Our popular KW810 ”Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System” (BNWAS) will be available for demonstrations on Stand B6/140 by kind permission of Telemar or on Stand B6/122 by courtesy of Aage Hempel.

Our sales manager, Mr David Clutterbuck, will be attending the show as our representative and would be very pleased to meet with you and offer a demonstration of our system and information on any of our other products and services.
If you would like to meet with David, or if you have any questions, please feel free to  call us on +44 2380 480 450 or email us at sales@amimarine.net

For a better understanding of our BNWAS please download the datasheet from our product page – BNWAS Datasheet

For more information on the SMM exhibition please follow this link – SMM 2010

The BNWAS will become a SOLAS mandatory carriage requirement from July 2011 and will be phased in for all vessels of 150GT and above. Please see our below chart for the SOLAS implementation schedule:

The vessels involved, according to officials, were the Panamanian flagged MSC Chitra and cargo ship Khalijia III. The vessels collided approx 8km off the Mumbai shore on Saturday morning, spilling between 200 and 400 containers and leaking oil into the sea.

At time of publishing there was no word on when the port would reopen which will likely cause chaos due to congestion problems prior to the incident. Mumbai port was also closed but was reopened for smaller ships shortly after the incident.

The oil leak was from the MSC Chitra but the exact location of the leak was proving difficult to determine due the vessel listing at a 75 degree angle. Six Indian coastguard ships were trying to contain the leak.

Suresh Shetty, India’s State Environmental Minister, instructed the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board to register an offense against the owners and staff of both vessels involved and a case has been registered under the Environmental Protection Act due to the containers, currently floating off the Mumbai coast, are carrying hazardous chemicals.

It has been suggested by the MbPT – Mumbai Port Trust – that the accident may have been caused due to the lack of pilot ships and the vessels operating on different radio frequencies.

It is understood that thirty five crew members were rescued from the MSC Chitra following the incident.

The would-be illegal immigrants were first detected in Dunkirk, France by a sniffer dog while the lorry was preparing to board a ferry bound for the UK.

The men were detained by the UK Border Agency before being handed over to the French Border Police, after the incident on Friday morning.

The vehicle was allowed to continue its journey to Bridgwater, but the British driver and haulage firm face a fine if they are unable to prove they took adequate steps to secure the lorry.

UK Border Agency’s dector for operations in Northern France, Carole Upshall, said: “This is exactly why we have staff in France and Belgium – to stop illegal immigrants before they can reach the UK.

“As well as using sniffer dogs, our staff also use heartbeat detectors and carbon dioxide probes.”

This horrifying revelation came in a testimony given by Mr Mike Williams, a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company who owned the oil rig. It was revealed that alarm systems, along with key safety mechanisms, had been consciously been switched off in order to ensure workers were not disturbed whilst they slept.

Mr Williams, who was in charge of maintaining the rig’s electronic systems, was giving evidence before a joint hearing of the US Coast Guard and the interior department, who are investigating the cause of the disaster,  which has been described as the largest environmental disaster in  modern history.

The panel heard that no alarms were sounded on the day of the explosion because they had been “inhibited”. Sensors monitoring the conditions on board the rig and in the Macondo oil well beneath it were still operational but the computer had been configured not to trigger any alarms in the case of adverse readings.

If configured correctly the computer would have triggered both visual and audible alarms once the sensors detected fire or dangerous levels of combustible or toxic gas.

This new evidence of deliberate dilution of the oil rig’s safety equipment is highly likely to have serious ramifications for  BT and Transocean. The spotlight of blame will now surely shift from BP and towards the subcontractor, the world’s biggest offshore drilling company, which made these disastrous decisions. Of the crew on board 7 worked for BP and 79 for Transocean.

Williams stated that he discovered the physical alarm system was disabled a full year before the Deepwater Horizon was destroyed. On questioning the decision he was told that the view from even the most senior Transocean official on the rig had been that “they did not want people woken up at three o’clock in the morning due to false alarms”!

