It’s not been the best of weeks in Durban harbour, with two ships grounding on submerged sandbanks.
One of the ships involved is the container ship NILEDUTCH BREDA which entered service in the Asia – West Africa service at the end of June. According to the Niledutch website, she was on her maiden visit to Durban. What isn’t reported is that she ran aground onto a sand hump near berth 107 and became stuck. The vessel was eventually pulled clear and damage appears to be minimal as the vessel has since sailed.
Niledutch Breda is deployed on the rotation Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Shekou, Singapore, Durban, Pointe Noire, Luanda, Lobito, Namibe, Shanghai.
The second vessel to come to a sticky halt was a Maersk container ship that became stuck on a sandbank close to the turning basin for ships going to DCT – this is in front and to the side of the T-Jetty. It took about 9 hours to get her clear.

In a move the company says “confirms its ongoing transformation”, engineering and management group Aurecon South Africa has appointed former Public Works deputy director-general (DDG) Dr Lulu Gwagwa chairperson.
She has worked as a development planner in various capacities since 1981, including in the private sector, nongovernment organisations, academia and the public sector.

President Jacob Zuma on Saturday announced plans to explore parts of the ocean to find economic potential that could contribute to the country’s gross domestic product.
“Four priority sectors have been selected as new growth areas in the ocean economy, with the objective of growing them and deriving value for the country,” he said in Durban on Saturday at the launch of Operation Phakisa.
“These are marine transport and manufacturing activities, such as coastal shipping, transshipment, boat building, repair and refurbishment; offshore oil and gas exploration; aquaculture; and marine protection services and ocean governance.”
Aquaculture is the farming of fish, crustaceans and aquatic plants. It involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions.
Zuma said the vast ocean space remained relatively unexplored.
“We chose the ocean economy with good reason. South Africa is uniquely bordered by the ocean on three sides – east, south and west.
“With the inclusion of Prince Edward and Marion Islands in the southern ocean, the coastline is approximately 3 924 km long.”
Zuma said it would explore maritime transport and manufacturing to secure the benefits of the growing volumes of cargo handling, sea and coastal shipping and support transport activities such as storage and warehousing.
“In addition, South Africa can utilise its location and expertise to increase its share of the global marine manufacturing market, including shipbuilding and repair, rig repair and refurbishment or boat-building,” he said.
“Against this backdrop, the aspiration of this workstream is to grow the marine transport and manufacturing sector over the next five years, to increase the contribution to GDP and multiply the number of jobs in South Africa.”
Zuma said offshore oil and gas exploration would deal with issues that government had previously tackled.
“The aspiration of this workstream is to further enhance the enabling environment for exploration of oil and gas wells, resulting in an increased number of exploration wells drilled, while simultaneously maximising the value captured for South Africa,” he said.
Aquaculture, meanwhile, remained an underdeveloped sector.
“South Africa’s aquaculture sector has an increasingly important contribution to make globally in food security. Despite its relatively small size, aquaculture in South Africa has shown strong growth of 6.5% a year.
“By generating jobs, especially in fish processing and marketing, employment in aquaculture can enhance the economic and social status of individuals in multiple coastal communities.”
Zuma said the objective of marine protection services and governance was to balance economic opportunities while maintaining environmental integrity.
“The aspiration of this workstream is to develop an incremental and integrated approach to planning, monitoring and execution of ocean governance and enforcement in the next few years,” he said.
Zuma said the ocean could contribute up to R177-billion to the GDP.
Teams of experts had already begun preparing its ocean plan.
“Our teams began working here in Durban on July 8 and will continue working until August 15, preparing the action plan for unlocking the potential of the country’s oceans,” he said.
“We are pleased that over 180 delegates from national government departments, provincial departments, civil society, the private sector, labour and academia are participating in the oceans component of Operation Phakisa.”
Edited by: Sapa

French logistics firm Bolloré Africa Logistics has again indicated its interest in operating the second container terminal at Mombasa once that terminal has been completed.
Mombasa’s second container terminal is currently being constructed by the Kenya Ports Authority, which is on record as saying that an outside operator will be sought to run the terminal. The second terminal will increase Mombasa’s container capacity by 1.2 million TEUs and increasing the port of Mombasa’s capacity to 2.1m TEU
Bolloré hasn’t been shy in making its intentions clear. “We have been in Kenya for 45 years and have been interested to run Mombasa on a concession for a long time. I had thought about it as far back as 15 years,” said Dominique Lafont President and CEO of Bolloré Logistics Africa.
Lafont said that Mombasa’s position as a regional shipment hub could be entrenched by being operated by a private operator. He added that the rapport that Bolloré Logistics Africa has with vessel owners could also increase traffic to Mombasa.
He saw Mombasa as the major gateway not only for Kenya’s East African neighbours of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but also its northern neighbours of South Sudan and Ethiopia. “Mombasa should become the driving port in East Africa as a natural regional transhipment centre.” Mombasa has been adversely affected in the past by inefficiencies resulting in congestion, which saw some cargo owners switching to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, but stern action has been taken recently to ensure that containers are moved speedily out of the port, which has resulted in a marked improvement. Last month (June), 25 agencies consisting of the government and its agencies along with private sector businesses, signed a ‘Community Charter’ as a binding pact with the aim of improving efficiency at the Port of Mombasa and eliminating cargo delays completely by 2016.

The Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) os covering 110 km² of land, is situated within the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality near Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The initiative is a multibillion-dollar industrial development complex customized for heavy, medium and light industries, adjacent to a deepwater port, Port of Ngqura. The Coega Development Corporation (CDC) is the developer and operator of the Coega IDZ and is responsible for the land side infrastructure, while the deep-water port facility, Port of Ngqura, is developed by the Transnet National Ports Authority. The Coega IDZ is a phased development around industry clusters with Custom Secure Areas dedicated for export-oriented manufacturing for companies located in the zone. Coega offers a platform for global exports by attracting foreign and local investment in manufacturing industries. A strategic development framework plan for the Coega IDZ has been developed, focusing on infrastructure development and facilities for the core development Area, which comprises 65 km². A number of multinational companies already operate from this area. The Coega IDZ has to date signed investments worth approximately R30 billion (US$4.1 billion) and currently has a portfolio of investments undergoing feasibility which are worth some R140 billion (US$19.2 billion), to come on stream at various stages over the next five years. These include an oil refinery, a combined-cycle gas turbine power station, a Business Process Outsourcing Park, automotive plants, and various other investments in the logistics, chemicals, and food-processing sector.

Italy’s Costa Concordia cruise ship is being readied for its final voyage to the scrapyard on Tuesday, two and a half years after it crashed into an idyllic Mediterranean island in a disaster that claimed 32 lives. A luxury liner the length of three football fields, the Costa Concordia was dragged upright in September after keeling over on its side, and is being refloated using air tanks attached to its sides like giant armbands. The four-day journey to the port of Genoa for the 290-metre (951-foot) vessel — roughly twice the size of the Titanic — will be the last step in the biggest salvage operation of a passenger ship ever carried out. “This is the finish line that all our citizens, Italians and the world, have been waiting for. Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” said Sergio Ortelli, the mayor of Giglio Island, a fishing community of just 1,500 residents that has been overrun by hundreds of salvage workers since 2012. The ship will be dragged at a speed of just two knots (3.7 kilometres) per hour by two tug boats — a Dutch vessel and a Vanuatu-flagged one — and 12 other vessels will make up the convoy accompanying the giant ship. The towing will begin after the arrival of a ferry from the mainland at 0630 GMT and engineers said it would take up to six hours to drag the 114,500-tonne ship into position. Greenpeace has said it will follow the operation closely because of concern that the ship could spill toxic waste into the sea, although officials have pointed out that the environmental impact has been relatively minimal so far. A 12-person team of salvage workers will be on the Costa Concordia itself during the journey and an evacuation plan is in place for them in case of an accident. South African salvage master Nick Sloane said this was the “biggest challenge” of a career that has taken him to accidents at sea in six continents and two warzones. The ship has been raised by six metres so far since the refloating operation began on July 14 and salvage engineers said they were aiming to float it by a further four to tow it through the Corsica Channel and on to northwest Italy. The Costa Concordia struck a group of rocks just off the Tuscan island on the night of January 13 with 4,229 people from 70 countries on board, just as passengers were settling down for supper on the first day of their cruise. The impact tore a massive gash in its hull and the ship veered sharply as the water poured in, eventually keeling over and sparking a panicky evacuation that was delayed by more than an hour in as-yet unexplained circumstances. Its captain Francesco Schettino is on trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all the passengers had been evacuated — even though he has claimed that he fell into a lifeboat. Four other crew members and an executive from the ship’s owner Costa Crociere, the biggest cruise operator in Europe and part of the US giant Carnival, have already plea-bargained and been convicted on lesser charges. The cost of the entire salvage operation including the scrapping is estimated at Euro 1.5 billion ($2.0 billion). The salvage work has been a source of year-round revenue for Giglio, but many islanders complain the eyesore has hit visitor numbers over three summer seasons. “This is something that the people of Giglio want to forget but cannot. They will always have to carry the memory of this event,” Ortelli said, adding: “I don’t think we should remember the ship, we should remember the victims.” Source : The Local

