MAC has a particular distaste for psuedoscience. If someone makes claims that they refuse to back up with solid, peer-reviewed evidence he shows them the door. Typically, a claim will be made that is not testable or verifiable, sometime the woo-woo vendor will demand that MAC gives him a considerable amount of money before evidence will be given that something actually works. Now lets discuss The Maritime Research Institute of the Netherlands.

We’ve seen the PR release, but it doesn’t say much and is, frankly, a disappointment. The Maritime Research Institute of the Netherlands boasts that “For the first time ever some of the reasons why containers are lost overboard have been investigated by the pioneering Lashing@Sea project, that has just completed after three years of intensive research.”

I can hear the squeak as you move to the edge of your seat, awaiting for The Maritime Research Institute of the Netherlands to impart this vital information. Unsqueak and sit back. You’re not going to get it. [Continue Reading →]

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It was not so much Transport Canada’s decision to investigate the capsize and sinking of the Barbados-flagged  sailing vessel Concordia that raised questioning eyebrows as the apparent implication that TSB did not trust the Barbadian maritime authority to do the job properly. The issues surrounding the investigation of what happened to the 58 metre tallship Concordia and the subsequent search and rescue operations, SAR, may go somewhat deeper.

Concordia, built in Poland and completed in 1992, apparently capsized swiftly and without warning on 17 February off the coast of Brazil. Its 64 passengers and crew were rescued 40 hours later by a merchant ship and subsequently transferred to Brazilian Navy rescue helicopters.

Concordia was registered as a sail-training yacht and operated as a “floating classroom” by Class Afloat, for which it was built. It is Canadian-owned and operated out of the port of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

What caused the capsize is yet to be determined. Some accounts suggest that she was knocked down by a microburst, a brief strong downblast of air that has been blamed for aircraft crashes and ship losses. Descriptions of what happened to Concordia are very similar to accounts of the losses of the Albatross, also a floating classroom, in 1961 and Pride of Baltimore in May 1986. [Continue Reading →]

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When Captain Doug Pine talks of floggings, mutiny and physical fear it’s not a tale of past centuries, but of today. Indeed it’s probably going on as you read this post. And it’s not happening aboard a flag of convenience vessel – the 187 gross tonne Majestic Blue, of which he was master until 18 October this year, proudly waves the flag of the United States of America at her stern.

We know that because the company itself boasts “Our companies are 100% owned by United States citize (sic) and vessel flies proudly the flag of the United States of America!”. It is unlikely that the United States of America will be proud of the vessel, owned by Majestic Blue Fisheries LLC, which flies its flag.

[Continue Reading →]

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Those of us who spend our time reading casualty reports often end up scratching our heads and muttering “Why the hell did he do that?” Mostly it’s down to a lack of safety awareness and, unfortunately, as the video still here shows, that lack of awareness may begin early in a seafarer’s training.

Here we have an instructor, apparently in Eastern Europe, doing an STCW course. He’s not wearing a hardhat, nor is he wearing a lifejacket. This tells us that he’s not teaching safety, and not teaching safely. He’s only teaching the students to pass STCW certification, not the safety lessons that might keep them alive and injured when they’re on a ship.

If the instructor isn’t taking safety seriously, will his students?

Isle of Man instructors are in Malaysia investigating the collision between the tanker Formosaproduct Brick and Ostende Max, which cost nine seafarers their lives. The Manx investigators do a good job and despite current attempts to hustle things along they know their business well enough to take the time necessary to do the job right.

It’s quite a complex investigation which will cover how the collision happened, how the Formosaproduct Brick caught fire, how the fire was fought and why the nine fatalities occurred, whether the Vessel Traffic Service was on the ball and whether the incident response was timely and appropriate.

It is likely, however, that liability issues and fear of legal action against the two vessels’ officers will hamper the gathering of necessary information for the safety investigation.

It does seem to have some similarities to the 1993 British Trent/Western Winner incident. Hopefully it will have a more satisfactory resolution.

