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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BEYOND THE HORIZON INDOMITABLE MARINERS BY HUGH WARE E x-mariner turned astronaut, US Naval officer, and the first man to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong, will be buried at sea as per his wishes. The US Navy has confirmed it will perform the ceremony. A UK-bound Brit from the Azores, and his sailboat Elixir, had been beaten up by ten days of bad weather. His MayDay call was answered by the Russian destroyer Vice-Admiral Kulakov. Its crew repaired his electronics and got the engine started (they couldn't do much for a torn mainsail) while the yachtsman gulped down hot food and drugs and then motored onwards. The Russians also notified the British coastguard of the situation and the indomitable lone sailor was later taken off by a coastguard cutter. He was 83 years old. THIN PLACES AND HARD KNOCKS The Zanzibar Minister for Infrastructure and Communication tendered his resignation after the ferry Karama Star sank with loss of 94 lives. Nine months earlier, the ferry MV Spice Islanders had sunk. The death toll then was 2976 people. The UK's oldest shipping company, Stephenson Clarke, founded in 1730 and affectionately known to generations of seafarers as Stevie Clarke's, has gone into bankruptcy. Commercial fishing is the deadliest job in the United States, topped by fishermen in the Northeast's multi-species groundfish (cod, haddock, etc) and Atlantic-scallop fisheries. They are 37 times more likely to die on the job than a police officer. In Zhenjiang Port, China, the iron ore-carrying bulker Changqing 16 abruptly rolled over and sank. Fifteen were rescued, two children died, and seven were missing. A refugee boat with 150 on board capsized and sank west of Java. Searchers found only 55 survivors. The searching vessels included (figures in parentheses are the number of survivors picked up): HMAS Maitland (34), APL Bahrain (15), AS Carelia (4), Gwendolyn (1), Da Qing Xia (1), Chemroute, Forever South West, Voyage Explorer, Frontier Coronet, Pelafigue Tide, World Swan. Vessel types included a patrol boat, several container ships, a tanker, bulkers, and an anchor-handler. The tugboat Sun Fat 3 struck the cargo ship Infinite Hope 1.4nm east of Tanjung Pungga, Malaysia, and was swamped. The tug's crew of seven took to a liferaft from which they were rescued by the cargo ship. Following a repair operation on the Sat3-Safe cable between South Africa and Europe, the cable ship Chamarel caught fire in the bridge area, firefighting efforts failed, and it was abandon-ship time. A Namibian fishing boat took aboard the crew of 56 and the still-burning cable ship drifted towards Namibia's infamous Skeleton Coast. In mid-Atlantic fire broke out in containers on the MSC Flaminia and eventually the crew had to abandon ship. Three large seagoing tugs fought the fire while towing the ship towards shore. Almost a month later, the four ships are still offshore and have yet to receive permission to enter a sheltered area or an emergency port. Not far from Perth, a massive search paid off when an Australian news helicopter spotted a naked man floating on his back and waving for help with a large hammerhead shark slowly circling him 20 metres away. The 49 year old man had been in the water for 22 hours after his small boat had capsized. One companion was later rescued but died in a hospital. A third man was missing. 34 Professional Skipper November/December 2012 . But smoke started coming from the same hold and so conditions there were monitored by infrared cameras and smoke detectors while the ship's crew removed the palm kernels by crane. In the end, shorebased firefighters were needed. At Lyttelton, New Zealand, firefighters cut a hole in the side of the drydocked trawler Ocean Breeze to get at a fire inside. It burned for twelve hours and leaking ammonia remained a peril afterwards. Seventy miles off Cornwall in sea state eight, forty foot (12m) swells, and atrocious visibility, a Royal Navy helicopter managed to find a 20 foot sailboat after searching for over an hour, when its lone sailor lit off a flare. He had injured an ankle while trying to repair mast and rigging. In his haste to get off, he jumped overboard, and that did not make this rescue any easier. In the Seychelles, the three-man crew of the ferry Le Cerf were rescued by a searching yacht four hours after the ferry sank. They had used their cell phones to direct rescuers but it was the glare of a searchlight that helped make the final connection. Typhoon Bolaven broke the empty bulker Pacific Carrier in half while it was anchored in South Korea. The vessel was in lay-up after a collision with the container ship Hyundai Confidence last year. Because there are too many of the largest tankers (the VLCC) and competition has become cut-throat, owners lose an estimated $5,700 each day during the return voyage a tanker makes after each hopefully profitable Mid East-to-Japan voyage. That figure ignores any benefits from slow steaming. At Portsmouth in the UK, two men entered the water to save two youngsters, aged 4 and 10, in trouble. The kids and one man made it ashore but the other rescuer disappeared. The container ship Hansa Berlin ran aground off Cuba, about 500 metres offshore between Mariel and Vista al Mar. Crewmembers were evacuated by helicopter and lodged in a hotel in Havana. In Chile, the bulker Ocean Breeze went ashore after its anchor chain broke providing spectators with spectacular sights as surf- created spray spouted many times higher than the mast tops. At Singapore, the bulk carrier Sunny Horizon collided with the LPG gas carrier DL Salvia in the Temasek Fairway, about 700 metres east of Sultan Shoal. The bunker tank on DL Salvia was breached but less than 60 metric tonnes of bunker escaped. When the bulker Lucy Oldendorff arrived at Tauranga, New Zealand, the crew reported there had been a fire in a hold carrying palm kernels four days earlier but they had extinguished it with CO2 Ocean Breeze