Other Shores -September 2011

Other Shores                                              

US crude oil imports in the year’s first half fell to the lowest monthly average (8.8 million barrels per day) since 2000.

Traditionally, this is the busiest time of year for container ships but rates are down 9.3 percent since April due to the lessened demand for consumer goods for the back-to-school and holiday seasons. Last year at this time, rates surged 56 percent.

DNV, one of the major classification societies, sponsored a summer study by students, who concluded that major advances in technology, improved standards, and increased Arctic research are needed. About 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered petroleum resources are in the Arctic. (The contradiction inherent in that word “undiscovered” bothers me.) 

What happened to the surface oil slick from that massive Gulf of Mexico spill more than a year ago? A report revealed that microbes residing within the surface oil slick ate the oil five times more effectively than microbes outside the slick. Not only that, but the wee beasties did not seem to require much in the way of necessary nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, elements scarce in the spilled oil. In addition, the microbes’ respiration produced carbon dioxide and energy but they did not seem to use the energy – certainly not for replication! Scientists are puzzled but it’s reassuring when unexpected friends show up to help us humans.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

In India, traditionally inefficient and lax Mumbia officials have stopped fooling around! They arrested the master and chief engineer of the Rak Carrier after the coal-carrying bulker sank some twenty miles offshore because “they were directly responsible for the vessel” and pollution from its bunkers was feared. (There was a spill, but that is not news in that part of the world.) In reaction to the sinking, the Gujarat Maritime Board, a state authority responsible for 1,600 km of coastline and several ports including Mumbia, banned all ships over 25 years of age. A floating drydock capsized and sank, reported Suez Canal authorities, adding that the two vessels in the dry dock had been raised. In Thailand’s Udom Harbor, the freighter Unison Vego was trying to anchor when its engine stopped. Momentum carried the vessel into the moored Ocean Tower, which slowly sank. It carried heavy machinery and some was salvaged as the ship settled lower and lower but most went under.

Near St Just (it’s in Cornwall), the container ship Karin Schepers ran onto the beach east of the Pendeen lighthouse but freed itself off before a rescue helicopter arrived.

The 3,225-dwt freighter Salmo managed to hit the quay at Brake in the Lower Saxony region of Germany. The master was fined 1000 euros and the vessel was detained during an investigation. 

(Wordplay about a possible cause of the accident and port’s name is permissible.) In southern Philippines waters, the Bulk Carrier 1 (probably a bulk carrier) sank after being in violent contact with the HS Puccini. Two engineers of the bulker died when trapped below. On the Rhine River, travel was messed-up for some time. A gravel-carrying barge sank between St. Goar and Bingen and that blocked the river. Then a second aggregate-carrying barge ran aground near Trechtinghausen, luckily outside of shipping lanes. A third barge, this one carrying ethanol, drifted out of the channel while waiting for the first barge to be removed and it too went aground.

While near Port Georgetown (this Port Georgetown may be in Guyana), a crewmember on the car carrier Global Leader died when a rescue boat collapsed onto him. Another man was seriously hurt.

Six hundred miles south New Zealand the Australian-owned, New Zealand-chartered fishing vessel Janas, longlining for the Patagonian toothfish, had engine problems. Emergency repairs failed so the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis came to the rescue. It towed the FV to remote Macquarie Island where better repairs were made in the lee of the island. Then a female crewperson on the icebreaker had severe stomach pains so two New Zealand-based helicopters flew out nearly 500 km and got the woman to the Dunedin Hospital for a probable appendectomy. 

At the Black Sea port of Constantza, the bulker FGM Europe caught fire while under repair. The bridge and accommodations took a beating.

A SWAT team of police boarded the product tanker Al Mahboobah off the Portuguese coast after the master radioed that his crew had mutinied and threatened to kill him. The SWAT team took the ship into Lisbon to sort out what had happened.

The LPG tanker DP Proteus lost its propeller off Vietnam and started drifting toward a reef. The local Vietnamese tug Phu My 03 was dispatched, as was the deep-sea tug Pacific Hickory from Singapore, and the similar-sized tanker DP Azalea was chartered to stand by. The Phu My 03 was towing the vessel clear of the reef when the Pacific Hickory arrived and took over. The tow headed for Shanghai, but entry there was denied (perhaps due to the tanker’s dangerous cargo) and so the tow headed for South Korea. All to replace a lost propeller! (The Pacific Hickory is one of my favorite tugs. Formerly the Irving Miami and based in eastern Canada, the big Dominican-flagged tug pops up in almost any part of the world, almost always towing some large object.) 

Gray Fleets

The Australian Navy, unfortunately, managed to keep itself in the headlines. A RHIB overturned while transferring personnel from the patrol boat HMAS Maitland to the frigate HMAS Darwin and five members of the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal needed hospitalization. And sex reared its ugly head once again on the supply ship HMAS Success when a female crewmember claimed she had been ambushed in a storeroom and sexually assaulted. She reported the incident to Navy officials and then went ashore and told Sydney police. The assault came only months after a report had revealed the existence of a predatory culture of sexual misconduct fueled by alcohol and drugs on the same ship.

Canada had its own share of naval problems. The submarine HMCS Cornerbrook struck the bottom while on an advanced submarine officer training exercise. It was Canada’s only operational member of Canada’s four submarines at the time. Repairs to sister-sub HMCS Windsor in 2010 alone cost almost three times the budgeted C$17 million – bad hull welds, broken torpedo tubes, a faulty rudder, and acoustical tiles that kept falling off. And the Navy also spent thousands trying to keep pigeons from roosting in the long-idled sub.

A female officer will command a Royal Navy warship for the first time. Promoted to Commander, she will take command of the frigate HMS Portland next April after commanding the minehunters HMS Pembroke, HMS Ramsey, and HMS Penzance. 

The Chinese Navy’s first aircraft carrier, formerly the Soviet carrier Varyag, went to sea for a short trial. Unlike the practice in the US Navy, where an aircraft carrier’s skipper is never an aviator, the first commanding officer of the yet-as-unnamed carrier is Li Xiaoyan, a top-rated naval flyer. Elsewhere, the former Soviet carrier Kiev is nearing completion as a luxury hotel that is expected to open later this year. Progress is at the internal-decorations stage. Pre-hotel, the carrier, moored at a theme park, was rated as attraction 33 of 158 attractions in or near Tianjin.

The US Navy has asked industry to come up with a large unmanned submarine able to operate in the open sea or in coastal waters and harbors on missions lasting more than seventy days.  The missions, of course, involve gathering intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. This LDUUV (Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) would be pier-launched and recovered (“door to door,” as it were) and would perform over-the horizon sensor missions in coastal waters and harbors. The program has two phases. In the first, hardware and software must be developed for missions lasting up to thirty days at depths from 100 to 400 feet. The Navy may provide a UUV prototype. 

In the second phase, missions would last more than seventy days without human interaction. The UUV must avoid all vessels in the area, detect stationary and moving objects and avoid them, detect and identify surface vessels and their intent, and avoid all kinds of fishing nets and gear including monofilament lines and twine nets. The program may take five years.

A company press release announced that the US Navy had lifted the veil of secrecy from its Ghost. It is a super-cavitating combination aircraft/boat that flies through an artificial underwater gaseous environment with 900 times less friction than water. The stealth craft was built at no cost to the government and the company expects it will have a great impact in many nautical matters. 

White Fleets

Bookings during the upcoming Rugby World Cup competition in New Zealand are disappointing operators of several cruise ships. For example, the Rhapsody of the Seas has resorted to selling half-price tickets (to New Zealand residents only) that combine accommodations, meals, entertainment, and a voyage around the North Island between matches.

At Key West, while trying to dock, the Carnival Fantasy managed to bump moored fleetmate Carnival Imagination. Cosmetic damage only. (Since one ship was immobile, it was, strictly speaking, an allision, not a collision.) 

