Welcome to 2012-Typical voyage on a VLCC PG-US

I have many batchmates who are Masters on huge ships, called ULCCs and VLCCs, what I like about all of them is their solid and stolid and stoic approach to all matters in life, especially maritime. Since I have known all of them from another era when they were like the rest of us carefree and footloose and fancy-free and more, it is not easy to get them to really unwind, but here's the result of an evening with one of them, currently on leave, but likely to rejoin early to mid January somewhere in Suez Southbound.

Off the flight, cooped up in cattle class on a heavily discounted ticket, tired and functioning off chemicals masquerading as coffee, dopamines racing ahead thanks to garbage fast food en route, dumped on a deserted wharf with other joining crew by a taxi driver eager to get back and make some real money, you are looking back at 30-odd years in command - even as a cadet in the ownership company you apprenticed with, things were better, when compared to this management company cut cost phenomena. As a Master, you carry your own bags on taxi, off taxi, onto boat, off boat, onboard into the Owner's or Pilot's cabin, if spare, and then run a rapid take-over. Even before you get used to the ship and the people onboard, you are in the heavy traffic in the Gulf of Suez, so you slow down since you have to pick the armed guards up from a pre-determind spot in the Red Sea, and you don't want too many ships messing around at that time.

The guards onboard are not really legit, and they know they have you by the short hairs, so even before you start, you have a problem - besides, you have been told that the crew already thinks that their lives and safety at sea depend more on the guards that on you, so now you have authority issue also.

When you pick the guards up, you discover that they have not been given training in being politically correct with officers and crew of a different Nationality, so there is, right away, a muster. This leaves a fair bit of muttering on all decks and a naked display of muscle power on the main cargo deck as part of their practice and to be on the safe side we go onto strict zero alcohol policy which leaves more people locking themselves up in their cabins.

Then you cross Bab el Mandir, and give the guards a short lecture on history as well as facts of life, while asking them to stay wide awake and wary as intelligence reports have just come in about some activity. They show you the reports they have received on their sat phones, which are way ahead of yours, and more precise. Go back to cabin. There is terror in everybody's eyes at this juncture in the Gulf of Aden area. Everybody knows that the razor wire has been lashed on to the railings, by plastic jubilee clips, ordered by a stores department who has seen too many American movies on Desert Rose.

Speak with Chief Engineer. Orders for next loading have still not come. Slow steaming is required. Low sulphur fuel adds to the risk of a temporary engine stoppage, no chance, hang around steaming at slow speed in the Arabian Sea, hopefully high freeboard and copy of BMP4 + SSO certificate will be enough, soon enough Chief Engineer insists that we need to stop for 12-24 hours, full dead. Sigh. Guards now even more cocky.

Enter PG, remember '80s, when we were not sure who was shooting at us with torpedoes and why. For some time, think about painting INDIA in huge letters on the ship-side, but change yourmind when the guards speak about Pakistani activities vis-a-vis Indians, which is the safe flag now, Lucerne? Edge up Hormuz with caution, and spot what just might be periscopes loitering around, read up notice on magnetic mines from mini subs and wonder what double hull does in such cases? Every twig and piece of driftwood or log afloat or packing case thrown overboard is a nuclear sub underneath.

Sail through the huge assortment of oil industry installations and traffic. VHF has become a zoo of ek do teen char balot balot pasok kabayan ella ella miakute and also songs, noises from animal farm and in the middle some ship is always getting a rocket from pilot. Somehow reach the terminal and then manouvering for 8 hours because, well, because the pilot did not get a hot breakfast, with only one GS, who gets hot fresh cooked food anymore? Get the ship ready to load. Many people have not slept for 48 hours. Fudge Rest Hours and enter Chief Engineer or Master in all the blank spaces. Guards are eating three times their entitlement, galley is in uproar, and two of the guards are now sun-bathing in the nude, offending sensibilities, luckily no ladies onboard.

