Indonesian Navy arrested the captain of a fuel tanker in May, suspected of anchoring illegally in its waters. He has been jailed for 15 days and fined 200 million rupiahs, per information from a navy spokesperson on Wednesday.

Nord Joy, an oil tanker flying Panama’s flag, was reportedly detained on 30 May. The ship was anchored in the Indonesian waters,  east of Singapore Strait, one of the busiest shipping channels in the world.

Indonesian navy officers asked for an unofficial payment of $375,000 to release the vessel, two individuals involved in the negotiations informed Reuters.

Indonesia’s Navy refused to accept that such payment was requested. They instead said that the vessel was held for anchoring in its waters without permission. Synergy Group, Nord Joy’s manager, said it was unaware of any request for money made by the Navy.

The vessel was reportedly released when a court on 7 July handed down the prison sentence and a fine to Vivek Kumar, the oil tanker’s captain, Julius Widjojono – the Navy spokesman – reported to Reuters.

A spokesperson associated with the Synergy Group confirmed that the vessel was released following a court hearing on Batam, an Indonesian island toward the south of Singapore that’s home to a core naval base of Indonesia.

The tanker, which measures 183 meters in length and can be loaded with up to 350,000 barrels full of fuel, is anchored to the west of Singapore on the route to Malaysia’s Tanjung Pelepas Port, per the ship date provided by Refinitiv.

In 2021, a dozen similar detentions by the Indonesian Navy were reported. In such cases, the ship owners reportedly made unofficial payments of almost $300,000 each. After that, the vessels were released.

The Navy refused to accept that any payments of this sort were made.

Source: https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/indonesia-jails-nord-joy-tankers-captain-for-illegally-anchoring-in-its-territorial-waters/

The incident happened at Kavkaz anchorage when Teal Bay was loading grain from Kavkaz V in a ship-to-ship transfer; Kavkaz V was at anchor with Teal Bay alongside.

A mooring line was being used to pull Teal Bay forward and was therefore under significant tension, but the STS transfer had created a difference in height (freeboard) between the two vessels. The vessels’ freeboards were similar when loading start, but as it progressed Teal Bay dropped lower relative to Kavkaz V creating an upward lead angle on the mooring line.

The fatal incident happened around 80% through the loading of the vessel when the vessel had to be moved forward to continue the loading operation.

KavKaz V’s deck was around 8 m higher than Teal Bay’s, and as the line had been secured through an open fairlead roller it sprang from the roller and struck the chief officer as it snapped tight. The Chief Officer was standing in a hazardous area close to the mooring line, and was struck in the head, falling unconscious to the deck.

After some delay in securing evacuation for the chief officer, he was pronounced dead by a paramedic at 0045 aboard a tugboat in the port of Taman.

“A postmortem examination determined he had sufered closed blunt force trauma to the head, traumatic swelling of the brain and a brain haemorrhage,” said the report.

“Chief Officer, Yuriy Maslov, was a 54-year-old experienced seafarer and had been with the company for over 20 years. He was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, safety boots, gloves and a hard hat.”

In its conclusions, MAIB said that the number of crew assigned to carry out the warping operation was insufficient and almost certainly influenced the Chief Officer’s decision, which went unchallenged, to stand in a hazardous area.  Ahead of the incident, the master had decided not to wake the of watch crew to assist, as this would disrupt their hours of rest.

MAIB also found that crew unfamiliarity with STS transfers and a lack of available time led to insufficient planning for the mooring and warping.

“Despite the crew’s efforts and the assistance of the tug Dobrynya, it took over 2 hours for the casualty to be seen by a medical professional. Given the severity of his injuries, it is unknown whether the delays in the Chief Officer receiving medical attention had any bearing on his death; however, the lack of co-ordination by the parties involved in organising the medical response created delays that lessened his chances of survival,” said the report.

MAIB has recommended that Isle of Man Ship Registry distribute the lessons from the report to owners and operators on its register. The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency is set to issue guidance on the use of open fairleads.

Teal Bay’s management company V.Ships Ship Management (India) has taken a number of steps, including:

• Commissioned and overseen the production of a human factors analysis of the accident.

• Sent a fleetwide safety alert to highlight the safety issues raised by this accident.

• Conducted additional safety training with Teal Bay’s crew, including modules on safe mooring operations and STS.

• Issued a work instruction setting out a plan to remove open fairleads from the fleet and replace them with a closed type or universal type of fairlead and directed managers to make allowance for this within the dry dock specification for vessels scheduled to dry dock.

• Reviewed SMS procedures to include guidance on STS operations for bulk carriers with a specific bulk carrier checklist and ofce involvement in the STS approval process.

• Amended the company risk assessments to include a generic risk assessment for bulk carrier STS operations.

