining spaces, alarming the ship’s 1,000 passengers. The fire was quickly extinguished and, after drifting for 24 hours, the ship limped at six knots to Sandakan city in Malaysia's eastern state of Sabah on the island of Borneo. In the Caribbean, the Caribbean Princess arrived four hours late at St Maarten due to a propulsion-motor problem and the next two sailings were cancelled.
Damaged by an engineroom fire earlier this year, the Costa Allegra, one of the company’s smallest and oldest vessels, will be sold as-is or scrapped.
Those That Go Back and Forth
Officers on the cross-Channel ferry Spirit of France were forced to confine about 1,300 passengers in a secure lounge while 200 drunken students from two Manchester, UK universities, trashed the ship. They will not return from a European skiing trip on that ferry.
The Isle of Man ferry Ben-My-Chree returned to Douglas after an engine developed problems two and a half hours into the voyage. It wasn’t that the ferry was inoperable but the ferry’s master figured he needed two engines to berth at Birkenhead. Overnight accommodations and alternative sailings were arranged for the 40 passengers.
Since the small craft used by students to get to school had proved to be extremely dangerous, strictly supervised students of some schools in China’s Hunan Province now wear lifejackets as they board new “school boats.” These are working out better than the rafts and fishing boats previously used.
Locomotive operators must expect vehicles stopped on the tracks at crossings and, accordingly, ferry skippers should expect passengers to go missing. A woman told her husband that she was going for a walk but her “walk” was off the Condor Rapide somewhere between the Channel Island of Guernsey and Poole in Dorset. A search on board and of the sea until nightfall failed to find her.
In Myanmar, the Pathein Thu sank as it was about to dock at a jetty near the town of Ngapuda in the Irrawaddy Delta. Seventy-two people were rescued, ten died, and others were missing. In southern Bangladesh, the double-deck ferry Shariatpur-1 capsized after colliding with a coal barge and 142 people died. The Japanese ro/ro ferry Masagena was heading to its new home in Indonesia when it sprung a leak. Most of the crew was taken off but the master and chief engineer remained on board to fight the leak. No reports are available on what happened next but they may have grounded the vessel.
A Washington-state ferry company needs full loads as part of a federally funded research project to see whether the low-wake ferry Rich Passage I can carry riders through Rich Passage without damaging beaches or bulkheads so it is offering very low fares for five months.
Legal Matters
Drugs can be hard to trace. At Los Angeles/Long Beach, custom officials found twenty bricks of cocaine in the sidewall of an empty reefer container. The container originated in El Salvador with vessel stops in Guatemala and Mexico, and had been returned to the terminal after delivering a shipment of cantaloupes to a distributor in California.
Nature
Explorer and filmmaker (“Titanic” and “Avatar”) James Cameron bottomed at the 35,756-foot depth in the Mariana Trench in his 24-foot-tall Deepsea Challenger. He filmed and took samples and readings with a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a "slurp gun" for sucking up small sea creatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. His vessel is bullet-shaped and designed to spin its way down faster than conventional diving vessels.
Elsewhere in the Marianas Trench, scientists discovered an eco-system, including ovesicomyid clams, that feeds on mantle material such as serpentinized peridotite, or serpentinite. Yep! Rock-eating clams.
The Cascadia fault in the Pacific Northwest is an offshore subduction zone fault capable of producing a magnitude-9 earthquake that would damage Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, and Victoria, British Columbia and generate a large tsunami. Scientists will soon build and install a seafloor geodesy observatory above the expected rupture zone.
Oceanographers have found that the very-cold deepsea Antarctic Bottom Water has been disappearing at an average rate of about eight million metric tons per second over the past few decades. That is equivalent to about fifty times the average flow of the Mississippi River or about a quarter of the flow of the Gulf Stream in the Florida Straits.
In a Caribbean rift, other ocean scientists discovered the deepest-yet vents. They spout water hotter than 450°C more than one km above the vent openings, four times higher than other vents. The vents also host a new species of pale shrimp, which cluster in dense clumps (2,000 per square meter). The shrimp have a light-sensing organ on their back in place of eyes, and the vent output is unusually rich in copper.
Metal-Bashing
The ex-Exxon Valdez was sold for $25.8 million (about $460 per ldt) for scrapping (probably in India) 23 years after the crude-oil tanker caused the worst oil spill in US history. Now converted into an iron-ore bulker, it was renamed Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, Dong Fang Ocean and, most recently, Oriental Nicety. Also sold for scrapping, this time in Turkey, was the cruise ship Pacific Princess, better known to TV watchers between 1977 through 1987 as the Love Boat.
Imports
The tanker Hamburg and a Canadian helicopter rescued six of nine men on the 35-foot sailboat Tabasco 2 in deep trouble about 100 miles off Canada’s Sable Island. It is suspected that the boat was smuggling humans since the occupants were from Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia.
