After a one-month long journey on board COSCO Shipping’s heavy lift vessel Xin Guang Hua, Damen’s two floating dry docks have arrived in Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island.

Xin Guang Hua had to wait out for the heavy winds and currents on April 28 to pass before being hauled into harbor early Sunday morning by KTK tugboat Manta.

The locals in Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao, gathered to welcome the arrival of the floating docks, which are part of Damen’s USD 40 million worth investment in the yard’s infrastructure and equipment. The yard is located on the route to the Panama Canal and features two graven docks and almost 2 kilometers of quayside.

It was taken over by Damen in February 2017 and has been renamed Damen Shiprepair Curaçao (DSCu).

The 255-meter semi-submersible sailed 5,000 miles to transport the 120-meter floating dry dock, accommodated inside the 230-meter Panama dock.

The two drydocks are aimed at bolstering the ship repair capacity at Damen’s Curaçao-based yard. They are expected to become operational in August, this year.

 

 

Posidonia is an international shipping exhibition that takes place every two years in Athens and is the largest meeting place of the Greek shipping industry and experts in international transport. The fair offers direct access to the Greek fleet, as well as to the international industry leaders. National and international exhibitions show the latest innovations in the boat market, and from 2014 also provide spare parts, boat accessories and all services related to the boot sector. This expansion of the exhibition gives it a new direction and offers visitors and participants a huge potential for new contacts, additional business and sales. In addition, Posidonia is not just an exhibition. The accompanying program provides broad conferences, seminars and technical seminars for discussing and discussing current issues, challenges and opportunities in the industry. Posidonia games include the Posidonia Cup sailing regatta, the Posidonia Golf Tournament, the Posidonia Shipsoccer tournament, and Podillia's event to unite and promote the social mix.

E-CREWING proudly announces trial deployment of innovating satellite vessel tracking service. No matter how far is your vessel beyond of terrastial AIS station coverage the updated vessel's position is always on your monitor. Secure and reliable algorithm of data transmission over open internet chanels using SSL technologies widely used in financial sector.

Navispotter brings a Company's logistic to the new heights by knowing how, where and when a vessel will get her destination with computed data based on real-time date read from a vessel's equipment and pre-planned voyage plan.

 

NAVISPOTTER.COM

The Rolls Royce together with world's biggest tug operator Svitzer A/S launched the first ever comercial remotely operated vessel on June 20, 2017 in Copengagen. 

On the morning of June 7, on the southeastern coast of the Peloponnese, Greece, the bulk carrier St. Gregory, the Bahamas, ran aground.

According to the Coast Guard of Greece, the ship, at the time of the accident there were 19 crew members, none of whom were injured as a result of this incident.

The Coast Guard added that there was also no contamination of the water area. The divers inspected the ship, discovering damage to the ship's hull, as well as a partial loss of tightness. The incident occurred on the route from Istanbul, Turkey to Sfax, Tunisia. At the time of midnight on the 8th of June the vessel still remains at the crash site.

The Greek Coast Guard also reported that the cargo on board St. Gregory - 31,000 metric tons of sulfur.

The cause of the incident is under investigation.

Development of drones' technologies as well as IoT slowly but surely leads to implementation of new logistic services into most spheres of our activity. This time the shipping industry which is traditionaly very conservative becoming a pioneer

in implementation of new way of interaction along with major IT companies.

Marius Johansen, VP Business Solutions & Marketing, WSS Ships Agency explains, “Whether it is deliveries of critical documents or vital medical supplies, tank inspections, or monitoring cargo and stockpile levels, we believe semi-autonomous drone flights can support and further enhance what our ships agency team can offer our customers”.

Adding, “Relied upon by owners, operators, vessels and crew to get spare parts, medicine, documents, or cash to master where it needs to be at moment’s notice, drone delivery is a natural extension of our existing agency service portfolio”.

Dispensing with the need for launch boats to deliver such essentials to vessels at anchorage, along with cutting delivery times, Johansen estimates drone flights will also slash costs. With launch vessels typically costing on average 1500USD, he suggests a drone delivery would eventually come down to costing just 150USD.

Launching a large scale working pilot project in one of the world’s busiest ports in 2017, in spite of the complexity of global aviation rules and restrictions placed on unmanned aerial vehicles, for WSS drone delivery is very much here to stay.

Colombian police are investigating explosions at two shipyards in Cartagena that killed at least six people and injured 22 others.

The blasts occurred within about 30 minutes of each other Wednesday, at two industrial facilities that are at least six kilometers apart. Black plumes of smoke rose into the sky from the scene of each blast.
Some of the injured were seriously burned.

The first explosion was aboard a ship undergoing repairs at a facility operated by the Cotecmar firm, which is linked to Colombia's defense ministry. The second blast rocked the Astivik Shipyards, owned by a U.S. corporation; the company builds specialized barges, floating docks and tugboats for fuel transporters and commercial salvage firms.

Authorities said investigators will focus both on the cause of the blasts and whether they were related. The shipyards in the Caribbean port's industrial zone are at least 15 km from Cartagena's center and tourist attractions including an old town section that has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Pirates and armed robbers attacked 43 ships and captured 58 seafarers in the first quarter of 2017, slightly more than the same period last year, according to the latest ICC International Maritime Bureau (IMB) piracy report.

The global report highlights persisting violence in piracy hotspots off Nigeria and around the Southern Philippines – where two crew members were killed in February. Indonesia also reported frequent incidents, mostly low-level thefts from anchored vessels.

In total, 33 vessels were boarded and four fired upon in the first three months of 2017. Armed pirates hijacked two vessels, both off the coast of Somalia, where no merchant ship had been hijacked since May 2012. Four attempted incidents were also received.

 

Six crew members have been kidnapped from a general cargo vessel off Nigeria, according to ICC International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) report. Pirates boarded an unidentified ship while it was underway around 21 nautical miles south of Nigerian Coast on May 17. Following the attack, pirates escaped. The remaining crew sailed the ship to Bonny anchorage.

_{Picture & source: www.icc-ccs.org}

According to The Guardian, UAE will be run out of ground water in the next 15 years  The major source of the fresh water in the area is mostly desalination, and average daily consumtion rate isabout 500 liters of water a day per person. A private company form Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, claims the National Advisor Bureau plans to send a vessel to Antarctida to haul the iceberg nearly ~13 000 kilometers to Fujairah.

Сompany claims the iceberg can provide enough water for one million people for five years. Moreover, there is a large influx of tourists to the Fujairah region to observe this unusual event.

The idea of towing icebergs is not at all new, this procedure has been used for quite some time by the offshore fleet to prevent the collision of icebergs with drilling platforms in the Arctic regions of Canada.