Search Results for: marine safety

NTSB reports on deck barge sinking

SEPTEMBER 1, 2016 — The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a report on the August 2015 sinking of the deck barge Margaret. The barge, which was anchored at a fleeting area

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Elcome to supply systems for three ADSB newbuilds

AUGUST 31, 2016 — Dubai headquartered Elcome International is supplying electrical switchboards, safety, monitoring and control systems for three vessels under construction at Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB). Elcome was selected for

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Fleet Xpress brings “smart” ship tipping point

High profile customers and technology partners are swiftly committing to shipping’s new era of connectivity through a series of agreements to use the world’s first global maritime high-speed broadband service from a single network operator. Officially launched on March 30, Inmarsat Maritime’s revolutionary Fleet Xpress has unleashed the power of ‘big data’ to enhance vessel efficiency, while delivering transformational but cost-controlled connectivity to the maritime industry..

Fleet Xpress delivers high-speed data transmission with unmatched reliability, switching automatically between Ka-band and Inmarsat FleetBroadband L-band services to ensure constant coverage.

“Fleet Xpress alters the asset management capabilities and frontline working experience of an entire industry,” says Inmarsat Maritime President, Ronald Spithout. “It will optimize vessel safety, security and efficiency, and meet the connectivity needs of the modern seafarer that have for too long been overlooked.”

Separate agreements announced in June with VSAT service providers Marlink and SpeedCast International suggest that leading maritime value added service providers agree. Both organisations already describe Fleet Xpress as key to their maritime services portfolios. SpeedCast says the service is fully integrated within its SIGMA gateway, while Marlink emphasises access to a range of options that include its XChange communication management platform, with ‘Bring Your Own Device’ crew connectivity.

SpeedCast and Marlink have committed to roll out Fleet Xpress to approximately 2,000 vessels apiece over the next five years.

Market migration
Direct agreements with shipowners also quickly followed the Fleet Xpress service launch. Early contracts were announced covering installations on 70 Nanjing Tanker Corporation ships.

However, the appeal of Fleet Xpress is not limited to the cargo-carrying ship sector. Even before its commercial launch, trials on the ice-class adventure ship Ocean Nova in Antarctica delivered the low-horizon satellite views through heavy cloud cover and precipitation that operators routinely face in such hostile waters. So satisfactory were the trials that owner Nova Cruising Ltd committed to the commercial installation of Fleet Xpress.

“Fleet Xpress delivered on its promise of high-speed seamless mobile broadband in one of the world’s most difficult areas for most satellite systems,” says Dr Luis Soltero, Chief Technology Officer of project partner Global Marine Networks.

In early June, Inmarsat announced a first commitment to Fleet Xpress from a superyacht owner, for the 44m sail yacht Juliet at Royal Huisman Shipyard, the Netherlands. The project involved installation of a new Sailor 100GX VSAT system and the Inmarsat GX bespoke below deck equipment configuration.

Gerbrand Schalkwijk, Chief Sales Officer, Inmarsat Maritime, says the maritime package has been eagerly anticipated by an industry seeking to take advantage of high-speed Ka-band with ultra-reliable FleetBroadband L-band service acting as unlimited backup. “We expect up to 1,000 ships will be using Fleet Xpress before the end of 2016,” he says.

For the first time, he explains, ship/shore connectivity is so reliable that service agreements can include network availability guarantees, with minimum and maximum of data throughput “so that customers know in advance what they are paying for”. Fleet Xpress also brings ‘Inmarsat Gateway’ access, which “effectively connects ships to landside offices via VPN”, opening up a new world of content-rich applications for shipping.

Enabling change
For its part, Inmarsat Maritime is cultivating the ‘service ecosystem’ for smarter shipping. It has approved new generation antenna systems from Cobham, JRC, and Intellian to meet requirements, but also devised the Certified Application Partner (CAP) programme to encourage the development of software and hardware that is compatible with Fleet Xpress.

The CAP programme offers a framework for maritime big data to drive smarter shipping. It looks beyond more timely updates of more data, better voyage planning, remote monitoring/ diagnostics, and better repair scheduling, to more imaginative applications: telemedicine; video conferencing; and video surveillance, to name but three. An Inmarsat Developer Conference, held in London earlier this year to hear presentations from existing and potential CAP partners was heavily oversubscribed.