In 2011, at least 1,500 people lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean in search of a better world – and few governmental or private entities made any attempt to help those in trouble. One small boat left Tripoli during the conflict in Libya with 72 people on board. It needed help and a distress call was duly logged by an Italian rescue center. Several vessels made contacts with the boat but none provided meaningful assistance (although a helicopter did drop biscuits and water). Only nine people were alive when the boat drifted ashore back in Libya 15 days after its departure.
Nasties and Territorial Imperatives
Employers and unions agreed that the territorial waters of Benin and Nigeria are a high-risk area so mariners venturing there will get double pay.
Peru joined most South American nations demonstrating solidarity with Argentina in its dispute with the UK over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands by cancelling a visit by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose.
Odd Bits and Headshakers
The 164-foot Japanese fishing vessel Ryou-Un Maru, spotted floating crewless off British Columbia, was the first large object to complete a trans-Pacific transit after being set adrift by the tsunami created by Japan’s earthquakes in March of last year. The Canadian fishing vessel Bernice C claimed salvage rights to the FV but was unable to tow the abandoned ship. As soon as the Bernice C left the scene, the USCGC Anacapa used its 25-mm deck gun to sink the FV 180 miles off Alaska.
Those fighting shipboard fires often need shore-based assistance. Some time ago in the UK, national funding enabled fifteen counties to organize and equip quick-response Maritime Incident Response Groups, each consisting of about fifty specialist firefighters and medics. Teams of nine responders would have been helicoptered to incidents as far as 250 miles at sea. To save $535,000, in the national budget, the MIRGS were de-funded and now only seven local fire and rescue services might be able to respond to a ship fire, and that number is expected to dwindle.
Excavations at the site of a former army barracks in Plymouth brought up a grenade-shaped object. A bomb disposal team decided it was either the knob of a bedstead or the end of a curtain rod. But the bomb disposal team at Portsmouth had a juicier object to work on – maybe a WW II German V2 rocket! Some of it was sticking up in shallow water and had been used for years for mooring local boats. Digging revealed it was the last four feet of a V2—nothing explosive, just the rocket motor.
Mozambique’s northwestern Tete province has the world's largest untapped coal reserves, estimated at 2.4 billion tons. How to get coal to customers hit a hitch when the government rejected a proposal to barge thermal and coking coal down the Zambezi River due to possible flooding if the river was dredged for barges. One mining company still plans to use both barges and the Sena railroad, recently restored nearly thirty years after the civil disturbances that put it out of service, since it has already invested $4 billion to buy one mine and control of another mine.
Some bunker fuel originates in the Urals and passes through many hands before being pumped into a ship, perhaps at Rotterdam. Along that long path, nasties have been adding waste products not naturally present in the fuel, including chlorine and zinc. The illegal pollution has been found in about one third of the tanks of inland tankers.
A new shallow-water sidescan sonar system was able to lead rescuers to the body of a drowned sailor who had been missing for over 10 years.
In Louisiana, a foreign shipping company was fined $2 million for dumping oily water in international waters while a land-based environmental company was fined $5,000 for dumping 1,200,000 gallons of oily water into a canal near New Orleans. Same court but different versions of justice.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Other Shores - April 2012
When Iran threatened to get nasty, the US Navy passed carrier battle groups through the Strait of Hormuz. Seeing no military advantage in having European ships taking part, the US Navy preferred an all-American response. Great Britain wanted to participate but was turned down. The French insisted on participating and sent the frigate La Motte-Picquet. So the Brits decided that “Britain must participate too, regardless of the military importance“ and sent the frigate HMS Argyll, thus preserving “the Special Relationship” between the US and Great Britain, a relationship that has come under doubt during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Most of the world’s largest container ships serve Europe but some are being shifted to trans-Pacific routes, possibly to force increases in freight rates.
Outfitting the entire world fleet by the end of the decade with equipment to kill invasive species in ballast water is physically impossible and would cost $74 billion. So predicted one group.
It has been long recognized that the suppression of regional piracy largely depends on the existence of a stable Somalian government. It is yet to be created but, encouragingly, regional Somali authorities are now hiring private security firms to provide counter-piracy forces. Puntland is creating its own maritime police force thanks to substantial financial aid from the United Arab Emirates while the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is forming its own anti-piracy taskforce with financing from international donors and a French sovereign wealth fund.
Thin Places and Hard Knocks
The Chinese freighter Xinyuanshun 6 was carrying 5,000 tons of pottery clay to the coastal Shandong province when it sank off the coast of Chongwu in Fujian province, drowning eight crewmembers and leaving another two missing. The capsize might have been caused by shifting cargo. In Greece, the small product tanker Alfa 1 capsized and sank west of Athens, possibly from hitting an old shipwreck. The master died while the other ten of the crew survived.
In Texas, the platform supply vessel Miss Pearl managed to run up onto the west side of the Sabine jetties until it was almost completely out of the water. The four-man crew suffered a variety of injuries from the sudden stop and was helicopter-evacuated to a local hospital. About 4,000 gallons of fuel were spilled. In Western Australia, while under control of a pilot, the product tanker Challenge Prelude ran aground at Dampier Port. (The port was created in the 1960s to handle iron ore shipments for Rio Tinto and it also exports salt, produced in nearby evaporation beds, and petroleum gasses.) The container ship MSC Carole ran aground off Jakarta for as-yet-unexplained reasons. The crew was OK and no oil was spilled but the first attempt to pull the ship off the reef failed.