• Amended the SMS to include detailed guidance on warping operations.

Source: https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/regulation/lessons-be-learned-fatality-during-sts-transfer

Container ship ALGECIRAS EXPRESS reported missing Captain in Jul 3 in Mediterranean being halfway between Malta and Panteleria islands, while en route from Istanbul to Tanger-Med with ETA Jul 6. The ship started SAR, which lasted from morning Jul 3 until morning Jul 5, with understood, involvement of SAR and CG of coastal states. The ship arrived at Algeciras on Jul 7, she was thoroughly searched by police, all crew were interrogated, but Captain’s disappearance remained a mystery. ALGECIRAS EXPRESS was allowed to leave Algeciras on Jul 12, after arrival of new Captain. ALGECIRAS EXPRESS arrived at Tanger-Med same day, left on Jul 13, next port of call unknown, as of 1320 UTC the ship is adrift in Med east of Tanger-Med since morning Jul 13.
Missing Captain said to be of Filipino nationality.

New FleetMon Vessel Safety Risk Reports Available: https://www.fleetmon.com/services/vessel-risk-rating/

MSC Group and the Italian Shipbuilder Fincantieri have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for an additional order of two vessels in the Explora Cruise fleet. The agreement also entails modifying the cruise vessels already under construction to be equipped with LNG-powered engines and power plants that use LNG and Hydrogen.

Explora Journeys, the new cruise brand of MSC Group, already had four ships on order; EXPLORA I – IV. This agreement called for two new vessels, along with the modification of the EXPLORA III and EXPLORA IV, to be equipped with LNG engines and a power plant that can run on Hydrogen and LNG. The work in progress on EXPLORA III and IV was halted due to the significant redesign of the vessels required. As a result, these vessels are being enlarged by 19m and will cost $120 million more than before. The delivery date for the vessels is also pushed back from 2024, 2025 to 2026 and 2027.

The two additional vessels, the EXPLORA V and VI, are newbuilds and will feature new generation LNG-powered engines. These new engines address the issue of methane slip, making them more environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient. The vessels will feature a containment system for liquid hydrogen, making hydrogen available for use, and a six megawatt hydrogen fuel cell, which will be used to power the hotel operations when the vessel is at the port and the engines are shut down. These vessels are to be delivered in 2026 and 2027.

Source: https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2022/38833/msc-places-order-two-new-cruise-vessels-powered-hy/

All 25 crew on a motor vessel survived on Tuesday evening. The vessel burst into flames in the waters off East Java’s Paiton coast in the Probolinggo District.

Slamet Prayitno, the Adjunct Commissioner and Chief of the Water Police Unit based at Probolinggo District Police said that based on the information received, crew members managed to survive. He added that they would be taken to the Indonesian Navy post in Paiton.

The motor vessel caught raging fire close to the Paiton special terminal on the route that extends from the fishing port on Mayangan Coast to the fishing ground in Aru, Timor, and the Arafura Sea.

Herman Yulianto, a spokesman associated with the Port Authority and the Probolinggo Harbormaster’s Office said that he made a distress call to other ships in the area to help out, after the fire incident was reported.

He informed that four tugboats — JKW Pelita 1, Banyak, Intan Megah 20, and Bomas Potenza — helped in putting out the flames and evacuating crew members.

The primary cause of the fire still remains unknown.

Source: https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/all-25-crew-of-motor-vessel-lautan-papua-indah-safely-evacuated/

A joint European / Japanese research project aims to lower the energy requirements and costs for manufacturing green methanol, the future fuel of choice for Maersk and one of the leading candidates for decarbonizing deep-sea shipping.

Methanol can be synthesized from carbon dioxide and hydrogen at high temperature, then converted to methanol for use as fuel. If the carbon comes from CO2 capture and the hydrogen feedstock is produced using renewable power, the product – green methanol – is considered a net-zero fuel.

However, it takes a lot of energy to make. CO2 is a stable, unreactive molecule, and it takes a push (a catalyst and a lot of heat) to get it to react with hydrogen. In 2018, researchers at Penn State found a way to do it using a palladium-copper catalyst at a relatively cool temperature of 350-480 degrees Fahrenheit, but this is still quite hot. Maintaining that kind of temperature requires industrial scale heating, which raises energy consumption and cost of production.

Courtesy Laurelin

The Laurelin project, a four-year international research initiative, hopes to cut that cost down. Its experts hail from Belgium, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom, and they are combining their efforts to survey multiple combinations of catalysts and reaction chambers in search of the best arrangement.

