Never Tailgate a Cutter — Mesabi Miner Runs into Cutter Hollyhock

Posted on by January 7, 2014

hollyhockOn Sunday, the USCG Cutter Hollyhock was conducting an ice escort for six Great Lakes ore boats.in Northern Lake Michigan.  The Hollyhock is a 225 feet long, Juniper Class Seagoing Buoy Tender displacing 2.000 long tons.  Following close behind, perhaps too close as it turns out, was Interlake’s Mesabi Miner, a 1,000 foot long, 60,000 dwt bulk carrier.

As reported by the Times Herald :  The Hollyhock was breaking ice, cutting a line west, and hit a hard spot in the ice, said Keith Showalter, operations specialist first class for the USCG Sector Sault Ste. Marie. The 1,004-foot Mesabi Miner was astern of the Hollyhock and hit the Hollyhock’s stern.  Showalter said the Hollyhock sustained significant damage to its stern and fantail. The Mesabi Miner sustained damage to its bow.

Fortunately, no one was injured and no pollution was reported.  The Hollyhock proceeded to St. Ignace, Mich to undergo a damage assessment. Thanks to Mike Cox for passing the news along.

Saildrone Sails the Pacific

Posted on by January 6, 2014

saildroneWe have recently posted about Slocum gliders, autonomous underwater vehicles, capable of extended voyages and used by oceanographers to map ocean conditions.  Saildrone, a company in California, has recently launched a 19′ long by 7′ wide autonomous  trimaran sailing drone capable of carrying an oceanographic sensor payload of 220 pounds.  On October 1st,  Saildrone-1 set off from San Francisco and arrived 34 days later in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Since then Saildrone-1 has successfully sailed over 100 days at sea in the Pacific covering 5873 miles at an average speed of 2.5 knots. The designers and builders of Saildrone suggest that their drone will prove to be far less expensive than traditional research ships. They believe it will be useful for buoy replacement, shark tracking and the study of ocean acidification.  It looks like an interesting design. My only concern is collision avoidance, if many of these autonomous drones are sent to sea.

Saildrone

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USCGC Polar Star Heading to Rescue Ice-bound Ships

Posted on by January 5, 2014

Polar_Star_2The USCGC Polar Star is on its way to attempt to break free two ice-bound ship off Antarctica.   So far, three icebreakers have attempted to free the the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been stuck in Antarctic ice south of Tasmania since Christmas Eve.  The Chinese ice breaker,  Xue Long or Snow Dragon, has now become stuck in the ice as well, after successfully evacuating the passengers from the cruise ship by helicopter to the Australian icebreaker,  Aurora Australis.  The Polar Star sailed from Sydney on Saturday and is expected to arrive at the stricken ships, which are roughly 1,500 miles south of Hobart, around January 12th.

Will the Polar Star succeed where the other icebreakers failed?   If she succeeds, it will come down to one word – horsepower.   Continue reading →

A Speck in the Sea — the Deadly Business of Commercial Fishing

Posted on by January 5, 2014
Fishing_Deaths

Click on the graphic for a larger image.

The New York Times has a wonderful account of the rescue of John Aldridge, a commercial fisherman who fell off a lobsterboat in the middle of the night last July, over forty miles off Montauk, Long Island, NY. Aldridge spent 12 hours in the water using his boots flotation.  The article by Paul Tough is well worth reading. It is available on-line : A Speck in the Sea.

Mario Vittone, of gCaptain, gives his take on the article in: Trying Very Hard To Die: The Preventable Disease in Commercial Fishing.  As might be inferred by the title, the tone is acerbic, but Vittone does make good points. Too many commercial fisherman die needlessly in a working culture that has traditionally lacked a due focus on safety.

Commercial fishing is dangerous. As noted by the Center for Public Integrity: Commercial fishing is the deadliest vocation in the United States.Four years running, from 2007 to 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked commercial fishing as the most dangerous occupation in the United States. From 2000 to 2010, the industry’s death rate was 31 times greater than the national workplace average. 

According to the CDC of 545 commercial fishermen who died while fishing in the U.S.:

  • More than half of all fatalities (279, 51%) occurred after a vessel disaster
  • Another 170 (31%) fatalities occurred when a fisherman fell overboard
  • Another 56 (10%) fatalities resulted from an injury onboard
  • The remaining 40 (7%) fatalities occurred while diving or from onshore injuries

Thanks to Rebekah Harris for contributing to the post.

A Sad Pilgrimage to the New York Boat Show

Posted on by January 4, 2014

boatshowEvery year I go to the New York Boat Show. In recent years, it has been a sad pilgrimage. Where once a wide range of boat types were represented, for the past decade or so most of the boats on the floor have been cookie cutter power boats. This year there were literally no sail boats in the show at all, with the exception of a couple of nice day-sailers and kayaks at the Hobie booth and a Sunfish at the Dory Shop.

Sadder still was the paucity of marine vendors. Many of the usual suspects were missing. West Marine and Defender Industries apparently didn’t think it worth showing up. A bad economy, poor priced show space or the growth of on-line shopping. Whatever the reason, I could find essentially nothing that I wanted to buy, which was a first.