In Belfast Lough, the coaster Union Moon T-boned the ferry Stena Feronia. The coaster master was drunk and both vessels will need extensive repairs.
In Finland at Hamina, the container ship Bianca Rambow experienced an explosion in the engine room. Nobody was hurt since the space was unmanned at the time. Life at Brazil’s Antarctic research station has been eventful. In December, a small fuel barge capsized and sank while being towed by four small boats in bad weather. None of the 10,000 liters of diesel fuel has leaked out. Then, a fire starting in the station’s generator room killed two navy personnel and forced helicopter evacuation of forty-four to Chile’s station. The burns of a third man were treated at Poland’s Antarctic station and then he was transferred to the Chilean station. In Ajman (the smallest of the seven emirates forming the United Arab Emirates), a short-circuiting industrial vacuum cleaner caused a ship fire that killed three and seriously burned another five workers.
The 3,000-TEU container ship MOL Maneuver collided with the 6,700-TEU container ship Zhen He while both were underway in open waters southeast of Hong Kong. No injuries, no oil spilled, some damage, and each proceeded on its way.
A female dockworker was killed at Port Newark when caught between containers being unloaded from a ship. At Portland, Oregon, a worker on the barge D/B Boaz fell into a tank and drowned. Responders used a camera to confirm the body was in the tank and then pumped out the toxic, corrosive lignin amine so two people in hazmat clothing could be lowered into the tank to remove the body.
In bad weather, an Iranian sailing dhow capsized in the Persian Gulf, triggering a search and rescue effort. The coastal patrol boats USS Firebolt and the USCGC Maui found one survivor and parts of the bodies (sharks?) of three others of the dhow’s crew of six. The bulk carrier Global Bay was more than 200 miles south of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, when it asked for help because it had a crewmember suffering from abdominal pain and possible appendicitis. The bulker was told to close towards Dutch Harbor so a Coast Guard helicopter on the cutter Alex Haley could make a mercy run. The man was medevaced and, after stopping at the Alex Haley to refuel, the chopper took the man to Dutch Harbor and a connection with a commercial medical flight. (The chopper was on the Alex Haley because the Coast Guard tries to maintain search and rescue-ready assets in the Bering Sea due to the harsh weather and job hazards experienced by those who work in that environment.)
And a Coast Guard helicopter flew more than 300 miles from Clearwater, Florida into Cuban waters to evacuate a 44-year-old man off the Carnival Liberty. He was suffering from abdominal pains. The ship, although American-owned, is Panamanian-flagged. Which may explain why Cuba didn’t raise a fuss about the intrusion of the chopper!
Gray Fleets
Three female US Navy officers were among several officers caught submitting fraudulent travel claims. The trio will no longer among the women recently selected to serve in the previously all-male submarine force.
Since drug use by sailors is up, the US Navy will start using Breathalyzer tests and random tests for synthetic drugs such as the synthetic marijuana Spice. The procedures should improve the readiness of sailors and Marines, the Navy claimed. The Navy will also end discounting cigarettes for sale at service exchange, raising the prices up to market levels.
Recently, the British Prime Minister pontificated that, "The Royal Navy is going to pack a huge punch in the future… we are going to have a very, very capable Royal Navy." But its only fixed-wing carrier (HMS Ark Royal) and all the Harrier GR9s capable of flying from it were axed, as were four highly capable Type-22 frigates. One of the Navy's two LPDs (amphibious ships) has been placed into extended readiness for three years and the Astute-class submarine construction program has been slowed. By 2015, the Royal Navy will have just thirty frontline ships, compared with nearly 100 at the time of the Falklands War in 1982.
The British nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Talent has been experiencing exciting events lately. First, hydraulic shutter doors protecting the mast suddenly closed on the head of an engineer and he was trapped for a few minutes. He had minor injuries. Six days later, fire broke out onboard. Authorities refused to disclose the fire’s location.
In 1998, Canada purchased four mothballed diesel-electric submarines and the second-hand subs have been trouble-prone ever since. The four were originally purchased from Britain for $890 million but estimates put repairs since at close to the same figure. HMCS Victoria is currently doing sea trials that include firing torpedoes. HMCS Chicoutemi and HMCS Windsor are being refitted and will be in the water by the end of next year while HMCS Cornerbrook is in extended maintenance until 2016. The subs must soldier on to at least 2030 But good news; planners will start thinking about their replacements some time in the next four years.
A South Korean firm will build three submarines for Indonesia. The 1,400-ton diesel-powered vessels will have eight torpedo tubes capable of emitting torpedoes, mines, or guided missiles, and a crew of forty. Deliveries will be in the first half of 2018.