Take one fatigued pilot, add cultural power distance, loss of situational awareness, a dash of unimplemented Bridge Resource Management , inadequate master-pilot exchange and passage planning and there’s a very good change of something unpleasant happening. TSB Canada’s investigation report into grounding of the bulker Tundra off Sainte Anne-de-Sorel, Quebec, is an interesting collection of what-not-to-does. Groundings in which pilots are involved are among the most expensive. A study by the International Group of P&I Clubs estimated that although groundings only account for 3 per cent of incidents resulting insurance claims of more than $100,000 they accounted for 35 per cent of the cost of claims at a cost of $7.85m for each incident. That compares with collisions, which accounted for 24 per cent of incidents and costs, and fixed and floating object claims which accounted for 64 per cent of incidents but 33 per cent of claims. When the pilot boarded the Tundra he did not have up-to-date information regarding the buoys he intended to use for navigation. One buoy has been removed, which was not necessarily going to be problem since the next buoy had distinctly different characteristics than the missing device and the pilot would have recognised the situation and adjusted accordingly. He did not have a documented passage plan – his was in his laptop. He should have become aware of the missing buoy, where a course change was scheduled. Fatigue may explain the overun. Says the TSB report: “Although an analysis of the pilot’s 72-hour sleep history indicated that he was not suffering from a significant acute or chronic sleep debt at the time of the occurrence, there were other risk factors and indicators of fatigue. The pilot’s untreated obstructive sleep apnea and shift worker disorder likely reduced the quantity and quality of his sleep on the nights leading up to the occurrence, increasing his risk for fatigue. The physical environment of the bridge, which was dark and warm with the presence of monotonous engine noise, and the time of day (evening), would have been conducive to sleep, especially for individuals with sleep disorders. “As well, his physical location on the bridge reduced his interaction with other crew members and, in the 10 minutes preceding the grounding, the relatively abrupt cessation in his level of activity suggests that the pilot may have experienced a micro-sleep.” Fatigue may not necessarily be obvious to the rest of the bridge team, and this pilot did not communicate much with the rest of those on the bridge but a sudden and prolonged silence may indicate that the pilot is not as alert as one would wish. Yet even a sleepy pilot need not have led to the grounding of the vessel had the rest of the bridge team known his intentions, but they did not and did not ask. The pilot’s passage plan called for a course change when the vessel was abaft of the now-missing buoy. The passage plan prepared aboard ship had no course change at that point but did have one for 0.44 nautical miles down river at waypoint 63 Shorty after passing waypoint 63 the helmsman reported that it was difficult to maintained course due to bank effect. At 2145.20 the helmsman reported he could no longer steer. Despite orders from the now alert pilot the vessel grounded within three minutes. Nobody on the bridge knew about the earlier course change given in the pilot’s passage plan and between that and the one prepared aboard ship. The pilot had simply signed the ship’s passage plan when he came aboard but had not shown his own passage plan or discussed it with the rest of the bridge team. Basically the team did not know what he actually wanted them to do. There was no ‘shared mental model’. Many’s the time that a pilot comes aboard and others on the bridge who are responsible for navigation sit back and relax and leave it to the pilot. In this case there may have been another factor involved: ‘power distance’. The crew were from Ukraine the pilot a Francophone Canadian. Differences in cultural influence how they interact. Says theTSB: “Cultural factors can play a role in communication and hence the effectiveness of BRM. “Power distance” refers to the extent to which members of a culture feel comfortable with hierarchy and power imbalance in personal and business relationships. Research has shown that cultures vary in terms of power distance. Compared with low power distance cultures, high power distance cultures are more comfortable with imbalance among their members, which means that people in less powerful positions may be reluctant to question or challenge authority figures. Cultural differences in power distance may contribute to poor communication between marine pilots and bridge teams. The National Transportation Safety Board recommends that a segment on cultural and language differences and their possible influence on mariner performance be included in the International Maritime Organization IMO’s BRM curricula.” All in all the simplest lesson is to keep an eye on the pilot and make sure you know what he wants to do with your ship.