Finish loading. Received stores which have come onboard with almost 2 tonnes of plastic wrapping. Departure formalities. We have used 4 reams of paper and the one you are not a Master, you are a photo-copying assistant, your 18k dollar salary is being utilised to perform a 8k rupees job, your fingers have gone black from playing with toner ink. Pilot enters into heavy discussion and allegations on why minorities are not treated properly in India, you want to try to tell him that they aren't doing too well in their country with minorities, he tells you they are a monarchy holy land and therefore exempted. You feel like kicking him, but you do not hit men in the nuts if they are wearing skirts, instead you just want to get out of there.

The threat of more torpedoes on the way out are how to de-stress. Latest reports indicate that there are 3 Israeli submarines inside the PG, and also Iranian, North Korean, Umrikan, Russian and the rest of them. And the Japanese have started selling arms and ammo again - after WW-II.

Sail out, inspectors, vetting, pilot, customs, Port State, Flag State, tug vaala, no shore leave, no sleep, and worst of all, the cook is sulking so we get corn in everything - including the desserts and the pickle. Tanker is really low in the water, given half a chance the owners will remove the Plimsoll Line also, but the bigger worry is you still do not know whose torpedo is doing target practice on you right now. It would have been good to have a radio officer, they used to be from the Indian Navy in the old days, and had re-assuring tales of how these torpedos were often duds.

Next worry is pirates. Every fishing boat looks like one. All ships are sailing with AIS off. Bo'sun is sent up as crew rep to ask why ship can't go sail closer to the coast. Bo'sun is old friend from previous ships. You tell Bo'sun to distribute canvas to crew to resolve matters, as old days type solution, Bo'sun says there is no canvas on ship. Extra ice-cream won't do it either. What to do? Double ration of weekly issue of Camay Soap.

Now you are in full-too piracy area. Some crew members want to sleep in citadel. (Next part is censored for operational reasons till guards are off-loaded at point xxyy North in Red Sea).

You have to now do the pipeline dance. Discharge some oil in the pipeline, race North to Med through Suez, re-load the oil. Suez song and game and boat and light and 4 pilots plus 4 trainee pilots plus all sorts of helpers and boatmen. They all want to eat every 2 hours. Sounding pipe covers gone again. Somehow, load oil back at the other end? How do you know it is the same oil? You do not. This is called blending. Iran Egypt Saudi all oil same same, never mind sanctions, multi point fuel injection no can tell.

Once again, no sleep for 72 hours, in addition, same old nonsense of getting off the ship the Suez light man-handling, bumboat guys onboard now make goodbye with bags bulging so secure anything loose, and bump your way out the canal and four pilots.

(To be Continued)

Really, is your Merchant Ship insured against piracy? How do you know?

So, dear Seafarer. Shipowner, Shipmanager, regulatory Authority, Fleet Personnel Manager, Union Leader, family members and everybody else interested in this subject of seafarers going off to dangerous waters . . .  would you please like to come out with cogent statements involving not just pleasantly couched words, but hard facts and numbers,  what really the insurance protection for the man on the ship is in case of piracy or hijack? Modern day piracy, of which just about 40% takes place in the Arabian Sea waters, is now a global phenomenon. Somalia gets a lot more attention because it appears to have become a hub lately, and is closer to India, but the rest of the world is not far behind, and the "business" of hijacking ships seems to be growing. Just like other streams of crime, for example prostitution, narcotics, arms trade - this too now seems to be settling into a pattern and a system.

That's as far as the relevance to the fact that this is now another business, and all business is about numbers, so what are the numbers, and where do the numbers go? What does it mean when somebody tells somebody else that "insurance for piracy" exists on such-and-such ship?

To start with, the piracy numbers include:-

# Investment versus returns, and a whole flotilla of numbers and words persons, and also some mercenaries, to keep the whole business well-greased. Imagine, can a transaction of almost 10 million dollars (9.8 million was the reported figure) plus costs involved in enabling this payment for releasing the supertanker SAMHO DREAM (say, another 5 million dollars) have been able to move across the globe without the direct participation of a whole lot of number crunchers  and shysters all over the world, especially in the "developed' world? So, modern-day piracy is not about to simply go away, for any reason.(Source - bankers unwilling to be identified in Europe and UAE.)