The Maverick air-to-ground missile saw combat in the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur War, and other conflicts but has been out of production for more than two decades. Now the laser-guided version is back in production. It is effective against frigate-size ships, small moving boats, tanks, fortified personnel, and fast-moving maneuvering vehicles in excess of 70 miles per hour.
White Fleets
It has not been a good year for Costa Cruises. A major contributor to the Costa Concordia fiasco may have been that the master didn’t have his glasses with him and had to repeatedly ask the first officer to adjust the scale of the radar so the master could see. Or so it was revealed at the first post-wreck inquiry.
A generator-room fire crippled the Costa Allegra while more than 200 miles off the East African island of the Seychelles. First to arrive on-scene was the French purse-seine tuna catcher Trevignon, which took the cruise ship in tow. Two tugs arrived soon after but the French fishing vessel, possibly with thoughts of salvage, refused to transfer the tow. (It was later revealed that the Costa Allegra had a history of fire violations so an appropriate award might be €1 million.) It maintained a creditable six knots, a surprising accomplishment for a vessel designed more for speed than pull, but the three-day tow to Mahe took several hours longer than necessary. In the interim, helicopters delivered fresh bread, 400 flashlights, and satellite phones but the lack of electrical power on the cruise ship meant the 627 passengers tended to cluster on deck in any available shade rather than retreat to their non-air conditioned cabins, which were often smelly from unflushable toilets. A company spokesman did optimistically note that the six-knot towing speed of the ship “creates a slight breeze... making the situation more comfortable.”
And a third Costa cruise ship had smaller problems. A cigarette started a fire in a cabin on the Costa Voyager while in the Red Sea. A sprinkler quickly took care of the fire but the carpet needed to be replaced.
The cruise ships Adonia (3,250 passengers) and Star Princess (2,580 pax) were denied entry to Argentina’s southernmost port of Ushuaia “for political reasons” and had to continue on to Chile. Both had just stopped at the Falkland Islands.
The Queen Mary 2 had two power outages while voyaging from Port Louis to Fremantle. The first lasted for 25 minutes. The second, in rough weather, lasted about ten minutes. Passengers were inconvenienced only momentarily by the loss of lights and TV but the engines took more than eight minutes to resume propelling the vessel. “Routine maintenance” was blamed for both outages.
A crewmember jumped overboard from the Magic while the ship was about 100 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas in rough weather and at night. He was wearing a life vest with a strobe light attached so the Magic’s rescue boat was able to pick him up within 45 minutes.
Those That Go Back and Forth
In Scotland, strong winds drove the Oban-Mull ferry Isle of Mull into the pier at Oban. No injuries to the 177 passengers. A few days earlier, a strong gust drove the Caledonian Isles into the pier at Androssan. The master had the ferry tied-off to the pier until winds abated and about an hour later the ferry berthed and landed its 277 passengers.
Also in Scotland, a landslide before Christmas closed A890 so the highway was replaced by a six-car ferry. Then, motorists faced a 180-mle detour because the Glenachulish ran aground. The thrifty Highland Council had the ferry beached at high tide so repairs could be made.
In the Philippines, the Cebu Ferry had an onboard fire after leaving Batangas 60 miles south of Manila and two Coast Guard vessels responded. The ferry’s 43 passengers, including one child, were safely transferred to the ferry Supercat-38.
While enroute from Lae to Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, the ferry Kimbe Queen ran aground on a reef off West New Britain. The thirty passengers were evacuated by boats provided by the Hargy Oil Palm Company and the ferry was refloated later that day.
Greek bureaucracy and problems faced by ferry companies could mean that a number of Aegean islands will be without ferry service this summer. Fuel costs have gone up 44 percent since 2010 and are expected to increase, and passenger and vehicle traffic has been down.
In Lagos, a sudden but seasonal overabundance of water hyacinth, a pernicious waterweed, has been denying ferries access to their berths and thus commuters had to find alternative ways to get to work. Also affected were fishing boats. The government took actions to clear the affected waterways.
Legal Matters
In New Zealand, the master and second officer of the wrecked container ship Rena admitted willfully perverting justice by altering various ship’s documents after the vessel grounded. Both also pleaded guilty to operating a vessel in a manner that caused unnecessary risk. The master also admitted that he was responsible for discharging harmful substances from the vessel. Several years of jail time and a sizable fine seem to be in their near futures.
When the bulker Laconia arrived at Astoria, Oregon, a Customs agent thought the master was drunk and soon after the Coast Guard agreed and also found open alcohol containers in his stateroom. The master’s blood-alcohol level was well above legal limit for a ship operator and he was taken into custody. He was sentenced to a $500 fine and one-year probation during which he must stay out of US waters.
The 1989-built Global Star was detained at Plymouth, UK after port state control inspectors found 19 deficiencies, four bad enough so as to constitute grounds for detention. The ship jumped detention and authorities in Europe, North America and Egypt were asked to keep their eyes open for the Mongolian-flagged chemical tanker. Authorities at the Suez Canal may spot the ship since it was originally bound for Alang for scrapping.
