May 2013: Other Shores

In the three months ended February 2013 overall confidence levels in the shipping industry were at their highest levels for two years. There was improved expectation of freight rate increases over the next twelve months, particularly in the dry bulk sector, and greater likelihood of new investment in the industry. The average confidence level was 5.8 on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) vs. 5.6 last November.

At Hong Kong, hundreds of dockworkers demanded a 15 percent pay increase and better working conditions – many work 72 consecutive hours during the high-season. They’ve been paid the equivalent of US$167 per day for 24 consecutive hours of work, less than they received in 1997.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks
A hard-luck small ship was the Indian MSV (motor sail vessel? dhow?) Arul Seeli, which sank about 21 nm off the Beypore Port while heading for Lakshadweep Islands. On board were eight seamen and 150 metric tons of cows (twenty), bricks, sand, and other commodities for the islands. Fishermen rescued three sailors.

About 124 miles northeast of Yangtze River Estuary, the container ship CMA CGM Florida came in contact with bulk carrier Chou Shan. The container ship had water ingress in cargo hold No. 5 due to damages sustained on its port side, containers were damaged by their shifting contents, and the bunker tanks started spilling fuel. At Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the 473-foot tanker Harbour Feature picked up a load of liquid tallow and moved to a refueling dock. Mooring lines snapped and the Piscataqua River’s strong currents swung the bow ninety degrees across an open bridge. Five hours later at slack water, two tugboats moved the ship away from its pinned position against the now-badly damaged bridge. (Three bridges cross the Piscataqua at Portsmouth. One is a high-level bridge that has stayed free of nautical attacks. The third is under reconstruction and two small tugs have already had major problems there due to the current, one sinking.)

At Colon City in Panama, six coaster-sized vessels were driven ashore when a cold front brought high tides and high winds to the port. Two seamen on one ship could not be rescued. Photos showed the former US Coast Guard buoy tender Hornbeam hard ashore, wave-washed and listing with the remains of an elaborately balustraded porch railing between it and the shore.

Somewhere between Africa and the US, a fire on the container ship Hammonia Antofagasta killed two crewmen. The fire was extinguished and the vessel headed toward Tenerife in the Azores. Off Fynsha in Denmark, the unloaded bulker CSK Glory suffered an engine room explosion and was taken in tow for Frederickshaven by the tugs Svitzer Njal, Svitzer Trim, and Frigga. The Alaska-bound tug Gulf Titan had to tack back and forth near Prince Rupert, BC, Canada while the local tugs Smit Mississippi and Lecheval Rouge put out a fire in containers on the barge being towed. After an explosion blew a hole in the hull of the Sohar Port-bound bulker Atlantik Confidence, the master ordered the crew of twenty-two into the lifeboats from which they were picked up by the tanker Alpine Marie and later transferred to the product tanker YM Pluto. The destroyer USS Nicholas and its helicopter coordinated the rescue. The fire-ravaged bulker later sank some 140 nautical miles off Oman’s Wusta Coast.

The Port of Tacoma was briefly shut down in memorial after two fatalities in one week. A 48-year-old crane mechanic died atop a crane from ”blunt force trauma to the head” and a 57-year-old refrigeration mechanic fell from a five-foot ladder, perhaps shocked by nearby wiring. The medical examiner said the cause of death here was heart disease. Both men worked for the same company. In Ireland’s Belview port, a 22-old crewmember on the Russian freighter Sormovskiy 3053 accidentally slipped and was caught in the jaws of a crane grab. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

The four Canadians on the 36-foot sailboat Viewfinder knew they had problems when the rudder unfixably broke 600 miles off Cape Verde. Authorities arranged for the tanker Amazon Guardian to swing by and pick them up. It dropped them off at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and the yacht owners decided to stay here while their insurance claim was processed. They were familiar with the process, having had submitted a claim for a rudder replacement after it was damaged by debris only last November. This time, their boat was left to drift and the Viewfinder may arrive at the North American seaboard in a few months.

The Russian cargo vessel Sea Star 1 had engine failure in the Japan Sea, some 60 nautical miles south of Nakhodka, and was taken in tow by the salvage tug Lazurit. Some 30 miles to the north, the Chinese aframax New Alliance was also drifting for unknown reasons. At the Danish island of Bonholm at Nexo harbor, the small tanker Orakota, loaded with mink food, was trapped by a low tide. It made a cautious two-hour crawl toward the harbor entrance but had to return and wait for more-favorable tides. (The Orakota carries molasses and anything liquid that animals might eat. Other specialized tankers carry cargoes like orange juice and wine.)

Gray Fleets
Cleanup of the former US Navy bombing and shelling range on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra wasn’t as thorough as authorities had hoped. A young tourist, believed to be seven years old, was carrying a munition containing white phosphorus while she and her family were waiting to board a ferry back to mainland Puerto Rico. She dropped it and it activated. She was burned but how badly was unknown because the family refused immediate medical help.

Removal of the mine countermeasures ship USS Guardian from its embarrassing perch on the edge of Tubbataha reef was completed when the giant crane of the pipelay vessel Jascon 25 picked up the stern-third of the warship and deposited it on a nearby vessel for transport anywhere-elsewhere. (Actually, the bigger pieces went to Sasebo, Japan.) Now all that remained was to pick up the smaller debris and pay a surprisingly moderate $1.4 million fine for damaging 2,345.67 square meters of coral at $600 per square metre. But, as expected, heads rolled. The Guardian’s CO, exec/navigator, the assistant navigator, and the officer on watch were relieved from their posts.

Not a Gray Warship but possibly part of a nasty conflict, the freighter Venus was suspected to be carrying Iranian arms to Syria. Its cargo was 8,500 tons of weapons and ground missiles for the Syrian regime, a rebel source said. It was scheduled to make a “fuel stop” at a Syrian port where it probably unloaded its cargo.

Guinea-Bissau’s former navy chief was plucked off a yacht in the east Atlantic and flown to New York to face charges linked to cocaine trafficking. The small West African state is a staging post for Latin American drug-smuggling gangs.