#The definitions of piracy and hijacking also appear to vary worldwide, and this in turn impacts the question of whether a vessel is a total loss or not, after the incident, whether hijack or piracy. Either way, in some countries, the insured shipowner/operator has not been "ir-retrievably deprived" of the vessel, so insurance claims for piracy or hijack, even interim, can not be paid out. Never mind what happens on the ship. In addition, it is the duty of the shipowner and his Master/crew to prove that they made all attempts to mitigate losses, and whether this includes the ransom payment or not is an open issue. So, a Master and his crew, who have not been paid, not received decent food, have been under capture, whose families may be starving - they still have to prove that all attempts were made to "mitigate" losses.

# In the UAE, it is even more complex, since they demand a "special provision" for piracy. The difference between "war risk" and "piracy" is there, not sublime, but complicated. However, one can not substitute the other, so a special cover in advance will be needed. At what point does piracy become an "act of war", given the current pronouncements of the attackers, claiming that they are working for their countries? No clear answers here, either - and carrying armed guards on board through somebody else's territorial waters, does that impact right of innocent passage? What does the Master of a ship have to say, if armed guards are on his ship, and the ship is then considered "hostile" - where do the crew stand as far as insurance goes, then?

# So while "piracy insurance" may have been taken by a shipowner/operator, please remember that "even though piracy is an insured peril, the onus to prove the act of piracy for successful recovery remains with the assured, in particular to establish that the act occurred was piracy and not terrorism, i.e. that the persons committing the act did so exclusively for their own material benefit, rather than pursuing a political, ideological or religious scope."

(Fichte & Co. http://www.fichtelegal.com/en/news_article.php?news_id=71)

Many of the latest episodes of piracy are defining their activities stikingly close to this.

# There is an estimate, provided by the Professional  General Insurance Research Organisation (GIRO) that each piracy attack on a merchant ship costs around 9 million dollars, and from another un-named source, that it is eventually between 10 and 15 million dollars, ransom and all costs. This is just a ballpark estimate, and rising lately. Working backwards from here, the average cost per merchant ship transiting the Suez Canal and going through the Gulf of Aden works out to between 70 and 110 thousand dollars, another rough estimate, and rising. Higher on ships carrying higher value cargoes, ofcourse, so assume a 10000 teu ship is paying about 300,000 dollars per trip each way - that's 30 dollars per teu extra costs. But what are the owners, cargo interests and seafarers getting out of this, incase of attack? That's not very clear.

# The number of seafarers kidnapped in piracy/hijack incidents as per the London-based International Chamber of Commerce’s Commercial Crimes Services was 867 in 2009, and 790 so far this year. There are some 'carry-forwards' who have been kidnapped in the previous year/years, and some simply 'missing'. However, this does not in any way provide any information on the disruption to seafarers even way outside in the Arabian Sea, in terms of mental tension and actual attacks.

# Allianz Global Corporate & Strategy, a leading insurer of ships and cargo, says that in most cases, piracy is covered under "normal" hull and insurance cover, even for ships not trading in piracy prone areas. The efficacy of this "normal" cover when a piracy or hijack takes place is very much under debate and till then, may well be slightly ineffective at best. So the solution would be to take additional cover. However, truth is that many owners or operators or charterers simply do not take additional cover when going through these areas - because special piracy covers are not easily available that offer special, flexible and tailor made cover for such ships.

# Here is a map of the piracy prone areas worldwide:-

http://www.aida.org.uk/AIDAEurop/AIDAStellaspaper.pdf

It is clear that marine insurance is the oldest form of insurance worldwide. War risk and piracy insurance have been linked for a long time. However, war risk insurance, and also piracy, can be unilaterally cancelled by the insurer at 48 hours notice. What does the seafarer onboard know about this, is the regulator able to provide any form of guarantees here?

It is in your interest as a seafarer to actively seek out the full details of the insurance cover taken for piracy, and to see that it is kept valid throughout your tenure - which obviously you can not do. But certainly the regulators, DG Shipping, can frame some rules urgently in this context?

