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
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The owners and operators of the container ship Cosco Busan, which rammed a pier of the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge in 2007 and dumped much oil, have agreed to a civil settlement. They will pay US$44.4 million, $18.8 million of which is for lost human uses of the shoreline and the bay. Four Somalis were sentenced to life in a US prison for their involvement in the hijacking of the sail yacht Quest in the Indian Ocean, in which the four Americans on the Quest were killed. NATURE The Republic of the Marshall Islands has created the world's largest shark sanctuary. No commercial shark fishing is allowed inside two million square kilometres of the Central Pacific, an area about four times the size of California. Tsunami debris from Japan's earthquake will reach Hawaii in two years and the West Coast of North American in three. The debris may include floating television sets, refrigerators and other home appliances. The Greenpeace vessel Esperanza prevented the bulker Fu Tian from leaving West Pomio, Papua New Guinea. According to Greenpeace, the vessel was carrying up to 4000cu m of illegally harvested logs, in defiance of a government order. COLLISION The 8.5m government-owned catamaran workboat Waitohi and an 8.5m Herreshoff sailboat collided In New Zealand's Queen Charlotte Sound in misty conditions. The yacht couldn't sink completely because her mast fittings caught the catamaran's safety railing. A barge with a crane separated the two and lifted the sailboat from the depths, then pumped her out. The operator of the Waitohi suffered a head injury and was hospitalised. IMPORTS Columbian police seized two drug-carrier submarines in one week. The larger one, probably belonging to the guerilla group FARC, carried up to 10 tonnes of contraband and operated 5m deep for up to 10 days. Authorities believe she transported drugs from Columbia to Central America, a transit point for shipments to the US. NASTIES AND TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVES Pirates are maximising profits by separating crews from hijacked vessels, taking them onshore and holding them to ransom. Groups of up to a dozen skiffs have been attacking vessels in the southern Red Sea. In the Gulf of Aden, pirates attacked the French catamaran Tribal Kat, killed the owner, dumped his body overboard and took off with his wife. The Spanish amphibious warship Galicia rescued her and seven pirates were detained. Spain has approved the use of high-calibre weapons (such as tripod-mounted 12.7mm heavy machine guns) on non-military vessels at risk from Somali pirates. The move is to help protect Spanish fishing boats operating out of the Seychelles. Insurers are offering discounts of up to 35 percent to shipowners employing private security on voyages in high-risk areas. (For an average vessel valued at $20 million, the discount would save about US$12,000.) France, Greece and Japan, among others, prohibit the use of armed guards on board vessels. ODD BITS … Two ship's masters have been rewarded for their skill and bravery following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The master of the vehicle carrier Morning Cedar opted to steam out of Onahama Harbour as huge waves lashed his ship. He cleared the breakwater and steered her to safety in the open sea. January/February 2012 Professional Skipper 35 The master of the bulker Port of Pegasus was on the bridge when a loudspeaker blared a warning in Japanese, which nobody could understand. But the operator of a crane-like unloader deep in number four hold knew and fled as the tsunami approached. All but two mooring lines snapped when the first 8m wave struck the ship. The master successfully worked the ship's propulsion and steering to manoeuvre her for the next 18 hours against the huge waves and extraordinary currents. The destroyer HMS Edinburgh was docked at Cape Town with her Sea Dart missile launchers pointing at the windows of the hotel where Michelle Obama was staying, so American Secret Service made sure the missiles were loaded with inert rounds. … AND HEADSHAKERS When the 85.3m high-speed catamaran ferry Condor Vitesse ran down the 8.5m whelk fishing boat Les Marquises south of Jersey last March, the little workboat was cut in half and her skipper was killed. The ferry skipper allegedly maintained her speed of 37 knots when she entered a thick fog bank. Two injured deckhands clung to her hull for 25 minutes until the ferry rescued them. Nobody on the bridge was watching the two radars that had tracked the Les Marquises for several minutes or turned on the ferry's fog signal as they were engrossed in hearing the master recount how watching the sexy actress Halle Berry in Catwoman on television had given him a bad night's sleep. A company in Sweden has discovered how to stop barnacle larvae from sticking to vessels' hulls. When small doses of the animal sedative Medetomidine are added to antifouling, the drug jazzes the barnacles and they start swimming frantically whenever they settle on the hull. VIP.WB12