Ships and boats

[Sigmetnow]

More on the Red Sea shipping disruption:

< Notice the V of cargo ships passing Africa's Cape the Good Hope instead of heading through the Suez.
Major shipping companies like Maersk, MSC & CMA CGM have diverted their ships because of rocket attacks rocket attacks in the southern end of the Red Sea.
 
Red colored ships are oil/chemical tankers, many of which have invariable business in the Red Sea.

From: 12/16/23, https://x.com/mortenlund89/status/1736060475480125628
 
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/15/maersk-to-pause-all-container-ship-traffic-through-the-red-sea.html

[Sigmetnow]

Fears of environmental disaster rise as ship sinks after Houthi attack

A British cargo ship sank in the Red Sea after an attack by Houthi militants, taking some 21,000 metric tons of fertilizer down with it, posing a significant environmental risk to one of the world’s busiest waterways and the home of many coral reefs.

The Rubymar was struck by an anti-ballistic missile fired by the Iranian-backed Houthis on Feb. 18 and sank early Saturday after “slowly taking on water” since the attack, U.S. Central Command said on social media early Sunday local time.

“The approximately 21,000 metric tons of ammonium phosphate sulfate fertilizer that the vessel was carrying presents an environmental risk in the Red Sea,” Centcom said, adding that the ship “also presents a subsurface impact risk to other ships transiting the busy shipping lanes of the waterway.”

The ship’s sinking “will cause an environmental disaster,” the Yemeni government said in a separate statement.
…

“As well as any further leaks of fuel oil from the engines, the sinking of the vessel could further breach the hull, allowing water to contact with the thousands of tons of fertilizer, which could then be released into the Red Sea and disrupt the balance of the marine ecosystems, triggering cascading effects throughout the food web,” Jreissati said.

“This disruption could have far-reaching consequences, affecting various species that depend on these ecosystems and, in turn, potentially impacting the very livelihoods of coastal communities.”
…

Many large ships — which carry some 12 percent of all world trade — have altered their routes to avoid the Red Sea amid the Houthi threat, opting to travel the long way around southern Africa instead.

Such detours could add as much as a month in transit time, delaying the delivery of goods and further disrupting international commerce — a sector already grappling with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, rising inflation and disruptions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/03/rubymar-houthi-attack-red-sea/

Or: https://wapo.st/49X24Ak

[Sigmetnow]

Really great in-depth piece on the little-known undersea cable repair industry
H/t: https://x.com/brianweeden/status/1780703784429302266

The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
 
The lifestyle can be an obstacle. A career in subsea means enduring long stretches far from home, unpredictable schedules, and ironically, very poor internet.  They are trying to get the ship set up with Starlink….

… Taiwan in 2006, one of the most notorious events in the annals of cable repair.
On December 26th, an earthquake dislodged sediment on Taiwan’s southern coast and sent it rushing 160 miles into the Luzon Strait, one of several global cable chokepoints. Nine cables were severed and Taiwan was knocked almost entirely offline. Banking, airlines, and communications were disrupted throughout the region. Trading of the Korean won was halted. The cables, buried under mountains of debris, were nearly impossible to find. It took 11 ships, including the Ocean Link, nearly two months to finish repairs.
 
…
At the most basic level, a broken cable is fixed by patching the break with a piece of new cable, but because the break is miles away on the ocean floor, this must be done in several steps. The first step is to cut the cable near the break (often, the cable will have been damaged but not cleanly severed, and cables are laid with so little slack that they cannot be pulled to the surface in one piece). This is done by dragging a bladed grapnel across the cable in a so-called “cutting drive.” The ship then swaps the bladed grapnel for a hooked one and catches one end of the severed cable, hoists it to the surface, and attaches it to a buoy. Then they catch the other cable end, splice the spare cable to it, and tow the spare cable back to the first buoyed cable to complete the patch. The ship is now holding a working cable but one that is considerably longer than it used to be. This process of bringing each cable end to the surface separately means that every repair makes a cable longer — in deep water, by several miles. In order to minimize slack that could get tangled and snagged, the loop of new cable is towed to the side of the original route until it can lay taut on the ocean floor once again.
 