White Fleets
It was not a happy month for Carnival Cruise Lines. The sudden passage of a cold front brought 70-mph winds to Mobile, Alabama that tore the disabled Carnival Triumph from its shipyard moorings. The big ship ravaged the port for five hours, banging into a cargo vessel and other piers before four tugs wrestled it under control. Damage overall was surprisingly light. The Carnival Elation had a precautionary tug escort when it undocked at New Orleans and headed towards the Gulf because one of its two Azipod drives had failed. However, the other Azipod unit was sufficient to keep the ship on its scheduled itinerary. The Carnival Dream lost some power-generating capability while the ship was docked at Philipsburg, St Maarten in the eastern Caribbean so elevators stopped running and public toilets didn’t flush. Carnival flew more than 4,000 passengers back to Florida. The Carnival Legend had propulsion (Azipod again) problems that forced it to operate at a lower speed and miss a scheduled port of call.

But there was a bright side: Carnival Sunshine is being refurbished and will return to service as the Carnival Destiny. The cruise line is making significant investments to enhance the ship’s backup systems and the ability of hotel services to run on emergency power, plus improvements to the ship’s fire prevention, detection, and suppression systems. (Carnival Cruise Lines, the largest of ten cruise-ship brands owned and operated by Carnival Corporation & plc, has 24 vessels that account for 21.1 percent of the worldwide market share.)

Most cruises are placid affairs but there are occasional exceptions. In northern Norway, the Marco Polo gave its 1,100 passengers a bonus moment when it ran onto something outside Sortland in Vesterålen where charts showed plenty of water. A ballast tank was breached but quickly repaired and, after an overnight inspection, the ship continued to head for Scotland. In New Zealand, a man was missing from the Celebrity Solstice when it left Port Chalmers but he rejoined the ship at Akaroa. The Queen Elizabeth II arrived at Los Angeles with 84 passengers having become norvirused during a 36-night South Pacific cruise. Several ships skipped stops at Grand Turk because of passenger illnesses after recent cruise-ship visits to the island. (The last to stop there may have been the Carnival Miracle and the cause of illnesses may be because the ground near the port is reportedly saturated with sewerage.) The Princess could not dock at Bermuda due to repairs being made to the Heritage Wharf, and the repairs affected other ships arriving later, including the Riviera, MSC Poesia, Carnival Splendor, and maybe the Norwegian Dawn if work isn’t finished in time. The Ventura had propulsion motor problems in mid-Atlantic and limped along while eagerly heading for a scheduled two-week refit in Germany. The Seven Seas Voyager had similar problems and missed a stop. Somebody was seen going overboard from the Coral Princess in mid-Caribbean and a body was recovered. A 4-year-old boy nearly drowned on the Disney Fantasy and was taken by ambulance to Cape Canaveral Hospital and later flown by medical helicopter to Orlando. His family had just boarded for a seven-day cruise to the western Caribbean.

Those on small boats sometimes needed other-than-routine rescuing. Fifteen miles east of Elliot Key, Florida, the Carnival Breeze diverted five miles to become a stable platform so a Coast Guard helicopter could hoist a woman suffering from heart problems. She and her male companion had radioed for help from their 28-foot sailboat Gretchen. A helicopter rescue swimmer decided it was too rough to hoist her in a basket so both sailors were pulled aboard a Coast Guard small boat and delivered to the cruise ship. She was helicoptered ashore to a hospital, he stayed on board for some lesser medical care, and the Gretchen was towed to Convoy Point.

Those That Go Back and Forth
The cross-Channel ferry Oscar Wilde’s needed five tries to offload 500 passengers and their vehicles at Cherbourg. The Channel was rough and conditions were far from ideal when the big ferry finally arrived five hours late. It failed to dock, even with tugs helping. During the night three further efforts were made and the vessel circled outside the port until the wind direction changed, making the fifth docking attempt successful. Then the bow doors refused to open—no problem, just back out and use the stern doors. But port authorities ruled that conditions in the English Channel were still too dangerous. Unloading was about 24 hours late and the ankle of a seaman, broken when a line snapped during a mooring attempt, finally received shore-side medical attention.

After three days without electrical power because of a freak snowstorm, hundreds of shivering Scots on Arran lined up in bitter cold to take the ferry to Andossan in Ayrshire where warmth and light were available. The situation on the island was perhaps best summarized by a resident in a hamlet called The Craw who said, “We are okay for food at the moment but have a shortage of coal or logs.”

The ro/pax ferry Olympus normally operates between the Egyptian port of Adabiya and the Saudi Arabian port of Dhuba. Shortly after departing Adabiya, the ship experienced engine problems that the crew was unable to rectify so the vessel was towed back to Adabiya. There, 200 trailers with drivers on board were transferred to another vessel while the Olympus was repaired. The ferry Caddebostan came to the rescue and removed dozens of passengers when the Turkish “tourist ferry” Sabret had a fire off Istanbul. Some passengers suffering from smoke inhalation were taken to hospitals. The ferry was travelling between Istanbul and the popular Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara. Thirty-one people were injured in a collision between the ferry Lamma IV and another vessel off Hong Kong Island in deep fog. The other vessel was reportedly a barge and the ferry, strangely, was damaged in its rear.

In dense driving snow one evening, the vehicular ferry Nordfjord drove itself up on a rocky ledge near the ferry dock in Rysjedalsvika (if you’re lost, we’re on Norway’s west coast). The single passenger and the crew of four weren’t injured but had to spend the night on board.

In the State of Washington in just one day, four ferry runs were cancelled, each time because a single worker failed to show up. (One called in sick and another overslept.) A cure for the over-tight ferry manning is in the works if the funds can be found for more staff. Across the border, BC Ferries cancelled a couple of sailings after a woman fell/jumped-off the Spirit of Vancouver Island. She was rescued near the Tsawwassen ferry terminal. Paramedics boarded the vessel and took the conscious woman to a waiting ambulance.

