• Dutch Consider New Ways of Holding Back the Waters.
• Ship stuck in the mud.
• Troubled waters over New Flame salvage operation.
• Superior Offshore International Extends Closing for Acquisition of Ocean Flow International.
• Vroon Offshore Services Acquires AHTS Acqua Azzurra.

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Following the successful revision in 2001 of the industry’s most well-known and widely used bareboat charter party, BARECON, work will shortly begin on revising BIMCO’s other bareboat charter form, BARGEHIRE 94.

This form has enjoyed tremendous success in the offshore sector and is generally felt to meet the needs of the industry. However, it has been noted that the insurance provisions of the form could benefit from being written more clearly. With this in mind it has been agreed that a restricted or “mini” revision of BARGEHIRE will be carried out. The revision will focus only on those elements of the form felt likely to benefit from a revision. The project team responsible for the drafting will ensure that the provisions of the form that users are happy with remain untouched so as not to disturb the general widespread use of the formwork on this project will begin in the early autumn and should be completed in the spring of 2008.

source: BIMCO

Tags : bareboat, BARGEHIRE, BIMCO

All pictures © DM Parody

A ship damaged in a collision off Gibraltar was expected to split in two and sink, sending its cargo of 27,000 tons of scrap metal to the bottom of the sea, officials from the British colony said Wednesday.

The Fotiy Krylov has been pulling at the New Flame throughout most of yesterday after the fuel extraction operations were halted due to the stability of the vessel.

Officials had hoped that the current operations would see the vessel breaking up, with the main fuel storage areas remaining intact and avoiding an oil spillage.

“The ship is going to break in two in a matter of hours or days,” Gibraltar’s Port Affairs minister John Holiday told Spain’s Cadena SER radio. He said Gibraltar had “the adequate logistics in place” to cope with whatever happened.

Holiday said the cargo would sink, but a Gibraltar government statement said the part of the ship containing some 500 tons of fuel was expected to remain afloat and would be towed to safety.

The Panamanian-flagged cargo ship, the New Flame has been partly submerged since it ran into a Danish tanker carrying 37,000 tons of unleaded gasoline on Aug. 12. The oil tanker was able to continue to the Spanish port of Algeciras.

Gibraltar, whose sovereignty is disputed by Madrid, lies at the southern tip of Spain.

source: International Herald Tribune

Tags : salvage, New Flame, Tsavliris, Fotiy Krylov

Norwegian offshore services group DeepOcean ASA said it has won a contract from India’s Reliance Industries for the provision of a multi-purpose subsea support vessel, in a deal worth 166 mln usd.

DeepOcean said the announced contract value concerns a fixed three-year period starting in December.

However, the contract also includes two additional one-year options that would, if exercised, increase the total contract value by 118 mln usd.

source: Forbes

Tags : DeepOcean, subsea, Reliance Industries

The tug will be delivered in the first half of September in Denmark. She will be renamed “Poseidon” and her trading area will be the Baltic.

BRIEF SPECS “Poseidon”

Built by Irving Shipbuilding Inc. East Isle Canada September 2006

Length overall: 30,80 m.
Length betw. p.p.: 29.00 m.
Breadth moulded: 11,19 m.
Depth moulded: 5,21 m.
Draft moulded: 5,55 m.
Gross tonnage: 360

Speed max: 12,5 kn.
Max range 50 % load: 5000 Nav.m.

Class: Lloyds Register *100 A1 tug, fifi(2400cbm)w/waterspray, LMC 06/02, UMS DIRP 06/02
Iceclass 1A
Trading area: Sea area A3 (worldwide) Main engines: 2 of CAT 3516
Each developing 1875 kw
2 of Rolls Royce 225 Controllable Pitch Azimuth Propellers 1 x bowthruster 260 kw
Auxiliary machinery:
2 of gen. sets 2 x 165 kW
Firefigting water monitors: 2 of 1200 m3/h.