One doesn’t think of large waves on the Volga River but the river system does incorporate large lakes in many places. And it was large waves that reportedly caused the multi-decked river cruise ship Bulgaria to sink in 66 feet of water. That cost 122 people (including 28 children) their lives in Russia’s worst maritime disaster since 1986. When the vessel was raised, investigators surmised that one engine may have failed because the steering wheel was found to be turned hard right and one engine had been asked to deliver full power. The accident had immediate repercussions. A criminal case was launched against the captains of the freighters Dunaysky 6 and Arbat for failing to take part in the rescue, a check-up of cruise ships found out that 90 percent failed to meet basic safety requirements and so twenty-three vessels were banned from operating as passenger ships, and prosecutors initiated sixty-six administrative cases against vessel owners. 

Top of Form

Only three weeks later, and infuriating Russian bureaucracy at the highest levels about the shocking state of that nation’s standards of maritime safety, the excursion boat Lastochka (Swallow) ran into a moored barge on the Moscow River. The allision killed nine partyers. The operator, who was also killed, had been fined three times this year for operating an overloaded vessel.

Those That Go Back and Forth

The British Columbia ferry Burrard Beaver struck the dock at Vancouver. The ferry was a half-boat length away when it lost power and steering and then veered to starboard and slammed into the dock. A nearby tug was able to get the ferry to its berth and there were no injuries to the 215 passengers. The Turkish ferry Ishan Alyanak sank at Izmir after the vessel struck the pier. The ferry with 250 passengers was approaching the pier when the rudder failed, resulting in the allision. There may have been some panic on board but everyone reached the pier safely. (A report stated that a fire in the stern section might have led to the rudder failure.) 

In New Zealand, the Marlborough Sounds ferry Straitsman had to stop and anchor for a couple of hours while repairs were made to a fuel pump. The fifty passengers on board may have enjoyed the pause and it is certain that the freight and vehicles didn’t care either way.

In India’s Goa region, the ferry on the Kirianpani-Aronda route broke down so hundreds of market-goers had to use a motorized canoe carrying only ten to thirteen at a time. In the Philippines, the ro/pax ferry Asia Malaysia sank off Calabasa Island after cargo shifted to one side in high winds and waves. All 107 passengers and 44 crewmembers were saved. The Government promptly suspended all operations by the ferry owners’ vessels. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a ferry carrying at least 200 passengers on the Tshuapa River sank after colliding with a wooden cargo vessel. Both craft were operating without lights and the cargo boat was not allowed to operate at night. At least 80 died. 

Nature

The Russians have two Arctic white beluga whales in captivity somewhere and wanted them to become used to humans swimming with them. One problem was that the whales shied away from contact with white diving suits so a 36-year-old Russian woman scientist named Natalie Davis Senke volunteered for the familiarization job. Naked, the yoga expert dove into water just above freezing and stayed under for up to ten minutes, thanks to her practice of doing rigorous meditation and breath-control exercises. The whales seemed to enjoy her company as she swam among them.

The operator of the Great Lake’s last steam-powered ferry, the Badger, asked officials in Michigan and Wisconsin to support its plea for an additional five-year exemption from the federal ban on dumping coal ash into Lake Michigan. The company is exploring the use of compressed natural gas. 

Metal-Bashing

Progress is being made in the UK on construction of two large aircraft carriers. The AMT Trader, one of the world’s largest barges, carried a 9,000-ton section of the future Queen Elizabeth from a Glasgow-area shipyard at Govan around Scotland to the Edinburgh–area yard at Rosyth, where it will be mated with other sections as they arrive or are constructed. For those interested in comparisons, that single chunk is heavier than one of the Royal Navy’s new Type 45 destroyers.

A report surmised that amalgamating the naval shipbuilding programs of Germany and France could create the biggest industrial partnership since armament-giant EADS was formed in 2000. The thinking was that Thyssen-Krupp, Germany’s largest steelmaker, would combine nicely with France’s naval shipyard DCNS. But ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems quickly squelched the idea, stating that it is not planning a joint venture with the French shipyards group, nor are there any plans for a merger or other partnership or alliance with French shipyards. (ThyssenKrupp recently cancelled a deal with Abu Dhabi MAR to set up a joint venture to sell naval surface ships to the Middle East and North Africa, blaming changes in the political landscape.)

Owners of supertankers have been torn between making some money in these hard times by scrapping their older tankers or keeping them in service although rates have dropped so low that some owners are effectively paying clients $1,037 dollars a day.

The over-aged (built 1974) product tanker Phoenix was slowly making its way towards a scrapping yard in India when its engine failed and it anchored somewhere off South Africa. Authorities, fearful of a possible pollution event, got a promise from the owner, reportedly a Lagos firm, to send a tug but it never appeared and subsequent phone calls were not answered. That meant that no insurance was available if anything happened so authorities prepared for a judicial sale. As expected, bad weather did arrive and the tanker’s anchor rode snapped. The deep-sea tug Smit Amandla, one the largest tugs in the world, attempted to connect a towline to pull the Phoenix to deeper water, but weather conditions made this impossible. Pushed by waves, the vessel struck bottom some 200 meters from the shore near Christmas Bay, north of Durban. Helicopters airlifted all fifteen of the Indian crew to safety. Three attempts to tow the 538-foot ship off the rocky beach failed and work shifted to removing the oil on board. 

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives

Think of Libya and Gaddafi, rebels, and oil probably come to mind. The Libyan tanker Cartagena belonging to a government-owned tanker company was anchored on Hurd’s Bank just outside of Malta’s territorial waters when a rebel-manned tugboat approached and captured the tanker and its cargo of 70,000 tons of gasoline. A Maltese Armed Forces patrol boat was nearby but took no action. Back in March, rebels similarly captured another Libyan-owned tanker.

Odd Bits and Headshakers

Many Viking ships succumbed to the cruelties of a sea voyage (witness the folk song “Sir Patrick Spens” and its “half o’er, half o’er to Aberdour lies guid Sir Patrick Spens wi’ the Scotch lairds at his feet” – yes, I know he was a Scot but he was sailing on a mission to his king’s liege lord in Norway and I suspect his vessel was Viking-like). Replicas of Viking ships also sink. The 2009-built Norwegian longship Dragens Vinge (as might be expected, that translates as the wing of the dragon) went under fifty miles east of Shetland. But its sailors had advantages their ancestors lacked. Modern technology, in the form of an EPIRB, lifeboats, helicopters and a liferaft, helped save the seven pseudo-Vikings. Weather at the time was force 7 to gale force 8. Replicas of Viking ships are surprisingly common. An entry in Wikipedia lists thirty-three and the list does not include the late Dragens Vinge.

In Australia, two young buckos cavorted around on a jetski until they chose to go around the back side of Flinders Island because a tugboat towing a big ship was blocking their way. They ran onto unseen rocks and were swept onto the island as their jetski was washed off the rocks and out to sea. Luckily, one man had grabbed his cellphone from a compartment on the jetski. His call brought a rescue helicopter. The mobile was an iPhone in a watertight plastic bag.

When Osama bin Laden’s body was flown out to the carrier USS Carl Vinson, officials wanted to make sure the body bag held the right body. The bag was unzipped and photos were taken but no ruler was available to measure the 6’4” corpse. So a six-foot-tall SEAL lay besides the corpse. Reports stated that the volunteer was about four inches shorter than he who had not volunteered. 

Has anyone noticed that the first races of the America’s Cup World Series are being held somewhere off Portugal? Does anyone care? For those that do care, there are eight boats from seven nations – the US, New Zealand, Sweden, China, South Korea, Italy, and two from France.) Next races in the Series will be held in the United Kingdom, and then at San Francisco. Later venues are to be announced. Then comes the Louis Vuitton Cup series in 2013 to determine the challenger. It will race the defending champion, the US’s Oracle, off Newport, Rhode Island in 2013 to decide which nation will keep the Cup for a while.

While racing off the Isle of Wight, the yacht Atlanta of Chester ignored multiple provisions of the Rules of the Road and an oncoming 869-foot large orange object. It bounced off the bulbous bow of the tanker Hanne Knutsen and then the tanker’s port anchor hooked the yacht’s hot-pink spinnaker and that pulled down the yacht’s mast as the yacht ground along the tanker’s side. The yacht was the give-way vessel but many have wryly noted that some yachties seem to feel that their racing always gives them precedence over any other vessel.