On Cape Breton, a vehicle failed to stop as it boarded the Englishtown cable ferry, speeded up, and ended up floating in Saint Ann’s Bay. It didn’t float for long and was last seen about 200 meters from where it entered the water due to the strong local currents. Days later, searchers using side-scan sonar still hadn’t found the vehicle and then ice floes arrived to fill the Bay and that stopped all searching. The ice left about a week later and RCMP divers found the car. It was a Toyota Camry and inside was the body of an elderly man. On the other side of Canada at Gabriola Island in British Columbia, a vehicle traveling at extremely at high speed broke through a six-foot high barrier gate, launched off the loading ramp, and landed on the deck of the ferry Quinsam, which was tied up in dock. The car sped the length of the ferry and flew off the end. The water there was 48 meters deep, too deep for a RMCP dive team. Pretty sure at least one death. In Cornwall not far from Falmouth, a car rolled down the slipway (a steep approach road leading onto the King Harry Ferry) and into the River Fal on the Feock side. The elderly driver had stepped out but his wife was trapped inside. One definitely dead.

Energy
Two Taiwanese-German expeditions are investigating the role that plate tectonics play in the formation of gas hydrates. Producing natural gas from gas hydrates in the seabed could be particularly attractive to industrialized regions (especially Taiwan) in East Asia where demand for energy is increasing but resources within their own borders are scanty.

Methane hydrates form in the sea floor whenever enough methane is available, the pressure is sufficiently high, and the water temperature low enough. Then water molecules create cage-like structures that capture large quantities of methane molecules. The formation of hydrates can also be fostered by plate tectonics when one tectonic plate is pushed under another. That compresses huge quantities of sediments, and natural gases and fluids escape through these sediments to the sea floor, forming gas hydrate on the way. “The amount of energy that is stored in natural gas hydrate in the oceans exceeds the presently known oil and conventional natural gas deposits by far“, said one authority.

Metal-Bashing
Drillers sought oil as far back as 1979 off Australia and found gas that couldn’t be transported to a market – they lacked the technology to extract gas from waters more than 3,000 feet deep and pipe it ashore for conversion to LNG. Now, two companies will build floating platforms to process and chill the gas to liquid form. These monster FLNG (floating liquefied natural gas) vessels will probably never enter a local port. The Shell vessel, at 1,600 feet long, and 242 feet wide, will weigh about 600,000 tons when fully loaded. (A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is 1,092 feet long and weighs about 100,000 tons.) It will be operational by 2016 at a cost of about US$12 billion. ExxonMobil’s barge will be much the same with gas fed into its super-chilling system from an initial seven production wells (to be drilled in 2018 and 2019) with five more wells drilled later. Production should start in 2020.

Odd Bits and Headshakers
The research vessel Falkor was routinely sonar-scanning the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles offshore when it spotted an unexpected object. A ROV found the wreck of the fishing vessel Katmai some 8,920 feet down. The brand-new Alaska-bound FV had disappeared in February 1972 along with its owner, his wife, their eight-year-old son, and a deckhand.

Queen Elizabeth I dispatched a ship to France in 1592 but it foundered off the island of Alderney in the Channel Islands. Researchers found an oblong crystal in the wreck. It was Iceland spar, a transparent, naturally occurring calcite crystal that polarizes light and can be used to get a bearing on the Sun. It may have been used as a navigation aid by Viking mariners and that use may have continued into Elizabethan times.

In Scotland a charitable organization transformed a former MoD tank barge into a swish, award-winning headquarter complex, now named Tom Dunn, with an onboard teaching area, a cinema room, a multi-purpose meeting space, boardroom, and offices. (Windows in the hull’s sides make it look especially spiffy.) Explained a trust officer, “One of the reasons we were keen to get the barge was that many people associate us with medical projects in the Amazon, where we provide care for over 100,000 patients through our two medical ships, and we are beginning work with another medical ship on Lake Victoria in Tanzania, so the barge helps build on that nautical theme.

At Los Angeles, a mechanic tried to add realism to a heightened-awareness drill by providing a fake bomb made from metal oil filters, batteries, and wires, all bound with silver duct tape and black electrical tape, with a note attached to the bottom reading, “this is for the drill.” He was fired and authorities want him to pay the expenses for proving the fake bomb was a fake.

Other Shores - April 2013

It’s the shore-based cargo-handling infrastructure, not ship design, that will restrict container-ship size, predicted one naval architect.

Overall US maritime cargo volumes in the Great Lakes region are recovering from the extreme lows experienced in 2009. The US Great Lakes maritime industry is generally healthy and providing efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly transportation services.

Planning to exploit the Arctic for oil and gas exploration and shipping is “intellectual masturbation,” claimed one energy consultant. The problem is that many plans for the Arctic overlook the human element. The harsh environment, with its thick ice, storms, and darkness, is excessively challenging for seafarers and rig workers.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

The bulker Harita Bauxite sank in Philippine waters probably because heavy rolling caused its cargo to shift and the crew was unable to correct the listing because ballast pumps could not be started as a result of a power failure. The lone fatality in the crew of 24 was vessel’s Myanmar chief cook. The ship was reportedly carrying a cargo of nickel ore from Obi, Indonesia to China. (Nickel ore is a dangerous cargo if too wet and has sunk many ships. The ore slides and the vessel may take an irremediable list.) At Port Klang in Malaysia, the ro/pax Fajar Samudera sank in the deepest part of the port. It had been under detention for more than three years.

While maneuvering at Jeddah in western Saudi Arabia, the container ship Maersk Kotka hit fleetmate Maersk Kalmar. The Maersk Kalmar was heavily damaged. While passing through the crowded Strait of Singapore. the containership Thuan My suddenly veered across of the bow of the bulker Beks Halil. Remarkably, only a cargo hatch on the Thuan My was damaged. In Australia at Freemantle, the fully loaded cargo ship Princess Mary lost power, “nudged into the North quay,“ and then ran aground.

Some helmsmen seem to be fascinated by lighthouses and steer for them. That might have been what happened when the LPG carrier Carnival (ex-Josefa Gabtriela Silang) ran aground 100 meters from the Aqutaya lighthouse in the southern Philippines. But the ship was actually trying to avoid several fishing boats. The vessel was freed the next day by sister-ship BC 2. In the Suez Canal, the crude oil tanker Volga grounded at Km 42 when engine failure led to loss of rudder control. Prompt response by Canal authorities got the tanker free in a little over four hours. Also in Egypt but at the entrance of the Suez Canal, the container ship CMA CGM Chopin ran aground at Buoy No. 80.