Perhaps because he was towing two barges, the master of the Volga River tugboat Dunaisky-66 opted not to go to the assistance of the sinking river cruise ship Bulgaria when it capsized and sank in a storm last July. At least 122 people died. He was fined 190,000 rubles (about $6,000) by a city court.
Nature
Satellite tracking data suggests that most dolphins rescued during recent mass strandings in New England survived their ordeal.
Marine scientists and a commercial telecommunications company are exploring deployment of sensors along a deep-sea cable and using the cable to send data such as the size and direction of passing tsunamis. The initial project may use a cable route spanning 12,950 kilometers (8,105 miles) from Sydney to Auckland and across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles. Initial efforts may use seismometers, pressure gauges, and temperature sensors.
Greenpeace activists, including “Xena” actress Lucy Lawless, swarmed over the drill rig Noble Discovery at Port Taranaki, New Zealand, and set up light housekeeping atop the 53-meter drilling tower for several days. Eventually, seven activists were arrested, reportedly for burglary. The rig was about to set off for the Sea of Chukchi off Alaska where it would have drilled three exploratory wells.
In the Antarctic, Sea Shepherd activists managed to get a rope into the propeller of the “research” vessel Yushin Maru No. 2, slowing it to some extent. The anti-whaling activists also threw smoke-producing flares and bottles of butyric acid (these stinkbombs spoil any whale meat they come in contact with and make it almost impossible to work on the deck) onto the ship and it responded by feebly spraying water and issuing warnings. The “fun” lasted about two hours and nobody was hurt.
Metal-Bashing
ExxonMobil sold for scrapping its tanker S/R Long Beach, the last single-hulled tanker in the Alaska crude-oil trade. The 1987-built, 214,853-dwt vessel was reflagged to Tuvalu on January 31 and its name shortened to Beach. By now, it may have been scrapped, probably in China.
Nasties and Territorial Imperatives
A British researcher concluded that 30 percent of a typical ransom goes to the Somalian pirates themselves, 10 percent to their shore-based support, 10 percent in bribes to local communities, and 50 percent to bosses, often safe in foreign countries. But local economies have been boosted, the exchange rate is better, real wages have risen, and inflation is down, all due to hard work by pirates. Another conclusion by the researcher was that the revenue from a typical ransom was roughly equivalent to exporting 1,650 head of cattle.
A commercial anti-piracy center recently established in the UK by a private firm will be manned by ex-Royal Navy warfare specialists and intelligence experts. The center can warn clients, such as shipping companies and charterers, if their vessels are standing into peril. Its intelligence warnings can also save, so the company claims, an average of two to four days of transit time and the hire of physical security guards at $90,000 to $220,000 per voyage.
Conflicting accounts told how a six-man Italian military security force on the Italian tanker Enrica Lexie fired at a threatening pirate boat in Indian waters but hit nobody. Or maybe it was the Indian fishing boat St Anthony the military fired at, killing two fishermen. India arrested the tanker and two of the security force. The two countries then argued about where the two Italian marines should be tried.
Odd Bits and Head-Shakers
Archeologists are searching for thirteen privately owned British transport service vessels burned and sunk in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island when that port was blockaded by the French Navy in 1778. Somewhere among the wrecks is HMB Endeavour, British explorer Capt. James Cook’s vessel. Endeavour was later used as a Navy store ship and in 1775 was sold to a private owner who offered the vessel back to the British transport service under the new name of Lord Sandwich.
A recent Tanzanian government decision forced the ferry company that links Kilombero and Ulanga districts to carry only 20-foot containers and a maximum of 50 tons at a time. These restrictions are limiting shipments by Africa’s largest grower of teak. The company has a backlog of more than 100 containers and has suspended sale and export of some products.
If ships go into Arctic waters, a trade group wants to see them equipped with the crisis-management products of its members. These include a built-in system of fast oil recovery piping that would greatly simplify the removal of fuels from a stricken ship, magnetic patches to cover ice-made holes in hulls, valves that allow passage of water but not pollutants, and specialized submersible pumps.
Danish authorities noted that the small container ship Danica Hav was standing into danger at Sjællands Odde, a long peninsula on the northwest coast of Zealand. The ship didn’t answer radio calls so a rescue helicopter lowered a crewman onto the ship. He found the quite-drunk master at the wheel. A mate, roused from sleep, turned the ship aside minutes before it ran aground.
Most of the world’s largest container ships serve Europe but some are being shifted to trans-Pacific routes, possibly to force increases in freight rates.
Outfitting the entire world fleet by the end of the decade with equipment to kill invasive species in ballast water is physically impossible and would cost $74 billion. So predicted one group.
It has been long recognized that the suppression of regional piracy largely depends on the existence of a stable Somalian government. It is yet to be created but, encouragingly, regional Somali authorities are now hiring private security firms to provide counter-piracy forces. Puntland is creating its own maritime police force thanks to substantial financial aid from the United Arab Emirates while the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is forming its own anti-piracy taskforce with financing from international donors and a French sovereign wealth fund.
