Professional Skipper Magazine from VIP Publications

B E Y O N D TH E HO RIZO N ONCE?! CHINA AND JAPAN START A MILITARY CONFRONTATION��� BY USA BASED CORRESPONDENT HUGH WARE C hina has confirmed it is building large amphibious-warfare ships in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper: ���Some of our analysts believe that once China and Japan start a military confrontation, China will be able to use this type of naval vessel in amphibious battles against Okinawa and the Japanese homeland.��� On state-owned TV, an admiral bragged, ���With the amphibious assault ships in our hands, our Navy will be capable of delivering power to any nation within the three island chains in the Pacific. (The so-called ���island chains��� include the US and Australia.) After Hurricane Sandy, more than 6000 New York/New Jerseybound containers were diverted to other ports and many ocean carriers declared force majeure, abrogating their responsibility to deliver containers to the original destination port. West Coast labour unrest quietened without too many container ships being diverted elsewhere or sitting at anchor. But expect labour problems on the Gulf and East Coasts in 2013. The Panama Canal moved a record 333.7 million Panama Canal tons last fiscal year. (In million Panama Canal tons: 119.8 full container ships, 83.4 dry bulkers, 51.6 tankers). China has banned the use of vessels of less than 5000dwt between its coastal provinces and territories, Hong Kong, and Macau. One expert said gas and oil projects historically deliver 20-30 percent less than promised, largely due to a lack of engineering graduates who shy away from what they see as ���a sunset industry.��� For a while, bargain hunters can pick up a second hand VLCC crude-oil carrier for only $54.5 million. Will water levels fall so low that parts of the Mississippi River will be closed to barge traffic? A National Weather Service hydrologist predicted lower water levels, possibly below nine feet, unless there are heavy rains or snow upstream. An increased inflow from the Missouri River would help but the Corps of Engineers is bound by law to refuse requests to release more water, and that alone may close the Mississippi. Meanwhile, barge drafts are being limited to eight feet instead of the usual nine feet. There is a race to get grain to Gulf ports for overseas shipment, and a year ago, the River was at flood stage! High water on the Rhine River stopped barge traffic between petro-hub Rotterdam and Switzerland and heating-oil shipments piled up. THIN PLACES AND HARD KNOCKS The standby safety rescue vessel Vos Sailor was designed to ride out North Sea storms but then a rogue wave bashed the front of the superstructure some 130 miles from Aberdeen. One man, presumably on watch in the flooded wheelhouse, died of injuries, and the remaining 11 crewmen were winched to safety. (The winchman continued to help after breaking a bone in his foot.) The powerless, deserted ship was later towed to Scotland. In nasty weather, the coal-carrying Volgo Balt 199 sank while waiting to transit the Bosphorus. A coastal safety boat, part of the subsequent rescue operations, hit rocks and also sank with loss of two of its crew of four. Three from the ship were rescued but another 10 died. The car carrier Baltic Ace sank after colliding with the container ship Corvus J about 25 miles NW of Westkapelle, the Netherlands. 11 crewmen and 1415 vehicles went down with the carrier. The small container ship Cecilia allided head-on with the Sluiskil 34 Professional Skipper March/April 2013 r Bridge in Holland and damaged the bascule bridge���s mechanism. The already unstable Philippine freighter Ocean Legacy sank itself at a pier in Ormoc on Leyte Island when it swung a heavy container over the pier. The Japanese reefer Asian Lily ran aground on the southern end of Kwewata island in Papua New Guinea near Woodlark on Christmas Eve, coating the island���s shoreline with oil. An unnamed freighter carrying 4725 tons of sand began to founder in strong winds off the mouth of the Yangtze and asked for help. It sank somewhere between Nantong, Jiangsu Province and Longkou, Shandong Province but its crew of 15 were saved. The small tanker Rami Dua partially sank in shallow water between Labuan and Sabahh���s western Menumbok in the west part of the Malaysian state of Sabah, and some of its cargo of 200,000 litres of oil leaked into the sea after its crew of seven had been removed. In Fiji, the container ship Westerems experienced engine failure while berthing at Suva and hit the container ship Southern Cross. Both suffered slight damage. At Tin-Can Port in Lagos, Nigeria, a barge caught fire at a tank farm and then exploded, and that set a storage tank on fire. Much local excitement but no reports of injuries or deaths! Off the South Korean port city of Ulsan, the 2600 tonne barge Seokjeong-36, carrying a large crane for pouring cement, capsized, in bad weather. Seven died and five more were missing. In a Singapore shipyard, a test on the drill platform Noble Regina Allen went wrong when the jacking mechanism for one of three lifting legs failed and the platform sharply listed to one side. 90 workers were hurt, some seriously. In West Virginia at the Robinson Run coal mine, a bulldozer and its operator slid into a slurry pit when an embankment he was constructing collapsed. Rescuers determined that they were 25-30 feet down in the slurry but it was too thick for a rescue diver. A barge was trucked in, sheet pilings were driven around the dozer, and the search began. Five days after the accident, the body of the operator was found inside the cab when divers peeled back the roof of the dozer. GREY FLEETS Does it pay a nation to acquire the most-advanced warships if not enough qualified operators can be found to man them operationally? That is a question that is plaguing Norway���s five advanced frigates of the Fridtjof Nansen class, Australia���s six Collins-class submarines, Canada, the UK, USA, New Zealand, and other navies. Swapping a crew in and out of ships as they deploy helps solve the problem but it���s hard on the personnel. The US Navy fired the top two administrators (president and provost) of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, for mismanagement and fostering an atmosphere of defying Navy rules and regulations. (The details are juicy but far too long for this column.) The US Navy���s IT network is targeted by 110,000 attacks every hour. That translates to 1833 attacks per minute or some 96.36 billion attacks every year. The US Navy is rushing to improve its anti-mine capabilities ��� those electromagnetic railguns, laser weapons, and carrier-borne

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