Towing equipment etc:
Certified bollard pull: 60 t.
Towing winch, max brake force: 150 t.
Hawser winch, max braking force: 150 t.
Towing wire: ø 51 mm 762 m.
Line handling winch fore 150 t
Hydraulic 8” Tow pins:
Electric tugger winch 10 t. Electric Capstan: 3 t. Hydraulic crane: 10 t at 3 m arm.

Navigation equipment etc.:
2 ARPA Radars.
Gyro.
Autopilot.
Transas chartplotter Echo sounder.
GMDSS radiostation.
Navtex.
DGPS Navigator
GPS Navigator.
Accommodation for 6 persons.

source: Alfons Håkans

Police are questioning seven crew members including the captain of a cargo vessel which hit a gas platform 40 miles (64km) off the Norfolk coast and then sank.

Six men jumped into the water after the “Jork” struck the unmanned Viking Echo platform in the North Sea.

A helicopter and a rescue vessel were sent to the ship, which was carrying grain from Lubeck in Germany.

Six men from Poland and the Polish captain are being questioned about the incident by Norfolk Police.

The vessel sank at 0800 BST on Sunday after bursting its hull, which was caused by its cargo of wheat “swelling”, coastguards said.

Damage assessed

Six crew members wearing lifejackets had to be rescued from the sea but the captain stayed on board trying to save the ship, which was destined for the River Humber. He too had to be rescued.

Watch manager at Yarmouth Coastguard Mario Siano said: “The captain of the ship is in police custody and the rest of the Polish crew are being housed in a local hotel.

“It’s a routine thing for captains to be breathalysed in situations like this. There will be all sorts of checks done. It’s a freak accident and we don’t know what caused it.”

He added that the chances of such a crash happening were “minimal” as there was a 500m exclusion zone around platforms.

ConocoPhillips, which owns the gas platform, has shut down production while any damage is assessed.

A company spokesman said: “The platform is normally unmanned and we’re very pleased it was on this occasion.”

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is looking into the cause of the crash.

Meanwhile the Viking Echo gas rig is said to be intact but floating in a lethal cocktail that would be more at home in a typical London pub.

source: BBC News, TheSpoof.com

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

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

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On June 15, President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan proposed a $6-billion project to build a canal connecting the Caspian and Black Seas at the 17th Foreign Investors’ Council Meeting in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan. If built, the nearly 700km Eurasia Canal would be four times longer than the Suez Canal and eight times longer than the Panama Canal. President Nazarbayev believes the canal would make Kazakhstan a maritime power and benefit many other Central Asian nations as well.

Currently, vessels traveling from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea must travel north to the Russian Volga River, then west into the Volga-Don Canal, then southeast to the Don River, and finally onto the Azov Sea that opens into the Black Sea. The proposed Eurasia Canal would be a direct passage, 1,000km shorter than the existing route, and be able to handle three times the traffic capacity of the Volga-Don Canal (40 million tons/year versus 13 million tons/year). Additionally, on the current route a vessel needs to pass through a dozen locks, but only half that amount has been proposed for the Eurasia Canal.

However, Russian officials have proposed their own plan to improve travel between the two seas: expanding the Volga-Don Canal. Nevertheless, the proposed expansion plan would only increase its traffic-handling capacity to 16.5 million tons per year, which is a far cry from the Eurasia Canal’s proposed 40 million tons per year. Furthermore, Russia currently keeps very heavy restrictions on vessels from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan wanting to traverse the Volga-Don route. The Eurasia Canal would give all three nations ready access to the open sea, allowing each of them to greatly augment their freighter volume.

If President Nazarbayev is successful in finding investors for his proposed plan, he estimates that it will take no more than 5 years to complete, though some speculate that it could take as long as 10. Kazakhstan’s Academy of Sciences is currently analyzing possible routes for the proposed canal and will make recommendations by the end of the year. Though the Eurasia Canal would greatly benefit the surrounding countries economically, some worry that directly connecting two seas with different ecological systems could have dire environmental effects.

Source: MarEx Newsletter

Tags : Eurasia Canal, Volga-Don Canal