Thin Places and Hard Knocks
The Chinese freighter Xinyuanshun 6 was carrying 5,000 tons of pottery clay to the coastal Shandong province when it sank off the coast of Chongwu in Fujian province, drowning eight crewmembers and leaving another two missing. The capsize might have been caused by shifting cargo. In Greece, the small product tanker Alfa 1 capsized and sank west of Athens, possibly from hitting an old shipwreck. The master died while the other ten of the crew survived.
In Texas, the platform supply vessel Miss Pearl managed to run up onto the west side of the Sabine jetties until it was almost completely out of the water. The four-man crew suffered a variety of injuries from the sudden stop and was helicopter-evacuated to a local hospital. About 4,000 gallons of fuel were spilled. In Western Australia, while under control of a pilot, the product tanker Challenge Prelude ran aground at Dampier Port. (The port was created in the 1960s to handle iron ore shipments for Rio Tinto and it also exports salt, produced in nearby evaporation beds, and petroleum gasses.) The container ship MSC Carole ran aground off Jakarta for as-yet-unexplained reasons. The crew was OK and no oil was spilled but the first attempt to pull the ship off the reef failed.
In Belfast Lough, the coaster Union Moon T-boned the ferry Stena Feronia. The coaster master was drunk and both vessels will need extensive repairs.
In Finland at Hamina, the container ship Bianca Rambow experienced an explosion in the engine room. Nobody was hurt since the space was unmanned at the time. Life at Brazil’s Antarctic research station has been eventful. In December, a small fuel barge capsized and sank while being towed by four small boats in bad weather. None of the 10,000 liters of diesel fuel has leaked out. Then, a fire starting in the station’s generator room killed two navy personnel and forced helicopter evacuation of forty-four to Chile’s station. The burns of a third man were treated at Poland’s Antarctic station and then he was transferred to the Chilean station. In Ajman (the smallest of the seven emirates forming the United Arab Emirates), a short-circuiting industrial vacuum cleaner caused a ship fire that killed three and seriously burned another five workers.
The 3,000-TEU container ship MOL Maneuver collided with the 6,700-TEU container ship Zhen He while both were underway in open waters southeast of Hong Kong. No injuries, no oil spilled, some damage, and each proceeded on its way.
A female dockworker was killed at Port Newark when caught between containers being unloaded from a ship. At Portland, Oregon, a worker on the barge D/B Boaz fell into a tank and drowned. Responders used a camera to confirm the body was in the tank and then pumped out the toxic, corrosive lignin amine so two people in hazmat clothing could be lowered into the tank to remove the body.
In bad weather, an Iranian sailing dhow capsized in the Persian Gulf, triggering a search and rescue effort. The coastal patrol boats USS Firebolt and the USCGC Maui found one survivor and parts of the bodies (sharks?) of three others of the dhow’s crew of six. The bulk carrier Global Bay was more than 200 miles south of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, when it asked for help because it had a crewmember suffering from abdominal pain and possible appendicitis. The bulker was told to close towards Dutch Harbor so a Coast Guard helicopter on the cutter Alex Haley could make a mercy run. The man was medevaced and, after stopping at the Alex Haley to refuel, the chopper took the man to Dutch Harbor and a connection with a commercial medical flight. (The chopper was on the Alex Haley because the Coast Guard tries to maintain search and rescue-ready assets in the Bering Sea due to the harsh weather and job hazards experienced by those who work in that environment.)
And a Coast Guard helicopter flew more than 300 miles from Clearwater, Florida into Cuban waters to evacuate a 44-year-old man off the Carnival Liberty. He was suffering from abdominal pains. The ship, although American-owned, is Panamanian-flagged. Which may explain why Cuba didn’t raise a fuss about the intrusion of the chopper!
Gray Fleets
Three female US Navy officers were among several officers caught submitting fraudulent travel claims. The trio will no longer among the women recently selected to serve in the previously all-male submarine force.
Since drug use by sailors is up, the US Navy will start using Breathalyzer tests and random tests for synthetic drugs such as the synthetic marijuana Spice. The procedures should improve the readiness of sailors and Marines, the Navy claimed. The Navy will also end discounting cigarettes for sale at service exchange, raising the prices up to market levels.
Recently, the British Prime Minister pontificated that, "The Royal Navy is going to pack a huge punch in the future… we are going to have a very, very capable Royal Navy." But its only fixed-wing carrier (HMS Ark Royal) and all the Harrier GR9s capable of flying from it were axed, as were four highly capable Type-22 frigates. One of the Navy's two LPDs (amphibious ships) has been placed into extended readiness for three years and the Astute-class submarine construction program has been slowed. By 2015, the Royal Navy will have just thirty frontline ships, compared with nearly 100 at the time of the Falklands War in 1982.
The British nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Talent has been experiencing exciting events lately. First, hydraulic shutter doors protecting the mast suddenly closed on the head of an engineer and he was trapped for a few minutes. He had minor injuries. Six days later, fire broke out onboard. Authorities refused to disclose the fire’s location.