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Three serious incidents have dominated the past week with the disappearance of the Arctic Sea, its cargo of timber valued at a little under $2m and its crew of more than a dozen Russian seafarers, garnering most of the bandwidth. That’s only natural, given the mysterious circumstances.

The trouble with speculating about what’s happened to the vessel is that there are simply too many options and not enough facts. Taken by the crew? Hijacked by the Russian Mafia or a disgruntled business interest? Suddenly sunk by a rogue wave? Taken by Somali pirates sporting long range tanks on their skiff outboards? Did she ever actually leave the Baltic? Take a number, but it certainly has got the attention of the security services: Arctic Sea passed through some of the heaviest traffic lanes and patrolled areas on the planet and vanished on the way. Or did she?

That story will run and run for a while but the fate of the Langeland and its six crew off the coast of Sweden as she sought a safe haven in bad weather has already faded from what limited attention it did get. Notably within days the wreck of the vessel was found an ROVs sent down to inspect her. A similar search for the missing m/v Rezzak has been a no-go because, we’ve been told, none of the concerned parties want to pay for sidescan sonar to find her.

Ferries in developing countries continued to take their toll in Incident number three: the sinking of the Princess Ashika off Tonga with more than 90 now missing. It is an enormous blow to the island nation.A Royal Commission has been set up to investigate the incident.

Somalia still gets the lion’s share of attention when it comes to piracy so it’s worth remembering that, out of the spotlight, it’s still continuing in the South China Sea with some seven vessels attacked since January, the most recent being the Singaporean-register tug Tahir on August 2.

Don’t be surprised to hear that the Danish Maritime Authority wants to tighten up, if that’s the phrase, on alcohol on ships after the report on the grounding of the Karin Schepers. ““He first realized that the ship was aground when a man he did not know came on the bridge…” says the DMA report on the incident, he being the chief officer who was asleep on the bridge, drunk and with the bridge watch alarm switched off and the ‘man he did not know’ being a pilot from a passing vessel. Read the report to brighten your day.

If you’re quick you might catch the BBC Radio 4 documentary on the British merchant navy, Under The Red Duster, which for once giving the seafarer a bit of the attention he deserves for keeping the world afloat. You can listen to it online.

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By William Redmond
MAC UK Correspondent

A container crane collapse during ship loading at Southampton Container Terminal on July 13 has raised serious issues about dock workers and ship crews’ safety in which the investigative authority, namely the Health & Safety Executive, HSE, does not emerge entirely unblemished.

The incident, which left the crane driver, 33-year old Mr Jay Squibb, with life-threatening injuries closely copied a similar crane collapse 19 months ago involving the same crane manufacturer and design at the same berth, the report on which dock operators are still awaiting.

[Continue Reading →]

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Coast Guard Ends Search for 67 Haitians Missing after Shipwreck
Latin American Herald Tribune
Fifteen Haitians died and 119 were rescued in a joint operation by the Coast Guard and Turks and Caicos maritime police.

Vessels without enough crew ‘are a hazard to shipping’
Scotsman
… the officer of the watch had been asleep for over three hours before the accident, while the vessel ploughed on like an unguided missile.

Mallorca target of Spain’s second attack in two days
Christian Science Monitor
… took the unusual step of shutting the island’s airport and ship terminals, effectively sealing off the island from the outside world for a few hours.

Sharp rise in crew abandonment cases
Lloyd’s List – London,UK
Another example — taken at random from the Lloyd’s MIU casualty service — is … to approval at the International Maritime Organization and International

Fire disrupts Atlantic ferry services for second straight day
The Canadian Press
A firefighter and one crew member were taken to hospital after the fire in the heating unit of the ferry. The vessel returned to North Sydney after the fire

Napoli salvage is declared over
BBC News
It was being taken to Portland in Dorset when the decision was taken to deliberately ground the vessel to try to prevent pollution damage to the world

Barge operators ask Marina to exclude them from CPC requirement …
Business Mirror
“Not all vessels will meet an accident. That is why there should be an actuarial study and the same should be done per sector since financial responsibility