Other Shores - August 2011

Wallet-restraint by US consumers has kept US import volume flat, but experts expect a rise by summer’s end when retailers build up inventories.

Will LNG shipping rates rise? At least one shipping company thinks so. It turned down a one-year charter at $125,000 a day of its newbuild LNG carrier Stena Crystal Sky, preferring a daily rate of $110,000 over only 210 days.

If you own a capesize bulker hauling iron ore from Australia to China, you have been enjoying the record rate of more than $8 per ton. 

Oil giant Shell applied to US regulators for permission to drill six wells in the Chukchi Sea. Permission was granted, perhaps because polar bears were recently re-categorized as merely “threatened” rather than “endangered.”

More than forty percent of about 600 Dutch and British mariners have personally experienced bullying, harassment, or discrimination at work within the last five years. Less than half felt they could make a complaint.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

As usual, there were collisions and allisions: The container ships CCNI Rimac and CSAV Petorca collided at Shanghai and a fire started on the Rimac when water reacted with inflammable goods in a container. The crew was evacuated and the ship was moved outside the port while authorities looked for twenty-six of its containers that had fallen into the sea. 

Ships ran aground: While being towed to a scrapping beach at Alang, the cargo vessel Wisdom broke free and ended up in Mumbai’s Jubal Beach. After three attempts, it was freed by two powerful tugs. In Indonesia, the crew of 28 manning the bulker Sunny Partners were rescued by a tug after it ran aground while on a voyage with a cargo of bauxite. In Indonesia again, the container ship Al Rawday ran aground near the Rock Island Chain at Sambu Batam and the chief engineer had a fatal heart attack during the incident. The ship had just left Malaysia’s Port Klang.

Fires and explosions took a toll: While discharging cargo at Luanda, fire broke out on the UAL Antwerp, probably in a tank of kerosene. Due to the firefighters’ extensive efforts, the ship took on so much water that it was beached to keep it from sinking. The cooling unit on a Dutch semi-trailer burst into flame on the ro/ro ferry Schleswig-Holstein en route from Puttgarden to Rodby but a deckhand on routine patrol spotted the fire and extinguished it. The container ship APL Chiwan suffered from main-engine camshaft problems off the coast of China but they were fixed. Two days later, an engine fire disabled the ship. A tug was called for a 100-mile tow to Hong Kong while onboard generators continued to power the coolers on refrigerated containers. 

Unusual things happened: Inland sand pits often use floating dredges and the Robert R Woodington lost its cutterhead and ladder when an underwater landslide occurred. What to do? Hire a marine salvage company to recover the head, now 100 feet deep and covered by more than 70 feet of sand and clay mix. The successful recovery team included five divers, a sectional barge with a crane, and airlift and jetting equipment. At Algeciras in Spain, the 509-TEU feeder ship Deneb flopped on its starboard side at a wharf for unknown reasons. In Israel, the bulker Avramit spilled oil on the coral beach between Marina and the border of a coral reserve. The oil was quickly pumped up and the Gulf of Eilat was spared further pollution. In Rotterdam’s Caland Canal, the bunker tanker Vialis embarrassed itself by breaking in half while refueling the chemical/oil tanker Marida Mimosa. At Beirut, a shore crane unloading the Laguna collapsed across the Darya, seriously damaging that ship. Both are small cargo ships.

Humans were rescued: Although the vessel owner said there was no emergency, the master of the small tanker Pavit disagreed and used e-mail to ask for help. As a result, Falmouth Coastguard in the UK coordinated the removal of thirteen Indian crewmen off the vessel, which had been drifting for several days about 120 miles off Oman with mechanical problems and a crew growing increasingly seasick. A helicopter from the frigate HMS St Albans made 27 trips to transfer the Pavit’s crew to the Indian tanker Jag Pushpa, which agreed to repatriate the men to India. Off Long Island, a Coast Guard small boat took a sick sailor off the USS Oak Hill (LSD-51) after he was disabled by abdominal pains. In Alaska near Valdez a Coast Guard chopper took the chief engineer off the 150-foot tug Sea Voyager. He was also suffering from abdominal pains. Another Alaska-based helicopter took a fisherman off the 50-foot fishing vessel Heidi Linea. He had bad back pains from a fall on the FV. 

Gray Fleets

Thou shalt lead a pure life. The US Navy has dismissed at least 29 commanding officers in the last two years. Included were nine commanding officers for sexual harassment or inappropriate relationships in the last 18 months. Three others were dismissed for alcohol offenses and two others for personal misconduct. And the Navy is currently investigating reports of hazing on the submarine USS Tennessee. Meanwhile, in Alaska, details were released on why the commanding officer of the Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC Anacapa was relieved of his command earlier this year. He had tried to get the vessel underway while intoxicated.

Soviet warships operated openly off the Virginia coast. They were part of a two-week-long international exercise originally designed to lessen Cold War tensions. Other participating nations were France, the UK, and the US.

The British destroyer HMS Liverpool has been having an eventful tour off Libya in Operation Unified Protection. In May it was under attack by forty rockets and her 4.5-inch main gun returned fire on the rocket battery near Misrata – the first time the main guns of a British warship have been fired in anger since Iraq in 2003. Then it used its 4.5-inch gun again, this time to thwart an attempt by four Libyan boats (three rigid hulls and one small boat) to disrupt shipping in the Gulf of Sirte. At least one boat was destroyed.

The Philippines will no longer buy second-hand naval equipment from the US but might lease relatively new US equipment rather than wait for surplus material to become available. Announced object of the new policy? To make the Philippines into a strong US ally. (The Philippines still uses WW II-vintage ex-US destroyers.) That nation also rebranded the South China Sea as the West Philippine Sea, thus mimicking the US’s recent renaming of the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.

Want to buy some surplus military and naval stuff? Australia is selling up to 24 ships, 180 aircraft, 600 armored vehicles, 12,000 other vehicles, and so on. The proceeds will, hopefully, help pay for a massive $61 billion planned upgrade of the Ozzie defense forces. 

Where better way to train boarding teams than on a WW II-vintage museum steamship? Florida Coast Guardsmen used the SS American Victory as a training arena while it was moored at The American Victory Ship Mariners Memorial Museum at Tampa.

China is hell-bent on getting aircraft carriers. Photos showed concrete replicas of a carrier superstructure and a jump-jet flight deck, both far inland. The half-built ex-Soviet carrier Varyag, which a Chinese businessman bought with the announced goal of converting it into a floating casino, was taken over by the government and it will become China's first aircraft carrier. And several Chinese businessmen have put in bids for the retired British carrier Ark Royal, with the announced intentions of converting it into a floating showcase for high-technology items. (Two other ex-Soviet carriers, the Kiev and Minsk, are now parts of Chinese military theme parks.

Last year, the US Navy acquired 59,000 Chinese-made microchips, each counterfeit and each equipped with a “back door” that could allow nasty tricks such as admitting signals to shut-off the chip. 

Women will be allowed to man Royal Navy subs now that fears that fumes might affect fetuses carried by pregnant submariners have been allayed. Other nations allowing female subbies are the US, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

A Royal Navy commander failed to notify the education authority that he had separated from his wife of twenty years and thus he was able to illegally accept nearly £75,000 to send his two children to a boarding school.

It won’t help US unemployment figures shoreside but about 3,000 US Navy sailors will be released as surplus to decreasing needs. They will get no severance package and no retirement since most will not have served long enough to qualify.

White Fleets

The 122,400-ton cruise ship Celebrity Silhouette was floated-out at an inland German shipyard and needed to be taken to the North Sea Dutch port of Eemshaven for completion. The 26-mile route involved a narrow, winding river, several very tight spots with less than five feet of clearance, and passage through a railroad bridge that was too narrow for the vessel. (A crane on a barge created just enough room by removing the bridge’s center span and moving it out of the way.) And the ship had to be moved backwards. Two tugs, one at each end of the cruise ship, slowly towed the vessel with little fuss and great precision, and the voyage was safely made. Why not? The demanding routine was familiar since the Silhouette was the fourth of its class to be built at the German yard. 

