Maritime Monday 134

The following is posted by Fred Fry:

NOTE: Did I miss something that you posted? I am currently traveling so feel free to email me via the address listed below with any maritime-related story you would like to see posted next week.

Welcome to this 134th edition of Maritime Monday.

You can find Maritime Monday 84 here. (Published 12 November 2007)

You can find last week’s edition here.

You can find links to all the previous editions at the bottom of this post. You are encouraged to participate using the comment link/form at the bottom of the post. If you have photos or stories to tell, do email me at [email protected]

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This Week’s Photos:

This week’s photos come from the website of shipbuilder Austal:

Austal commenced operations in 1988 with a vision to build high quality commercial vessels for the international market. By the company’s fifth anniversary, Austal had become the world’s leading manufacturer of 40 metre passenger catamarans and the dominant supplier to Asia.

It was in Hong Kong as early as 1993, that Austal introduced gas turbine propulsion and the first two installations of the Austal developed motion control system. The success in Asia and the introduction of a range of sophisticated, large vehicle-carrying fast ferries were the springboard for ongoing growth in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Asia-Pacific.

Today, Austal is the world’s largest builder of fast ferries and is proud to list amongst its customers many of the world’s leading fast ferry and shipping operators… (Click to read more on Austal’s site)

“Osman Gazi 1” Seatrials

Larrakia in rough weather sea trials

The 127m Littoral Combat Ship INDEPENDENCE(LCS 2) is launched at Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama.

Yemen patrol boats shipment

Hawaii Superferry during Sea Trials – “Alakai” performs during Sea Trials

Hawaii Superferry Engine Installation – Installation of one of the four MTU engines at Austal’s shipyard in Mobile, Alabama

Austal staff celebrate the recent launch of “Glenelg”, the last of 14 Armidale Class Patrol Boats built for the Royal Australian Navy

Their homepage can be found here.

VIEW VIDEOS HERE.

Thanks to Austal for providing the photos!

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This Week’s Items:

EagleSpeak has “Arctic Turf War” and “Meet a pirate from the Strait of Malacca“.

EagleSpeak‘s weekly series “Sunday Ship History: Riverine Warfare: The U.S. Navy’s Operations on Inland Waters“

gCaptain has a trio of posts looking at the COSCO BUSAN accident in “Deconstructing The Cosco Busan Incident – More On Accidents And Why“, “The Cosco Busan – A Failure in xxx Resource Management” and “Feedback – A failure in XXX Resource Management“.

The Jawa Report has “Navy to Name Newest Destroyer After SEAL Who Died in Iraq“. The ship is being named after Medal of Honor recipient Michael Monsoor.

The Chicago Boyz have “Pirates and Insurance Blackmail“.

Deep Water writing has more bad news for active sailors as he summarized some potential new training requirements in “More school for sailors“. You’ll be glad to know that they are thinking of tackling crew fatigue with another class and not any sort of review of minimum safe manning levels. Does your ship have ridiculously low Minimum Safe Manning certificate requirements? Let us know in the comments.

Information Dissemination has a merchant ship report of being attacked twice in one day in ““The Danger Here is Absolutely Real”“.

Tims Tims notes some recent discrimination at a terminal where the crew was banned from walking or bicycling to the gate despite the fact that the entire terminal staff seemed to be on bikes in “On yer bike“.

MarineBuzz has “Indian Interests on Sea Trials of Russian Akula II Class Nuclear Submarine” and “14 Reasons: Why Ship Owners Prefer Filipino Seafarers and How They Exploit Them“.

The Argus has “Ice prince memorial planned“. It is a memorial to celebrate the beach full of wood cargo after the vessel sunk.

Telegraph (UK) has “Giant lego man appears on Brighton beach“. Another large Lego man was recovered a couple months ago.

AFP has “Egypt calls urgent meeting to fight piracy“.

The BBC has “Cameroon oil vessel’s crew seized“. The country shares a border with Nigeria.

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Lloyd’s List has “Red letter day“.

Yet at bottom the humble LC [LC = Letter of Credit] — the document that that for centuries has assured an exporter of payment once goods are loaded on a ship but yet to arrive with the purchaser — is another way of borrowing money, and thus has fallen victim to the credit crunch.