Off the coast of Portugal, the chemical tanker Harbour Krystal carrying light virgin naphtha for Amsterdam had an explosion and fire. One crewman could not be accounted for but all tanks were still intact. While en route to Brazil, the ore carrier Stellar Eagle had a fire on board. The crew contained the fire but one of them needed medical evacuation. While anchored off Luanda, the container ship Niledutch Cape Town had an engineroom fire. The crew quenched the fire, the ship was towed to a berth and unloaded, and then the tug Fairplay 30 towed the damaged ship to Cape Town for permanent repairs. At Hamburg, observers noted smoke coming from the cargo vessel Cap Diego. (It was due to welding work that set insulation to smoldering.) The next morning, fumes were detected in the No. 4 hold so the insulation was torn out.

The parents of a drowned sailor shared the same rope when they committed suicide by hanging in their residence in Arakkonam in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. They blamed the government and the shipping agency for negligence and inaction after the tanker Pratibha Cauvery ran aground off the Chennai Coast last October. Their son died when a lifeboat capsized while trying to reach the Besant Nagar Beach.

At Puerto Limon in Costa Rico, a ship’s crane on the container ship Freemantle Express was being used to place a “pontoon” (cargo hatch cover) over a hold when the pontoon somehow became detached and fell onto sixteen containers. Multiple dents resulted. Two large pieces of a 50-foot Hatteras motorboat, a body, ten lifejackets, flares, and an oil sheen were discovered floating 22 miles off Jacksonville, Florida. The body belonged to a Venezuelan. Authorities learned that two other Venezuelans had been on board and probably an American boat captain. At Oakland, California, a large barge-mounted crane was removing a temporary structure on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge when a 129-ton piece slipped out a carry basket and dropped into the harbor. Said a nearby security guard, "It sounded like a jet, like something taking off, so we all looked to the sky. The rushing was followed by a clanking sound, then an immense splash”

Gray Fleets

It took ten, highly specialized vessels to dismantle the mine countermeasures vessel USS Guardian, stranded on the edge of Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines. As best I understand the process, the massive crane on the pipelay construction ship Jascon-25 plucks off a chunk of the Guardian, swings it over onto the deck barge S-7000, which is then towed by the Trabajador-1 to the smaller crane ship Smit Borneo anchored nearby in deeper water. It offloads the chunk onto the Archon Tide for transport to a disposal site.

At one time, the Guardian salvage fleet consisted of the JASCON-25, the SMIT Borneo, the salvage ships USNS Salvor and USNS Safeguard, the large Navy cargo-carrier USNS Wally Schirra, the Archon Tide (an anchor-handling tug supply boat), Intrepid (an otherwise unidentified tug), and the salvage tug Trabajador-1, Malay Towage’s barge S-7000, and the Philippine Coast Guard search-and-rescue vessel BRP Pampanga.

The US Navy is on a synthetic-fuel kick, purportedly to make sure it will never depend on oil from unfriendly nations, but eyebrows (particularly those of appropriations-rival Air Force) were raised when among the various bio-fuels the US Navy has purchased were 55 gallons (one barrelful) of “cobalt n-Butanol to Jet fuel” at $245,000 or $ 4,454.55 per gallon. No doubt that price included some R&D.

The 4,800-ton Trafalgar-class hunter-killer sub HMS Tireless may be getting tired. While on training exercises for new officers off Scotland’s west coast, a coolant leak was contained within the reactor compartment. The leak "posed no risk to the public, the environment or the crew," but it is not known how long it would take to repair the 28-year-old submarine, expected to be decommissioned this year.

The Royal Navy has a new medium-range 3D surveillance radar that is five times more efficient than any radar currently used by the fleet. It can detect a tennis ball travelling at three times the speed of sound when more than 15 miles away and is capable of monitoring more than 800 objects at the same time. (So can it track 800 super-sonic tennis balls 15 miles away?)

White Fleets

The cruise ship Carnival Triumph received the world’s attention when a fire disabled its engines soon after leaving Cozumel, Mexico. Quickly extinguished by automatic systems, the fire left the ship powerless. That meant its nearly 3,200 passengers were bereft of cruise-ship niceties such as air conditioning, hot meals, flushable toilets, elevators, cellphone connectivity to land-based cell towers, and arcade games. Since the ship was only 150 miles out from the Yucatán Peninsula, the initial decision was to return to a shipyard at Progreso. However, when the Mexican- flagged, Progreso-based tug Dabhol arrived, the Gulf of Mexico’s Loop Current had carried the Triumph 90 miles to the north so the destination was changed to Mobile, Alabama and the American salvage ship Resolve Pioneer was ordered to set out from Key West.

Upon arrival, it took the Triumph in tow at a steady 5-6 mph while the Dabhol, trailing on a stern line, provided corrective nudges whenever the Triumph veered off course. Other members of the Carnival fleet (Carnival Elation, Carnival Legend, Carnival Conquest) stopped by to ferry over food including hot meals, water, and supplies. Perhaps most important for many passengers, they temporarily provided cellphone connectivity to the media and anxious relatives.

Nearing Mobile, the Port Fourchon-based tug Roland A. Falgout was ordered to join the convoy. Soon after its arrival, the pilot in charge of the towing convoy ordered a speed-up to 7.5 mph. The additional speed triggered unfixable winch problems on the Pioneer so the Falgout took over the tow. Harbor tugs Hawk and Lisa Cooper came out from Mobile to help steer the big ship in the narrow channel to Mobile and soon after they docked the ship. Soon afterward, the 3,143 passengers debarked, most with stories to tell and fascinating memories for the future. Later that day, the Carnival Triumph, with its deck and engineroom crews still on board, was towed to a nearby shipyard for repairs – after all, the next cruise was only two months away.

Most vacations end happily but not always. During a shore excursion at Cozumel, a male passenger on the Elation drowned when swept away by an undercurrent. A giant wave washed two elderly Americans into the sea while strolling on the beach near the famed stone arch at Cabo San Lucas. The woman died and the man was listed in serious condition. On the Carnival Miracle, a teenager died, probably from alcohol poisoning.

