• Seadrill Ups SapuraCrest Stake (Tags : Seadrill, SapuraCrest)
• Floating Apartment Building Called At The Port Of Gdansk (Tags : Gdansk, The World)

• Twin For Siem (Tags : Siem, ahts)
• Towage Pasha Bulker (Tags : Pasha Bulker)
• Fred Fry’s Maritime Monday 69 (Tags : Fred Fry, Maritime Monday)

© International Marine Consultancy

Some 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs splashed into the mid-Pacific on January 10, 1992 whilst on transit from China to Seattle. During August-September, 1992, after 2,200 miles adrift, hundreds beached near Sitka, Alaska.

Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.

A breakaway flotilla of ducks is expected to make landfall in Britain this summer. Bleached by sun and seawater, the ducks and beavers had faded to white, but the turtles and frogs had kept their original colours.

While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the bath-time fun of thousands of children, their adventures at sea have proved an innvaluable aid to science.

The toys have helped researchers to chart the great ocean currents because when they are spotted bobbing on the waves they are much more likely to be reported to the authorities than the floats which scientists normally use.

And because the toys are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, they have been able to survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements.

In the intervening time an oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, has devoted his retirement to tracking the little yellow ducks and their friends over 17,000 miles, and it is he who has predicted that this summer they will land in the West of England. Mr Ebbesmeyer said: ‘We’re getting reports of ducks being washed up on America’s eastern seaboard.

“It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches.

“Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them.”

Curtis Ebbesmeyer And His Plastic Treasures

THE JOURNEY SO FAR:

10 JANUARY 1992: Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean nearly 29,000 First Years bath toys, including bright yellow rubber ducks, are spilled from a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean.

16 NOVEMBER 1992: Caught in the Subpolar Gyre (counter-clockwise ocean current in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Siberia), the ducks take 10 months to begin landing on the shores of Alaska.

EARLY 1995: The ducks take three years to circle around. East from the drop site to Alaska, then west and south to Japan before turning back north and east passing the original drop site and again landing in North America. Some ducks are even found In Hawaii. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) worked out that the ducks travel approximately 50 per pent faster than the water in the current.

1995 - 2000: Some intrepid ducks escape the Subpolar Gyre and head North, through the Bering Straight and into the frozen waters of the Arctic. Frozen into the ice the ducks travel slowly across the pole, moving ever eastward.

2000: Ducks begin reaching the North Atlantic where they begin to thaw and move Southward. Soon ducks are sighted bobbing in the waves from Maine to Massachusetts.

2001: Ducks are tracked in the area where the Titanic sank.

JULY TO DECEMBER 2003: The First Years company offers a $100 savings bond reward for the recovery of wayward ducks from the 1992 spill. To be valid ducks must be sent to the company and must be found in New England, Canada or Iceland. Britain is told to prepare for an invasion of the wayward ducks as well.

2003: A lawyer called Sonali Naik was on holiday in the Hebrides in north-west Scotland when she found a faded green frog on the beach marked with the magic words ‘The First Years’. Unaware of the significance of her find she left it on the beach. It was only when she was chatting to other guests at her hotel that she realised what she had seen.

July 2007 According to an article in England’s “Daily Mail”, the first “Friendly Floatee” rubber duck has been found in the UK. As predicted by oceanographers, some of the 29,000 rubber ducks (and frogs, beavers and turtles) accidentally lost at sea in 1992 are now beginning to make landfall in Britain. The wayward rubber duck was found by Penny Harris, 60, as she walked her dog on a Devon beach. Covered in brown seaweed and barnacle-encrusted, the faded and partially decomposed toy has been sent to manufacturer The First Years in order to claim the finders reward offered by the company.

Anyone who finds one of these three-inch rubber toys can earn a GBP 50 reward by returning it to The First Years Inc., the company that originally commissioned the toys from a Chinese manufacturer (I could not find confirmation of this on the First Years website).

sources: Sea Sabres, Beachcombers’ Alert, Daily Mail

Tags : friendly floatee, curtis ebbesmeyer, OSCURS, rubber ducks, beachcombing

EXMAR has applied today to MBZ, the Zeebrugge Port Authority, for a domain concession for the construction of a discharging and ship-to-ship transfer installation for LNG and high pressure natural gas in the Port of Zeebrugge (Belgium).