In 1998, Canada purchased four mothballed diesel-electric submarines and the second-hand subs have been trouble-prone ever since. The four were originally purchased from Britain for $890 million but estimates put repairs since at close to the same figure. HMCS Victoria is currently doing sea trials that include firing torpedoes. HMCS Chicoutemi and HMCS Windsor are being refitted and will be in the water by the end of next year while HMCS Cornerbrook is in extended maintenance until 2016. The subs must soldier on to at least 2030 But good news; planners will start thinking about their replacements some time in the next four years.
A South Korean firm will build three submarines for Indonesia. The 1,400-ton diesel-powered vessels will have eight torpedo tubes capable of emitting torpedoes, mines, or guided missiles, and a crew of forty. Deliveries will be in the first half of 2018.
The Maverick air-to-ground missile saw combat in the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur War, and other conflicts but has been out of production for more than two decades. Now the laser-guided version is back in production. It is effective against frigate-size ships, small moving boats, tanks, fortified personnel, and fast-moving maneuvering vehicles in excess of 70 miles per hour.
White Fleets
It has not been a good year for Costa Cruises. A major contributor to the Costa Concordia fiasco may have been that the master didn’t have his glasses with him and had to repeatedly ask the first officer to adjust the scale of the radar so the master could see. Or so it was revealed at the first post-wreck inquiry.
A generator-room fire crippled the Costa Allegra while more than 200 miles off the East African island of the Seychelles. First to arrive on-scene was the French purse-seine tuna catcher Trevignon, which took the cruise ship in tow. Two tugs arrived soon after but the French fishing vessel, possibly with thoughts of salvage, refused to transfer the tow. (It was later revealed that the Costa Allegra had a history of fire violations so an appropriate award might be €1 million.) It maintained a creditable six knots, a surprising accomplishment for a vessel designed more for speed than pull, but the three-day tow to Mahe took several hours longer than necessary. In the interim, helicopters delivered fresh bread, 400 flashlights, and satellite phones but the lack of electrical power on the cruise ship meant the 627 passengers tended to cluster on deck in any available shade rather than retreat to their non-air conditioned cabins, which were often smelly from unflushable toilets. A company spokesman did optimistically note that the six-knot towing speed of the ship “creates a slight breeze... making the situation more comfortable.”
And a third Costa cruise ship had smaller problems. A cigarette started a fire in a cabin on the Costa Voyager while in the Red Sea. A sprinkler quickly took care of the fire but the carpet needed to be replaced.
The cruise ships Adonia (3,250 passengers) and Star Princess (2,580 pax) were denied entry to Argentina’s southernmost port of Ushuaia “for political reasons” and had to continue on to Chile. Both had just stopped at the Falkland Islands.
The Queen Mary 2 had two power outages while voyaging from Port Louis to Fremantle. The first lasted for 25 minutes. The second, in rough weather, lasted about ten minutes. Passengers were inconvenienced only momentarily by the loss of lights and TV but the engines took more than eight minutes to resume propelling the vessel. “Routine maintenance” was blamed for both outages.
A crewmember jumped overboard from the Magic while the ship was about 100 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas in rough weather and at night. He was wearing a life vest with a strobe light attached so the Magic’s rescue boat was able to pick him up within 45 minutes.
Those That Go Back and Forth
In Scotland, strong winds drove the Oban-Mull ferry Isle of Mull into the pier at Oban. No injuries to the 177 passengers. A few days earlier, a strong gust drove the Caledonian Isles into the pier at Androssan. The master had the ferry tied-off to the pier until winds abated and about an hour later the ferry berthed and landed its 277 passengers.
Also in Scotland, a landslide before Christmas closed A890 so the highway was replaced by a six-car ferry. Then, motorists faced a 180-mle detour because the Glenachulish ran aground. The thrifty Highland Council had the ferry beached at high tide so repairs could be made.
In the Philippines, the Cebu Ferry had an onboard fire after leaving Batangas 60 miles south of Manila and two Coast Guard vessels responded. The ferry’s 43 passengers, including one child, were safely transferred to the ferry Supercat-38.
While enroute from Lae to Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, the ferry Kimbe Queen ran aground on a reef off West New Britain. The thirty passengers were evacuated by boats provided by the Hargy Oil Palm Company and the ferry was refloated later that day.
Greek bureaucracy and problems faced by ferry companies could mean that a number of Aegean islands will be without ferry service this summer. Fuel costs have gone up 44 percent since 2010 and are expected to increase, and passenger and vehicle traffic has been down.
In Lagos, a sudden but seasonal overabundance of water hyacinth, a pernicious waterweed, has been denying ferries access to their berths and thus commuters had to find alternative ways to get to work. Also affected were fishing boats. The government took actions to clear the affected waterways.
Legal Matters
In New Zealand, the master and second officer of the wrecked container ship Rena admitted willfully perverting justice by altering various ship’s documents after the vessel grounded. Both also pleaded guilty to operating a vessel in a manner that caused unnecessary risk. The master also admitted that he was responsible for discharging harmful substances from the vessel. Several years of jail time and a sizable fine seem to be in their near futures.
