Other Shores - February 2013

The Mississippi River was at near-record low levels, and when barge owners said their businesses were at risk if the river got much lower, the US Corps of Engineers claimed it would keep the River open. One way was removing rocks in the channel in Southern Illinois that had been exposed by the low water, and contractors were digging and blasting sixteen hours a day. (Barges slipped by in the other eight hours.)

In sharp contrast, high water on the Rhine River stopped barge traffic between petro-hub Rotterdam and Switzerland and heating-oil shipments piled up.

Marine authorities in Papua New Guinea quickly learned that the Japanese reefer Asian Lily had run aground on the southern end of Kwewata Island near Woodlark on Christmas Eve, and that oil from the vessel was coating the island's shoreline, but the governor of Milne Bay province first heard of the accident from villagers several days later. He was not happy about having been ignored.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

The already-unstable Philippine freighter Ocean Legacy sank itself at a pier in Ormoc on Leyte Island when it swung a heavy container over the pier. An unnamed freighter carrying 4,725 tons of sand began to founder in strong winds off the mouth of the Yangtze and asked for help. It sank somewhere between Nantong, Jiangsu Province and Longkou, Shandong Province but its crew of fifteen were saved. The small tanker Rami Dua partially sank in shallow water between Labuan and Sabahh’s western Menumbok and some of its cargo of 200,000 liters of oil leaked into the sea after its crew of seven had been removed.

In the Philippines, the Zamboanga Ferry ran aground while docking at Dumaguete due to strong winds from Tropical Depression Auring. Rescuers waded into the surf, hoping to attach lines so a forklift on the pier could pull the vessel to deeper water. Meanwhile, rescuers got all passengers, mostly students returning to university, safely ashore using lifeboats. In the Maldives at Male, the container ship Augusts Schulte ran aground. It was just a “routine” grounding and the ship was afloat again in three hours.

Drilling for oil in arctic waters off Alaska isn’t easy and Royal Dutch Shell had enough problems last season that Democratic congressmen wanted an investigation. Take what happened to the highly specialized Kulluk off Kodiak Island. It’s a circular drill platform bearing a drill tower. The hull below is cone-shaped, extends down sixty feet, and is made from three-inch steel-The specially built, very large (361 feet), high-powered (22,000 hp plus) icebreaking anchor-handler Aiviq was towing Kulluk to Seattle for winter modifications and maintenance when the towline parted south of Kodiak Island in bad weather. Then all four engines on the Aiviq stopped working (perhaps due to bad fuel) and the weather worsened. To the rescue came the USCGC Alex Haley, once a Navy salvage ship, but its towline parted and the end wrapped itself around the Haley’s port propeller. Off the Haley went for an unwrapping in a calm-water port. A ton of spare parts (probably filters and fuel injectors) was helicoptered to the Aiviq and soon engineers and flown-in technicians got the engines running again. Several other big tugs and supply ships played roles in the next few days and more towlines parted. Royal Dutch Shell finally decided to let Kulluk go aground where it would do minimum environmental damage. It landed on a sand-and-gravel beach from where it was calmly pulled off by the Aiviq a few days later.

The just-emptied, outbound crude-oil tanker Overseas Reymar struck “a glancing blow” to a tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The double-hulled tanker was damaged above the waterline and the bridge’s fendering system, made of timbers with steel backing, was also damaged but the bridge remained open to vehicular traffic. In Fiji, the container ship Westerems experienced engine failure while berthing at Suva and hit the container ship Southern Cross. Both suffered slight damage.

Ferries had a particularly bad month, several violently running into things. A New York fast commuter ferry crashed into its Manhattan pier at considerable speed (about 14 knots, the Coast Guard later estimated) and 85 of 326 passengers, many on their feet ready to disembark, were hurt, two seriously. When transfer from astern to forward failed, the rail ferry Conro Trader rammed the crude-oil tanker SVL Pride, damaging both ships. Damage would have been worse except for a cushioning tug between ferry and tanker. All this happened at Kavkaz Port, a small harbor on the Kerch Strait in Krasnodar Krai, Russia that is the eastern (Russian) terminal of the railroad and car ferry line terminating in the Crimea. At Macau, a TurboJet fast ferry cautiously left its pier at slow speed because visibility was only 0.8 miles but it somehow managed to leave the channel and run into the No. 5 marker buoy, still at slow speed. Taken to a hospital were 26 people and two stayed there for some time. In Norway at Bergen, the ro/pax Vesterålen hit the pier hard after an engine failure. No injuries but the passenger flybridge was crushed, there was other damage to the vessel and the pier, and 3,000 liters of oil started leaking somewhere on the pier.