At the industry’s leading edge of technology, Inmarsat is also a partner in the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA), led by Rolls-Royce. Funded by the Finnish research institute Tekes, the €6.6 million project runs until 2017. “Fleet Xpress delivers the vital ship-to-shore communications required to support the remote control functionality fundamental to the realisation of the autonomous ship,” says Inmarsat Maritime President Spithout.

Whatever the outcomes of this radical scheme, Inmarsat expects it to yield tangible progress for data transfer ship-ship and ship-shore, with significant consequences for the way ships are managed and worked at sea.

Life at sea transformed
In the more immediate term, ship crews working today will be among those feeling the most significant transformation due to Fleet Xpress. The seafaring life still consists of extended periods of working under pressure, punctuated by opportunities for intense boredom. It also continues to involve long periods of separation from family, friends and the world at large, adding up to a burden of isolation.

This is despite the fact that, according that the Maritime Labour Convention: ‘Every seafarer should have reasonable access to ship-to-shore telephone communications, email and Internet facilities, where available, with any charges for the use of these services being reasonable in amount.’

Drew Brandy, Senior-Vice President, Inmarsat Maritime points out that 73% of seafarers take into account ship-shore connectivity when deciding which ship to join, according to the 2015 Crew Connectivity Survey from Futurenautics. The same survey reports seafarers on average bringing three communication devices onboard ship, with 77% now carrying a Smartphone.

Meeting seafarer expectations of access to VOIP and Video Chat services will be a key plus point for Fleet Xpress bandwidth because owners will be able to do so without compromising their operating costs. The migration of existing customers from XpressLink Ku-band services to the Ka-band based Fleet Xpress will “double the bandwidth available at no additional cost,” according to Brandy.

Critical momentum
If emerging crew attitudes are a spur and global end-user agreements suggest shipping is easing into the Ka-band era, the recent appointment of Satlink Satellite Communications as a further Inmarsat partner may also be telling. Satlink, whose Satbox and Tracklite service will become integrated as ‘value added’ features of Fleet Xpress, is the largest single XpressLink provider for Inmarsat globally. Its customer base includes MSC Shipmanagement Limited and Columbia Shipmanagement Ltd.

Inmarsat Maritime has separately disclosed intentions to transition more than 2,600 existing XpressLink installations and convert its committed XpressLink backlog to Fleet Xpress over the next three years.

Maritime President Spithout believes the opportunity for an industry transition is now ripe. “We are already committed to future service enhancements by contracting Airbus to build the first two satellites for our sixth-generation I-6 fleet. But the partnerships we have put in place for Fleet Xpress and our engagements on hardware, software, service and distribution mean that the tipping point for maritime communications as a whole is 2016, not at some time in the future.”

The maritime industry and 9/11: Spirit of service & duty

Obligation, vigilance, and perseverance are among the professional qualities of the merchant mariner. Whether one attends a maritime academy, as I did, or comes up through the hawsepipe, in seagoing service mariners learn and practice the ethos of care to crew, ship, and the environment. Mariners are supposed to display those qualities in spite of cold, or rain, or discomfort–one of my strongest memories of the academy is being on lookout, freezing, wearing all my jackets. Mariners are supposed to be ready, to be watchful, to put together skills and equipment and to balance paradox and contradiction to make a successful voyage.

The New York Harbor community combined all these unique attributes on 9/11, evacuating hundreds of thousands of commuters and residents of Lower Manhattan to Staten Island, to New Jersey, and elsewhere in New York City in an improvised fleet of boats: tugs, dinner boats, tour boats, private vessels. Over the course of those hours, boats made trip after trip across the harbor. Then, as the number of evacuees from Manhattan tapered off, the boatlift shifted to transporting responders and supplies to the island, an operation that continued for several days. They accomplished the largest water evacuation in history without planning, without practice—and without accidents.

What made this possible? To find out, my coauthor Tricia Wachtendorf and I talked with boat operators and waterfront workers, piecing together their stories for our book American Dunkirk: The Waterborne Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11. Foremost was a spirit of service and a duty to rescue that is characteristic of the maritime community. Law and tradition require a mariner to come to the aid of a person at sea in danger of being lost. On 9/11 mariners widened the compass of their obligation to include the people who were queuing up at the shoreline.