Small events can cause major problems. The elderly (1952) cruise ship Philippines (ex-Augustus) had a fire in its stack while moored at Manila. The blaze was quickly quelled and an investigation revealed that the fire originated in the DC generator in the stack and was caused by someone closing ventilation flaps. That allowed heat to build up inside the funnel until ignition was reached. 

Those cruise ships that can’t fit under the Sydney Harbor Bridge have been using the one-cruise-ship berth at the Circular Quay but it really isn’t a cruise-ship terminal. Australian authorities are considering use of the nearby navy base at Garden Island even though it is busy with navy activities.

Those That Go Back and Forth

Patronage of a new East River ferry service in New York City that linked Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn (three of the City’s five boroughs) was pleasingly high because it was free. Then a ticket started costing $4 and patronage dropped to one half, Officials, however, were pleased with that number. It was higher than they had expected.

The Alaskan ferry Malaspina has a bow lookout on duty at all times. The ferry was near the eastern shore of Taiya Island and approaching Skagway when the bow lookout, in what was probably the quietest spot on the vessel, heard a faint call for help. All hands including the 45 passengers started searching the shore, a searchlight finally illuminated an injured man, and he was taken onboard. He was bleeding from multiple gashes, had two large swollen areas on his body, and was semi-conscious and dry-heaving. He also had no memory of what had happened (he probably had been hiking and had fallen down a cliff into the water and managed to pull himself ashore). When spotted, he was preparing to re-enter the water and swim toward the Malaspina.

High winds and heavy seas capsized a ferry in a bay west of Haiti’s capital and seven people went missing. The boat was transporting charcoal, bananas, and other goods to Archaie, a coastal town thirty miles northwest of Port au Prince. In Bangladesh, the Madinar Alo capsized in the Sitalakhya River and at least a dozen of more than 100 passengers died. In Indonesia ten people including two children died when their canoe sank in the Bengawan River in East Java. They were simply trying to get to their village on the other bank. At Charlotte Amalie, in the US Virgin Islands, the 89-foot fast catamaran ferry Royal Miss Belmar ran up high and dry on a rocky point. That crash injured five, including a baby, of the 102 people aboard. 

Those that carried fireworks onto a Washington State ferry around the date of the Fourth of July may have noted that explosives-sniffing dogs were active at the ferry terminal. They also learned that carrying legal fireworks onto the ferry was OK.

Legal Matters

The Chinese master of the bulker Full City is lucky and one might say he beat the current trend of criminalizing mariners for accidents. A Norwegian appeals court overturned a lower-court decision that he must serve mandatory jail time and instead substituted a suspended sentence. The second mate, also sentenced to jail, was acquitted by the appeals court. (The Full City ran aground off Telemark during a summer storm and the grounding released oil that became the worst oil spill in Norwegian history.) 

A Macedonian court jailed two men for a year because of a boating accident on Lake Ohrid in 2009 in which fifteen Bulgarian tourists died. Their offenses were allowing overcrowding and issuing false safety certificates. 

Nature

Researchers searching for the Pacific Ocean’s proverbial Great Garbage Patch of floating plastic, a patch reported as being twice the size of Texas and somewhere between California and Japan, found it hard to find and far less dense than reported. Scientists often could not see much plastic from the deck of their research vessel. “The amount of plastic out there isn’t trivial but the patch is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size,” reported one scientist. And the patch is not growing exponentially, as was earlier reported.

In New Zealand, a young humpback whale swam into a Tory Channel mussel-farming operation and became so entangled that it became exhausted. The mussel-farmers moved a barge alongside the whale and it was utterly passive during the 45 minutes it took to cut the whale free with the help of a crane on the barge.

A massive underwater landslide 200 miles off Cornwall caused a minor but measurable tsunami along the UK’s south coast. Wave heights were measured as being between 05 and 0.8 meters.

The North Atlantic island of Rockall is exceedingly unattractive to most people, being 82-feet wide, 101-feet long, and 68-feet high and 187 miles from the nearest land, and the highest waves in the world (95 feet) were measured nearby. Nevertheless, a Yorkshireman plans to spend a night on the island to replace a brass plaque left there in 1955 and re-establish Britain’s ownership of the island. (There is a four-way dispute between the UK, Ireland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands over ownership.) By the way, his name is Strangeway.

Metal Bashing

The 1960-built tanker Wenjiang was launched as the British Curlew for BP Tanker Co. It was shelled and abandoned in 1980 during the Iran/Iraq war while at Basrah. Apparently it stayed afloat and managed to end up Bandar Abbas in Iran. Someone decided that nobody really owned the tanker, took over ownership, a tug appeared, and the tow headed for Pakistan and scrapping. The real owners are unhappy.

China’s largest shipyard will expand into green recycling by erecting the world’s largest dismantling facility. It should be capable of dismantling about 75 ships a year that range in size from about 50,000 dwt to a VLCC-like 300,000 dwt.

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives

Due to the monsoon season, Somali pirates left open waters and concentrated their activities in the southern Red Sea and off the coast of Oman. Somali fishermen reminded everyone that they too carry AK-47s but just for self-defense against the real pirates. (If a fishing skiff’s equipment includes a boarding ladder and several RPG’s, it’s probably a pirate vessel.) And Somali pirates did something unusual: they rescued nineteen crewmembers from the cargo vessel Orna after it caught fire. No word whether they were held for ransom.

Odd Bits

Prince William and his new bride visited Canada and their progression has been much more sedate than the last time Canada was visited (in 1786) by another Royal Navy officer and heir to the throne with the name of William. That William, later King William IV, could be a rousterer (his several visits to Halifax while a junior officer are still prominent parts of local history) and he fathered several illegitimate children, including ten by one actress/mistress. (He would have married her but descendants of George II were forbidden to marry unless they obtained the reigning monarch's consent.)

Last summer, Canadian government searchers discovered the Arctic exploration ship HMS Investigator, which sank in 1854 off Banks Island. This summer, the same people hope to find HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, the heart of Sir John Franklin’s abortive 1854 expedition to discover the Northwest Passage. The vessels are Canada’s only national historic sites with no known location. Noted one searcher, Even if they are not found, “next time the team will know where not to look.”

A major problem for shipping companies and port operators is that shippers too often mislabel the weight or contents of containers, and that practice has resulted in a number of accidents. (When the MSC Napoli was grounded, it was found that the declared weights for 137 of the 600 shipping containers on its deck differed from actual weights by more than three tons.) The major shipping companies are organizing a Cargo Incident Notifications Network called Cinsnet (perhaps it would be better labeled as Sinsnet?) to help identify both potentially dangerous containers and industry-wide trends.

The following may tell readers something about the so-called “warrior complex.” The Navy SEALS that killed Osama bin Laden referred to him as “Geronimo” while those insiders at the Pentagon and the CIA preferred “Cakebread.”

Coal from Indonesia has been catching fire while being carried to China so one insurance company issued a simple checklist. Coals are ranked from anthracite, bituminous, and sub-bituminous down to lignite (aka brown coal). Indonesia mostly exports the lower-ranked coals, which tend to self-ignite. Shipments often have a high moisture content, which is a no-no. 

Upon hearing an electronic emergency signal one night, British coastguard authorities launched a lifeboat and searched for three hours some four miles off the Welsh coast before it was realized that the signal had been transmitted by a standard electronic device in a BMW parked on the ferry European Endeavour inbound from Dublin. This Emergency Telematics anti-theft, send-help device is fitted to many new BMW and Volvo vehicles.

Per international agreement, the longer a vessel, the lower must be the pitch of its horn. If longer than 200 meters, its horn must issue a sound between 70 and 200 Hertz. For lengths between 75 and 200 meters, the sound should be between 130 and 350 Hz, and between 20 and 75 meters, the pitch must be an almost squeaky 250-700 Hz. (To establish a baseline here, A above middle C is normally 440 Hz but is sometimes set at 432 Hz for a “warmer” orchestral tone.)

