Severe weather off the east coast of Australia has left beaches in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and on the Gold and Sunshine coasts covered in a thick layer of sea foam, attracting crowds of curious locals, and, at least potentially, venomous sea snakes.
News.com.au reports that the foam went viral across the globe after a local Byron Bay woman interrupted a live weather update to search for her missing dog, Hazel, who was later rescued from the mess.
At roughly this point in the last sailing of the Vendee Globe in 2016-2017, 5 boats had been forced to retire after being damaged by collisions with UFOs, unidentified floating objects.
In this year’s race, 18 of the 33 boats competing are carrying a new high-tech collision avoidance package dubbed OSCAR. The electronics package, installed at the boat’s masthead, uses day and thermal cameras combined with artificial intelligence, to provide a second set of ‘eyes’ for the solo skipper both day and night.
How well has OSCAR worked so far? It may still be too soon to judge. That being said, of the 4 racing boats damaged by UFOs in the current race, at least two had OSCAR units installed.
Sail-assist propulsion on commercial ships is developing rapidly, featuring a range of technologies including rotor sails, rigid wing sails, ventilated turbo sails, and even conventional fabric sails.
One thing that all these rigs have in common, however, is that when they are not converting wind energy into power to propel the ship, they can interfere with operations, whether loading and discharging cargo or navigating under bridges. Now, in addition to fixed installations, engineers are designing rigs that can be moved or tilted out of the way.
Today, steel was cut for the first National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV) at Philly Shipyard, Inc. The NSMV is designed to be a state-of-the-art training vessel for America’s state maritime academies. The ship will also be available to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions.
In May 2019, MARAD awarded TOTE Services, LLC, a company involved in ship management, marine operations, and vessel services, a contract to be the Vessel Construction Manager (VCM) for the NSMV program. In April 2020, TOTE Services awarded Philly Shipyard, Inc. a contract to construct up to five NSMVs.
A year ago we posted about the innovative ideas and products developed by the Dutch firm, eConowind. They have developed a Ventfoil, a fixed airfoil-shaped spar with an internal fan that uses boundary layer suction to generate thrust. Ventfoils can be installed to provide sail-assisted propulsion on new ships, or retrofitted on existing vessels. There is also a modular version in which two Ventfoils can be deployed from inside a 40-foot container. The Ventfoils can be raised or lowered from the container in about 5 minutes.
Recently, an eCononwind Ventfoil container was installed on the TMA Logistics container barge Ms. Royaal, operating on the IJsselmeer and the Wadden Sea, between Harlingen and Amsterdam. The conditions were close to perfect. The route is typically very windy. That being said, the single eConowind container sail unit produced fuel savings of 10%, enough to justify further testing.
Today, the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine have begun to be distributed in the United States. It seems like a good time to look back at the voyage of the orphan boys in the vaccine ship that sailed from Spain in 1803.
Now know as the Balmis Expedition, it was officially called the Real Expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna (Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition) and was a three-year mission, from 1803 to 1806, to Spanish America and Asia led by Dr. Francisco Javier de Balmis with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox. It was the first large scale mass vaccination of its kind.
This is a wonderful half-hour documentary hosted by Tom Cunliffe about Jolie Brise. Jolie Brise is a gaff-rigged pilot cutter/racing yacht built and launched by the Albert Paumelle Yard in Le Havre in 1913 to a design by Alexandre Pâris. Tom Cunliffe is a British yachting journalist, author, and broadcaster.
Here are his comments on the video: Here’s a ‘lock-down special’ released early for Christmas about one of the greatest cutters of them all, Jolie Brise. This boat truly changed my life. She deserves this professionally made, TV-quality show, so pour yourself a glass of the finest and shut the cabin door on the world for half an hour.
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL) has reached a coal transport deal with Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc., which will use a new 99,000 DWT collier equipped with a retractable wing sail propulsion system, known as the Wind Challenger. Construction of the vessel will start at Oshima Shipbuilding with the goal of going into service in 2022.
The new ship will feature a single retractable sail, mounted near the bow, which is expected to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by about 5% on the Japan-Australia route or about 8% on the Japan-North America West Coast route, in comparison with a conventional vessel of the same class.