At the moment, Belgium has only one single jetty to discharge LNG, at the LNG terminal in the Port of Zeebrugge.

With the view of securing additional natural gas supply for the country, in an effort to increase the diversification of the supply sources for LNG in Europe and in order to speed up the liberalisation of the Belgian and European gas markets, EXMAR wishes to build a new discharging and ship-to-ship transfer infrastructure in the Port of Zeebrugge.

This infrastructure will be fully compatible with that already existing and will further strengthen the position Belgium commands as a supply and transit country for natural gas in Europe.

For the construction and development of the new infrastructure, EXMAR is working closely together with such companies as Ondernemingen Jan De Nul (dredging), Praxair, Jacobs Engineering, ERM and ECOLAS.

The infrastructure to be built, will allow simultaneous berthing of two conventional LNG carriers or LNGRV’s (regasification vessels). The LNGRV’s are able to regasify the LNG on board and inject it directly into the gas transport grid. As an alternative, they can pump the LNG from the ship to storage tanks onshore. Finally, they allow the transfer of LNG from a conventional LNG to an LNGRV. This precludes the storage of large quantities of LNG and, as a result, avoids the need to construct large LNG tank farms onshore.

In addition, this technology offers an environmentally friendly, cost-efficient, economic and safe solution when bringing additional LNG volumes to the Belgian and European market.

Similar infrastructures are already operational at other locations worldwide (Gulf Gateway offshore Louisiana/US, Teesside GasPort in Teesport/UK) and has proven its reliability and flexibility. A second offshore facility (Northeast Gateway) is being built near Boston in the USA which will come on stream at the end of 2007.

EXMAR developed, together with its American partner Excelerate Energy, the LNGRV or Liquefied Natural Gas Regasification Vessel. Exmar now operates a fleet of 2 conventional LNG carriers and 8 LNGRV’s, of which 5 are currently under construction.

source: openPR.com

Tags : Exmar, lng, zeebrugge

Created with flickrSLiDR.

© International Marine Consultancy

Singapore based towage and salvage company Semco has taken delivery of three newbuild deepsea tugs, Salveritas, Salviceroy and Salvigilant in January, April and July of this year respectively.

The tugs are designed for long distance towage and salvage, but have also been fitted with anchor handling and mooring equipment.

All three vessels measure 68m in length and have a twin screw conventional propulsion system providing 12,000 horsepower resulting in a bollard pull of 157 tonnes and a free tunning speed of 15 knots.

SALVERITAS

SALVICEROY

SALVIGILANT

Tags : Semco, towage, salvage, anchor handling

The Jan De Nul Group has placed orders with Tianjin Xinhe Shipbuilding Heavy Industries Co.Ltd. in Tianjin, China for 8 new vessels:

♦ One 3700 m3 Splithopper Dredger, similar to the De Bougainville which was delivered in 2006. The design of the dredger is based on the design of the 3700 m3 splitbarges: the vessel is provided with a suction pipe with submerged dredge pump. In comparison
with the De Bougainville, this dredger will additionally be equipped with a self-emptying installation with a 3000 kW shore discharging dredge pump. This hopper dredger will carry the name “De Lapérouse”.

♦ Two 3700 m3 Splitbarges. These vessels are of the L’Aigle class, of which 5 have already been built and delivered by the Shipyard. These two splitbarges will be named “Astrolabe” and “Boussole”.

♦ Four 1800 m3 Splitbarges. These medium sized barges will be used with the large backhoe dredgers under construction for the Group. The vessels will be self-propelled, and have a “Deep Sea” certificate, enabling worldwide operation in offshore conditions.

♦ One Backhoe Dredger, with a Backacter 1100 crane. This vessel will be identical to the two backhoes under construction at the De Donge Shipyard in Vlissingen, Holland. With these orders the cooperation between Tianjin Xinhe Shipbuilding Heavy Industries Co.Ltd. and the Jan De Nul Group continues. Since 2003 Xinhe Shipyard has built and delivered 9 vessels (5 splitbarges, 1 splithopper, 2 cutter suction dredgers and 1 workboat). These vessels are now operating succesfully in the Jan De Nul Group fleet.

source: Jan De Nul

Tags : dregding, splitbarge, backhoe dredger, Jan De Nul

© International Marine Consultancy