When the bulker Laconia arrived at Astoria, Oregon, a Customs agent thought the master was drunk and soon after the Coast Guard agreed and also found open alcohol containers in his stateroom. The master’s blood-alcohol level was well above legal limit for a ship operator and he was taken into custody. He was sentenced to a $500 fine and one-year probation during which he must stay out of US waters.
The 1989-built Global Star was detained at Plymouth, UK after port state control inspectors found 19 deficiencies, four bad enough so as to constitute grounds for detention. The ship jumped detention and authorities in Europe, North America and Egypt were asked to keep their eyes open for the Mongolian-flagged chemical tanker. Authorities at the Suez Canal may spot the ship since it was originally bound for Alang for scrapping.
Perhaps because he was towing two barges, the master of the Volga River tugboat Dunaisky-66 opted not to go to the assistance of the sinking river cruise ship Bulgaria when it capsized and sank in a storm last July. At least 122 people died. He was fined 190,000 rubles (about $6,000) by a city court.
Nature
Satellite tracking data suggests that most dolphins rescued during recent mass strandings in New England survived their ordeal.
Marine scientists and a commercial telecommunications company are exploring deployment of sensors along a deep-sea cable and using the cable to send data such as the size and direction of passing tsunamis. The initial project may use a cable route spanning 12,950 kilometers (8,105 miles) from Sydney to Auckland and across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles. Initial efforts may use seismometers, pressure gauges, and temperature sensors.
Greenpeace activists, including “Xena” actress Lucy Lawless, swarmed over the drill rig Noble Discovery at Port Taranaki, New Zealand, and set up light housekeeping atop the 53-meter drilling tower for several days. Eventually, seven activists were arrested, reportedly for burglary. The rig was about to set off for the Sea of Chukchi off Alaska where it would have drilled three exploratory wells.
In the Antarctic, Sea Shepherd activists managed to get a rope into the propeller of the “research” vessel Yushin Maru No. 2, slowing it to some extent. The anti-whaling activists also threw smoke-producing flares and bottles of butyric acid (these stinkbombs spoil any whale meat they come in contact with and make it almost impossible to work on the deck) onto the ship and it responded by feebly spraying water and issuing warnings. The “fun” lasted about two hours and nobody was hurt.
Metal-Bashing
ExxonMobil sold for scrapping its tanker S/R Long Beach, the last single-hulled tanker in the Alaska crude-oil trade. The 1987-built, 214,853-dwt vessel was reflagged to Tuvalu on January 31 and its name shortened to Beach. By now, it may have been scrapped, probably in China.
Nasties and Territorial Imperatives
A British researcher concluded that 30 percent of a typical ransom goes to the Somalian pirates themselves, 10 percent to their shore-based support, 10 percent in bribes to local communities, and 50 percent to bosses, often safe in foreign countries. But local economies have been boosted, the exchange rate is better, real wages have risen, and inflation is down, all due to hard work by pirates. Another conclusion by the researcher was that the revenue from a typical ransom was roughly equivalent to exporting 1,650 head of cattle.
A commercial anti-piracy center recently established in the UK by a private firm will be manned by ex-Royal Navy warfare specialists and intelligence experts. The center can warn clients, such as shipping companies and charterers, if their vessels are standing into peril. Its intelligence warnings can also save, so the company claims, an average of two to four days of transit time and the hire of physical security guards at $90,000 to $220,000 per voyage.
Conflicting accounts told how a six-man Italian military security force on the Italian tanker Enrica Lexie fired at a threatening pirate boat in Indian waters but hit nobody. Or maybe it was the Indian fishing boat St Anthony the military fired at, killing two fishermen. India arrested the tanker and two of the security force. The two countries then argued about where the two Italian marines should be tried.
Odd Bits and Head-Shakers
Archeologists are searching for thirteen privately owned British transport service vessels burned and sunk in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island when that port was blockaded by the French Navy in 1778. Somewhere among the wrecks is HMB Endeavour, British explorer Capt. James Cook’s vessel. Endeavour was later used as a Navy store ship and in 1775 was sold to a private owner who offered the vessel back to the British transport service under the new name of Lord Sandwich.
A recent Tanzanian government decision forced the ferry company that links Kilombero and Ulanga districts to carry only 20-foot containers and a maximum of 50 tons at a time. These restrictions are limiting shipments by Africa’s largest grower of teak. The company has a backlog of more than 100 containers and has suspended sale and export of some products.
If ships go into Arctic waters, a trade group wants to see them equipped with the crisis-management products of its members. These include a built-in system of fast oil recovery piping that would greatly simplify the removal of fuels from a stricken ship, magnetic patches to cover ice-made holes in hulls, valves that allow passage of water but not pollutants, and specialized submersible pumps.
Danish authorities noted that the small container ship Danica Hav was standing into danger at Sjællands Odde, a long peninsula on the northwest coast of Zealand. The ship didn’t answer radio calls so a rescue helicopter lowered a crewman onto the ship. He found the quite-drunk master at the wheel. A mate, roused from sleep, turned the ship aside minutes before it ran aground.
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