While waiting to berth at Mumbai, the container ship E.R. Perth had a fire in hold No.7. It radioed for shore help but had the fire out before that help arrived. At Tin-Can Port in Lagos, Nigeria, a barge caught fire at a tank farm and then exploded, and that set a storage tank on fire. Much local excitement but no reports of injuries or deaths!

Off the South Korean port city of Ulsan, the 2,600-ton barge Seokjeong-36, carrying a large crane for pouring cement, capsized, reportedly because of bad weather. Seven died and five more were missing.

In Western Australia at Dampier, a worker’s arm was crushed between a barge and the dock. He was airlifted to a Perth hospital. In Scotland at Wick, a worker had a 30-foot fall while unloading wind turbine parts from a ship. Broken bones but nothing critical. The standby safety rescue vessel Vos Sailor was designed to ride out North Sea storms but then a rogue wave bashed the front of the superstructure some 130 miles from Aberdeen. One man, presumably on watch in the flooded wheelhouse, died of injuries, and the remaining eleven crewmen were winched to safety. (The winchman continued to help after breaking a bone in his foot.) The powerless, deserted ship was later towed to Scotland.

In Alaska, a couple were out in the boondocks, a tree fell on a man, his wife lit off a flare for help, it was spotted by the fishing boat Victory, and a Coast Guard chopper soon arrived and plucked him off a beach. In bad weather, the 64-foot sailboat Paradise was somewhere between Cozumel, Mexico and Houston when the younger male onboard decided his stepfather needed to be evacuated. He had a history of heart disease and was slumped over and unresponsive. A Coast Guard helicopter took the man ashore but his wife remained with her son.

Other things happened.  China banned the use of vessels of less than 5,000 dwt between its coastal provinces and territories, Hong Kong, and Macau. During a barge-to-barge transfer of No. 6 heating oil, a tank on one barge started seeping oil into New York’s Kill Van, the waterway between Staten Island and New Jersey that connects to New York Bay and the Hudson River.

Gray Fleets

 “…quiet submarine technology in China and Iran is improving at a noticeable rate… US ASW capability going backward, the submarine capability of US strategic adversaries [is] going forward, and US Navy capability as a whole [is] in decline,” was the dismal summary by a top Navy official. "We are going to be doing less with less in the future." (But the Navy is rushing to improve its anti-mine capabilities and there’re those electromagnetic railguns, laser weapons, and carrier-borne drones coming soon)

The US Navy received much media attention for its campaign against the so-called “bath salts.” They are designer drugs that mimic cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine. The drugs physically resemble Epsom salts but produce long-lasting hallucinations and drastic changes in behavior, sometimes culminating in suicide.

As had been expected, the commanding officer of the nuclear attack sub USS Montpelier was relieved of his command for letting the sub surface in the path of the oncoming cruiser USS San Jacinto. The Navy said an investigation revealed that the primary cause was human error, poor teamwork by the submarine’s watch team, and the commanding officer’s failure to follow procedures for submarines operating at periscope depth.

A Royal Navy insider described the two UK aircraft carriers being built as “white elephants with dinky toys on top.” He stated that they have less basic capabilities than Argentina’s navy during the Falkland war and noted that their aircraft will lack midair refueling capabilities and so the ships will have to remain close to shore

Shortly after a Chinese pilot landed a Chinese-built jet on China’s first aircraft carrier for the first time, the president of the company that built the jet dropped dead from a heart attack.

The third of Russia’s Borey-class strategic nuclear subs started sea trials. The fourth-generation nuclear-powered missile submarines are intended to replace the aging Delta III and Typhoon-class submarines and will carry up to 16 Bulava missiles with multiple warheads.