Aurora Australis Standing By As Snow Dragon May Now Be Stuck in Ice

Posted on by January 3, 2014

The Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, currently carrying passengers rescued from a stricken Antarctic expedition cruise ship, has been told to stand by to assist the Chinese icebreaker, Snow Dragon, as necessary. The icebreaker Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, notified rescue authorities that its crew was concerned about “their ability to move through heavy ice in the area”, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said on Friday afternoon.

Second Antarctic rescue Aurora Australis on standby to free icebreaker

The Defecating Dog as Compass

Posted on by January 3, 2014

north-defecateI am surprised that the Vikings didn’t discover this first.  The Vikings did, after all, develop a sun compass for use on sunny days and used sunstones to find the direction of the sun when it was overcast.  One might have though that they would have perfected the defecating dog compass, as well.

Recently, researchers have documented that when dogs defecate they usually align their bodies along the magnetic north-south axis, not unlike the needle of a magnetic compass.

Dogs align themselves with Earth’s magnetic field when it comes time to poop

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Passengers Airlifted from Icebound MV Akademik Shokalskiy

Posted on by January 2, 2014

All 52 passengers have been airlifted from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy by a helicopter from the Chinese Icebreaker Xue Long or Snow Dragon.  The passengers were ferried to the Australian ice breaker Aurora Australis.  Both icebreakers had attempted, but failed, to break through the ice, which has trapped the expedition cruise ship off Antarctica south of Tasmania since Christmas Eve.  The 22 Russian crew members will stay aboard the the MV Akademik Shokalskiy to await a shifting in the ice to allow the ship to depart for open water.  The ship has been restocked with provisions by the Chinese helicopter which ferried out the passengers.

Chinese arrival at the Shokalskiy

Giant Yellow Duck Explodes in Taiwan

Posted on by May 27, 2014

Disturbing video of the Giant Yellow Duck exploding shortly before a New Year’s Day celebration in the northern Taiwan port city of Keeling. it is unclear what caused the duck to explode though some are speculating that it was attacked by eagles. The duck has had a difficult tine in its visit to Taiwan. While it attracted 4 million visitors in its month stay in Kaohsiung, it needed to be deflated and taken ashore when Typhoon Usagi hit the island.

We have followed the travels of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman‘s inflatable sculpture “Spreading Joy Around the World,” better known simply as the Giant Yellow Duck. In June, we posted about its visit to Hong Kong, and in September its arrival in Pittsburgh.  The almost 60 foot tall inflatable sculpture inspired by a bath toy has traveled to 13 cities in nine countries on its journey around the world. Thanks to Kevin Boatman Foster for pointing out the recent explosion on Facebook.

Giant yellow rubber duck explodes

Happy New Year — New Moons & Super Moons!

Posted on by January 1, 2014

new-moonHappy New Year! The New Year 2014 begins with both a new moon and a supermoon. The month also ends with a both a new moon and and a supermoon on the 30th. A supermoon is the term applied when the moon is at perigee, the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit. A supermoon during a full moon will cause the moon to appear up to 16% bigger than usual. A supermoon during a new moon will, of course, not appear larger, as the moon is in the shadow of the earth during a new moon and is not visible at all. Tides are usually higher during a supermoon.

According to Earth Sky: “..The year 2014 will have five supermoons: two January new moons, and the full moons of July, August and September. The full moon on August 10, 2014, is the closest supermoon of the year (356,896 kilometers or 221,765 miles).

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Cape Wind Beats the Deadline — Signs Deal for Offshore Wind Turbines

Posted on by December 31, 2013

WindmillsIn the list of the world’s 25 largest operating offshore wind farms, 11 are based off the United Kingdom. Denmark has five; China three; Belgium and the Netherlands each have two, while Germany and Sweden each have one.  Don’t look for the United States in the list, because the US has no offshore wind farms, despite having one of the longest and windiest coast lines in the world.

With luck, that may begin to change before too long.  Cape Wind, a project to build an offshore wind farm offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, recently signed a deal with Siemens for 130 3.6-megawatt wind turbines. Siemens is also reported to be likely to take $100 million equity stake in the project.

As important as the deal itself, was the date that the contract was signed.  If Cape Wind had failed to show that they had made a substantial start on the project by December 31, 2013, they would have lost a U.S. investment tax credit that would cover 30 percent of its estimated $2.6 billion in construction costs.

Siemens Puts Weight Behind US Offshore Wind

MV Akademik Shokalskiy Still Stuck — Third Icebreaker, Aurora Australis, Turns Back

Posted on by December 30, 2013
Aurora Australis berthed in Hobart. French icebreaker L'Astrolabe at right.

Aurora Australis berthed in Hobart. French icebreaker L’Astrolabe at right.

We posted recently about the Chinese icebreaker,  Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, which came within about 6 miles of the expedition cruise ship, MV Akademik Shokalskiy, before being forced to turn back. MV Akademik Shokalskiy has been trapped in pack ice off Antarctica south of Tasmania since before Christmas.  Now, the third icebreaker to attempt to assist the stricken ship, Aurora Australis, was stopped by ice and poor weather roughly 10 nautical miles away.  News.com.au reports: “30-knot winds and driving snow has forced the rescue icebreaker to turn back.