The participants in this evacuation saw themselves as part of an active maritime community. Everyone knew everyone else, they said. They knew each others’ boats, and personnel were always moving from company to company, creating a strong network of acquaintance. Even though the commercial setting could sometimes be highly competitive, there were also habits of cooperation: any company might need help from any other in an emergency. It’s almost a rule in the disaster field that the planning process is more important than the plan itself. Responders have to become familiar with each others’ capacities, resources, and limitations. The years of interaction and familiarity were actually a planning process for urban disaster management, though they didn’t know it.

Mariners lead lives of paradox. GPS provides fabulous accuracy, but the prudent mariner is still reminded to check it by other means. Some mariners have attended disciplined and hierarchical academies where they live a regimented lifestyle while also learning Bridge Team Management, to adopt proper communications skills that short-circuit the intimidation of hierarchy. They operate in a complex web of maneuvering rules, which also contain a rule that prescribes that the rules should be broken when they’re not working. Often their information is ambiguous, as with weather, so they are sensitive to margins of error. In this complex milieu, mariners are always making judgments about safety, speed, and efficiency. These judgments abounded on 9/11.

They carried passengers on boats not certified for that. In some cases, they exceeded boats’ passenger capacity. Boat operators said they didn’t do this recklessly, but looked at the boat’s performance, the distribution of additional weight, and the demands of the immediate crisis. Certainly the usual margin of safety was narrowed in this event both with respect to capacity and to navigation. In some areas around the harbor the dust was so thick that visibility was zero, but they continued on. “Radar, don’t fail me now!” recalled one captain thinking as he approached the entrance to North Cove. Sometimes, boat captains took on bystanders to assist in embarking evacuees or in handling lines. Boats used piers they were unaccustomed to, or that weren’t designed for passengers, and had to jury-rig gangways because of the different heights. The captains were careful, using their experience and judgment to know how much they could push the boundary of risk. Other rules were slackened. A Coast Guard officer authorized fueling without permits. Two harbor pilots took golf carts to move supplies. The main thing was that when they pushed the limits, they were thoughtful, weighing the risk as experience has taught them.

Sometimes older technologies are more adaptable than modern ones. A break-bulk ship can work cargo anywhere, but a container ship, not so much. Efficiency sometimes erases adaptability, but disasters remind us of the importance of older tools and technologies, such as radio. Certainly there are tools to help the modern disaster manager: satellite photography, robotics, drones. But a lot of disaster management is old-fashioned work: moving things and people, staging equipment, organizing activities, talking on the phone. Probably the exemplar of this principle during 9/11 was the John J. Harvey, a retired fireboat that had been bought and restored by a group of enthusiasts. On the morning of September 11, the group boarded the Harvey and got underway first just to see what was happening, then they moved some evacuees, but then the Harvey’s real talent became obvious: the capacity to pump a lot of water. That capacity, left over from now-ancient days of wooden piers and warehouses and stacked-up flammable cargoes, was just what was needed to charge the fire hoses now substituting for the destroyed infrastructure at Ground Zero. Even in normal times, the Harvey demonstrated the qualities of prudence and vigilance. One of her owners, a retired fireboat captain, insisted they always have some usable firehose on hand, just in case.

Of course, there were challenges. The era of deep-draft commercial maritime use of much of Lower Manhattan has long since past. The waterfront had few good locations for the boats to embark passengers and lacked critical shoreside infrastructure, such as bollards or cleats, to tie boats to. Meanwhile, the smooth stone surface of the Battery Park seawall threatened to damage boats that were coming alongside. The sailboat Ventura, for example, could not tie up there because of being buffeted against the wall. “We’re going to have a boat that’s full of matchsticks and it’s going to sink,” said the captain. Even the durable Harvey got “quite a battering.” Some boats tied up to trees to hold steady for taking on evacuees. In other instances there was too much infrastructure, some of it in the form of fences and ornamental ironwork. Several participants in the evacuation reported simply cutting down the fences to clear a path for the evacuees.