The US Navy has selected Captain Amy Bauernschmidt as the first woman to command a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Capt. Bauernschmidt was selected for the position by the fiscal year 2022 aviation major command screen board. It has not been announced which of the Navy’s 11 nuclear-powered carriers Bauernschmidt will command.
Other officers who were picked for nuclear aircraft carrier command include Capts. Colin Day, Gavin Duff, Brent Gaut, David Pollard, and Craig Sicola.
Capt. Bauernschmidt also made history, when, in 2016, she became the first female executive officer of a nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Yesterday afternoon saw unusual traffic on the Hudson River in New York’s inner harbor. A humpback whale was seen swimming in the Hudson, off Pier 84, on Monday afternoon. The whale is no stranger to New York waters. Gotham Whale‘s lead researcher Danielle M. Brown identified the whale as NYC0089, first spotted in 2018, and recently photographed on November 27th. For a slideshow of wonderful images taken by Bjoern Kils of New York Media Boat, click here.
📸 A humpback whale surfaces near the Statue of Liberty in this photo taken from a boat on New York Harbor. pic.twitter.com/OancSlqft0
— ABC News (@ABC) December 9, 2020
Last week, the container ship ONE Apus lost or had damaged over 1,900 containers in a storm in the Pacific. The lost or damaged containers representing close to 25% of the ship’s cargo. The casualty represents more containers than are typically lost in a year worldwide off all container ships, according to the World Shipping Council.
What happened on the ONE Apus? Why did so many boxes go over the side? It may be too soon to say. The ship just arrived in Kobe, Japan, and will be the subject of a detailed investigation as soon as the remaining damaged boxes are unloaded. That being said, one possible explanation is that ONE Apus experienced parametric rolling, a phenomenon that can induce violent rolling, particularly in large containerships.
An interrupted broadcast of a football game, a newsbreak during a performance by the New York Philharmonic, a weather report followed by an announcement from President Roosevelt that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Reports of attacks on the Philippines. Here is a compilation of news reports from Sunday, December 7th, 1941, seventy-eight years ago today.
The one-year-old, 14,000 TEU capacity container ship, ONE Apus, has set a dubious new record. It encountered severe weather about 1,600 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii while sailing from Yantian in China to Long Beach, California. In the violent storm, it is believed to have lost or damaged over 1,900 containers, a record for boxes lost over the side. Of these, 40 are believed to be Dangerous Goods containers. Container News suggests that the ship may have lost up to 25% of its cargo. The ship was diverted to Kobe, Japan for assessment.
To put the scope of this casualty in context, the loss on the ONE Apus appears to be greater than the total yearly loss of containers from all ships worldwide. Continue reading
On December 2, Initiatives-Coeur, being sailed by Sam Davies off South Africa in the Vendee Globe Race, came to a crashing halt. Davies describes the collision: “ It was as if I had run aground on a rock at the time. The boat speed went from 20kts to zero.” Davies had struck an unidentified floating object (UFO) which shattered the longitudinal stiffeners that support the boat’s keel. Davies herself suffered bruised ribs but was fortunately not seriously injured.
After determining that the repairs necessary to make the boat safe to sail in the Southern Ocean could not be performed at sea, Davies pointed Initiatives-Coeur’s bow toward Cape Town. Because the rules of the Vendee Globe require that the racers compete unassisted, Davies has retired from the race. She is not however giving up on the voyage. When and if the boat can be repaired she intends to continue sailing hors course or “out of the game,” no longer in the race, but still endeavoring to complete the circumnavigation.
Of the 33 IMOCAs which started the Vendee Globe Race, four have officially abandoned. Two, Hugo Boss and Arkea Paprec, were damaged after striking Unidentified Floating Objects (UFOs). A third boat, Sam Davies’ Initiatives Coeur was also damaged by a UFO collision. Davies is now evaluating whether she will be able to stay in the race. Corum L’Épargne, sailed by Nicolas Troussel, quit the race after dismasting, and PRB sank after an apparent structural failure.
In considering the status of the race, the French phrase, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, ( the more things change, the more they stay the same) comes to mind. Looking back at the 2016-2017 Vendee Globe Race, little seems to have changed. Four years ago, UFOs were the largest single cause of damage to the fleet.