At Wellington, New Zealand, the Seabourn Odyssey lost all power as it approached Aotea Quay and a Centreport tug continued towing the vessel to its assigned berth. A problem in a power cable had become apparent when engineers energized the bow thrusters for docking. Also at Wellington, the Centreport tug Toia, crowded with fifty guests of the city’s “Open Day” celebration, hit the lowered landing stage of the Queen Elizabeth. (How embarrassing!) The combined funnel-mast of the tug departed from the vertical but the 40-year-old tug remained in service. About seventy miles from Panama City, the expedition ship Sea Lion hit an uncharted rock while departing an anchorage at the Las Perlas Islands. The propeller and hull were damaged but none of the 55 passengers or 35 crew were hurt.

Those That Go Back and Forth

You take a ride on New York’s Staten Island ferry and it’s “free” but the real cost to New York taxpayers is $4.68, up 57% from a decade earlier. But it was $5.69 in 2008!

The Sausalito-San Francisco ferry San Francisco collided with a 22-foot boat near Raccoon Strait. One man on the small boat later died of his injuries and the other man was seriously injured.

The Nova Scotia provincial government rejected both of two proposals for renewing ferry service between Portland, Maine and Yarmouth, NS even though one firm had already leased a suitable large ferry.

In Newfoundland, the Mayor of St. Brendan's (2011 population of 147) was notably verbal about the provincial government's plans to shuffle around its ferries to accommodate refit work. She wanted to make sure the community doesn’t lose its ferry service.

In New Zealand, the interisland ferry Kaitaki aborted its daily voyage across the Cook Strait to Picton and returned to Wellington after an elderly woman suffered an apparent heart attack.

In Scotland, the operator of the small vehicular ferry Island Trader failed to hoist the bow ramp before setting off across the River Clyde at Glasgow. Passengers were forced to jump on seats or retreat to the ferry’s after areas. No prosecution of the skipper left some passengers quite angry.

In Wales, the ro/pax Finnarrow slammed into the quay at Holyhead’s ferry terminal hard enough to disable itself. Rather low in the water back aft due to a problem with the ship’s stabilizers, it was towed to a drydock for attention while officials scurried to restore the ferry service to Dublin.

In the Turkish Black Sea port of Zonguldak, the ro/pax Cenk Y had a fire on its vehicle deck that started in the cooling unit of a citrus-laden reefer truck and spread to other trailers. Ship and shore firefighters killed the fire in two hours.

In Norway while entering the Troll Fjord, the ro/pax Kong Harold struck rocks. The bulbous bow took a bashing and a ballast tank was breached but none of the 258 passengers or 57 crew were hurt. The ferry proceeded to Svolvaer to unload passengers. From there, the ferry headed for a shipyard near Åalesund.

At Singapore, the ferry Sea Hawk collided with the coaster Budi Jasa 18. The coaster sank, killing one mariner.

Are you a government entity needing a new ferry? How about a 200-foot-long vessel the world's first icebreaking catamaran capable of carrying 20 cars and 120 passengers? For free! In Alaska, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough has an albatross around its neck. It accepted the $80 million ferry Susitna, built partially with US Navy funds to explore the potential of an experimental landing craft design, but it now sits at a Ketchikan dock, unused but eating up about $90,000 a month in dock fees and insurance. Writing applications for necessary permits, their cost, and building the necessary landings means the ferry is essentially unusable, hence the “ferry-for-free” offer. Said one assemblyman in dismay, "I would look for the ray of sunshine in this, but I can't find it."

Legal Matters

Three people boarded the 82-foot sailboat Darlin at Sausalito, California, carrying with them ample stocks of pizza and beer. They then headed south on a joy ride but the yacht ran aground on a beach near Pacifica. The owner recognized his luxury boat on TV news and called the police. They persuaded the trio to surrender and they were held on suspicion of grand theft conspiracy with the bail set at more than $1 million.

At Wellington, New Zealand, three men jumped off the back of the Cook Strait ferry Santa Regina after he ferry had moored at its Glasgow Wharf berth and shut down its engines. The trio received fines under harbor by-laws. Navigation and safety bylaw 2.2 states that: without the permission of the Harbormaster, no person may dive or swim within 50 meters of any structure in the commercial wharf area.

Nature

The US National Hurricane Center revealed that Hurricane Sandy was the second-costliest cyclone to hit the USA since 1900. Preliminary damage estimates are near $50 billion. In addition, there were at least 147 direct deaths recorded across the Atlantic basin due to Sandy, 72 of them in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States This was the greatest number of US direct fatalities related to a tropical cyclone outside of the southern states since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Sandy made landfall late on 29 October near Brigantine, New Jersey, but its tremendous size drove a catastrophic storm surge into the New Jersey and New York coastlines.

NASA’s Aquarius instrument package in the Argentine SAC-D spacecraft (it was launched by an American rocket) has been tracking salinity levels in the world’s oceans for over a year. The Aquarius sensor detects the microwave emissivity of the top 1 to 2 centimeters (about an inch) of ocean water – a physical property that varies depending on temperature and saltiness. Visible have been seasonal pulses of freshwater from the Amazon River, an invisible seam dividing the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal, and a large patch of freshwater that appears in the eastern tropical Pacific in the winter. But the most-prominent feature is a large patch of highly saline water across the North Atlantic. This area, the saltiest anywhere in the open ocean, is analogous to deserts on land, where little rainfall and a lot of evaporation occur.

Metal-Bashing

While the ultra-large container ship OOCL Brussels was being tested by its Korean builder, the propeller was damaged and then shaft bearings were damaged while parts were being removed for repair. The 13,208-TEU newbuilding, part of an order for ten ultra-large container ships placed by the line in 2011, will be delivered somewhat late.

The semi-submersible heavy-lift ship Xiang Rui Koa left China for Dutch Harbor, Alaska where it was to pick up the damaged Royal Shell Oil’s conical drillrig Kulluk, the focus of much recent media attention when it broke free from multiple towing vessels multiple times off Alaska. Destination? An unannounced repair facility, probably in the Far East.

