Ice breakers and winter shipping

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Just a reminder for those who think weather conditions play no role in geopolitics...

Ferries Collide Near Sweden, Passengers Safe

YLE News


The Viking Amorella and the Finnfellow side by side near the Swedish coast.
Image: Sakari Lindström

The passenger ferry Viking Amorella and the roll-on/roll-off passenger ferry Finnfellow collided in difficult ice conditions off the Swedish coast near Norrtälje on Thursday.

According to the Swedish Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC), there are 900 people aboard the Amorella and 84 on the Finnfellow. It says that the passengers are in no immediate danger. The Finnfellow has already proceeded on its way.

The centre says the mishap occurred at 4.40 pm Finnish time, when heavy ice pushed them together amid winds of 15-20 metres per second. It occurred between the Tjärven lighthouse and the mouth of the Furusund inlet which leads in to Stockholm.

The 170-metre Amorella was built in 1988. It can carry nearly 2500 passengers and 450 cars. The Swedish-flagged Finnfellow, built in 2000 in Spain, is owned by Finnlines and operated by Finnlink.

Immediately after the accident there was discussion of evacuating the ships, but this idea was abandoned.

Another Viking Line ship, the Isabella, is also stuck in ice nearby.

There are two icebreakers at the scene. A third is on the way, but was not expected to arrive until around 10 pm Finnish time.

Severe ice and wind have been causing trouble all week for ship traffic between Turku and Stockholm. On Tuesday this week, Icebreakers had to help the Rosella, which was stuck in the ice.

Delays All Day

Heavy ice had already delayed passenger ferry traffic between Finland and Sweden on Thursday. For instance the Viking Isabella, due to arrive in Turku in the evening from Långnäs in the Åland Islands, is several hours behind schedule.

Viking Line has cancelled several sailings between Åland's capital, Mariehamn, and Kapellskär, a port near Norrtälje, about 80 kilometres north of Stockholm, and has changed the route of ships plying the Turku-Stockholm route. It says its ships on the Helsinki-Turku route have remained on schedule.

On Thursday afternoon, there were a total of five vessels stuck in the ice near Stockholm.

Ships operated by Tallink and Finnlink also had trouble with the ice earlier Thursday. Icebreakers helped the Sea Wind ferry get from Turku to Stockholm as well as the Estonia-bound passenger-freight carrier Regal Star.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute has issued warnings for near-gale force winds of 14 to 16 m/s on all parts of the Baltic west of Finland, as well as a warning for moderate ice accretion on vessels in the Northern Baltic.

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Ice breakers and winter shipping

Of course you should´t ask the opinion of an ex-ferryman, but I tell it anyway!

Thanks to bad ice conditions most sea traffic in Northern Baltic Sea is trouble. For example parts of Stockholm archipelago are closed. To make things more interesting Swedish icebreaker "Oden" is in Antarctica doing polar expedition while Finnish multi-role icebreaker "Botnica" has been leased to the Med for the winter.

This is only part of the problem. Ice shipping experience is not what is used to be, old ships are used and the new ones don´t have the engine power because it is not economical. Finnish harbour workers´ union about to start their winter of discontent.

In the same time ice breaking fleet has started to deteriorate. Last real Finnish icebreaker "Sisu" with four propellers was build in 1976. Oldest icebreaker "Voima" has been in service since 1954 and has been waiting years for replacement. New multi-role icebreakers are not the best ones for really bad ice conditions.

In the mean time the Russians have started to ship more and more oil from the Baltic ports, increasing the risk of oil spills is getting higher and there isn´t enough resources to clean oil from ice. Well, one new multi-role vessels have been ordered (see pic).

Large image of the new vessel: http://www.environment.fi/download.asp?contentid=75688&lan=fi

Another useful link: http://portal.fma.fi/sivu/www/baltice

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Meanwhile we get news like this from Denmark. Somobody might want to quote Hamlet, but then again global warming means that there is no ice anymore. And commercial icebreaking capacity is always there. Or is it?

And I still don´t know what to think of the concept of multi-role icebreakers (moulinex type). Idea was to use these vessels for offshore services when icebreaking capacity is not needed. However, multirole icebreakers have two decades shorter service life than conventional icebreakers and are more expensive to operate that most offshore vessels.