White Fleets

New York met Hurricane Sandy; Fiji met Cyclone Evan. Both were damaging. The cruise ships Carnival Spirit and Crystal Symphony changed itineraries to avoid Cyclone Evan but the Fiji-based 140-passenger cruise ship Reef Endeavour took a beating and suffered some damage. It was back in service within eleven days. Other nautical damage included the storm-induced groundings of two anchored ships at Suva, the bulker Starford and the fully loaded container ship Captain Tasman, aka Capitaine Tasman.

Fishnets wound around a propeller shaft damaged shaft seals on the Carnival Splendor and repairs forced a change in the next seven-day cruise. Passengers on that cruise were offered a full refund due to the itinerary change.

The status of QE2, Cunard’s longest-serving liner, was obscure. Reportedly, more than 160 planned events on the ship were cancelled and the QE2 was sold to Chinese or Indian scrappers for £20 million. The famed vessel had been bought by Dubai interests for £64 million for conversion into a luxury hotel at the tip of the man-made Palm Jumeirah Island but along came the credit crunch.... (For the last five years, the QE2 has been maintained in running condition at a cost of £650,000 a month.)

About 300 passengers on the Oriana were afflicted by what was probably the norovirus, with the first passenger reporting to the sickbay within two hours after leaving Southampton. Since the disease has an incubation period of one to two days, at least one sick person had the disease when he/she boarded.

The start of a 109-day round-the-world cruise of the Saga Ruby was delayed to a faulty crankshaft; a defect discovered only hours before departure. Some passengers spent the night on the ship before returning home. Repairs took about a week and there were no cancellations for the world cruise.

Those That Go Back and Forth

In Massachusetts’s Boston harbor, a homeless man boarded a holiday-vacated ferry on Christmas Day and celebrated by setting the empty vessel adrift. They were three piers away when police arrived. In the UK, a pub boss disappeared the same day as £29,000 in Christmas Club cash. He boarded a ferry for France but seems not to have arrived there. Somewhere between Devon and Cornwall, a popular teen-aged lad was seen on CCTV jumping off the Torpoint ferry, which is pulled across the river Tamar on chains. An extensive search failed to find him. On Lake Tanganyika a ferry sank between Tanzania and Burundi due to violent winds with about ninety on board. Eight died and around twenty were missing.

At New Orleans, the lower Chalmette-Algiers ferry turned around in mid-stream and returned after passengers got sick. A “chemical cloud" drifting over the Mississippi River had caused throat and eye irritation. The cloud was probably sulphur dioxide released by a local plant during maintenance. A British mother of two spent the evening drinking with her husband on the Pride of Rotterdam and CCTV showed her staggering about, alone on deck in the wee hours. She was not on board when the ferry arrived at Rotterdam.

Energy

Low speeds to save fuel have created a continuing struggle between the container shipping lines and shippers. Speeds below twenty knots save money for the lines but increase customers’ costs. However, the lower speeds also increase schedule reliability. In any case, express service is unlikely to return any time soon. (An item below explains how a major container shipping company plans to improve its bottom line.)

Demand for crude oil abroad increased as US crude-oil output rose to the highest level since January 1994. (The International Energy Agency recently reported that the US would overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia by 2017 as the world’s biggest producer of liquids.) The gains have been primarily in light, low-sulfur oil from Bakken and Eagle Ford shale formations in North Dakota and southern Texas. (North Dakota output jumped 57 percent last year.) An oil glut in the upper Midwest has producers shipping oil to the East and West Coasts by train. Refiners were also using tankers to ship North American crude to eastern Canadian plants to replace foreign oil and another refiner will ship oil from the Gulf of Mexico to a refinery in Quebec. Driving these moves was the fact that Bakken oil was about $27 a barrel cheaper than North Sea Brent crude, the benchmark for overseas imports.)

The first attempt to ship railcar-carried Bakken Field crude from Albany, New York to a refinery in New Brunswick was aborted when the tanker Stena Primorsk had a steering failure and ran aground just south of Albany. Three tank barges offloaded the oil and the tanker, escorted by two precautionary tugs, limped south for a date with a New York shipyard. The tanker lost its left rudder in the grounding but normally features twin engines, twin propellers, and twin rudders.