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Another Container Ship Cracking – MSC Monterey Anchored off Newfoundland

Posted on by December 30, 2013

Container_ship_MSC_MontereyMSC Monterey, a 4,892 TEU container ship, was bound from the Belgium port of Antwerp to Newark, NJ, but diverted to Newfoundland after cracks in her hull were discovered. The ship is now at anchor south of Newfoundland, near Trepassey Harbour. Four passengers were airlifted off the ship. The crew of 20 remains aboard.  MSC Monterey was built in 2007 in Daewoo Mangalia Heavy Industries in Mangalia, Romania.

In June, the 2008 built, 8,110 TEU container ship, MOL Comfort, broke in two about 200 nautical miles off the coast of Yemen.   The aft section sank of the ship on June 27th while the bow section stayed afloat until July 11th.  The MOL Comfort’s five sister ships were also found to have bottom plate buckling deformation, suggesting that they were experiencing excessive hull loading.   A few weeks ago the Committee on Large Container Ship Safety of the Maritime Bureau of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism issued an interim report on the casualty.  Interestingly, in the structural modeling of the hulls the ships, the engineers were not able to replicate the conditions that would have caused the MOL Comfort to break in half.  The report found that the calculated loading was only 67% of the allowable design stress of the ship.

Sharks – Photobombing and Posting on Twitter

Posted on by December 30, 2013

shark30n-2-webTwo recent items on sharks in the news — a photobombing shark off the coast of California and Australian sharks posting warnings on Twitter.

Off Manhattan Beach, California, June Emerson took a photograph of her son and a friend playing in the surf but didn’t realize until they were on their way home that there appears to be a large shark behind them and to the right.  She posted the photo on Facebook and Instagram where it quickly went viral –spreading across the internet and being picked up by national newspapers and television news programs.   Local station KTLA reports that sightings of great white sharks are not uncommon near Manhattan Beach.

On the other side of the world, Australian sharks are using Twitter to warn swimmers of their presence.   Specifically, GrindTV reports, that “scientists have fitted 320 sharks, many of them great whites, with transmitters that automatically issue warnings to the Surf Life Saving Western Australia’s Twitter feed when the tagged sharks approach within a kilometer of the coast’s popular beaches. 

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Global Ship Traffic — Then and Now

Posted on by December 28, 2013

11530100184_4f6201f997_oBy definition, shipping is the ultimate offshore industry. For most, the business of shipping is largely invisible, literally beyond the horizon. I recently came across two representations of global shipping – a plot developed from ship’s logs from the 18th and 19th centuries and an animation of a week’s shipping traffic using AIS and satellite technology from FleetMon. It is interesting to see how much and how little has changed over the centuries.

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Icebreaker Snow Dragon Now Stuck in Ice, Six Miles from MV Akademik Shokalskiy

Posted on by December 28, 2013

xuelongThe Chinese icebreaker Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, has gotten to within around 6-7 miles of the expedition cruise ship,  MV Akademik Shokalskiy, before it too was stopped by thick ice off the coast of Antarctica, south of Tasmania. Three icebreakers were dispatched to rescue the stricken cruise ship. Unfortunately, the Chinese Snow Dragon is the largest and most powerful of the three and it is stuck in the ice.

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Icebreaker Snow Dragon on Horizon with Penguins!

Posted on by December 27, 2013

A few hours ago, Professor Chris Turney, on the  MV Akademik Shokalskiy currently trapped in pack ice off Antarctica, south of Tasmania, tweeted:  Great news. Icebreaker Snow Dragon on horizon with penguins! Everyone very happy!   

We suspect that the penguins are not actually part of the rescue.  Professor Turney also tweeted a light-hearted Vine video.  Click on the upper left corner of the video for sound.

https://vine.co/v/h9r9IwB1wJM

The Akademik Shokalskiy is one of eight Finnish-built Akademik Shuleykin-class ice-strengthened oceanographic research ships built for the USSR. Five of the class have been converted to expedition cruise ships.

Stuck in Antarctic Ice – Snow Dragon Underway to Rescue MV Akademik Shokalskiy

Posted on by December 26, 2013
MV Akademik Shokalskiy

MV Akademik Shokalskiy

Expedition cruising is often considered “adventure travel” as it involves smaller ships and often more exotic destinations.  The scientists and passengers on the current cruise on the ice-strengthened expedition cruise ship, MV Akademik Shokalskiy, appear to be having more of an adventure than they had bargained for. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) received a distress call on Christmas morning, indicating that the ship was stuck in Antarctic ice around 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart in Tasmania.  Three ice breakers are on their way to break the ship free.  The The 166m-long Chinese icebreaker, Xue Long, which translates as Snow Dragon, is expected to arrive on Friday.

The ship, with 48 passengers and 20 crew members aboard, left New Zealand on Dec. 8, intending to follow in the footsteps of the great Antarctic explorer and scientist Douglas Mawson.  Apparently roughly half the passengers are scientists and half are tourists.  The ship had been following the course of the of Mawson’s  Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) of 1911, when it became stuck in the ice.