The boat operations demonstrate what we have seen in many disasters: the importance of improvised, unscripted activities, and the importance of new groups, organizations, and networks. In spite of a widespread desire to “command and control,” that is not possible in an unfolding community-wide disaster. Most people are rescued by bystanders, for example, often well before formal responders arrive, which shows that there is always a grassroots dimension to disaster management. 9/11 maritime activities took place all around New York Harbor. No one could have full “command” of these activities, where needs were being identified and handled in an organic way through a growing network. The Coast Guard took a coordinating but not a commanding role. They wisely made no effort to take over the entire operation, recognizing that they needed to let it unfold. And there would be no way to command activities that were happening at Liberty Landing, or at Weehawken, or at Highlands, a 17-mile transit from Manhattan, where they were all dealing with their own needs of sorting passengers, decontaminating people, and offering comfort and bottles of water.

The 9/11 boat operations offer some insights for urban disaster management and resilience, organizations, and communities. Key features of resilience are redundancy, substitutability, and mobility. Some vessels can operate even if others are out of service. Boats are a mobile resource, easily moved around as needed. If some facilities are damaged, others may be available or can be improvised on short notice. Some vessels of more rugged construction served as floating piers, so that other vessels of lighter design would not be damaged against the seawall. Vessels are connected by VHF radio—nearly always available– and vessel movements are organized not by a flowchart or a rigid command structure but rather by a nautical chart and the mariners’ operational knowledge of that area: its laws, regulations, and customs. Public officials in waterfront cities should look closely at the different transport modes available. In particular, emergency managers and urban planners and engineers should work much more closely together to identify needs and resources.

That’s the key. People, groups, and communities share what they know; identify what they need; and connect to others. The maritime operations on 9/11 are an example of principles that extend to other settings. In situations as diverse as U.S. wildfires to the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear plant catastrophe, people have built new networks and improvised with whatever is available. A resilient disaster response depends on deep knowledge of a place, memory, gathering resources, and finding substitutes. These are the pieces that people can assemble creatively and strategically to manage a disaster.

You can view a list of the vessels and operators that lent their support on 9/11 at www.fireboat.org/911_rescue_boats.php

James Kendra is a graduate of Massachusetts Maritime Academy and a former merchant marine officer. He is Director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware.

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The unwanted ship: Break it or lay it up?

To lay-up a vessel means to stop using it for a certain period. It will simply be anchored in appropriate waters or a berth for a few weeks or even a couple of years. The reasons for the lay-up might be to postpone over-capacity or to wait for a better scrap price before selling it. However, lay-up costs need to be taken into account, too.

For example, a six-month lay-up of a Capesize bulker in Malaysia’s Labuan costs between $1,000 and $2,000 per day— far less than the cost of operation which hovers around $7,000 a day, but an investment, because the longer the vessel is in lay-up the higher scrap steel or charter prices have to rise.

Scrapping a vessel means selling it to a ship-breaking yard where workers will cut it to pieces and recycle the steel and other metals, chemicals, and equipment. The owner will receive a price based on the total light displacement ton (LDT) of scrap metal the vessel contains; equipment is taken into account, too.

The market demand defines the LDT price, which is at its lowest in many years. Just recently buyers were offering $270/LDT (as of May 2016), a year ago Capesize bulkers could easily fetch $100/LDT more, and two years ago the figure was $200/LDT more.

Can higher LDT prices be expected? Well, the number of bulkers sold for scrapping is expected to rise throughout 2016 (according to Peter Sand, BIMCO)—this is strengthening the supply. Furthermore, in Asia demand for steel is currently low.

How to lay-up a ship?
Just as the lay-up time can vary, the treatment of vessels varies too, and so do obligations and requirements assigned by class, flag state and port authorities. In general, all responsible parties should be informed. For example, some insurance companies may accept a payment hiatus if the vessel is in lay-up for more than 30 days.

The operator must first decide on either a hot or a cold lay-up. In a hot lay-up condition the ship engines and machinery keep running so that the re-commissioning of the vessel can be carried out very quickly, allowing a cheap and easy vessel preservation. However, with long-term low charter rates in mind, many opt for a cold lay-up, which has lower operational and crew costs, and requires less consumables.

In a cold lay-up vessels are only supplied with emergency energy for lights, windlass/mooring winches and fire extinguishing—often by portable generators installed on deck. Depending on the length of lay-up, three weeks or more should be expected for re-commissioning. Should the lay-up be five years or longer then the re-commissioning time is unpredictable and can last months. The main concern here is protection against humidity, leakage of chemicals and condition of the hull (sea chest/sea water lines).