Head-Shakers

Since many persons refuse to believe the US Government’s announcement that Osama Bin Laden is dead, an underseas explorer and treasure hunter will search for the body and, if successful, he announced he will obtain DNA and other evidence.

Other Shores - July 2011

Is it Fiji or Tonga that owns the remote Minerva Reefs (two submerged atolls named after the wrecked whaleship Minerva)? The question became important when two Tongan patrol boats drove off a lone Fijian patrol boat. Any conflict will be limited; tiny Fiji has 3,500 soldiers, no air force, and nine patrol boats and the tinier Tonga has 500 soldiers, one maritime-patrol airplane, and three patrol boats plus a royal yacht. (The quarrel is really over Tonga’s providing refuge to a fleeing dissenter, a member of a prominent Fijian family.) 
 

Danish shipping giant Maersk is deep into the green scene. Its latest environmental policy is to reduce to a minimum the amount of illegally logged tropical hardwoods in the floors of its shipping containers.

Shipping companies are trying to ensure that the mega-container ships on order will have an adequate supply of containers by trying to fix ten-year charters for feeder ships of about 1,100-teu capacity.

At one point during the month, the transpacific rate per loaded 40-foot container was down to $1,932.

Increasing production in the US of shale gas and oil as a result of fracking (fracturing the shale layers in which gas and oil are trapped) should reduce by 5% the average ton-miles of oil cargo shipped, especially from the Middle East to the US. Attention in the Middle East became focused on the Asian market. And major flooding along the Mississippi River drastically cut coal shipments southward and that affected bulker traffic in the Gulf of Mexico.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

In Columbia, the bulker Chios Wind ran aground in the River Magdalena and that blocked access to the port of Barranquila for five days. As a result, at least seven ships were diverted to the nearby ports of Santa Maria and Cartagena. The German-owned deep-sea salvage tug Uranus finally arrived and pulled out the harbor’s cork.

Ships collided: At night, the container ship Euros London collided with and sank the 165-foot pogy fishing boat Sandy Point about eight miles south of Gulfport, Mississippi and three of its crew of sixteen died. Worldwide, shore installations took a beating. In New Zealand, the container ship Maersk Dabou punched a large hole in its side when it hit the Beach Street Wharf at Port Chalmers. In the UK at Littlehampton, the dredger Arco Dee lost control in high winds and its superstructure scraped a concrete wall. No holes this time. At Odessa, the container ship RHL Fidelitas lost its ability to reverse and slammed into a pilot boat and the wharf while trying to dock. The pilot boat sank and the pier needed extensive repairs. And at Karmoy in Norway, so much gravel was unloaded from the Nyyfjeli that the pier collapsed.

In Thailand at Laem Chabang, the container ship MOL Aqua had a fire and explosion in a cargo hold as it was berthing. In Sweden at Trollhatten, fire broke out in a load of scrap cars on the cargo/container ship Rebecca Rousing. A port crane lifted off the scrap to allow access to the fire, and it was extinguished but then broke out again.

At a Singapore shipyard, a welder and a nearby worker were killed when fumes exploded in a tank on a barge. The tank had been painted a few days earlier. At Port Manatee in Florida, a dockworker died when he lost his footing and fell about 25 feet down a shaft between a load and the side of a ship. An overloaded crane collapsed at a Vietnamese shipyard, killing two South Korean workers and injuring two others. At Mexico’s Veracruz, three crewmembers of a Greek-flagged cargo ship loading maize died of asphyxiation when the door to a cargo hold accidentally swung shut and trapped them inside. (The bulker was probably the Chios Destiny.)

Alaskan Coast Guard helicopters found the bodies of five clam diggers on mudflats southwest of Kalgin Island in Cook Inlet. They had been digging for razor clams and what happened to their twenty-foot skiff was unclear. At Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick the ro/ro ferry Grand Manan V failed to reach its dock, hitting a nearby ledge. Its bow then swung around and hit the dock. About 100 passengers and eighteen crewmen were helped ashore from the ferry in its awkward perch on the ledges. Failure of one engine to go into reverse was the probable cause of the accident. An injured sailor was brought into Bermuda for treatment of serious burns to his hands after an accident on board the container ship Washington Express. He was picked up by the pilot boat at Five Fathom Hole off St David’s and the container ship continued on its way from Germany to Charleston, South Carolina.

Somewhere in the Bering Sea, a Coast Guard C-130 helped a Coast Guard vessel by dropping enough spare parts onto the cutter Bertholf to enable repair of its helicopter. In India, the product tanker Pratibha Neera gave Vishakhapatnam Port authorities a major scare when it developed a severe list while loading. A problem regulating the loading-compensating ballast was the probable cause. 

Gray Fleets

Two officers and two others of the Indian Navy died when a floodgate collapsed at the naval dockyard at Visakhapatnam on that nation’s East Coast. In New York City for Fleet Week, a US Marine was struck and killed by a car about 200 yards from his ship, the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7).

A lieutenant commander on the Royal Navy frigate HMS Richmond was sent home from anti-piracy patrolling because of a seven-month affair with a leading seaman (a female). His father is a Rear Admiral and former head of naval training. The commanding officer of the US Navy’s Blue Angels flight team was relieved of his command at his request. He had led the team into a lower-than-planned maneuver during an air show at Lynchburg, Virginia. In Alaska, the commanding officer of the USCGC Anacapa was temporarily relieved of his command after superiors lost confidence in his ability to command. The vessel is a 110-foot patrol boat.

The Royal Australian Navy apologized to Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, and New Zealand because the submarine HMAS Decaineux, which was to play the enemy submarine during anti-submarine Exercise Bersama Shield in the South China Sea, couldn’t make it. The sub had to sit out the exercise in Singapore with “propulsion problems.” Making matters worse for the Ozzies was the discovery that just before the exercise the navy newspaper Navy News had written an imaginative and complimentary article on the sub’s daring performance in the exercise. High brass were not amused.

What does a nation do when it gets rid of its carrier-based aircraft but wants have a few carrier-trained fliers? It sheds its national pride and looks for alternative schemes. Since the UK has deleted its Harrier aircraft and its last aircraft carrier, naval fliers will serve on American carriers and be trained to fly F-18s, a plane the UK does not plan to operate. The flyers will form the basic training cadre when the Royal Navy once again has naval jet aircraft (probably a variant of the US Joint Strike Fighter F-35) sometime in the next decade. And thirty Royal Navy fliers will serve on the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle as soon as they learn enough French in a Parisian school. They will then join the air wing of the Charles de Gaulle for three years to gain experience flying French Rafale jets.

The French are also looking for win-win options. That nation has the one aircraft carrier while the UK has none but has two 60,000-ton biggies ’abuilding, although one will be put into storage as soon as it is completed. As a win-win option, French naval authorities have been pondering cooperative schemes in which that second carrier might fly the tricolor at times. As a French admiral explained, “It would be useful to each have a national carrier [and] then have an extra carrier – not as expensive and for training uses [only] – for UK and French use.” 

For his 90th birthday the Duke of Edinburgh was made the Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy. Her Majesty had held the office of the titular head of the Navy since 1964 but passed it on to her husband as he celebrated his ninth decade. The office dates from the 14th century.

White Fleets

At Gibraltar, a sullage* tank on the North Mole exploded and that triggered a string of frantic activities. The first was to rescue the two men who had been welding on the tank’s top. They were badly burned and one had life-threatening burns. Also needing help were twelve passengers (mostly minor burns and one fracture) on the cruise ship Independence of the Seas, which was moored near the burning tank and the ship’s master then hurriedly took his ship to sea, leaving two passengers behind. Three tugs operated by a local company were among the first-responders. Two tugs set to work to help vacate the area of vessels - including fuel-laden bunker barges - before starting to spray the tanks adjacent to the fire to help cool them down. 
Meanwhile, the tug Egerton, crewed by off-duty employees who had run down to the port to offer their assistance, took on the task of moving a barge named Slop 107 that was docked next to the exploded tank and carrying fluids similar to what was in the burning tank. When the Egerton arrived at the scene, its crew found the company’s tug Sun Swale up against the quay next to the fuel barge, spraying water on the tanks on land. Getting the barge underway was not easy; Slop 1707 was tied up to two bollards and the initial plan was for someone to approach along the quay and cut the ropes, allowing Egerton to tow it away.
 But the fire intensified and it became too hot and too risky for land-based personnel to help.
 So the master of the Egerton pushed the barge against the quay, allowing two brothers to jump across and release the ropes. They were sprayed with water by the crew on the Sun Swale to give them some protection from the heat.