Rates for capesize bulk carriers on key Asian routes will continue to fall next week as the number of ships available for charter outpaces the volume of new cargoes, brokers said. There is a lack of activity. There are quite a few fixtures, but the market is not exactly busy,” said a Singapore-based capesize broker. The broker estimated around 12 capesize ships had been chartered by Thursday, mainly to haul iron ore to China from Brazil and Australia. That is half the number that were chartered in the first three days of last week, Reuters freight data showed. The broker estimated there would be around 90 capesize vessels available for charter by the end of this week. There will be a gradual slide in rates. The market will continue to soften, although owners will resist lower rates where they can,” the broker said. Freight rates from Australia to China would fall below $7.50 per tonne and could head towards $7 per tonne next week, the broker said. Charter rates from Brazil to China would drop towards $20 per tonne, he added. Rates for the Western Australia-China route closed at $7.76 per tonne on Wednesday, down from $8.26 a week earlier. But the last concluded fixture was lower at $7.64 per tonne, the cheapest rate since May 29. Freight rates for the Brazil-China closed at $21.55 per tonne on Wednesday, compared with $23.20 last Wednesday. The last fixture hit a three-week low of $21.19. The summer mood has reached the market with less cargoes and lower rates,” Norwegian broker Fearnley said in a weekly note on Wednesday. “The state of our market can be explained by high iron ore inventories in China and inactive iron ore traders,” Fearnley added. Iron ore stockpiles at Chinese ports topped 114.8 million tonnes in June, 57 percent higher than last year, the China Iron and Steel Association said in research published this week, even as iron ore imports fell. Rates in the Pacific for smaller panamax vessels are also set to slide as chartering activity eases, brokers said. The general consensus is the panamax market is softening. It shot up quite quickly last week, but I think it will come off a bit over the next week or 10 days,” a Singapore-based panamax broker said on Thursday. Panamax charters in the Pacific were being fixed at $8,000 per day this week, about 25 percent higher than the Baltic index level, Fearnley said. Rates for a panamax transpacific voyage closed at a six-week high of $5,884 per day on Wednesday, compared with $3,566 per day last week. The last concluded fixture was slightly higher at $5,900 per day. Rates have rebounded since June 27 when they bottomed at $3,236 per day following a steady decline from $8,031 per day on May 20. Charter rates for supramax vessels were unchanged from last week at around $11,500 per day for a voyage from Singapore to India although there were signs of an improvement in rates, Fearnley said in its weekly note. The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index closed at 863 points on Wednesday, down from 890 a week earlier. Technical analysis showed the index is expected to keep consolidating

Costa Cruises’ Costa Concordia is to be refloated on Monday 14 July, pending final confirmation from the Italian authorities. Over the past few days the Titan-Micoperi salvage team has tested the refloating systems, which were completed last week after the final sponson was installed on Concordia’s port side. Following authorisation from the Italian Monitoring Observatory and confirmation of appropriate weather conditions on 13 july, technicians will use a pneumatic system to gradually empty all 30 sponsons of ballast water, providing the necessary buoyancy to refloat the wreck. At the end of this operation the ship will have a draft of around 18.5 m. Last week, Costa revealed that Titan-Micoperi will tow Concordia from Giglio Island to the San Giorgio del Porto shipyard in Genoa. The ship will then be dismantled and recycled during a four-phase, 22-month project.

We have become used to machinery that appears to be cleverer than the people who are supposed to be in charge of it. We can turn on the central heating ten kilometres away from the house, while it is possible to buy a fridge that can order more food from the supermarket as you eat it. It is all clever software, of course, and it is getting more intelligent all the time. As the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) reviews its work programme it is significant the member societies will be paying some attention to what has become known as “complex on board systems”. Increasingly, ships are becoming dependent on these complex systems, which are now permeating every department, with a good deal of interlinking and integration and very often involving significant safety impacts. Propulsion systems, power systems, navigation and ship handling systems – all are becoming more sophisticated and need, it is suggested, a new type of officer who can fully understand them and who can intelligently intervene when things go wrong. In the design and operational departments, is everyone capable of grasping the implications of the equipment and components, the software and systems that are being incorporated into a ship? Often the solution of one problem will merely uncover another, if there is not a proper comprehension of what is happening. It is the way of the future, of course, but it is important that these complex systems are sufficiently robust in every part, for their life aboard ship in a demanding marine environment. So it is encouraging that there is to be an IACS approach to this issue, which hopefully will lead to a more holistic approach to such systems, so that there is less risk of problems being magnified into emergency systems. Many modern mariners will recognise some of the problems that arise. A passenger ship experiences an electrical problem which disables the vessel’s propulsion system and perhaps as important, renders the air conditioning and refrigeration systems inoperable, causing considerable discomfort for the several thousand people on board. A software problem on a semi-submersible causes the ballast systems to become uncontrollable, almost causing the loss of the rig. Systems linking the bridge control system with the steering and propeller pitch are made unreliable because of a software glitch in barely associated equipment. The integration of a whole range of navigation and collision avoidance functions are available for the watchkeeper, but without any “default” system which maintains a degree of functionality if the more sophisticated system “goes down”. Possibly, one of the most important areas in this is the role of the human being, and a trained ability to recognise that something is going wrong, to analyse the situation and intervene accordingly. Will the system facilitate adequate human oversight? Will the human intervention be possible? Or will the complexity of the systems aboard defeat the humans? Source: BIMCO The OPDR LISBOA enroute Rotterdam – Photo : Krijn Hamelink © Preliminary Results