The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/131029
B E Y O N D TH E HO RIZO N CONTAINERS OF THEORETICAL BANANAS ON EMMA MAERSK BY USA BASED CORRESPONDENT HUGH WARE A single 20 foot standard container on average can hold about 48,000 bananas. In theory then, the giant containership Emma Maersk is capable of holding nearly 528 million bananas in a single voyage – enough to give every person in Europe or North America a banana for breakfast. THIN PLACES AND HARD KNOCKS Ships sank: The world's most-reputable maritime news service printed a news report from the Australian Rescue Centre stating that the unmanned tug, the PB Margaret, sank south of the Mangrove Islands in Western Australia. No explanation was given why the 3000hp tug (ex-Heung Kong) was unmanned and the tug still appears in its owners' fleet list online. But then a colleague in Ozzie-land sent a copy of a governmental warning about the sunken vessel, the tug was on a cyclone mooring and so was unmanned. Now to the northern hemisphere. At Kodiak, Alaska, the Fisheries and Wildlife Service's research vessel Arluk, a 20 metre, 69 tonne Bertram, quietly filled and rolled on its side at St. Herman's Harbour. Ships collided and allided: Multiple objects at Bremerhaven took a beating. The car carrier Euphrates Highway allided with the quay of the foreport of the Northern lock after the towing line to an assisting tug snapped. The container ship Flottbeck hit the Strom quay while docking. The quay was damaged and the hull of the vessel was breached, but not fatally so. The tanker Nordic Ruth was leaving Bremerhaven's Bredo shipyard when it brushed against a motor yacht. Its hull was damaged while the tanker suffered scratches. The tug RT Stephanie was getting set to pull the vehicle carrier Atlas Highway from a pier when it struck the stern of the American-flagged pure truck carrier Endurance and then rebounded into the Atlas Highway. All wheelhouse windows on the tug were smashed but both vessels managed to depart Bremerhaven more or less on schedule. In the Bosphorus Strait near the Turkish city of Istanbul, five people were injured in a collision between the tanker Amur 2521 and the high-speed Turkish ferryYenikapi-1. TOTAL MARINE: • Wharves • Jetty and Marina Construction and Repair • Marine Towing • Pile Driving and Drilling • Salvage • Barge and Tug Hire VIP.S91 Ships went aground: While heading for the Panama Canal, TOTAL FLOATS: Design, Supply and Installation of all Floating Structures: Marinas – Commercial and Private Wharf Pontoons Phone 09 818 1541 • Fax 09 818 9451 www.totalmarineservices.co.nz 34 Professional Skipper May/June 2013 the container ship MSC Fabienne ran aground near the port of Cristobal. Canal tugs soon got her free. In Wales, high winds pushed the ro-ro Ciudad de Cadiz thoroughly aground at Mostyn in late January and four tugs were unable to free her. Fires and explosions, of course: On a creek in suburban Shanghai an unknown gas triggered an explosion in the cabin of a fertilizer-carrying barge. His wife was killed and he and a son were injured. There were public concerns about pollution in the creek so households in the district received a 50 percent discount on their water bills for the next month. People died: An Australian report stated that in November 2011 a wave knocked a seaman off MSC Siena's accommodation ladder while he was rigging a combination pilot ladder in preparation to embark a harbour pilot near Rottnest Island. He was wearing a safety harness and harness rope. After falling the rolling of the ship banged him against the hull several times and he fell out of his harness. In the United Kingdom, the small tug Endurance was towing an 18 metre motorboat in gale force winds and violent seas when one of the two crewmembers on the tug fell overboard five miles south of Sovereign Harbour on the East Sussex coast. An extensive search failed to find him. Five crewmen fell 20 metres and died when cables broke during a lifeboat drill on the cruise ship Thompson Majesty at La Palma. But people were rescued: In Danish waters three crewmen were helicoptered off the freighter Atalanta while she was anchored in the Bay of Aarhus. They had been working in a hold that had recently been cleaned with gases. On the container ship Jonni Ritscher at Hamburg, 14 workers became ill, possibly by fumes from bunker fuel. Other nautically unpleasant things happened: At Durban in South Africa, although the container ship MSC Luciana was moored by 22 lines and had a powerful tug pushing, that was not enough when sudden wind gusts arrived. Lines started snapping and the vessel was blown against the Finger Jetty at the opposite quay. The vessel whammed into the chemical/oil tanker Marlin (scheduled to be scrapped anyhow) and then the wind slewed the MSC Luciana's bow so that it totalled the superstructure of the pilot boat Orient and pushed the tug up onto the east quay. Nearby, a crewman on another container ship had his leg broken by a snapping mooring line. Last September, the MSC Luciana lost power while outbound from Antwerp and ran onto a sandbank. The tug Christos 22 was towing the ex-German Navy training ship Emsstrom off the southern coast of the United Kingdom when the tug slowed and headed towards the coast. The towed ship smashed into the slowing tug, holing both vessels. Valiant fights by Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats, local tugs, and Royal Navy ships HMS Severn and HMS Lancaster saved the tug, but the Emsstrom sank and so the vessel failed to meet a scrapper in Turkey.