At a shipyard in Germany, a stubborn fire attributed to welding on the newbuilding cruise ship Norwegian Getaway did not affect the nearby sister Norwegian Breakaway. Fire brigades from surrounding communities were alerted after the shipyard’s forces did not succeed at first. Both gates of the building hall were opened so that the smoke could be ventilated and the inhabitants of Halte, Weener, and Stapelmoor were asked to keep their windows and doors closed but the fire was under control within two hours.

A West Coast shipyard has ordered a very large floating drydock from a Chinese builder. At 960 feet long and with a lifting capacity of 80,000 tons, it can handle all but the largest cruise ships and the owner expects it may attract business from oil and gas exploration firms and other ship operators taking advantage of longer ice-free Arctic summers. The dock will be towed to the US in three pieces and its first job after assembly will probably be to prepare the company’s smaller, Portland-based drydock for use at Seattle.

Odd Bits and Head-Shakers

Last July in mid-Atlantic, containers on the MSC Flaminia caught fire. Weeks later, the stubborn fires were finally extinguished and the ship was towed to Germany. There, 37,000 tons of contaminated water in its holds were pumped into the product tanker OW Atlantic and transported to Nyborg in Denmark where a company specializes in the incineration of wastewater with high temperatures.

Shipping out lead, zinc, and other concentrates often requires barging them several miles to bulkers in deep water. This is true at the Red Dog mine in Alaska and also at the Port of Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. There the captain of the powered barge Wumna noticed the vessel wouldn’t steer. The 1.6-ton rudder had fallen off and a week-long search by side-scan sonar and a magnetic survey failed to find it. A replacement rudder was ordered from Germany. (When it has steering, the Wumna transports 5,000 dwt of concentrates at a time, or 1,000,000 tons per annum. Operating the barge has its risks. In February 2007, the barge was swamped and disabled by Tropical Cyclone Nelson and the owners were advised that the Wumna was “far from a typical seagoing example.”)

Two elderly tugs of the Royal Navy’s ”Dog” class (all originally named after breeds of dogs) slipped out of Newlyn in West Cornwall for an unknown destination in spite of being detained because of major defects. The Juliette Pride 1 (ex-Sheepdog) and Juliette Pride 2 (ex-Huskie) now fly the flag of Tanzania and are owned by a Nigerian oil trader who already has four other “Dogs” supporting his tanker business.

A British charity shop was trying to sell some donated videogames on eBay. Only a game about Pearl Harbor was sold and the winning bid came from Japan.

March - Other Shores

A single 20-foot standard container, on average, can hold about 48,000 bananas. In theory then, the giant containership Emma Maersk (see news below) is capable of holding nearly 528 million bananas in a single voyage – enough to give every person in Europe or North America a banana for breakfast.

In 2012, 263 rescues in the United States were triggered by receipt of aviation and marine distress signals by the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System (SARSAT), with 183 people being rescued from the water.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

Let’s start off with a bit of a mystery item. A reputable maritime news service printed a news report from the Australian Rescue Centre stating that the apparently unmanned tug, the PB Margaret, sank at lat 21 30 06 S long, 115 21 48E. (That’s somewhere south of the Mangrove Islands in Western Australia.) No explanation was given why the 3,000-hp tug (ex-Heung Kong) was unmanned and the tug still appears in its owners’ fleet list on-line. (The list may not be current; many aren’t.) But then a colleague in Ozzie-land sent me the answer, a copy of a governmental warning about the sunken vessel – the tug was on a cyclone mooring and so was unmanned! Now to the northern hemisphere. At Kodiak, Alaska, the Fisheries and Wildlife Service’s research vessel Arluk, a 63-foot, 76-ton Bertram, quietly filled and rolled on its side at St. Herman's Harbor.

Multiple objects at Bremerhaven took a beating. The car carrier Euphrates Highway allided with the quay of the foreport of the Northern lock after the towing line to an assisting tug snapped. Both quay and hull were damaged. The container ship Flottbeck hit the Strom quay while docking. The quay was damaged and the hull of the vessel was breached, but not fatally so. The tanker Nordic Ruth was leaving Bremerhaven’s Bredo shipyard when it brushed against a motor yacht. Its hull was damaged while the tanker suffered scratches. The tug RT Stephanie was getting set to pull the vehicle carrier Atlas Highway from a pier when it struck the stern of the American-flagged pure truck carrier Endurance, and then rebounded into the Atlas Highway. All wheelhouse windows on the tug were smashed but both vessels managed to depart Bremerhaven more or less on schedule. In the Bosphorus Strait near the Turkish city of Istanbul, five people were injured in a collision between the tanker Amur 2521 and the high-speed Turkish ferry Yenikapi-1.

While heading for the Panama Canal, the container ship MSC Fabienne ran aground near the port of Cristobol. Canal tugs soon got it free. In Wales, high winds pushed the ro/ro Ciudad de Cadiz thoroughly aground at Mostyn in late January and four tugs were unable to free it. That happened due to the high spring tides in the middle of the next month and Airbus A-380 super jumbo jets in production at Toulouse in southern France may have waited for British-built A380 wings since that is what the ship carries.

In suburban Shanghai on Zhangjing Creek in Jinshan District, an unknown gas triggered an explosion in the cabin of a fertilizer-carrying barge as the operator was about to start the engine. His wife was killed and he and a son were injured. There were public concerns about pollution in the creek so households in the district received a 50-percent discount on their water bills for the next month. The smallish tanker MCT Breithorn had an engineroom fire at the Bijela shipyard in Montenegro. The shipyard’s firefighters aided ship’s personnel in extinguishing the fire in an hour.

An Australian report reported that in November 2011, a wave knocked a seaman off MSC Siena’s accommodation ladder while he was rigging a combination pilot ladder in preparation to embark a harbor pilot near Rottnest Island off the port of Fremantle. He was wearing a safety harness and harness rope. While working on the bottom platform, an unexpectedly high wave struck, leaving him hanging below the platform. The rolling of the ship banged him against the hull several times and then he fell out of his harness. In the UK, the small tug Endurance was towing a sixty-foot motorboat in gale-force winds and violent seas when one of the two crewmembers on the tug fell overboard five miles south of Sovereign Harbour on the East Sussex coast. An extensive search failed to find him. Five crewmen fell 65 feet and died when cables broke during a lifeboat drill on the cruise ship Thompson Majesty at La Palma.