(*Sullage is usually defined as being gray water, the wastewater generated from domestic activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing. In this case, sullage meant a mixture of oil and water. Sullage is not to be confused with ullage, the unused space in a nearly filled tank.)

The MSC Opera had to be towed to Sweden after an engineroom blast cause a massive power failure in the Baltic Sea. Readers know what “no power” means – no toilets, lights, air conditioning, or hot food – in short, much like steerage class was a century ago. At Copenhagen while leaving port, the Costa Magica, with a pilot on board, ran onto a sand bar without harming a single passenger. A tug pulled the ship free the same day.

A woman with symptoms of a stroke was heli-evacuated by an Alaska-based Coast Guard chopper from the Celebrity Millennium.

In the state of Washington at Woodinville, a tour bus carrying 46 passengers from the Sapphire Princess had mechanical problems. First, it ran across the community’s award-winning traffic circle, made it around the next traffic circle but not the third, and finally hit two cars along the way before being stopped by two large boulders. No one in the bus was hurt.

 

Norway was not kind to some cruise ships. While boarding passengers at Bergen, Norway, the Costa Deliziosa broke free, tearing off two bollards and a large chunk of the wharf. Fifty feet of the pier were destroyed and walkways plunged into the sea. After some cleaning up, the final one hundred passengers were boarded and the ship departed towards Geiranger. (140-180 cruise ships visit the beautiful fjord there during the four-month cruise season.) And at Kristiansand, the Oriana acquired a large dent in her stern after colliding with the dockside in Norway. The vessel was beginning to maneuver away from the quayside when a combination of high winds and fierce tidal conditions resulted in Oriana’s stern striking the corner of the solid stone dock, damaging a water pipe and a fiber-optic cable. Nobody was hurt and the ship was able to head to Southampton with 1,800 passengers on board.

In 2009, a woman slipped on a pool deck on the Carnival Pride and suffered a fractured kneecap and that required at least six surgeries. She sued, claiming that the cruise company knew the deck was slippery by nature and knew of other falls on the Pride and other ships in its fleet. She also claimed that she will need one or two complete knee replacements in the future. A US judge awarded her a total of exactly $2,998,155.70.

Those That Go Back and Forth

In Scotland, the £25 million ferry Finlaggan was the first new large ferry in the Calmac fleet in ten years and the first new ferry to serve Islay in forty years but the new vessel broke down with engine problems that cancelled its inaugural voyage. The problem was an “unexplained component failure of the port engine.” 

The Leonora Christina, one of the world’s largest high-speed ferries at 371 feet (113 meters), 1,400 passengers, and 357 cars, allided with a freshwater supply vessel at the entrance of the Suez Canal. The damage was not serious enough to stop the vessel continuing through the Suez Canal on its delivery voyage but it will arrive in Denmark with a depressing depression in its side.

The old (1965) ferry Grand Manan V made an unconventional and unsuccessful landing at its wharf at Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick. It hit a ledge and then its bow swung around and hit the pier. About 100 passengers and eighteen crewmen had to be helped off the ferry from its awkward perch on the ledge. Loss of the ability to reverse one engine was the probable cause. 

On Vancouver Island at Swartz Bay, a man committed suicide by driving his pickup truck at high speed through a barrier, down a lane leading to a loading ramp, and off the ferry’s ramp and into the water.

In Indonesia, at least 27 people died when a passenger ferry capsized off Indonesia’s Borneo but more than 70 people were rescued. The ferry was carrying four crewmembers and more than 100 passengers when it capsized and sank about two hours after the ship departed from Tanjung Dewa.

Legal Matters

In an unpublished decision, a US Appeals Court confirmed that the manufacturers of a recre

ational vessel and its engine were liable for injuries if a propeller blade cut and severely injured a swimmer. 

Imports

Refugees fleeing the recent “Arab Spring” series of revolts and overthrown rulers increased the already-massive illegal-immigration problem for other nations. Typical was the 100-foot fishing vessel Wave. With high hopes for better lives for those onboard, it set out from Tripoli in Libya with maybe 850 refugees from Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Pakistan and Bangladesh but ran aground and capsized off the Tunisian coast. Rescue forces were able to save 578 men, women, and children, and the reader can do the remaining arithmetic. The survivors were sent to a refugee camp at Ras Ajdir near the Libyan border.

Nature

Hydrophone-using scientists located some rare right whales in a region off Greenland where they were thought to be extinct. 

Southern California has the world’s first hybrid tugs, the purpose-built Carolyn Dorothy, and a converted sister, the Campbell Foss. European designers have been developing hybrid designs too and the Dutch tug RT Adriaan will be retrofitted with basically similar hybrid systems that combine main diesels engines, electric motors, and batteries. All three tugs basically use electric power except for tasks (high-speed transits or ship assist) that require more power, and that is when the main engines are started and used.

Metal-Bashing

She may look like an oversized, over-specified shrimp trawler but an as-yet-unnamed vessel and a 2009-delivered sister named Poncho will trawl for old tires, scrap metal, and any other scrap at the sites of decommissioned oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. US laws require that such sites be left clean enough to allow the typical Gulf shrimp boat to safely use its trawls.

Shell has decided to go ahead with construction of the world’s first Floating Liquefied Natural Gas facility. This “vessel” will process gas from offshore fields and cool it into liquefied natural gas. The FLNG facility will be immense, at 1,600 feet long and a displacement of about 600,000 tons (about six times the largest aircraft carrier). Some 260,000 tons of that displacement will be steel (as the Australian press release parochially notes, that is about five times the steel used in the Sydney Bridge). A South Korean yard will build what will be the world’s largest floating offshore facility.

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives

In 2010, Somalian pirates attacked 4,185 seafarers with firearms and rocket-propelled grenades; 342 seafarers were rescued from citadels (ships’ reinforced security rooms); 1,090 seafarers were taken hostage; 516 seafarers were used as human shields; and as many as 488 seafarers were subjected to abuse or torture. Currently, more than 400 mariners are held captive along with more than twenty vessels. Piracy increases the cost of international commerce by $12 billion a year. 

Piracy Somalia style, is big business with the actual pirates getting only pennies of each ransom dollar. There is even an actual stock exchange (at Harardheere and established ‘way back in 2009) that may list more than seventy entities that sell shares in pirate activities. As one participant bragged, “We’ve made piracy a community activity.” Somalia also has five banks eager and able to launder pirate money. Perhaps international sanctions are needed to complement the busy but relatively ineffective patrols by the warships of many nations?

Odd Bits and Head Shakers

The Felicity Tenacity, carrying 23,500 tons of propane, ran a gauntlet of vessel abuse during the recent Japanese tsunami. First, it broke free and rammed into the bulker China Steel Integrity, and was then battered in turn by numerous smaller boats and tugs before it hit a jetty, which opened a gash in its side. The vessel started taking on water into the engineroom but soon ran aground. It was repeatedly freed and then trapped again as tides came and went, and that sequence damaged and bent the rudder. The ship remained at anchor for at least two weeks before its dangerous cargo was discharged and the ship could limp to a repair yard. 

NOAA’s Office of Coastal Survey now uses Twitter to keep customers abreast of critical chart corrections and new chart editions. See www.twitter.com/nauticalcharts.

In May, the bulker Double Prosperity, which departed Australia for India with 65,351 metric tons of coal, ran aground on Bacud reef that runs along Sarangani Bay in the Philippines. The ship’s captain admitted to officials that he had moved his ship closer to the mainland merely to establish solid cellphone signals.

