In early December, on her maiden voyage, the VLOC (Very Large Ore Carrier) Vale Beijing suffered structural cracking while loading cargo in northeast Brasil. As reported by Maritime Propulsion , the extent of the damage was significant – the hull plating was found to have cracked in the vicinity of a water ballast tank, and from there water was making its way into a cargo hold. Vale Beijing is classed by DNV whose preliminary inspection reportedly described (in addition to the crack in outer hull plating) fairly substantial internal damage to web frames and longitudinals in the vicinity of the water ballast tank.
Thanks to Dirk Bal for passing along a condition update and photos of the ship at anchor in the outer roads of Sao Luis, The Vale Beijing is one of 35 Valemax class ore carriers delivered or under construction and are the largest ore carriers ever built.
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Update: 
Waves behave nicer now and the wind is blowing from behind so Guppy still keeps rolling back and forth. Yet the wind is pulling at 15 knots which is unusual around here in the doldrums. Guppy is getting to be an oven now so I sleep during the day and stay up at night… and it is nice, what with the moonlit sea and the many many thousand stars up above.. It is real cool just to look at. Good winds keep Guppy happy and we are making good progress too with 3000 nautical miles already done which is more than halfway through this crossing. Let’s hope the second half will be just as good… Laura
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The headline in the Liverpool Daily Post reads, “
It would have been almost funny, if billions of dollars were not at stake. As we posted last June, the
Last week we posted about 
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