In Danish waters, three crewmen were helicoptered off the freighter Atalanta while it was anchored in the Bay of Aarhus. They had been working in a hold that had recently been cleaned with gases. On the container ship Jonni Ritscher at Hamburg, fourteen workers became ill, possibly by fumes from bunker fuel, and they were hospitalized after on-scene treatment by an emergency physician for nausea and eye- and respiratory irritation.

At Durban in South Africa, although the container ship MSC Luciana was moored by twenty-two lines and had a powerful tug pushing on it, that was not enough when sudden wind gusts arrived. First, bowlines started snapping and then stern lines broke and the vessel was blown against the Finger Jetty at the opposite quay. The vessel whammed into the chemical/oil tanker Marlin (scheduled to be scrapped anyhow) and then the wind slewed the MSC Luciana’s bow so that it totaled the superstructure of the pilot boat Orient and pushed the tug up onto the east quay. Nearby, a crewman on another container ship had his leg broken by a snapping mooring line. (Last September, the MSC Luciana lost power while outbound from Antwerp and ran onto a sandbank.) The tug Christos 22 was towing the ex-German Navy training ship Emsstrom off the UK’s southern coast when the tug slowed and headed towards the coast to check out things. The towed ship smashed into the slowing tug, holing both vessels. Valiant fights by RNLI lifeboats, local tugs, and Royal Navy ships HMS Severn and HMS Lancaster saved the tug but the Emsstrom sank and so the vessel failed to meet a scrapper in Turkey.

A leak at one of the aft thrusters and the consequent flooding of the engineroom of the Emma Maersk, one of the world’s nine largest container ships, threatened to block the Suez Canal. The vessel was towed to the Suez Canal Container Port where its cargo of 13,537 containers (including about 1,000 reefer containers) could be discharged and loaded onto other vessels. But it was not possible to unload all the containers since, without engine power, it was not possible to trim the vessel's ballast tanks to keep it stable during the discharge work.

It took only an hour for the Emma Maersk’s engineroom to be flooded about 60 feet (18 m) deep, deep enough to cover the massive main engine. Unclear was the extent of damage to this huge 14-cylinder engine (109,000 hp) and whether it and the auxiliary engines, which together provided about 40,000 hp, will be reparable. The first priority was to preserve the engineroom equipment, which ironically meant keeping it submerged for the time being since any contact with oxygen would result in corrosion. The plan was to have the hole plugged by underwater welders, unload the remaining containers, pump out the water, and as equipment was exposed, wash it with fresh water, dismantle it, and decide what could be repaired and reused and what must be replaced. As a precaution, Maersk instructed the seven other vessels in the E-class fleet not to use their stern thrusters.

(The Emma Maersk has faced adversity before. The first of the eight-vessel E-class, it was nearly ready to be launched when a disastrous fire gutted the accommodations and bridge structure. Un-fazed, the Danish shipbuilders removed the superstructure from the next E-class vessel being built and made a fast swap. The Emma Maersk was launched only six to seven weeks late.

Gray Fleets

In the Philippines, the Japan-based mine countermeasures vessel USS Guardian ran onto Tubbataha Reef, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, in spite of warnings from park rangers. Efforts to pull the ship free and attempts to lift it by the crane-barge SMIT Borneo (recently used on the wrecked container ship Rena in New Zealand) proved fruitless and damaged the fiberglass and wood ship enough so it will be dismantled in place. The cause of the mishap seems to have been an error on digital charts that misplaced the reef by several miles. The Philippine Government and people were not happy with the accident and the US government will probably pay the usual fine of about $300 per square meter (yard) of damaged coral, plus other fees. But the Navy has good company; in 2005, the environmental group Greenpeace was fined almost $7,000 after its flagship struck a reef in the same area.

The US Navy revised its overall fleet-size requirement downward from 313 to 306 ships – a modest downscaling that reflects modified operational requirements, not the ongoing budget crisis. The fleet currently has 288 ships, up from May 2007’s low of 275 ships. (The count fell below 300 in August 2003.)

The US Navy cut back the number of aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf region from two to one, the latest example of how contentious fiscal battles in Washington are impacting the US military. The USS Harry S. Truman and its carrier strike group will now remain stateside at Norfolk, Virginia.

The $3.3 billion, three-and-a-half-year refueling overhaul of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was postponed by the Navy – another manifestation of Congress’s inability to pass a 2013 defense funding bill. Any significant delay in beginning the Lincoln’s refueling overhaul will ripple through years of carrier scheduling.

The US Navy wants to acquire binoculars capable of reading faces of uncooperative subjects up to 650 feet away. The purpose is to identify them.

The rescue of two bullocks from a cliff in Cornwall by a Royal Navy helicopter was deemed “a useful training exercise.” The two Charolais Cross bullocks had been in the gully for at least two days. (In North America, these castrated male animals would be called “steers.”)

White Fleets

The cruise ship Seabourn Quest left Tonga an hour earlier than scheduled so it would be in deeper water when a tsunami hit. (The five-foot-high waves of the tsunami, created by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake at Santa Cruz Island several hundred miles SW of the Solomon Islands, killed nine people at Santa Cruz plus others in the Solomons.)

The polar expedition ship Silver Explorer encountered heavy weather and sustained damage while on a cruise from the Argentinean port of Ushuaia to South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula and so it returned to port. None of the 133 passengers were injured but four crewmembers had minor injuries.

The polar expedition ship PV Orion, eleven days into an 18-day cruise of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic, made a 50-hour diversion from a visit to Macquarie Island to pluck a French solo sailor from a liferaft. His boat, the Tchouk Tchouk Nougat, had been dismasted and suffered hull damage about 500 miles southwest of Tasmania during a solo round-the-world voyage. The rescue effort lasted three days and involved near-continuous communication with the 63-year-old sailor and multiple airdrops by up to five aircraft while the PV Orion and its 100 passengers headed towards the raft through deteriorating weather. When in contact, the PV Orion launched a Zodiac and then tethered the Zodiac and liferaft together and pulled the sailor into the Zodiac. Next stop on the ship’s revised itinerary? Hobart, Tasmania.