Other Shores - June 2011

The Administration, some members of Congress, and many in the media attack the oil companies for their greed but here are a couple of facts that may illustrate the unique financial conditions under which US oil companies operate. One: The oil companies pay a royalty of 18.75 percent to the federal government on all oil produced in the US. Two: Ethanol/biofuels receive federal support totaling $5.72 per million BTU while petroleum and natural gas receive a subsidy of just $0.03 per million BTU.

Driving its ships at high speeds (more than 18 knots) through pirate-ridden Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden and paying for piracy-related crew hardships cost shipping giant Maersk $100 million last year and that figure is expected to exceed $200 million in 2011 due to increasing fuel costs.

Thin Places and Hard Knocks

On the Kiel Canal, the clipper bow of the container ship OOCL Finland swept the entire wheelhouse off the Russian container ship Tyumen-2. Two of four men in the wheelhouse ended up on the bottom of the Canal, still inside the upside-down wheelhouse. A tanker ran into the embankment while trying to pass the two ships. In Australia, Fremantle authorities were reminded that a 2004 engineering report had stated that the port’s “traffic” (vehicular?) bridge was structurally unsound when the re-fuelling tanker Parmelia 1 hit the nearby rail bridge. It appeared that an incoming tide contributed to the alllsion. No fuel was spilt and the small tanker was towed away after the incident. The container ship MSC Maria, en route from St. Petersburg to Rotterdam, ran into the concrete breakwater outside Kronstadt harbor at 10.8 knots even though the crew had dropped an anchor. Apparently the vessel experienced a rudder malfunction. In the North Sea, the standby safety vessel Grampian Defender lost all power as it approached the BP Magnus platform and the vessel slid under the platform. One bent mainmast.

 

In Australia at Gladstone, the coal- loaded bulker Dumun ran aground in the main shipping channel due to steering failure and a tug helped free it an hour and a half later. In the Philippines, the Panama-registered cargo ship Double Prosperity was en route to India from Australia with 65,900 metric tons of coal when it hit the Bakud Reef off Kiamba town. 

About forty nautical miles off the Kannur coast in north Kerala, a fire broke out in the engine room of the Orchids, a tanker bound for Cochin Port from New Mangalore with gasoline. The fire was immediately doused and there was no fuel or gasoline spill and no casualties. Off remote Tristan da Cunha Island in the South Atlantic, an explosion (probably fueled by an ammonia gas leak) resulted in a fire on the Taiwanese fishing vessel Lai Ching. Dead were five crewmembers, four went missing, and the remaining members managed to survive by jumping off the ship, getting into lifeboats, and waiting for help. They were soon picked up by the nearby Hsiang Man Ching. This vessel waited for Tristan da Cunha rescuers to take the eleven most-severely injured crewmembers and then headed for Cape Town at ten knots with thirteen slightly injured crewmembers. Meanwhile, the South African Navy Valour-class frigate SAS Isandlwana headed for Tristan da Cunha to assist in treating the seriously injured Taiwanese sailors. In the Faroe Islands, fire broke out on board one of the Islands’ largest fishing vessels, the 345-foot trawler Athena, which was being rebuilt at Runavik after a massive fire last October. The latest fire went out of control, a large explosion was heard, and the coastguard vessels Brimil and Tjaldrid were deployed to fight the fire. People in the local area were evacuated due to dangers of the smoke and escaping gas. (The vessel's ammonia plant contained 18 tons of ammonia.) An attempt was made to tow the ship out of the harbor but that meant passing a towing wire through the Athena’s bow-thruster tunnel underwater since it was impossible to make fast above deck. It was the third time Athena had been stuck by a large fire.

Off New Zealand’s South Island, more than 100 people are marooned for a while on the drill ship Noble Discoverer off the Taranaki coast. The rig, which had been drilling on the Ruru-1 exploration well on the southern boundary of the Maui gas field, was disconnected it from its wellhead as a precautionary measure before heavy winds hit. But, during the height of the storm, some of the vessel's anchor lines failed and the remaining lines were released, enabling the ship to be steered safely away from the location to find shelter in deeper water. Rolling heavily in the big seas due to its drilling derrick, the top-heavy vessel may have drifted within 1000 meters of the Maui-B production platform near the Tui oilfield to the north and the floating production and storage vessel Umuroa, laden with thousands of barrels of crude oil. While leaving a pier at Houston, the container ship Horizon Challenger clipped the dock and damaged a crane. Any problems were quickly and amiably resolved. Off Campeche, Mexico, 713 oil platform workers were evacuated when the flotel (“floating hotel”) oil platform Jupiter sank. The structure is taller than the water depth so much of the flotel remained above water. 

In the Fermer Baelt in the Baltic, a seaman was crushed on Solitaire, the world largest pipelay vessel, and he was rushed to a Norwegian hospital. While laying cables in Scotland, a crewman on the landing craft Forth Guardsman fell overboard and was trapped between the cable and the vessel. He died. Five miles off Slaughter Beach, Delaware, a crewmember fell some 20 feet into a cargo hold on the Greek oilrig Cosmic. Paramedics back-boarded the patient for transport. A State Police helicopter then lowered medical personnel to the ship. They and the casualty were hoisted up to the chopper, which went to the shore where the casualty was stabilized. He was then flown to a hospital where he was listed in critical condition. Lifeboat drills again took a human toll. This time it was in the Chinese port of Yantian and it was two officers on the containership Christophe Colomb who died when the release mechanism failed and the lifeboat dropped into the water. Ironically, the lifeboat was fitted with an IMO-recommended fall preventer. At Singapore, a Bangladeshi dockworker and the corpse of a companion were found in a container. They had been there for nine days with nothing but a pack of cigarettes and had entered the container for a post-meal nap. At Houston, a crane was used to retrieve an injured female stevedore from the hold of a ship, possibly the Norwegian-flag bulker Fermita.

 

Gray Fleets

The US Navy demonstrated a new laser weapon by tracking a small boat underway in rough water. First the laser set fire to one of its two 200-hp outboard motors and soon both motors were aflame. Worldwide, millions of video viewers silently cringed at the wanton destruction. The 15-kW laser was mounted on the destroyer USS Paul Foster (DD-964). The Navy plans to acquire a megawatt laser weapon that should cut through 2,000 feet of steel a second.

Up to 1,000 workers may be added to Newport News Shipbuilding's Virginia-class attack submarine construction program as production increases to two subs per year. But the Navy suspended the authority of its Norfolk command to oversee repair of Navy ships by private contractors, citing missing and flawed reports. A senior officer will provide technical oversight until confidence is restored.

The US Navy relieved the commanding officer (a female) of the USS Ponce (LPD-15) for poor leadership and failure to follow up on reports of sailors hazing other sailors. She was also charged with improperly handling a loaded weapon, thus endangering some of her crew. The executive officer (a male) was relieved for failing to support her. Both officers were “mustangs,” having started their Navy careers as enlisted personnel. 

The Royal Navy’s latest £1.2 billion nuclear submarine, the hard-luck HMS Astute, continued its trouble-attracting career. The hi-tech nuclear-powered attack sub was towed to the Faslane Naval Base after it suffered “a technical issue with hydraulics” that could have killed the entire crew. Reportedly, the hydraulics controlled the sub’s diving planes.

At Singapore, a civilian sub-contractor working on one of the ship's sea boats fell 13 meters from the side of the Australian replenishment oiler HMAS Success into the water. Three Navy sailors came to his aid, entering the water to bring the unconscious man to the surface, but he died a few hours later from his injuries.

White Fleets

Cruise fleet operator Carnival Corp filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana seeking damages for “economic losses and damages” it claims to have suffered as a result of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The lawsuit named just about every firm or organization and person connected with the spill.