The famed Staten Island ferries make 109 trips each workday and burn between 60,000 and 70,000 gallons of diesel fuel in doing so. But that gallonage will lessen after one of the smaller Austen-class ferries is converted this year to use LNG.

An American company will build the world’s largest LNG-powered container ships and put the duo into service to Puerto Rico. The company is also converting existing container ships in its Alaskan service to LNG while they are sailing.

Legal Matters

The US Coast Guard established temporary safety zones so four small vessels (think tugs and the like) could service grain-shipment vessels on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Why? “To ensure that protest activities relating to a labor dispute do not create hazardous navigation conditions for any vessel or other river user in the vicinity of the safety zones.”

The longshoremen’s strike at seventeen Gulf of Mexico and East Coast container ports was averted when parties agreed to keep on talking.

Nature

Unusually thick sea ice on Laizhou Bay in east China's Shandong Province, the worst the area has experienced in three years, stranded a thousand coastal ships, and conditions were expected to grow worse.
 Local aquafarmers were concerned that the thicker ice may lead to heavy losses because  they were unable to penetrate the ice to provide adequate ventilation for sea cucumbers and other aquatic organisms.

Oil and methane gas seeps may contribute as much as 50-70 million tons of atmospheric methane per year, or about 10% of global sources. Capture and use of methane from seeps could mitigate global pollution in two ways: Combusting methane (a potent greenhouse gas 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide on a per molecule basis) converts it to the weaker greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and water, and use of local methane could reduce energy consumption associated with shipping costs and diesel usage by remote villages.

NOAA has been mapping US East Coast deepwater gas leaks between Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and Cape Ann, Massachusetts because "It's important to find and understand such seeps because they have global significance for the transfer of methane carbon from long-term storage in ocean-floor sediments into the ocean and atmosphere.” Approximately 25 distinct seafloor gas seeps were identified based on plumes rising into the water column as high as 1,100 meters (3,600 feet). 

In British Columbia, leaking dishwashing detergent is imperiling the clams he harvests. So claimed a member of the Gitga’at First Nation who voiced concerns about fluids leaking from the sunken ferry Queen of the North.

Metal-Bashing

It’s been five years since a commercial vessel was built on the River Clyde but the world’s first seafaring hybrid ferry was launched there recently. The ro/pax will utilize a hybrid system of diesel engines and lithium ion batteries and it and a sister ferry will operate in Scottish waters.

Bulbous bows reduce fuel requirements by moving the bow wave forward into space not yet occupied by the hull. (That is not the technical explanation but hopefully the reader gets the general idea.) Maersk has found it can reduce fuel bills up to two percent by replacing the bulb with a new bow design. Because retrofits will be both costly and time-consuming, individual business cases will have to be developed for each class of Maersk containership. Bulbous bows are most effective when used in vessels when the waterline length is longer than about 15 meters (49 feet) and the vessel operates most of the time at or near its maximum speed. Maersk’s decision may be because it has been operating its container ships at slower-than-normal speeds due to high fuel costs.)

Odd Bits and Headshakers

In Virginia, a man found what he thought was an old buoy, He trucked it home where he spotted a plaque that identified the “buoy” as a 1917 anti-shipping mine, and it was still ”hot.” Experts blew up the mine in a nearby state park, placing it underground (it was a mine, after all!) for safety.

At Lyttelton, New Zealand, a ferry skipper didn’t hesitate when a line fouled the port propeller. He got the boat back to a pier on one engine and then he stripped to his skivvies and over the side he went, pocketknife in hand and mask on face. Sixty-six waiting Christmas-time passengers applauded as the successful skipper re-donned his uniform over wet undies and invited them aboard.

Two Brits were walking their dogs near the South Pier at Blackpool one night, tossing objects for the dogs to retrieve, Somehow, both men ended up in the water and only one was saved. Also saved was a soccer ball that had been heaved into the sea as an impromptu substitute for a life ring.