Maritime Transportation And Shipping Talk

The 2008 shipping season into the Great Lakes is finished for this time. This concludes this the 50th Navigation Season into the Great Lakes. The first section of the Seaway from Montreal to Lake Ontario was kept open until December 30th (280 days)and the Welland Canal section was kept open until December 31st.
The year had seen some decrease in traffic volume mostly due to decrease in Steel Imports and Grain Exports.
Looking back and the year passed there was some very good news and one of them was the uniform ballast water management for all ships trading into the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Seaway issued a press release on January 6th and you can read it here!

A question that has been asked me many times by local and people abroad is why the Seaway shuts down in end of December for 2-3 months? In this article we will try to answer and lay out some of the reasons for the shut-down.
When the cold period come in Canada, the Rivers and lakes freezes over and the Seaway being a man made part of Saint Lawrence River is a body of fresh water that will also freeze. The part of the seaway that is man made namely the Seaway Locks or Sluices are no different.

Technorati Tags: Saint Lawrence Seaway

[Read more →]

We here at ShippingTalk have decided to re-activate our sister site Maritimecommunity.com and write about the shore based Maritime Community, especially about the procurement side of the Maritime Industry. Technical Procurement can be very difficult as so many factors are involved. Amongst who is the ever so important Logistic factor - How to get the right part onboard in time!
Shipping Talk staff has been involved in some of these operations for over 30 years and has a solid background in Maritime Procurement and Logistics.
We will be looking forward to some great upcoming articles on that site.

Technorati Tags: maritimecommunity.com

North Atlantic Ocean can be an unforgiving place to be in the winter. Any seafarer that works in this area knows that firsthand. More than likely they have seen how ruffs this area can be. Nerves are stretched and senses are on high alert. Leaving port, a last check on all lashing, weather-doors and hatches. Forecast looks ok at the moment but things can change in a hurry up here in the North Atlantic wintertime. [Read more →]

I recently did some shipments by Air and Sea. They were of same type, size and weight. The process of getting the shipments ready was very different in many ways. Air transportation has many restrictions that you don’t find in maritime transportation. In a LCL maritime shipment the restrictions are not many as long as you comply with the appropriate documentation to follow your shipment. In the air type shipments you have restrictions regarding the content and the packaging has also to be of approved type for air use. Pressure vessels, batteries, liquids, electronics, they all have some restrictions that doesn’t apply to same shipment going by maritime transport.

Technorati Tags: Maritime Logistics

[Read more →]

The Container, the use of it and it’s place in Maritime Transportation has been going through a process of change over the last few years that could not have been foreseen back in the 50’s when the pioneers like Malcolm McLean, the founder of Sea-Land started the adventure of carrying full truck chassis onboard ships. Some of these changes are evident in the type of ships that are being used and other changes are evident in the type of equipment being used both onboard and ashore alike. Containers are moving in virtual space. There are unmanned equipment being used, control is done remotely by computer and a large volume of containers are being handled every day with no human present except for in the control tower overlooking the whole thing.

Back again a bit to the beginning of Ships Containers and how it all started. USA was the first country in the world to have containers on ships and if my memory serves me right it was the founder of “Sea-Land” Mr. Malcolm McLean that started it all. With a background from his trucking business he found a way for his trucks to bypass the different state regulations for trucking. Having a North South trucking route from New York to Texas he simply loaded the truck trailers onto a ship and transported them directly to Houston Texas. In the beginning the whole trailer chassis was loaded onboard but it was difficult to stow this way. The next step was to have removable containers from the trucks that was loaded onboard and could be stacked. The size that Mr. McLean used was 35 feet long. Box container had been in use for many years by the US Army and also by the British Railway. These containers bare no standardization at all. They existed in many sizes and were also made in wood before they became metal, as they are today, however the principal use was road and rail. Mr. McLean was really the first one to develop this container to suit maritime transportation. He could see the need for a standard box that would fit on truck, rail and could also be easily loaded onboard a ship. This is how he came to the size of 20’ long by 8’ wide by 8’ high. The popular term TEU was derived from this measure and translates to Twenty-foot Equivalent Units. These first containers that was used was loaded onboard and placed on deck of Tank Ships. These ships had a very small capacity for “containers” but in those days it was considered a revolution having a 58 containers on deck.