A dehumidifier has to be installed and connected to the engine room; other items to keep in mind are sea-water tanks, ballast tanks and bow thruster rooms.

Classes, Flag States and Port Authorities
Many classes and port authorities expect minimum manning levels during cold lay-ups to cover at least fire, leakage, mooring and security watch. However, the Safe Manning Certificate applies only to vessels in operation or while vessels are safely at anchor, within port limits or alongside. Requirements of flag states and port authorities apply to laid-up vessels. Flag states in general require notification of vessels laid-up for longer periods—the requirements vary from short notification to a detailed lay-up plan.

In addition, during the lay-up class surveys might take place. For example, DNVGL may carry out an annual lay-up survey (covering watertight integrity, bilge system, fire hazards and equipment in use). After lay-up a number of surveys have to be carried out and expired certificates need to be renewed. Some class authorities require a sea trial when the vessel has been laid up for 12 months or longer.

Green ship breaking?
It seems more environmentally friendly to take old ships out of service than to lay them up for later usage, especially as many were built in times when speed was more important than HFO efficiency.

Indeed, ship breaking can be environmental friendly; approximately 85% of a vessel can be recycled – even the furniture and carpets are sold at local markets in Bangladesh and India. However, the problem is that many shipyards do not handle hazardous chemicals as they should, and consequently the lives of workers are endangered. Rising public awareness has prompted the involvement of authorities leading to the Hong Kong Convention and EU Ship Recycling Regulation. Only time will tell whether these efforts will actually improve environmental and working conditions.

Some yards in China, Turkey and India/Bangladesh are already pre-approved and comply with the Hong Kong Convention and/or the EU Ship Recycling Regulation. However, green recycling often only happens on paper. In this respect the , “Ship Breaking Platform” should be considered, as it does not recognize any yard in India to be green and claims it to be a marketing coup.

Conversely some yards in Europe are recognized even by the NGO as environmentally friendly. For example, Fornaes in Denmark cooperates with the Ship Breaking Platform. Keld Kokholm, Manager of Fornaes, explains: “In general, the offered price per LDT is lower than that which non-environmentally friendly yards in Asia offer due to the expensive recycling of toxic substances and higher labor costs. Furthermore, we and some other European yards are sometimes limited by the size of vessel that we can handle. For example can we recycle ships up to 10,000 tonnes GT or 25 meters in width.” Fornaes therefore focuses on local offshore and fishing ships.

Other companies involved in green ship recycling like Grieg Green AS, can handle big vessels. Grieg Green approves yards based on a list of factors including the safety of workers and downstream waste management, all influenced by the HKC and EU regulation. Here, too, responsible acting results in a current price difference of $70 – $90 per LDT. As stated by Magnus Hammerstad, Area Manager of Grieg Green, this figure is volatile and is related to the local scrap steel price.

Why go green?
Companies which plan to maximize their profit will sell their vessel to a so called cash buyer (a ship broker) who in turn will beach it somewhere in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan. This way the original ship owners avoid regulations and legal trouble.
Recently Maersk opted to recycle the Maersk Wyoming and the Maersk Georgia in a ship-breaking yard in Alang, India which is not on the EU list of green ship breaking yards. Maersk stated that it expects to generate an additional $1 million to $2 million per ship by beaching there.

“Without a strict legal framework and financial mechanism, there are very few incentives for ship owners to choose clean and safe recycling,” said Patrizia Heidegger, Executive Director of the Ship Breaking Platform. “Currently, at the EU level we are debating a ship breaking license, and a financial incentive for clean and safe recycling.”

She pointed out that in addition to new regulations, an increasing number of cargo owners as well as ship financers are demanding ship-recycling policies from ship owners. In the future ship owners may lose both financers and clients if they continue to use substandard shipbreaking.

KLP, the largest Norwegian pension fund, published a report on the human rights and environmental risks related to the current practice of ship breaking.

KLP CEO Håvard Gulbrandsen, states in the report’s foreword: “We hope that the report can help raise awareness of the severe human and environmental risks beaching can entail for shipping industry companies, their customers, and also for other investors […]”.