“Reducing the e-methanol production costs would lead to an increase in the opportunities to use it as fuel. This would directly benefits society thanks to the reduction in GHG emissions and costs, creating further jobs and wealth,” explained Professor Teruoki Tago of the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The team will test out more than 100 different catalyst materials and three reactor technologies (microwave heating, magnetic induction and plasma induction). “Catalysts are the key for methanol to become the main product, minimising the production of undesired complex mixtures,” explains Adolfo Benedito Borrás, head of technical coordination for the project.

If successful, the Laurelin project’s efforts would complement the push for higher efficiency in green hydrogen production, and would help expand the availability of green methanol for shipping.

The initiative has about $4.8 million in funding from the EU and additional funding from Japan.

Source: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/joint-eu-japan-project-aims-to-reduce-cost-of-green-methanol

The UK MAIB has published a report on the death of a chief officer who was struck in the head by a tensioned mooring line aboard a bulker in 2021, finding that a short-handed operation and an unfamiliarity with the mooring arrangement contributed to his death.

On August 29, 2021, the bulker Teal Bay arrived at Kavkaz, Russia, to rendezvous with a transloading vessel and take on grain from small powered barges. With guidance from the local pilot, Teal Bay tied up with the geared bulker Kavkaz V on the Kavkaz’s port side. The crew had never made fast to another vessel of this size, nor had they conducted ship-to-ship loading operations in this manner before. They used a combination of three head lines, three stern lines, two bow spring lines and two stern spring lines. (Spring line naming conventions vary among maritime nations, and “stern spring line” refers here to an forward-leading spring line originating from the stern.)

The transloading operation got under way, and the crane operators aboard the Kavkaz V scooped up grain from small barges on Kavkaz’s starboard side, swung the cargo over the deck and over the port side, depositing it into Teal Bay’s holds. As the operation proceeded and her holds filled up, Teal Bay’s freeboard decreased. Over the course of the next day, her main deck level dropped to about 25 feet below the deck of the Kavkaz, and her mooring lines took on an upward lead.

At about 2220 on August 30, loading was nearly complete. The third officer aboard Kavkaz V asked Teal Bay to move ahead so that the crane operator could reach another part of Teal Bay’s hold. Teal Bay’s master decided to warp ahead, since this was a small move. He could have treated this as a full mooring operation per the SMS, but this would have meant waking up the off-watch crew to add more personnel on deck. He did not want to wake the crew, so he sent the chief mate to the stern and the third mate to the bow, each with one AB.

At about 2235, as the team on the bow slacked off their spring line, the AB on the stern spring line activated the winch to pull in and warp the ship ahead. The line was run through an open roller fairlead, and the chief mate was standing next to the fairlead near the deck edge, where he would have been able to watch and supervise the evolution. As soon as the line came under tension – with a vertical lead towards the Kavkaz’s higher main deck level – the line popped up and out of the roller fairlead and struck the chief mate in the head. He fell immediately unconscious to the deck.

The open fairlead and chief mate’s position (far left) and a diagram of the mooring arrangements (MAIB)

The open fairlead (center) and the substantial height difference between the decks of the Teal Bay and Kavkaz (MAIB)

The local maritime rescue coordination center was contacted and Teal Bay’s second officer gave the chief mate first aid, including oxygen. The victim had a pulse and was breathing, and there were no outward signs of injury.

A tug arrived to evacuate the victim at 2316, but the crew would not take him aboard before receiving permission from the port. Alternate arrangements for a helicopter were discussed but none were available. The tug ultimately took the chief mate aboard, getting under way for shore at 2350. At this point, the officer’s pulse had weakened. By the time a paramedic met the tugboat at the pier at 0045, the chief mate had no vital signs.

An autopsy determined that he had died from a brain hemmorhage resulting from blunt force trauma.

Through its investigation, MAIB determined that the crew’s decision to run the line through an open roller fairlead, combined with the vertical lead from the deck of the Teal Bay to the deck of the Kavkaz, allowed the line to pop out of the fairlead when it came under tension. The appropriate choice would have been to select a closed roller fairlead; the crew may not have known this as they were unfamiliar with this particular mooring operation. No risk assessment was conducted before the evolution, and so the opportunity to identify this hazard was lost.

The short distance of the move and the desire to complete the loading operation quickly could have motivated the master to warp ahead without making a fuller assessment of the situation. As the captain did not bring out the crew for a full mooring operation, the chief mate was operating with fewer people on hand than he usually would have, and was tasked with supervising both the aft deck and the evolution as a whole. If the full crew had turned out, the chief mate would not have been on the stern.

The extra time taken up in making medevac arrangements reduced the officer’s chances of survival, MAIB determined, though it is impossible to know whether he would have survived even with prompt care.

Among other post-casualty recommendations, the shipmanager has been advised to remove all open fairleads from its fleet and replace them with closed or universal type fairleads, which will not release a line with an upward lead.

Source: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/uk-maib-improper-mooring-arrangement-led-to-chief-mate-s-death