Or, as is often the case, keep sailing "Ram Bharose".

The case of the disturbing personal eMail - NORFOLK EXPRESS grounding

The Chief Officer of the NORFOLK EXPRESS received a personal eMail while on watch which troubled him so much that he lost all semblance of attentiveness, resulting in the ship going aground at full speed in the Gulf of Suez, because he was totally distracted.

Read more about it here:-

http://maritimeaccident.org/2009/10/norfolk-worries-led-to-grounding/

The lookout has been sent elsewhere for other tasks.

To quote from the article:-

A number of lessons arise from the incident, the most obvious relates to lookouts. Many of us prefer to be alone when dealing with personal issues and its tempting to send the lookout away so we can be alone with our thoughts. Unfortunately, those are the very conditions under which we need to have a lookout present in case we get so deep in our own concerns we lose track of what’s going on.
Whatever the psychological state of the officer of the watch a lookout might have made the difference.
At the same time, two alarms were not functioning, the bridge watch alarm which should have sounded every 12 minutes, and the echo sounder depth alarm. BSU says that it is uncertain that these would have alerted the chief officer to the situation.
Two GPS waypoint alarms sounded but were not responded to.

Memories of Suez Canal, '70s

So, the Israelis and Egyptians had just about made up, the canal was re-opened on the 5th of June 1975, and there we were, cream of the Nation, fresh out of the TS Rajendra a few days later on the 7th of June 1975, ready to sail. Scattered like so many dried leaves in the summer winds, 120+ of us went forth to sail under the red ensign. Many of us wanted to sail across Suez, because beyond lay the dreams and delights of Socialist countries, with their welcoming feminine arms and charms.

A dollar and pound went a long way there, so did the rupee, actually. Another story for another day.

Yours truly was lucky enough to be on one of the earliest merchant ships to cross the canal, the date is lost in the diary I kept, which got stolen years later with all the other diaries. There were reports of minor floating mines popping up every now and then, brought to the surface by the wake and churn, and similar explosions, still making the news every now and then, and extra lookouts were posted, without a clue on what we were supposed to do if we did spot sommething looking like an undefined mine floating in front of the ship. Throw a stone at it, no stones, ok, shackle, bolt, piece of dunnage wood?

On the desert side of the Canal (polite word for Israeli side) still lay the remnants of much of the Egyptian Armies hardware, growing older gracefully under the desert sun, a pity digital cameras were not around then.

Here's more of what I remember of the Suez Canal transit . . . I wonder if things have changed?

# Four pilots, each one ate at least 2 or 3 meals and drank half a dozen or more colas, while nibbling constantly at the cookies and biscuits on the bridge. and took back huge bags full of cigarettes, condiments, and whatever else. One even visited the dry provisions room to take a look, and picked up spices as well as "daal" and "basmati rice".

# A "Suez Canal Light" was rescued from the bottom of the rope locker, where it had lain forgotten since the ship was built. The Electrical officer and his assistant workedon it for days, and then we struggled to get it ready, after which, once we were in the canal, it didn't matter if it was used or not. It was heavy.

# The anchorage slots in Port Suez were really tight, and required amazing ship-handling, especially on unwieldy bulk carriers with wide beams. The slot we got would always be somewhere in the middle. Yes, you could buy fresh fish from the boats that swarmed around you, in exchange for old ropes, paint cans, and other scrap.

# Pilots and everybody else would only board and disembark by the gangway. This would include all variety of shopkeepers, who both bought and sold, and at that juncture, did not know the difference between a West German Deutsche Mark and an East German Deutsche Mark. For some reason, they always sold a lot of candies and gum - borrowed from other ships.

# These shopkeepers were also the emergency boat crews, who were supposed to keep their boats ready, but were actually running a great trade in Egyptian souveniers and artefacts. If you wanted something they didn't have (they had these photo albums) then they would deliver at the other end. In a day and age before mobile phones.

