Professional Skipper Magazine from VIP Publications

one of its two Azipod drives had failed. The Carnival Dream lost some power-generating capability while the ship was docked at Philipsburg, Saint Maarten in the Caribbean so elevators stopped running and public toilets didn't flush. No-one was allowed to get off and Carnival Cruise Lines flew more than 4,000 passengers back to Florida. The Carnival Legend had propulsion (read: Azipod again) problems that forced it to operate at a lower speed and miss a scheduled port of call. Carnival Cruise Lines, the largest of ten cruise-ship brands owned and operated by Carnival Corporation and Public Limited Company, has 24 vessels that account for 21.1 percent of the worldwide market share. THOSE THAT GO BACK AND FORTH A woman told rescuers that she had a newborn infant in her arms when she "threw herself" off the Superfast VII ferry at Belfast last May. Her tale triggered a massive but fruitless search lasting 10 hours over two days. The sad affair ended with her in court charged with wasting police time. A deckhand who was acting as fourth officer on the British Columbia coastal ferry Queen of the North was found guilty of criminal negligence causing death. The ferry had missed a scheduled turn and struck Gil Island and sank, killing two passengers. Prosecutors suggested he was distracted by the female quartermaster because they were arguing or having sex. They had recently terminated a love affair. The ferry Caddebostan came to the rescue and removed dozens of passengers when the Turkish "tourist ferry" Sabret caught fire off Istanbul. The ferry was travelling between Istanbul and the popular Prince Islands in the Sea of Marmara. 31 people were injured in a collision between the ferry Lamma IV and another vessel off Hong Kong Island in deep fog. The other vessel was reportedly a barge and the ferry, strangely, was damaged in its rear. In the Orkney Islands, ferry crews refused to take on additional duties to cover absent crewmen over the Bank Holiday so passenger and cargo trips were cancelled or ran late. The ferry company is owned by the Orkney Islands Council, which has insisted that increased costs due to an increase in basic pay must be funded by commensurate savings in other costs of employment but offered a one percent pay increase anyhow. The three unions said this was unacceptable as it is less than the rise in the retail price index and that the maritime sector is a special case as the council would be unable to recruit suitable staff if the current workforce leaves. ENERGY Two Taiwanese-German expeditions are investigating the role that plate tectonics play in the formation of gas hydrates. Producing natural gas from gas hydrates in the seabed could be particularly attractive to industrialized regions (especially Taiwan) in East Asia where demand for energy is increasing but resources within their own borders are scanty. The formation of hydrates can be fostered by plate tectonics when one tectonic plate is pushed under another, compressing huge quantities of sediments. Natural gases and fluids escape through these sediments to the sea floor, forming gas hydrate on the way. The Supreme Court in Belize ruled that offshore drilling contracts issued by the government in 2004 and 2007 were null and void, effectively ending the government's immediate effort to allow offshore oil drilling in the Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world. The reef is a UNESCO World www.skipper.co.nz www.skipper.co.nz w Heritage Site and a popular travel destination made famous by legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau. The Court cited failure to assess the environmental impact on Belize's ocean and expressed concern about a company's financial abilities – it was the operator of hotels and casinos before being given a secret concession to drill for Belize's oil. METAL BASHING Drillers sought oil as far back as 1979 off the coast of Australia and found gas that couldn't be transported to a market – they lacked the technology to extract gas from waters more than 3000 feet deep and pipe it ashore for conversion to LNG. Now, two companies will build floating platforms to process and chill the gas to liquid form. These monster Floating Liquefied Natural Gas vessels will probably never enter a local port. The Shell vessel, at 1,600 feet long, and 242 feet wide, will weigh about 600,000 tonnes when fully loaded. The vessel will be operational by 2016 at a cost of about US$12 billion. ExxonMobil's barge will be much the same, with gas fed into its super-chilling system from an initial seven production wells (to be drilled in 2018 and 2019) and five more wells drilled later. Production should start in 2020. ODD BITS The research vessel Falkor was routinely sonar scanning the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles offshore when it spotted an unexpected object. A remotely operated underwater vehicle found the wreck of the fishing vessel Katmai some 8,920 feet down. The brand new Alaska-bound FV had disappeared in February 1972 along with its owner, his wife, their eight-yearold son and a deckhand. Queen Elizabeth I dispatched a ship to France in 1592 but it foundered off the island of Alderney in the Channel Islands. Researchers found an oblong crystal in the wreck. It was Iceland spar, a transparent, naturally occurring calcite crystal that polarizes light and can be used to get a bearing on the sun. It may have been used as a navigation aid by Viking mariners and that use may have continued into Elizabethan times. HEAD-SHAKER Can you teach an old sea dog a new trick? It may be time to do so. A Coast Guard helicopter rescued a 72-year-old British man after he requested a medevac from his 24-foot sailboat Erma about 70 miles east of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He told the chopper crew that he had been unconscious for seven hours and believed that he had fallen and hit his head. It was not his first rescue. In 2000, he set out on a solo sail across the Atlantic from the United Kingdom. A broken rudder ended that trip and he had to be rescued and lost his sailboat. He tried again in 2002 but got caught in a hurricane. He broke three ribs, was rescued, and lost his sailboat. In 2005 he tried again, this time making it to Brazil – but then a storm, a lost mast, and finally a sinking off Guyana led to another rescue and a third lost sailboat. Now the loss of Erma makes it number four. IT IS WITH great regret we inform our readers that Hugh Ware, the author of "Beyond the Horizon", has passed away at the age of 86. His obituary on page 8 in this issue tells of his life and contribution to our magazine as well as other publications, both print and digital. Here at Skipper we will miss Hugh and thank him for over a decade of great writing that went above and "Beyond the Horizon." July/August 2013 Professional Skipper 35 r

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