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From Shipgaz

Danish icebreaker service a step closer to termination



The three Danish icebreakers at the Frederikshavn naval base. Photo: Bent Mikkelsen


The Danish governmental icebreaker service has come another step closer to termination. According to the Association of Danish Ports, the country’s ports do not need the DKK 30 million annual insurance service, as the ports can handle the ice by themselves.

More and more members of the Danish Parliament agree with the Association of Danish Ports. Recently, Henriette Kjær, spokesperson for the Konservative Folkeparti, which is part of the government, said that there is no need for a service that is out of date as ships today are stronger and more suitable for operation in ice. She also said that the icebreakers will have to be renewed if the service is to continue.

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The Coast Guard cutter Healy, an icebreaker, is in dry dock in Seattle. USCGC Healy is the largest ship of the U.S. Coast Guard, but used mainly for oceanographic research and showing the flag in Arctic waters. It was designed in Finland, but because somebody in the U.S. Government didn´t want a foreign design, the Finnish design work was called "consulting". That was a good deal for everybody else than American taxpayer.

from porttechnology.org

U.S. Icebreaker receives new deep water multibeam echo sounder

The United States Coast Guard has ordered a Kongsberg Maritime EM 122 deep water multibeam echo sounder for use aboard the icebreaker Healy, the largest vessel in its fleet. Although a Coast Guard Cutter, Healy is specifically designed for high latitude research operations in the fields of marine geology, physical and biological oceanography and meteorology. Healy is supported by scientists from various universities and institutes, so requires high-end hydroacoustic solutions, such as the EM 122.

At a time when interest in the Arctic Ocean basin is intensifying, the new EM 122 will substantially enhance Healy's ocean mapping capabilities. The scientists embarked on Healy are involved in a wide variety of research and several of its most recent voyages have involved hydrographic work related to determining the limits of the Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) of the United States. If the United States can prove that its continental shelf extends beyond the Exclusive Economic Zone, then under the United Nations convention on the Law of the Sea, the U.S. will have economic rights to the additional area.

The EM 122 was selected by a third party consulting company that was contracted by the US Coast Guard to perform a detailed evaluation of currently available deep water multibeam echo sounders. The evaluation was based on several criteria that were deemed critical requirements for the new system and its application aboard Healy. After evaluating the multibeam products of various manufacturers the consulting company came to the conclusion that the Kongsberg Maritime EM 122 was the only deep water system that met all of the criteria.

Designed to perform seabed mapping to full ocean depth, the cost-effective, reliable and easy to operate EM 122 provides unsurpassed resolution, coverage and accuracy. The EM 122 offers accuracy of better than 0.2% of depth in deep waters and has up to four times the resolution of the EM 120 in terms of sounding density, because of its multi-ping capability and ability to perform over twice the number of detections per swath.

Healy, which is named after Captain Michael A. Healy, a famous US Cutter Revenue Service commanding officer at the end of the 19th century, is currently in dry dock in Seattle, WA to install the EM 122 and to perform other maintenance and upgrades, which are expected to be completed by the spring of 2010. The 420-foot ship is capable of breaking through ice that is five feet thick at a speed of three knots. Healy is outfitted for extended deployment and has berthing for 76 crewmembers and up to 50 scientists.

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Well, Canadian polar icebreakers are expensive too. They ordered a new $720-million (Canadian dollars) icebreaker John G. Diefenbaker in 2008 (see link). Trouble is it won´t be ready before 2017. What´s wrong with their shipyards? (that was a rhetorical question because I´m posting icebreaker news for myself, but this makes you wonder)

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=2252

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In the epic youtube clip below huge Russian icebreaker "50 лет Победы" overtakes Swedish icebreaker "Oden". Russian nuclear icebreakers are now operated by state corporation Rosatom, but the previous operator Murmansk shipping company still has a nice icebreaker museum in Murmansk if you ever visit the city.

These Artika-class nucler icebreakers are the biggest in world. Russia also has Taimyr-class icebreakers which remain the only nuclear ships build in Finland.

Three propellors, nuclear power:


Only two propellors:

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This looks kind of creepy...