Mr Mike William’s testimony will raise questions about whether lives could have been saved if the alarms had not been disabled and the alarm raised before the disaster occurred.

It was also revealed that a crucial safety device had been disabled, or bypassed as it was called, designed to shut down the drill shack in the case of dangerous gas levels being detected. When Mr Williams noticed that the system had been bypassed he protested to Transocean supervisor, Mark Hay, who dismissed his concerns. Mr Hay’s response was “Damn thing been in bypass for five years. Matter of fact the entire fleet runs them in bypass”

The third disclosure made by Mr Williams was that a computer system used to monitor the srill shack was constantly freezing, and on once occasion actually produced incorrect information. The system failed to indicate that a vital valve inside the blowout preventer, the device designed to shut down the well in case of problems, had been damaged.

Pressure will now undoubtedly mount on Transocean to explain these discrepancies.

A report by The New York Times last week stated that a survey of workers carried out by Transocean, shortly before the blast, suggested key safety practices were not being followed. Workers said that while they were aware of unsafe practices on the rig they were afraid to report mistakes for fear of reprisals.

“The investigations continue to demonstrate that a range of things went wrong and the responsibility lies with a whole load of different companies” was stated by a BP spokesman.

Meanwhile, workers on the ships at the site of the oil spill are aking final preparations to leave as a storm approaches.

Source - BBC News - The Guardian

Chinese yards are shown to be ahead of their South Korean rivals on all key measures such as ship deliveries, deadweight and gross tonnage, according to figures for the first half of the year.

Clarksons report that Chana delivered 22.7m dwt in the first six months of 2010,  with South Korea behind with just 18.3m dwt.

These figures put China around five years ahead of the government’s stated ambition to become the largest shipbuilder by the year 2015. However, brokers are not convinced that China can maintain the momentum and stay on top for the full year, believing that South Korea is likely to overtake China China by 2011.
However, it is believed that beynod that China will take the crown on a more permanent basis.

Despite South Korea’s forecast market share increase shipbuilders’ backlogs are expected to continue shrinking until late 2011 or 2012.

A new  HSBC analyst reports that the recent comparative decline in new orders at South Korean yards and their inability to make new investments will see cash flows eroded and problems with increased debt across the sector.

While the Chinese shipbuilding industry has the support of the government policy which encourages state-owned shipowners to place orders as well as access to cheaper financing from Chinese banks, South Korean yards are simultaneously losing their bargaining power as BRIC countries enforce national sourcing policies that require parts and yard facilities be sourced domestically.

Chinese yards enjoyed a significant increase in newbuilding orders through 2009 just when the industry was suffering the most, thanks to the lure of cheap financing which analysts suggest pulled in a significant number of owners who would have otherwise headed to South Korea.

According to HSBC Chinese commercial banks are increasingly financing domestically built ships, for foreign as well as Chinese buyers, and shipping funds in Shanghai and Tianjin intend to support the expansion of the Chinese fleet, especially in the event of contracts that have fallen into default.

“Korea’s shipbuilders will have to lower vessel prices and sacrifice profitability to secure new orders,” analyst Paul Choi wrote in the research paper. “The Korean shipbuilding industry’s positioning is structurally weak and it lacks the government support and scale of big shipping companies in China.”

According to HSBC new orders at South Korean yards should improve to 16.8m CGT for 2010, up 43% year on year and the current low newbuilding prices should encourage further investment. However the report concedes that this is not a sustainable trend and a weak macro backdrop, potentially weaker commodity pricing, ship delivery delays causing continued oversupply and the structurally weaker positioning of Korean yards will remain the key obstacles to a full-blown recovery.

The fishermen explained to the authorities after their arrival in Mukalla City, Hadramout, the Somali pirates attacked their ship during a voyage between MuKalla and Aden in April 2010.

Four other fishermen remain in the pirate’s custody and it is hoped that they will be released in the coming days.

