During IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee (MSC), that took place between June 5 to 14, participants discussed on current issues related to safety and security of the shipping industry. The matters of discussion also focused on draft measures for safe mooring operations, as prepared by the SDC sub-committee based on proposals originally submitted by Denmark.
According to local sources, a port worker was killed on the spot by snapped mooring line in Ancona port, Italy, Adriatic sea, early in the morning of June 10. Container ship BF PHILIPP was already moored, or in process of mooring, when the fatal incident took place.
The US Department of Transportation’s Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation announced that Hands-Free Mooring technology is fully used throughout the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The new technology aspires to revolutionize the method for locking vessels through the Seaway and is considered the most important technological advance since the Seaway’s opening in 1959.
DNV GL, a major of the oil and gas industry, has developed a solution that reduces the risk of offshore floating vessel mooring line failure going undetected by replacing physical sensors with a machine learning algorithm that accurately predicts line failure in real time.
In the latest publication of its ‘Lessons Learned’ series, the UK P&I Club described a serious eye injury of a crew member while securing a tow. The Club noted that three crew members were probably not enough to safely manage an operation of this nature.
MPA Singapore issued an alert on the mooring and unmooring of vessels that will be carried out one at a time during daylight hours between 0700hrs to 1800hrs.The procedures will take place from April 18 to October 17, 2019. The location of the mooring and unmooring will be at the Tuas View Reclamation Project Area.
In its latest Safety Digest, the UK MAIB describes a case of damage due to mixing old mooring equipment with different, more modern, mooring lines. UK MAIB advised that mooring equipment, as a system, requires an assessment of how individual parts interact with each other.
TAIC issued an investigation report on the collision of the passenger ship ‘Seabourn Encore’ with the bulk cement carrier at Timaru, on 12 February 2017, after its breakaway from wharf. The Commission found that the mooring failed because the bollards on the wharf failed.
In its newly published Safety Digest, UK MAIB focuses on a passenger ferry that was attempting to moor on a berth with a strong groundswell in strong winds when, without warning, one of its mooring line bollards was ripped from the deck. The ferry had to be taken out of service for several days to facilitate repairs to its deck plating and a roller fairlead. Nobody was injured.
Malta has traditionally been dependent on diesel and heavy fuel oil for its power generation. However, these facilities no longer comply with current European environmental legislation and are inefficient and expensive. To address all of these issues, ElectroGas Malta Consortium developed a liquid-natural-gas-to-power project.