Hellenic Shipping News has “Glencore Says Has No Difficulties in Opening Letters of Credit” and “Aegean Marine: Credit squeeze ‘won’t stop growth’ in seaborne trade“. Most likely now is a good time to have good credit.

Military.com has “CG Team Seizes Illegal Loot“. (Fish off the Cook Islands)

Freight Dawg has “Port of Lazaro Cardenas, a Southern Alternative“.

Scandinavian Shipping Gazette has a Danish shipyard in trouble as the local Government plots to pull the land out from under them in “Fight for survival in Fredericia“.

“We find it most irregular to terminate the lease of a thriving company with nearly 500 employees in the daily workforce, just because the Municipality of Fredericia wants to fill up the quayside with housing estates and office buildings. They simply do not recognise the kind of work that my staff and I conduct literally every day all year round”.

USCG Pacific Northwest has Coasties ashore helping out in “Edmonds Waterfront Clean-up“.

The Maritime Executive has “When “Heel” IS Cargo as Opposed to When it is Not ” discussing an issue concerning tankers where at the end of the discharge, some cargo remains on board.

With the connection broken for some strange reason, I dutifully logged the call (in a rare moment of C.Y.A.) in my notebook and murmured to myself, “Well, that went well – I think.” Soon thereafter, we commenced loading. The cargo poured on board at 15,000 barrels per hour at a temperature of – and I am not making this part up, either – 200 degrees F. For those of you on the fence about such things: there IS a God. Temporarily relieved of the burden (at least until the next day when my client might deny to his boss that he had ever spoken with me) of cargo quality considerations, I literally licked my chops at the prospect of stripping out the lion’s share of that OBQ quantity as outturn for my client in Port Neches. As the heat from the cargo radiated on deck, you could almost feel the solidified cargo melting off the vessel’s bulkheads like warm chocolate bars turning into a nice fondue. In any event, we finished loading that evening and the vessel departed for its next port, which thankfully was about 24 hours away; dock-to-dock. (Go read the rest!)

BarentsObserver has “Norwegian illegal fishing increasing” and “New icebreaking oil tanker for Russian Arctic“.

myway news has “Texas floats plan to house Ike victims aboard ship“. The US should have bought the FINNJET that was used in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina instead of letting the ship be sold by the owners for scrap. This ship in question this time is the REGAL EMPRESS.

HAWSEPIPER explains why he is turning down a dream job and is sticking with the company he is currently working for in “staying the path“.

Theo Spark has video “ETERNAL FATHER – The Naval Hymn“.

Tugster has some photos of “UFOs“. (unidentified or unique floating object)

Mr. Boat Blog has another case of failing to look out the window in “Man who followed his sat-nav too closely…“

Asahi.com has “MSDF officer guilty of leaking Aegis data” as American Aegis Destroyer technology goes loose in Japan.

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The Diplomad wonders about the Dutch abortion ship.

Just imagine for a second the global outcry if the occupants of this ship were killing whales or baby seals . . .

the elder of ziyon reports “Free Gaza freaks are seasick!“.

Freaque Waves covers a death in Oregon: ““It was just a freak wave, . . .”“

Her Captain’s Voice has “Fincantieri: Underway Replenishment Tanker ordered for Indian Navy“.

Helsingin Sanomat has “Major unemployment threat looming over Hanko as imports of cars grind to a halt“.

Paavo O. Lyytikäinen, the Managing Director of the Port of Hanko, calculates that the Russia-bound transit traffic of cars has dropped by almost 30 % over the period from September to October. Some 70 to 80 % of the imported new cars arriving at the Port of Hanko have been transported to Russia each year for the past several years.

Break Bulk has “Jaxport sets vehicle record“.

Navagear has “Class B AIS Underway“. Interesting.

MarineLog has “Economic downturn won’t ease crew shortages“. Sounds like a good business to be in if things get rough economically…

The Stupid Shall Be Punished has an interesting comparison in “Which Presidential Candidate Would Be Better For The Submarine Force?“.

Cruise Bruise has “Passengers Tossed Into The Sea During Rough Weather“. The accident involved the ship’s gangway. The ship was BLACK WATCH.