Those That Go Back and Forth

The passenger ferry Sarash capsized after colliding with a sand barge on a river in central Bangladesh, dumping as many as 100 people into the water. There were no immediate reports of casualties after the ferry went down on the River Meghna in Munshiganj district, 32 kilometers (20 miles) south of Dhaka but there was confusion over the number of passengers on board: a TV station put the number at more than 100, a local police official said it was about 80, and the president of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport and Passenger Service said the ferry was carrying just more than 50 passengers.

In Greece, a strike by ferry workers was stopped when the Greek government imposed martial law on striking ferry workers and mobilized police to break up their picket lines.

Legal Matters

The Philippine Senate committee on foreign affairs conducted an inquiry into operations of the small tanker Glenn Guardian, a contract vessel that removed waste from US Navy ships, and found it liable for violating Philippine laws when it dumped some 200,000 liters of wastewater off Subic, Zambales. (A business rival tipped off authorities to the dumping in 2011.) But the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority concluded that the Malaysian contractor had committed no violations with regards to its handling and disposal of waste materials, agreeing with company statements that the waste materials were "treated" and environmentally harmless.

Nature

A preliminary new record low-water level of 576.02 feet (175.57 meters) was registered for Lake Michigan-Huron for January. It was the lowest water level for this body of water since Great Lakes water levels were first maintained in 1918.

Energy

Although the current federal administration and the greenies want to kill off all fossil fuels, shipments of US-mined steam coal last year were 120 million tons, about twice that exported as recently as 2009. Most of the coal went to Europe, especially the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy, for generation of electricity. For many years, the US exported much high-quality metallurgical coal used in steel mills but now most exports are of steam coal.

A California senator introduced a bill to permanently prohibit offshore drilling on the outer Continental Shelf off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Production of coal in Australia and the overseas shipping of it were hampered by two factors. Bad weather hit first. Yancoal declared a Force Majeure for its Yarrabee coal mine after it received more than 360 mm of rain in the pit and production was suspended for two days. Another Force Majeure was declared due to damage caused to the Blackwater rail corridor by ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald. Yarrabee, along with several other mines on the same rail corridor, was not able to rail coal from the mines to the port in Gladstone. Following flooding in Queensland, Xstrata declared a Force Majeure on some of its coal exports because heavy rains damaged its rail network. Rio Tinto Ltd also declared a Force Majeure on coal sales contracts from its Kestrel mine due to damage to the Blackwater rail network.

But Australian labor also played a role. Australia's main rail union called two 24-hour strikes that affected the New South Wales coal industry. Pacific National Rail normally hauls about 300,000 tons of coal per day and so there were 600,000 metric tons less coal in the stockpiles at Newcastle and Port Kembla when railing resumed.

In Nigeria, Shell declared a Force Majeure at their Soku gas flow station when there was no supply available due to leaks in the pipeline and loading of a LNG vessel at the Bonny Nigeria LNG Terminal had to be suspended.

Salvage

About two weeks after its stranding, the fast reefer Asia Lily was pulled off its island beach by the Papua New Guinea-based tugs Wombi and Vulcan. (The Asia Lily had been on its way to the Philippines to get bananas when it ran into a coral beach at speed and ended up with its bow angled high above the beach on Kwaiawata Island in the Marshall Bennett Islands on Christmas Eve, December 24 last year.)

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives

Piracy reached a five-year low in 2012, thanks to a “huge reduction” in Somali piracy, but east and West Africa remain as “hot” areas. Attacked in 2012 were 297 ships vs. 439 vessels the previous year. Globally, pirates boarded 174 ships last year, while 28 ships were hijacked and 28 were fired on. Hostages taken on board fell to 585 vs. 802 in 2011; a further 26 were kidnapped for ransom in Nigeria. Six crew were killed and 32 were injured or assaulted.

Sailors on board the USS Kearsarge and USS San Antonio can chat with each other for free using free Android-powered LG phones – subject to certain limits. The warships are part of a 4G LTE network, a microwave-based wireless wide-area network or WWAN that handles calls, text, and data transfers anywhere within a radius of 20 nautical miles. One probable application: helicopter crews will be able to shoot videos of pirates and forward the footage for analysis.

The US Navy has been crowdsourcing other ideas using a new gaming platform called MMOWGLI (Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet) to collectively generate ideas. Anti-piracy results have included "stinky water" walls (a skunk-smelling water curtain that even a tough Marine cannot penetrate), propeller-tangling ropes, and extremely loud (louder than a jet engine at 100 feet) warnings to turn away.

Odd Bits and Headshakers

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued a Safety Alert to operators of some offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. They must secure current well operations and retrieve the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) and/or Blowout Preventer (BOP). The existing bolts on the LMRP connector/wellhead connector must be changed-out with bolts certified by an independent third-party to be in compliance with recommended heat treatment practices or the exiting bolts must be examined and certified by an independent third-party that they are fit for the purpose. The Safety Alert was triggered by a pollution incident involving the discharge of synthetic base mud (SBM) into the water due to a loss of integrity of a LMRP H-4 connector.

India issued a circular reporting that a container ship arriving in Mumbai had fires in two of its containers. They held sunflower cake with an oil content of 14-16% and a moisture content of 4-6% and had experienced self-heating due to oxidation of the residual oil.

The bulker Oliva with a cargo of soy beans (nearly 60 percent of all soybeans entering international trade today go to China, making it far and away the world’s largest soy bean importer) was en route from Brazil to Singapore when it ran aground on Spinners Point, the far-north-west promontory of Nightingale Island, a four-square kilometer island in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago in the South Atlantic, the most-remote inhabited archipelago in the world. The crew of 22 was removed and the vessel soon broke up. That was in March, 2011. Recently, a lifeboat from the Oliva washed ashore in the Cooring wetlands near the mouth of the Murray in South Australia after having floated about 8,000 kilometers from Nightingale Island. The boat with 29 seats, a diesel engine, and a lot of barnacles must have passed south of one of the world’s most-famous capes but which one? Was it the Cape of Good Hope (drifting eastward) or Cape Horn (westward)?