# We were like awake and on duty most of the while during transit, which could take a day or so, and the whole issue of fatigue and IMO inspired rest was not a parameter then. Also, keeping the ship in the middle while steering, especially if the ship was on even keel, was very difficult. You needed the best quartermasters on duty then.

# Fine sand got into everything. Even and especially into your nostrils. And for some reason, we would often pick up a pigeon or two hitching a ride towards the Med, once one stayed with us till Poland. Mostly, they would fly away near Gib, fatter for their experience.

# Crossing the South bound convoy, since North bound would be non-stop, was always great fun. Thanks to free rights of innocent passage to everyone, you saw all sorts of ships and flags, merrily next to each other - even if they were at war elsewhere.

I loved the Suez transits, and look forward to doing them again, as well as sailing past Gib. Some day soon, Insha-Allah.

Personal communication and information technology access on merchant ships

Just one single aspect of life at sea:- the busiest time for people on board ship is when the ship is either in port or close to a coast. One would expect that is the time when all other issues are set aside, and people concentrate on work, like they do in any other job ashore.

The maximum number of phone calls and emails I get from friends at sea is when they are in port or coasting. This includes Masters going through pilotage waters, Chief Engineers when they are receiving bunkers, and others. It is almost as though the sanctity of "only work" when in port is almost lost on the present generation of seafarers, and this was one of those important aspects drilled into our heads way back when mail came in packets - of paper, not bytes.

But then, fact remains, for a 24x7 connected generation, this is also the only time when seafarers get "connectivity". Both for mobile phones as well as wireless broadband. And as a result what do you have? People on duty in charge of navigation issues, pollution prevention, dealing with shore staff and most of all, snatching a few hours for rest - these very people also have to somehow find time to communicate with family, friends and other beloved ones.

This is being repeated because it is so important now, and there are whispers that accidents were caused because the watchkeepers were busy "doing personal mail". Whether on laptops, netbooks or simply mobile phones. And fishing vessels get run over, amongst other things. For lesser crimes, car drivers go to jail - for long durations.

Likewise, the availability of news, information and other updates, while at sea. Go back to memories of people buying ultra-powerful "world radios", with short-wave capabilities that ensured they managed to receive static infused but audible all the same, music and news from their homelands even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I just received news that a batchmate of mine revived his old Grundig World Radio - and the Customs Officers were amazed at seeing this vintage piece, took photos next to it. Almost as big as a suitcase, but then luckily, he was entitled to 60 kilos of baggage.

Now match this with this big move afoot, keeps ebbing and surging actually, to try and improve matters for seafarers. Especially in "Year of the Seafarer", whatever that may imply to the rest of the world, since many or most outside the orbit of shipping are still to figure out what to do next about it.

Yes, we are repeatedly told that the Maritime Labour Convention 2010 will address and improve matters, but despite that, there will be a shortage of any number of thousands of trained seagoing personnel - especially on deep sea tanker, both liquid and gas.

Would it, then, be asking for too much that ships complement be provided with the facility of something everybody has at home - 24x7 internet, through VSAT on satellite and similar?

To my simple mind, and having headed a technology company where the same generation of youngsters needed full-time connectivity as a given, this is a holistic solution to a lot of issues at sea. It provides a low-cost benefit, it certainly keeps seafarers more in touch with the world and most of all, it is a step that actively promotes safety by freeing the body and mind of the seafarer when the ship needs it the most.

Ship-owners of a slightly more aware nature have already started providing this onboard, some for more than a few years now. Having revalidated my "ticket" with a whole new generation of young seafarers  in their 20s and 30s, I am aware how internet onboard is now one of their major parameters when deciding where and who to sail with.

And most of all, in The Year of the Seafarer, denying them what is almost a basic requirement is like shipowners and managers making an issue of providing air-conditioning and radars on ships in the "old days".

Good luck. And this article typed out on a netbook while riding the Delhi Metro underground, sent out through a small little USB port linked device, which goes through repeaters and boosters on this train. In some trains, the wi-fi is free, too.

About time ships followed what trains provide?