Technorati Tags: Maritime Transportation, Containers, Container Ships

Maritime Transportation has always been a dominant factor in Global Trading. Looking back through History we can see maritime transportation by the Egyptians as early as around 3200 BC. It is said that they had Maritime Trade Routs going as far as Sumatra (Indonesia). All maritime transportation depended on the wind until the mid 19th century when mechanized ships started with the arrival of the first Steam Engine. It is a belief that the first steam engine was built back in 1690 by the French inventor Denis Papin. The first known steam engine in a boat was in 1704 by the same inventor. The arrival of the steam engine in ships made for a gradual replacement of the sail ships. All of a sudden man was not depending on the flow of the wind anymore. It was the beginning of better and more efficient maritime transportation. New Trade Routes was opened up and ships were now able to carry things that in the past would not have been possible since the sailing time had been so long. Since steam engine came, ship speed was increasing and could be maintained for the duration of the trip. In the past with sail ships, the speed was just as fast as the wind could bring you. Larger and better ships were built, more power and better steam plants was built. It was a time with an explosion of development within maritime engineering and eventually led to the diesel engine that we have today. Diesel engines became a fact in the 20th century and again we saw an explosion within maritime engineering and maritime transportation saw some significant improvements.
Maritime Transportation is now at a stage were about 90-95 % of international trade is carried onboard ships of some sort. The largest part of this is probably Container Transport. These boxes of various sizes, mostly 20’ and 40’ size have revolutionized maritime transportation. The largest problem facing maritime transportation today is being able to accommodate the flow of cargo in the shore facilities. Container Transport is demanding a lot of space for port operations and since the size of these ships are steadily increasing the need for deeper ports is also rising. Maritime transportation in bulk is also seeing a increase as more raw material is in demand. Newly developed raw material sites has seen new terminals being opened up and a demand for new tonnage in Bulk Carriers to be developed for this trade. In North Eastern Canada the simple geographical placement of the terminal demands ships that are able to handle heavy ice conditions during winter months. Maritime transportation can be the make or brake factor for some of these industries that are depending on it to get their product out to the International market. The extreme demand on vessel construction and power in order to handle this trade has made for many new innovations in naval architecture and marine engineering. As we are seeing more segmented marine transportation the arrival of tankers has also played an important role. The demand for fossil fuels as energy has made it into a very lucrative market for ship owners to invest into large tankers. A sub category to this kind of maritime transportation was the arrival of parcel tankers carrying specialty chemicals and other liquid cargoes.
In this article we have laid the base for understanding the history of maritime transportation and touched base with some of the segments within it. As we continue this series of articles we will go more in dept on the various segments and look closer at their individual history.

Technorati Tags: Maritime Transportation, Marine, Shipping

We Better Prepare For Cold Weather! When I was sailing one of the things we always made sure of was to prepare the ship for cold weather.

We are heading north to cold weather and lots of ice. This time of the year it can be some severe weather conditions facing you. Better be prepared for some cold weather. One of the first things to do is to make sure that any water that can freeze is drained or protected. I’m talking about drinking water in the lifeboats. Pipe lines like fire lines, freshwater lines, ballast lines, lines for water to the anchor chain etc. They have to be drained and preferably blown with air to remove all water. You should add some antifreeze liquid to sounding pipes, enough to prevent it from freezing. Humidity can make for a lot of problem in the hydraulic lines if it has a chance to freeze. It would be a good idea to have the hydraulic system run so circulation is going. Certain areas might prevent you from doing all the above so other measures has to be taken. I lamp with some cover can be sufficient heat to prevent from freezing. Electrical heating coils or cables can also be used. There are many options available to you. Wheelhouses have a tendency to be cold in this climate. A trick to maintain heat in the wheelhouse is to have a fan heater on each side, very close to the door out to the bridge wing. This will act as a heat curtain and prevent the cold from accessing the wheelhouse. Having a fan heater blowing towards the wheelhouse windows or portholes will prevent them from freezing up on you. If started early, you prevent it from building up and it becomes easy to maintain.

These above are some simple things that can prevent a lot of headaches later on. You will have ice on deck so a couple of mallets would help you with removal. Ice buster or road salt is also of good help. Make sure you have warm clothing available for the crew. They will need it. You don’t need a bunch of sailor becoming sick on you with colds and flu etc. It can be a great experience going north in the winter providing you are prepared for it. 

It has been almost a month since I last wrote something here. The New Year is in full swing on the Saint Lawrence River. Even though it’s in the middle of winter ships traffic on Saint Lawrence River is still going as far as Montreal. The Seaway Lock System is closed for the winter months. Canadian Coast Guard Ice Breakers are readily available for any ice jams in the river. They will have the river flowing again in a very short time should it happen to jam up. Container traffic on Montreal doesn’t seem to slow down any during the winter months. Canadian Lakers are laid up for the winter but there are a few that are still operating in the open waters on the east coast of Canada. Traditionally winter months in this area was used for vacation and some sorely needed time for the families involved in shipping. Having a Seaway system like ours means that the summer months were very busy and time off was hard to find. Ports like Montreal used to close down completely and operations were moved out to the Maritime Provinces. Cities like Saint John, New Brunswick used to take the brunt of the business from Montreal during those months. Companies had a full operation in those ports. They just moved their people down for the winter. Icebreakers and better ships changed all that the day the Government started to keep the River open to Montreal during the winter months.

It has been a trail to get the ships up and down the Seaway these last few days. Heavy ice in front of the Seaway locks has hampered the entry of ship into the locks and also exiting the locks. Who is to blame? There have been some serious delays for ships and certainly a costly affair. Who will bare the blame or will there be any pointing of fingers? Is it only Mother Nature that will bare this one? Could the situation with the locks have been avoided?

This year December 2007 we have seen what many have been waiting for. Mother Nature gave us an early Cold and Snow winter. As many years in a row now we have seen fairly easy operation well into the end of December before we started to get any serious problem with Ice. This year we got it early. I wonder if it has been any estimate on the loss of revenue for owners and operators of the ships? Will there be claims against the Seaway? What will happen now?

Would a batter agitation in front of the locks have helped? We are using a ice buster system around the propellers of the ships during lay up and that seem to keep it almost free of ice. Would a similar system working on the same principals, in front of the lock gates have helped? It seems that the current system is not working very well. It might just be that we need some modernization of the seaway and a re-thinking and assessment of what has happened this winter.