the 'Fast Cat M19' was damaged in a collision with the barge “Krizza Rica”, loaded with 300 sacks of cement, two nautical miles southeast of Barangay San Agapito on April 3, 2024, at around 1:45 a.m., with 88 people on board, among them 47 crew members and 41 passengers. A 26-year-old male passenger suffered minor bruises and was given first aid treatment. The ferry had departed from Batangas en route to Calapan in Oriental Mindoro. The barged was being towed by the tug “Migi” with 17 crew members onboard, bound from Calaca, Balayan, Batangas to Semirara Island, Caluya, Antique. The ferry was damaged on deck 3 at the starboard quarter. The 'Krizza Rica' sustained scratches on its port side bow. The Batangas portimmediately reported the incident to the Coast Guard Sub-Station (CGSS) Calapan for response. Personnel of CGSS Calapan contacted the crew of the two vessels and advised the barge to anchor at Calapan Anchorage Area for further investigations. The 'Fastcat M19' safely docked at Calapan Port at around 3 a.m., where all the passengers were safely disembarked. The injured passenger was transported by personnel of Calapan City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) to Oriental Mindoro Provincial Hospital for further medical care. The collision did not result to an oil spill based on the assessment conducted by personnel of the PCG Station Oriental Mindoro, CGSS Calapan, and Maritime Safety Services Unit-Southern Tagalog. Repprt with photos: https://mb.com.ph/2024/4/2/passenger-ship-collides-with-barge-off-isla-verde-in-barangas-1-hurt-1?__cf_chl_tk=UaBmixi3hlshX8gUZZeJcgcpDYZ.NdqeNei_wHplAII-1712136807-0.0.1.1-1770
News
SHTANDART
The 'Shtandart' will not participate in the Escala a Castellón, after a stopover in Sète. The Escale à Sète has barely finished when Escale a Castellón, the next gathering of tall ships, already begins. Many ships present on the island set sail on April 1, 2024, for the maritime event which opens on April 5 in the port of Castellón de la Plana. If the Russian frigate, built according to the plans of the flagship of the fleet of Tsar Peter I, is not on the trip, it is because the organization ultimately opposed its participation, a decision taken by the Spanish municipality under pressure from the Ukrainian population based there. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the ship, which found refuge in the port of La Rochelle, has been at the heart of a geopolitical battle. For the #NoShandartInEurope collective, some of whose activists were present in Sète, welcoming the vessel contravenes European regulations put in place following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, the prefect of Hérault took the decision to prohibit the arrival of the ship for Stopover in Sète, forcing the crew to head towards Port-de-Bouc. But its captain Vladimir Martus has presented himself since the start of the conflict as a dissident to Putin and obtained authorization to participate in several gatherings. Vladimir Martus was asked not to fly the Russian flag out of respect for the Ukrainian people.
San Juan
Two more cruise ships bypassed scheduled stops in san Juan as demonstrators have been calling for the resignation of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. The loss of tourism is impacting the island's economy. Tourism officials said the two ships would have generated a $1.3 million economic impact. Officials estimated the island missed out on a combined $760,000 from the Seaside and Equinox on Monday
Sines
The Portuguese government announced an investment of 547 million euros in the expansion of the Port of Sines in the southwest of the country and an agreement to extend its concession from 2029 to 2049. The agreement was reached last week between Portugal and PSA Singapore for the completion of the 3rd phase of expansion of Terminal XXI, so as to greatly increase its capacity and give another 20 years of operations in Portugal to PSA Singapore. The Sines port, 58 nautical miles south of Lisbon, is one of the major European ports and the great hub port of the Iberian-Atlantic front.