The five released fishermen described how they were first taken to Qarad area and then, in June, transferred to Bosaso port from where they were deported.

Elsewhere, in the Southern Red Sea a vessel carrying 18 Filipino sailors came under fire when Somali pirates hijacked the Marshall-flagged chemical tanker.

The MT Motivator came under small arms fire on Sunday morning in the northern Bab-Al-Mandeb area, the strait between the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, in a statement made by the EU NAVFOR mission.

The statement said “After notification of this attack attempts were made to make contact with the Motivator but to no avail. The hijack was confirmed early on 5th July”

Despite the World Cup being on we had a great turn out and made a number of new contacts, as well as having the opportunity to catch up with some old friends!

As expected the BNWAS was a big hit, with greater interest than was expected. With the IMO regulations coming into force just around the corner it would seem demand is ramping up. The big surprise for us was the continued demand for the S-VDR, which should have ceased by now but once again there was great interest in our VR2272B.

So a very big thank you to everyone who came along to see us and to those of you who didnt quite make it we hope to see you next time round.

Photos of the show will follow……………………………..

As reported earlier this year AMI Marine (UK) Ltd will be exhibiting at SeaWork 2010 International.
The exhibition will run from 15th – 17th June 2010

During the exhibition we will be launching our BNWAS – Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System – to the UK market.

The system has already proved to be a hit following our European launch at Europort last year, and we are confident that the UK launch will be equally as successful!

We will be located at stand 248 - adjacent to the innovations showcase.
Please see the latest floor plan here – Floor Plan 

For more information on the KW810 BNWAS please feel free to visit our BNWAS product page here – BNWAS

Also on show will be our VR2272B VDR / S-VDR system and hugely successful SMIDS – Ship Movement Information Display System, along with a selection of our interfaces.

A demonstration of our SMIDS in action (albeit graphically) can be seen by clicking on the following links:

- SMIDS – Docking
- SMIDS – Lightering
- SMIDS – Replenishment At Sea

For more information on these or any of our other equipment please feel free to contact us using the “Contact Us” page or directly at sales@amimarine.net or on Tel: +44 2380 480 450

In the meantime AMI would like to invite you all to visit our stand and we sincerely look forward to seeing you at SeaWork 2010 International!

A group of Somali pirates, captured in the Gulf of Aden, was forced to be released by Russia naval forces because of “imperfections in international law”.

A daring operation was launched by commandos to rescue the seized Russian oil tanker.

One pirate was killed in the 22-minute firefight and 10 were arrested, several of them injured, in a dawn raid on the ship yesterday, hailed as a victory for the Russia’s oft-criticised navy.

Those captured were expected to face trial in Moscow but today Colonel Alexei Kuznetzov said that “imperfections in international law” meant they had to be released.

The pirates were captured when marines from the Marshal Shaposhnikov, a Russian warship, stormed the oil tanker, called the Moscow University.

Colonel Kuznetsov declined to elaborate on the legal flaws that prompted the release.

The Law of the Seas Convention, to which Russia is a signatory, says that the courts of a country that seizes a pirated vessel on the high seas has the right to decide what penalties are to be imposed. However, some countries are wary of hauling in pirates for trial for fear of them remaining in the country after they serve prison terms.

Colonel Kuznetsov appeared to echo those concerns when asked why the pirates who seized the tanker were released.

“Why should we feed some pirates?” he said.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russian President had yesterday hinted at possible tough punishments for the pirates taken in the troubled waters off the coast of Somalia.

“Perhaps we should get back to the idea of establishing an international court and other legal tools to prosecute pirates,” he said.

“Until then, we’ll have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates.”

A top NOAA official says the Gulf Coast oil spill is a major blow to the U.S. economy and the environment. David Kennedy is the acting administrator for the National Ocean Service, a branch of NOAA that manages coastal and marine resources. (AssociatedPress —April 29)