The speakers of the bridge stereo are blasting out the sound of Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” album from the 80’s. The voice of New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi is appealing to us and in the dark it reminds me of those sweaty discos back in Wexford 20 years ago.
The adrenaline shock from the Satellite alarm gets me right back to the present, with the siren breaking the music like a nuclear attack warning, every time the bastard goes off I think WW3 has been declared. This time it is merely a Navigation warning for the Straits of Gib., fat lot of good it is to us up here in the North Sea, not one of my favourite places to be.
We are crossing at the time of writing an area near the Fergus Oil Field, on a border area shared by the UK, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, the rigs go from being called Ardmore, Angus, Flora and Fife to Valhalla, Svend, Valdemar and Rolf.
Meanwhile out on the main deck our cargo fan is belting away at 200 bar pressure driving out the vapours of the last cargo Naphtha and replacing them with cool, clean, fresh North Sea air, the ship is airlocked down with a carbon filter on the intakes keeping out the nasty smell of Naphtha, it doesn’t stop the vapours from finding a way in and every so often there is a smell of brimstone mixed with pig slurry, a real pleasant waft to get across the olfactory membrane.
The Naphtha is used as a cracking additive in the petrochemicals industry and is really nice stuff, it has the skull and crossbones symbol, is highly flammable and dangerous for the environment. It may cause genetic mutation, cancer and other sicknesses. It says no smoking here on the checklist, although smoking would be the healthy option when given the choice between the two.
The sampling guy had a breathing mask and filter but the hose connecting guys did not. We had them onboard also for our crew naturally but the epsilon minuses connecting the hoses were either unaware of the dangers or too thick to realise the dangers , or maybe they had spare lungs at home.
Next cargo, Naphtha again….Nice.
There is plenty talk about carbon neutrality and carbon footprints, I think I’d have to plant a forest the size of New Jersey to get to carbon zero, maybe New Jersey would benefit from forestation?
Archive for the 'The 80's' Category
Back in 1986 the ore carrier Kowloon Bridge sank off the Irish coast, in the vicinity of the Stags Rocks near Baltimore west Cork. The wreck is the biggest by tonnage in the world and is a huge diving tourism magnet to the area. She had gotten into difficulty and needed repairs so stopped at Bantry for repairs, on proceeding from Bantry she got into difficulty again in storms and “lost her rudder”, a bit of a disaster, the crew abandoned ship and the ship hit the rocks and later sank despite salvage attempts.
Built as the English Bridge in 1973 in Newcastle upon Tyne she was renamed Worcestershire, then Sunshine, then Murcurio when owned by Grimaldi, she became Crystal Transporter in 1983 and in 1985 the name welded to the stern was her everlasting and final name Kowloon Bridge.
Anyway some of the firemen on the firecourse were telling me that they were divers also in their spare time, the excitement of fighting fires was not enough for these boys. They had been diving at the wreck of the Kowloon Bridge and were saying that the area was being buoyed and cordonned off for a salvage operation.
I did a bit of investigation and found out that the owners of the wreck paid the minister of the marine €1.135 million in 2005 as a settlement to for damages, a bit more than the £1 paid back in 1986 by the second owner Shaun Kent, but peanuts compared to the value of the iron ore cargo that has being lying there for 20 odd years. There have been challenges form environmentalists and local Cork people reported in the papers from November 2006 against the “environmental catastrophe” that awaits when they start to salvage the ship and cargo. The price of metal these days has made the salvage more profitable, so I think the diving gang are going to be minus a wreck object in the near future, unfortunately for them.
The other interesting thing about this ship is that she is the sister to the ill fated “Derbyshire” which sank in the South China sea in 1980 without so much as a mayday and all hands lost 44 people in all. Nothing was done about the Derbyshire until the Kowloon Bridge sank, the Derbyshire has been the subject of many theories and t.v. programmes she was found in 1994 and a brief history is found here http://www.nautical-heritage.org.uk/derbyshire.html
The 1988 built Repubblica di Genova lies on her starboard side at Antwerp, Belgium.
How not to market your freight business, you can’t do that lads. In this case bad publicity is bad publicity. Although it probably only got TV news coverage in Belgium.
She was tied up, or moored starboard side to the quay and she developed a 20 degree starboard list towards the dock wall, at this stage the ship was evacuated of her Italian and Romanian crew plus passengers. The list got worse and she came to equilibrium starboard side down in the water.
As in the case of the MSC Napoli who developed a hole in her side the Repubblica di Genova worryingly developed a 20 degree list. This doesn’t just happen, someone made a cock up, a very large and costly cock up.
Whether it was a ballast mistake or a bunker mistake will come out in the wash, but free surface effect must have played a part here, apparently she had come from drydock and had a lot of empty tanks.She has been lying down since yesterday Thursday the 8th of March, and according to the chat on Shipspotting.com the salvage will be carried out next week.
Additional Sunday 11th March
The following link has more information on the story www.imcbrokers.com
head on over there for more photos and reports from Antwerp.
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