US Congress Working on 2010 Appropriations for Loran-C and eloran …
Inside GNSS
eloran also has strong support from the General Lighthouse Authorities (GLA) of the UK and Ireland (equivalent to USCG for maritime safety,

Interferry joins IMO ro-pax safety review
Maritime Journal
The expert group submitted an initial report to the IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee after meeting for the first time during the recent MSC 86 session in

PIRACY/CRIME

Bill requiring cruise lines to share reports of on-board crime …
Gaea Times
The Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act tightens restrictions on an industry that has long evaded much scrutiny — in part because of the complexity of

UNDER THE RADAR

Fire destroys replica of 17th-century Dutch flagship, a major …
By Bureau News
Fire destroys replica of 17th-century Dutch flagship, a major tourist attraction. Bureau News. July 30th, 2009. Fire guts replica of 17th-century tall ship. AMSTERDAM — Fire consumed a replica of the 17th-century flagship of the Dutch

Expert gets in the middle of explosive situations

Explosives expert James Dahn was asked by Chinese officials for advice on transporting fireworks after a powerful blast had ripped through a cargo ship bound from Singapore to Hamburg. One crewman was killed, and a spectacular fire burned for four days on the 900-foot vessel.
That scenario could happen again, said Dahn of Rolling Meadows, who will discuss the dangers such cargoes present at a United Nations conference next month in Tokyo.

Mary Rose grant fully approved

Celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne this year have come to a fitting culmination with the announcement that the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has recently given full approval for a £21m grant to the Mary Rose Trust.

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It’s been a week of fire, ferries and fortunate rescues, as well as tragedies.

Sweden saw the collision of two ferries, Gotlandia and Gotlandia II, at Nynäshamn port, south of Stockholm, possibly with the help of a small barge. Some 15 injuries were reported. A boiler room fire, apparently in the thermal heating unit (thermal heating?! BDC) forced the ferry Atlantic Vision to return to port in Nova Scotia, the second fire on the vessel since December last year.  A smaller ferry, Captain, grounded on a boat launch on Balboa Island on July 21.

Apart from Atlantic Vision, fire ranged far and wide in the past seven days. Fire gutted a passenger-cum-cargo ship, MV Pemba at Dar es Salaam habour. Thiswas the second fire and fourth incident in Tanzanian waters in the past four months, which included a capsize with loss of life and another in which, says a Tanzanian report, “its backdoor fell off while in the Indian Ocean”. Three men were rescued, one sent to hospital, when the shrimp boat Kemo Sabay caught fire off Protection Island, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the somewhat larger,2,545 grt, containership Forum Avarua suffered an engine room fire.

Two whale stories, one of which got worldwide coverage: Princess Cruise Lines’ Sapphire Princess, went inadvertently spear fishing with its bulbous bow and came up with a 70-tonne, rare, fin whale. At the other end of the scale of size and intelligence were the 32 passengers aboard the whale-watching boat which sank off Mayne Island, Canada – none were wearing lifejackets in the open inflatable.

Thanking their lucky stars this week were two seafarers from the coal carrier United Treasure whose scaffold collapsed while they were painting a hold, resulting in four badly broken legs, a broken arm and serious spinal bruising. Also in the lotof the fortunate were the 20 crew of the bulker Ioannis NK, rescued by helicopter after the ship capsized and sank 98 nautical miles off Cape Columbine on the West Coast, near to Saldanha Bay.

Inevitably, there were the aftermaths of tragedy: the burial of the first victim of the Aguila sinking and the naming of an oilman whose body was found after he went missing from the Brent Delta platform in the North Sea.

Be safe out there

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Captain  Hristo Papukchiev, pictured right, is an unhappy man. How unhappy? Until April this year he was lead investigator for the Bulgarian Maritime Administration. Then, just a day after being tasked with leading the re-investigation of the sinking of the m/v Vanessa in a storm last year, he resigned.

So far, his story has only appeared in a Bulgarian-language magazine, Klass, online at Maritime Accident Casebook, and now, of course, here at gCaptain.