In Turkish waters, the cruise ship Melody lost power near the Akbas Light while transiting the Canakkale Strait and that gave its 946 passengers a thrill. The tug Kurtarma-1 soon arrived and stood by until the cruise ship’s engines ran sweetly again. In Alaska, the 935-foot cruise ship Westerdam was maneuvering through ice near Hubbard Glacier ice in the vicinity of Yakutat Bay when it sustained damage approximately 15 feet below the waterline. The hull was reportedly not breached and no injuries or pollution were reported. The Westerdam continued on her voyage to Sitka,

In the Bahamas, a passenger from the Carnival Sensation was killed and another was seriously injured in a shore-side jet-ski accident.

How sanitary is your typical cruise ship? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rigorously inspects each vessel and assigns a sanitation rating. Anything below 86 is a fail. One cruise company averages a rolling 12-month average for all of its ships of 98.7 and the Norwegian Epic got a 100 in its first test. A few cruise ships do get close to the fail level but none have failed since the Albatross, a private vessel, earned a 69 back in February 2010. Standards seem high. Dipping a pot in a hot sanitizing mix for less than 30 seconds is a typical no-no, as is storing strawberries in a plastic bag in the same chest freezer as raw meat. 

They That Go Back and Forth

In Libya, the passenger ro/ro Red Star came under rocket attack from government forces while helping to evacuate people from Misrata. At least five people died and there was widespread panic among those trying to board the vessel. The vessel, chartered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), had waited offshore for several days because of the continuing fighting. 

At least twenty people drowned and five others were missing after a minibus carrying 32 passengers slipped into the Nile while it was disembarking from a ferry. The bus was returning from a traditional visit to a graveyard on the 40th day after the death of a relative of one of the passengers. In Bangladesh, the double-decked ferry Bipasha, operating at night on the Meghna River and badly overloaded with 200 on the 30-person-capacity ferry, struck a sunken vessel and itself sank. About sixty swam to shore but more than thirty died. 

The anchor of the Norwegian ferry Pride of Telemark (28,559 gt, built 1983) dragged a fiber-optic cable about 200 to 300 meters out of position while on a voyage from Spind to Lundevagen, and that left customers at Spind without broadband. The vessel required the assistance of pilot boats to get loose. The cable was destroyed and a new cable was estimated as costing a surprisingly modest 150,000 Norwegian Crowns (about $27,000).

In the Sea of Japan, the Russian ferry Michael Lukonin sent out a distress call during a storm, with waves of up to 2.5 meters high and with winds up to 15 meters per second. It had lost use of its main engine. The Sahkalin Shipping Company’s large Pioneer Kholmsk went to the rescue (as it often seems to do) and towed the disabled ship to Djigit Bay in the north of Primorsky Krai. There, repairs were made and the ferry headed for Korea, possibly to be scrapped. 

Somewhere probably in the Philippines (the news item was negligent in the completeness of its reportage of Who, What, Where, When, Why), the passenger ro/ro Mary The Queen (7,054 gt, built in 1985 as the Ciudad de Valencia) ran aground after “the vessel tried to head back to port due to big waves. Due to low tide, the vessel was maneuvering back to port but got stuck in shallow water about two km off pier 8.” That left at least 1,000 passengers stranded. Two tugs proceeded to the scene to tow the vessel off but had to wait until the high tide came in.

In the State of Washington, a multi-car collision on the Kingston ferry dock delayed sailing of the Spokane. One vehicle collided with a railing and that caused at least one other vehicle to crash. One person was transported to a hospital.

Boisterous Cook Strait separates the two main islands of New Zealand and several large ferries provide cross-Strait service. Last month, several ro/ro ferries made the news. Passengers on an unidentified Cook Strait ferry (probably either the Aratere or Kaitai) were distressed to watch a cow in a trailer parked on the top vehicle deck become distressed and then collapse and die. Another cow was later found dead in the same trailer. The stock company explained it had transported twenty loads a week for fifty weeks a year and had had no problems in the last three years. While en route from Wellington, the Interisland Line's ferry, the Monte Stello, veered off-course (possibly due to the helm being put the wrong way) and collided with what was initially reported to be an “object” just inside the Tory Channel. A company spokeswoman acknowledged that a brief grounding had taken place, the starboard propeller had been damaged, and that the ferry had continued on to Picton on one engine. There were truck drivers on board the ferry but no other passengers. Finally, at Wellington, the Cook Strait ferry Santa Regina was pushed by strong winds onto a berthed fishing boat at Glasgow Wharf. The FV had been for sale for many months and any damage to it seemed of little concern to anyone but the ferry suffered a long dent and gash on its stern quarter and was taken out of service for repairs.

In the US, determining a safe passenger load for a ferry was legally based on an average body weight of 160 pounds but a deadly accident or two demonstrated that humans now tend to weigh somewhat more so the US Coast Guard has raised the figure to 185 pounds.

Legal Matters

The Chinese bulker Shen Neng 1 ran aground on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef about a year ago and an accident report stated that the principal reason for the grounding that was that its new chief mate had had too little rest. He had wanted to make sure that the cargo of coal was loaded properly but loading took far longer than planned and he got only two and a half hours of naps in the 38.5 hours preceding the moment when he made a navigational error that put the ship aground. The accident left a scar three kilometers long in the Reef and it could take twenty years for Nature to repair it.

Nature

Fire ants can assemble themselves into a waterproof raft that can float for months. Trapped air helps provide flotation and enables the bottom ants to breath.

Imports

Since the outbreaks of unrest in North Africa, at least 25,000 Africans have used small boats to escape the troubles and to get a better life (ie, a job) but many of these migrants died in their attempts. Typical was a very small and overcrowded boat carrying 300 African immigrants that sank in the Mediterranean Sea near Libya’s coastline and broke into pieces only an hour after sailing. Dead were at least sixteen African asylum-seekers.

Nasties and Territorial Imperatives

Somalian piracy is getting nastier. Executions (including beheadings) and torture are now not uncommon (but such nasty deeds do tend to reduce the ransoms paid). In an example of spite, pirates held eight Indian seamen after their ship, the asphalt carrier Asphalt Venture, was freed after a $3.6 million ransom was paid because the pirates were mad at the Indian Navy for capturing pirates and putting them on trial In India. A pirate spokesman explained the situation thusly: “India has not only declared war against us but also it has risked the lives of many hostages.”

The Royal Navy has been teaching pirates it captures how to treat prisoners with dignity. It then usually releases these pirates as probably unprosecutable.

Metal Bashing

Brazilian iron ore mining giant Vale SA took delivery of the world's biggest ore carrier, a 400,000-ton capacity vessel built in South Korea by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. The new vessel, named Vale Brasil, is the first of seven ore carriers ordered by Vale from the South Korean shipyard. 

Later this summer, Maersk should order another ten 18,000-TEU container ships from a South Korean builder and competitors CMA CGM and Claus-Peter Offen are discussing with builders about enlarging five 12,800-TEU ships on order to 16,000 TEU but the #2 company, Mediterranean Shipping, is not considering enlargement of any boxship it has ordered.

Odd Bits and Head-Shakers

The main function of the replenishment ship USNS Walter S. Diehl (T-AO 193) is to refuel warships while they steam alongside and so its after structure bears two captions. They may bewilder foreign warships but the port-side caption reads FULL SERVICE while the matching caption to starboard reads SELF SERVICE. 

Russia launched an urgent rescue mission after the nuclear-powered icebreaker Taimyr developed a nuclear leak in the frozen Kara Sea about 2,000 kilometers east of Norway’s border and was forced to abandon its mission. The seriousness of the event could be registered as a zero on the seven-point International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale – a level officially defined as “bearing no safety significance” but officials did look into the possibility of the situation becoming more serious. In any case, the incident was serious enough to force the mammoth vessel to abandon its mission and head back to the northwestern city of Murmansk using only its diesel engines. Another icebreaker was dispatched to help the vessel’s journey back to port. 

In the Indian Ocean, a Military Sealift Command replenishment tanker and a warship customer routinely changed course to improve sea-keeping conditions for an upcoming fuel transfer, and they ended up headed towards a small Arabian dhow. It nervously changed course to avoid the oncharging grey vessels. Soon after and perhaps coincidentally, a large yellow plastic bag, quite empty and with its corners neatly clipped off, was spotted. Nearby were the corners, still afloat.