CRYSTAL COAST
The 'Crystal Coast', pushing a fuel barge, was the first vessel to move through the newly created temporary alternate channel in Baltimore following the collapse of the Key Bridge on April 1, 2024. The tug and barge were headed to Dover Air Force Base with jet fuel. The emergency passageway, which is 264 feet wide and 11 feet deep, was cleared on April 1 to allow essential vessels to pass along the Patapsco River around the mangled wreckage at the bridge disaster site. Report with Video: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/first-vessel-passes-temporary-alternate-123203976.html
FV BREIZ
Five people have been on trial in Le Havre since April 2 for the sinking of the 'Breiz'. On the first day of the trial, the shipowner was accused by the court regarding its responsibilities. The five people were tried for involuntary manslaughter and negligence. Questioned at the very end of the day after three other defendants who maintained their line of defense, the co-owner of the ship was confronted with his contradictions. “I didn't have absolute confidence in this boat,” the owner finally said, “but I didn't worry about anything anymore, I trusted Quentin.” On January 14, 2021, Quentin Varin, the master of the 'Breiz', called for help while scallop fishing off the coast of Port-en-Bessin. While the ship was towed by a boat from the SNSM of Ouistreham, the ship sank in the middle of the night, leading to the death of the skipper and his two sailors, brothers Jimmy and Steven Gibert, aged 19 and 26 years. With tears in his eyes, the owner of Breiz, who had sold 49% of the shares to Quentin Varin a few weeks before the tragedy, knew that the new boss did not have the necessary qualifications to run a shellfish company, and he was aware of the state of disrepair of his boat: "I have had a lot of damage in six years, the propeller, the gantry, leaks on the deck, an engine fire..." The owner invoked "zero profitability below 1.2 tonnes" per tide to explain the chronic overload of his trawler and the trips made by large time. Quentin Varin, 27, had been wrongly registered by the authorities as captain of the fishing boat without having the required certificates. The hearings of the two DDTM officials did not make clear why it had nevertheless been recorded. On the report from the Bureau of Investigation into Maritime Events (BEAmer), the action of the SNSM boat during the fatal towing was incriminated regarding the lack of vigilance by the crew of the SNSM boat, of whom five were sick, and three were sleeping, causing a delay of 46 seconds between the alert of the towed ship and the reaction of the lifeboat, and blamed too high speed and a dangerous route over shoals.
Napier
Ships could continue to be turned away from Napier Port for the next few days as an "unprecendented" swell hammers Hawke's Bay. Clifton Beach was closed by Hastings District Council on Wednesday and Napier City Council closed the Marine Parade viewing platform after tourists were drenched by a heaving sea on Wednesday morning. MetService meteorologist Tui McInnes said a slow building pressure system out to the east of Hawke's Bay had ramped up the seas, causing swells of close to 4m. McInnes said the 4m swells had the potential to "cause a bit of havoc on the coast" as it could possibly continue until Saturday morning. "The main thing that is causing the big waves is the easterly winds that are occur. "With a large space and a slow build-up it leaves time for some quite nice swells to develop," McInnes said. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12252333
Rotterdam
APM Terminals Maasvlakte II’s new rail service between its Rotterdam terminal and Venlo, a key logistics hub on the Dutch-German border is proving popular. Following the success of the initial five-times-per-week service, plans are already in place to scale this up to 14 times per week over the coming weeks.
MSC ARMONIA
The 'MSC Armonia' was detained in the Port of Barcelona on April 3, 2024, due to problems with the visas of 69 Bolivian passengers. They did not have valid visas for entry into the Schengen area. The company has indicated that the documentats seemed appropriate at the time of boarding of the passengers in Brazil, but that the authorities of the Port of Barcelona have not considered it so.
OPEN ARMS
The "Jennifer" as well as the tugs "Open Arms" and "Ledra Dynamic" returned to Larnaca on April 2, 2024, after the death of seven employees of World Central Kitchen in the Gaza Strip in an airstrike. Only a barge carrying around 110 pallets of goods was unloaded in the Gaza Strip before the aid convoy was attacked on the mainland. The 'Jennifer' then set sail without having accomplished anything. The ship had around 250 tons of relief supplies on board. The aid organization immediately stopped its operations in the region in light of the fatal incident. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the attack on foreign aid workers in the Gaza Strip and spoke in a video message of a "tragic case of an accidental hit by our armed forces against innocent people in the Gaza Strip." The Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulidis and EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who met in Nicosia on the morning of April 2, strongly condemned the incident, but also pleaded that aid to the suffering population in the Gaza Strip should not suffer as a result. Report with photo: https://www.gmx.net/magazine/politik/tod-helfern-schiff-bringt-hilfsgueter-zurueck-zypern-39500376
Chittagong Shipbreakers
Bangladesh has become the top dumping ground for discarded ships in the world with the country dismantling the highest number of vessels in the first half (January-June) of the current year, according to a report of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a leading NGO coalition campaigning for clean and safe ship recycling.
Churchill
Canada’s arctic port of Churchill is set to resume its first grain shipments since 2015 after a group backed by investor Prem Watsa stepped in last year to buy the facility and a related rail line linking the northern town with the rest of Manitoba. The 88-year-old port on the shores of Hudson’s Bay will resume operations in the next few months, reducing by several days the shipping time to deliver grains to Europe and the Middle East across the Atlantic Ocean.