Maritime Compass has “Seafood Watch sushi pocket guide is out!“.

Neptunus Lex has a burial at sea for a survivor of the USS INDIANAPOLIS in “Home is the Sailor“.

Never Sea Land has video: “Underwater Galapagos“.

BitterEnd has “Another Aid to Navigation at Risk“. It is the Mukilteo Lighthouse. Go check out the great picture.

SmadaNek has “Cost Growth in Shipbuilding” in Russia.

Steeljaw Scribe also posts about online vessel tracking site marinetraffic.com in “Where’s My Ship? Live Ship Locater via the Web“. There is lots of mystery surrounding the recently-freed IRAN DEYANAT. I tried to find it on the site and it is not listed. So, the ship is either traveling with its AIS off or it is not in the Mediterranean Sea as some recent news reports suggested.

THE PRIVATE ISLANDS BLOG has “James Bond & Private Islands“.

IMC Brokers has “Waiting for another ship to go down?“.

Sea * Fever has “Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s Report of Crew Member Laura Gainey Lost Overboard Sail Training Vessel Picton Castle 376 nm SSE of Halifax, Nova Scotia 08 December 2006“.

Robin Storm – In Search of Severe Weather has “Hurricanes, high winds and heavy seas in the Gulf of Mexico“. Now think of trying to operate a computer network through all of that. That is what this story covers.

CDR Salamander has “RIVRON 3 – the Navy’s tip of the spear“. Looking at some of the comments left by the readers was this jewel ‘As I discovered in 1989, the Navy works in spite of Washington, not because of it.’ Funny, and true.

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Haight’s Maritime Items has:

USCG Proceedings – Focus on the mariner – The USCG Marine Safety and Security Council released the Fall 2008 edition of its Proceedings. This edition is entitled “Focus on the Mariner”. (10/31/08). – Dennis Bryant Holland & Knight homepage (Used with Permission)

Fairplay Daily News has:

Wind turbine boat lost at sea – A JACK-UP lift boat used to install wind turbines has been lost at sea in the Atlantic.

KS Titan-1 was being loaded aboard the semi-submersible heavy-lift vessel Ancora, which was en route from Pascagoula to Liverpool, when the larger vessel encountered main engine problems in mid-Atlantic.

The rolling and tilting motion resulted in KS Titan-1 shifting to the port side and capsizing on the night 26-27 October. No injuries have been reported.

KS Titan 1 was being sent to the North Sea to carry out a 817-day contract for a major operator for installation, servicing and maintenance work of wind turbines offshore Denmark and the UK. Titan is operated by Singapore’s KS Energy Services. – Fairplay Homepage (Used with Permission)

AND:

Riverboat fleet sale founders – THE SALE of US riverboat operator Majestic America Line has been stymied by the credit crunch, confirmed owner Ambassadors International.

“I do not foresee the sale of Majestic as an entity,” admitted Ambassadors president Joe Ueberroth in yesterday’s conference call. “There is interest in the vessels, but only on a vessel-to-vessel basis. We did have several interested parties looking at Majestic America, but lack of financing made it difficult.”

Ambassadors is now preparing for “extended lay-ups if necessary” following the previously scheduled cessation of Majestic operations next month.

Two of the riverboats, the Empress of the North and American Queen, had US Maritime Administration debt attached.

The Empress was “voluntarily returned” to MARAD on 15 August. Ueberroth revealed that “if we can’t sell the American Queen in the next few months, we will hand her back to MARAD”. He conceded that Ambassadors’ investment in the domestic river trade “was a very bad business decision – we got it wrong”.

Ambassadors also owns the international line Windstar Cruises and Ueberroth strongly implied that it could be for sale. “Everything’s on the table,” he asserted, including the sale of Ambassadors’ remaining business units. – Fairplay Homepage (Used with Permission)

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Submissions for future editions:

Please submit articles for inclusion in next week’s edition using the following submit form at Blog Carnival. You are also welcome to email stories and photos to [email protected] for inclusion in future editions as well as suggest areas of coverage.

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Previous Editions: As linked below or click on the tag ‘Maritime Monday’ for all gCaptain editions.

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