…
At the same time, there are more cables to repair than ever, also partly a result of the tech giants entering the industry. Starting around 2016, tech companies that previously purchased bandwidth from telcos began pouring billions of dollars into cable systems of their own, seeking to ensure their cloud services were always available and content libraries synced. The result has been not just a boom in new cables but a change in the topology of the internet. “In the old days we connected population centers,” said Constable, the former Huawei Marine executive. “Now we connect data centers. Eighty percent of traffic crossing the Atlantic is probably machines talking to machines.”

… in February, a freighter struck by Houthi rockets dragged its anchor across three crucial connections between Asia and Europe, degrading connectivity and raising the frightening prospect of conducting repairs under fire. The Red Sea vulnerability has in turn renewed interest in an Arctic route, made potentially feasible by melting sea ice, though, for years, one of the fatal flaws of this proposal has been the question of who would repair such a cable, there being no ice-capable maintenance vessels. …

https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships

[interstitial]

A fully-electric 10,000 ton container ship has begun service equipped with over 50,000 kWh in batteries


https://electrek.co/2024/05/02/fully-electric-10000-ton-container-ship-begun-service50000-kwh-batteries/

[Sigmetnow]

Water recreation is going electric:

NEWS: @ArcBoats has announced that their all-electric Arc Sport is now available for test rides.

• Starting price: $258,000
• 226-kWh battery
• Travel 24 hrs straight at low speeds. 4-6 hrs of faster active use, incl. towing
• 80% charge in 45 mins
• Deliveries: Late 2024
 
More info: https://arcboats.com/blog/arc-sport-hits-the-water
 
5/21/24,  https://x.com/sawyermerritt/status/1792978486073729076
 
➡️ pic.twitter.com/Qbej1cjxym  1 min promo — having fun with a boat

[Freegrass]

Union Maritime and BarTech Lead On Wind Propulsion

https://www.bartechnologies.uk/insights/union-maritime-and-bar-tech-join-to-lead-on-wind-propulsion/

Union Maritime is leading the global shipping industry into a new era of wind propulsion.

The company is deploying cutting-edge wind technology across its fleet: it is working with BAR Technologies, the supplier of WindWings® – an industry-leading rigid sail technology that uses wind propulsion to deliver average daily savings of 1.5 tonnes of fuel per wing and tonnes of CO2 per wing on typical global routes.

Wind propulsion will be deployed on a total of 34 Union Maritime newbuild vessels, including 14 LR2s, 12 chemical tankers, and 8 MRs.

This propulsion technology has huge environmental benefits as well as economic incentive for shipowners and charterers alike – as well as the wider shipping and trading community – in the form of significant reduced fuel costs.

Crucially, all this is achieved without compromising on speed, efficiency, and quality of service. Union is pursuing ambitious sustainability goals, whilst maintaining the highest standards of operational excellence.



At the same time as deploying this new technology on its ships, Union Maritime is also working with BAR Technologies’ shareholders on a significant strategic equity investment into the company, reflecting the companies’ long-term commitment and strategic alignment. That process is in its final stages and reflects Union Maritime’s deep commitment both to good corporate citizenship – it intends to continue to lead the way on efficient environmental shipping – and to WindWing® technology and its central role in global shipping. Further announcements will be made in the near future.

Wind propulsion is the central feature of Union Maritime’s wider environmental initiatives: the company is also deploying dual-fuel LNG engines on up to 8 LR2s, working with BAR Technologies on its transformational AeroBridge® superstructure which provide further efficiency and crew comfort, as well as various other technologies.

[Sigmetnow]

Union Maritime and BarTech Lead On Wind Propulsion

This tech is so cool.  The “sails” are essentially vertical airplane wings: flat on one side, curved on the other.  Air moving past the curved side must move faster, and thus creates a lower pressure, than air moving past the flat side.  The pressure behind the flat side of the wing helps propel the ship forward. (The negative pressure on the curved side helps a bit, too.)

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1200788439/wind-power-cargo-ships-carbon-emissions

[kassy]

And foldable too. Nice!