Wärtsilä has developed a new water lubricated seal, Enviroguard SLR, which provides cost-effective reliability for small workboats.
Available in nine standard sizes that suit 75mm-306mm of shaft size, the new seal is expected to provide more reliability to smaller workboats, fishing boats, motorised barges, and super yachts.
The Wärtsilä Enviroguard SLR water lubricated seal is also designed to survive large shaft movements and to tolerate aggressive waters that are heavy with silt or sand.
On 9 March 2016, three French fishing vessels sought shelter from bad weather in Dartmouth harbour, on the south-west coast of England. One of the vessels, Saint Christophe 1, was directed to berth alongside a quay wall and when the tide went out it grounded and capsized alongside. Saint Christophe 1 subsequently flooded and sank with the incoming tide, and was declared a constructive total loss.
Safety issues
The lack of effective communication between harbour authority staff and vessel’s crew failed to ensure a common understanding of the fact that the boat would ground at low water
The assumption that the crew understood the information provided by the harbour staff, prevented further safety checks from being made Continue reading “MAIB report into the grounding and capsize of berthed trawler Saint Christophe 1”
The report on the sinking of the scallop dredger JMT has been published
The MAIB has issued its report into the capsizing and sinking of the scallop dredger JMT in 2015. The report will be of particular interest to surveyors given that the incident raises issues around the effect modifications made potentially had on the stability of the craft.
During the afternoon of 9 July 2015, routine contact was lost with the skipper and crewman on board the 11.4m scallop dredger JMT that was fishing off Plymouth, UK. A search and rescue operation was initiated the following morning when the vessel did not return alongside as expected.
In one of its regular safety bulletins, the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) has issued new information on an incident involving parts falling from a crane – in this instance a steel sign. IMCA says that this is not the first time this has happened and individuals may wish to review this in light of other similar reported signage dropping incidents.
A piece of metal fell from a crane boom. The incident occurred on a vessel whilst alongside during the testing of the luffing motors’ braking system on the main crane. During this testing the crane boom made an uncontrolled descent into its crutch, resulting in a 60 kg steel sign falling 15m down to the deck. Investigation revealed that the sign was fixed by 4 x stitch welds, of which three were completely rusted away.
Cheetah Marine has built a hydrogen-fuel catamaran which demonstrates the potential of zero CO2 technology in the marine industry. It is believed to be the first hydrogen powered craft.
The 9.95m catamaran, designed and built at Cheetah Marine’s workshops on the Isle of Wight in the UK, features a Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine (HICE). The Honda outboard works in the same way as traditional petrol engine, except it burns hydrogen and produces harmless water vapour as the only emission.
The collapsed crane which caused the death of the Carol Anne skipper
The MAIB has now released its report into the incident in which skipper, Jamie Kerr, died on the Carol Anne when the crane fitted to the vessel collapsed leaving the reader in little doubt that this was an avoidable accident. The installation of a crane to a workboat adds significant challenges for the marine surveyor when assessing the structure as this report highlights.
On 30 April 2015, an Atlas lorry loader crane fitted on the workboat Carol Anne collapsed while being used to offload a net at a fish farm at Balure on Loch Spelve, Scotland. The crane fell directly onto the workboat’s skipper, who was declared dead at the scene. The crane had been in operation since its installation just six and a half weeks earlier. It was not overloaded when it failed.
ESNA has won funding to research the next generation of Surface Effect Ships
Sørlandet Knowledge Foundation and the Regional Research Council Agder has granted ESNA funding to develop the next generation of Surface Effect Ships for offshore service operations. ESNA, an independent naval architects and ship design company for high speed vessels, specialises in air cushioned catamaran Surface Effect Ships.
ESNA operates at the crossroads between advanced military and commercial high speed craft technology and the market for offshore renewable energy and maritime operations. The company develops designs with outstanding performance, seakeeping and comfort, higher speed and with lower power consumption and emissions for a greener future.
The new SeaVax solar and wind powered vessel concept will be able to clean up the oceans
A team of inventors from Sussex, England, has developed a solar and wind-powered boat that can suck up plastic waste.
Bluebird Marine Systems unveiled their proof of concept at the government funded Innovate UK show in London in late 2015 and are now crowd funding the construction of a full-scale vessel.
SeaVax, when built, it will be 44 meters (144 feet) long, have a suction head some 13.5 meters (44 foot) wide, and will be fully autonomous. Deck-mounted solar panels and two wind turbines will feed power to electric pumps and filters that will suck up plastic solids and micro plastics.
Windcat Workboats launches its newest vessel. Picture: Stephen Waller
Windcat Workboats has launched its latest vessel for the growing renewable energy industry at ABP’s Port of Lowestoft.
The vessel, ‘Windcat 38,’ is the first to be launched following the signing of a long term lease agreement between ABP and Windcat Workboats for their new marine engineering facility in the port.
Windcat Workboats owns and operates over 38 offshore crew transfer vessels which are predominantly used in the European offshore wind sector.
There is an important free resource available to the whole of the shipping industry that makes a major contribution to safety and that surveyors can help to improve. This is the Mariners Alerting and Reporting Scheme (MARS) operated by The Nautical Institute. MARS is a free resource and The Nautical Institute hopes that surveyors will help to make its existence known to the maritime world. The Nautical Institute wants as many mariners and, indeed, as many in shipping as possible, to benefit from lessoned learned from accidents and near misses. Surveyors can spread the word to let mariners and companies know the resource is there.
The background to MARS is known to all; across the major transportation modes and in many other fields, human error looms as the leading cause of both accidents and incidents. In recent years, the definition of human error has been expanded to include concepts such as unsafe supervision and organisational influences (e.g. resource management and operational processes). In the maritime industry approximately 90 percent of accidents can be traced to human error despite the promotion of regulations, training and quality management systems.