He joined the administration in October 2008 at about the same time as the sinking of the m/v Tolstoy with the loss of eight of her 10 crew, which became his first investigation. Despite attempts at delays interference he and his team completed the investigation and filed reports with EMSA and the IMO.

There were serious regulatory shortfalls revealed in the Tolstoy report – she had been deleted from the North Korean registry a year before the incident but still flew the DPRK flag, as well as shortcomings in the Bulgarian SAR system,which in fact was not in line with the description Bulgaria logged with the IMO.

Papukchiev believed there would be calls for action in response to the report.

Instead the report was shelved and no action taken. Neither the IMO nor EMSA encouraged Bulgaria to put its house in order. Today he suggests that if you’re in trouble in the Bulgarian area of responsibility it’s better to depend on a passing ship than the Bulgarian SAR system, which didn’t get underway until up to 10 hours after Tolstoy was on the seabed and around five hours after her EPIRB was activated. In fact the only two seafarers to survive the Tolstoy did so because they were picked up by a passing yacht.

No report has yet been issued on the sinking of m/v Vanessa, which lies undisturbed and unexamined in shallow waters. After Papukchiev accepted the task of re-investigating the loss, which cost the lives of nine crewmembers and a Ukrainian pilot with just one survivor, he was asked by a colleague “Who paid you to re-open the Vanessa case?”.

Says Papukchiev “I was shocked at first, but then started to ponder on the investigations done so far, the report that had been prepared long before my appointment, although not approved … Well, did this mean that its authors had been paid? Where were they now? These questions were my greatest concern, namely the Vanessa’s case had begun with a false start … Anyway, I was appointed to proceed with independent investigation because the society expected the truth to come to light. These investigations should be done very precisely and objectively, with facts prevailing not hypotheses. When there are no conditions for an unbiased and objective investigation, a true professional is obliged to resign.”

Bear that in mind if you’re in Bulgarian waters. We’re covering this story in depth at MAC.

Two recent casualties with particular lessons are the Scots scallop dredger Aquila on July 20 with the loss of three lives and the Asian Forest, which foundered 15 miles off Mangalore, fortunately without loss of life.

Commercial fishermen are often reluctant to wear lifejackets, feeling restricted in them, which almost certainly cost the lives of three of the four men aboard the Aquila. There is certainly an argument that commercial fishermen may benefit from a specially designed lifejacket but that’s not an argument to go without one.

Asian Forest foundered almost certainly because of liquefaction of her cargo of iron ore fines. It isn’t a cargo normally thought to be subject to liquefaction but at this time of year, with the South West Monsoon, heavy rains are soaking into iron ore fines stored in the open to await shipment  in New Mangalore and the West Coast of India, raising the moisture content.

It has been reported that often the moisture content stated on the certificate given by shippers bears no resemblance to the moisture content of the cargo at loading. If you’re loading such cargoes in South West India exercise extreme caution.

Stay safe out there.

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Were you injured while working offshore?  Know your rights! Speak to maritime injury attorney today.

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Master Of The Alien Invasion

Chief Officer Charles P. Posas, has scored a dubious first in legal history. He is the first person to be charged with a violation of the US Anti-Invasive Species Law in addition to two felony counts of lying to the Coast Guard and violating recordkeeping laws. His superior, Captain Panagiotis Lekkas, is charged with violating anti-pollution laws, ship safety laws and obstructing a US Coast Guard investigation. Both have pleaded guilty in a Federal court in New Orleans, sentencing for both officers defendants is set for 14 October, 2009.

Says the US Department of Justice: “Posas is the first individual ever charged under the anti-invasive species law, a law designed to mitigate the introduction of marine invasive species into waters of the United States. Aquatic nuisance species are non-indigenous species that threaten the diversity or abundance of native species or the ecological stability of infested waters.

“Lekkas, who was the highest ranking officer aboard the ship, pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, one count of obstruction of justice and two counts of violating the Ports and Waterways Safety Act. Posas, who served as the vessel’s chief officer, pleaded guilty to one count of false statement and one count of violating the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance and Prevention Control Act.” [Continue Reading →]

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