Seaspan owns container ships and charters them on mostly long-term, fixed-rate charters. Also in this issue: Maintenace-BIMCO, Greater China Forum and Horizon lines.
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Date: 2008-02-04
A seaplane is descending towards the inner harbour of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, bringing mostly commuters to and from Vancouver Island. Overlooking this activity, next to the control tower and the rest of the harbour, is a tower building on Granville street where Seaspan Ship Management has its offices. This location reflects Seaspan’s very active shipping philosophy in Vancouver’s expanding business environment. “Our target is to double our fleet by 2010,” says Peter Curtis, Vice President of Seaspan.
After GL, DNV has the biggest fleet of existing container ships in the German market. The statistics are produced by ISL and comprise container ships above 300 GT owned by German owners (parent company) as of April 2007. The DNV fleet comprises 62 ships and more than 185,000 TEU.
By popular demand, we are issuing more and more of our documentation in Chinese.
Time was when an eagle-eyed Chief Officer, possibly accompanied by a hugely experienced Boatswain, would clamber around the entire hull of a ship to plan the fabric maintenance strategy. Based on their eyes and experience, along with a knowledge of the ship and what had been done to it over the years, they would assess what needed the urgent attentions of electric hammers and scrapers, and what could be safely left until a later date. And if anything had advanced too far for the capabilities of the ship, it would be marked down for the next visit to the repair yard.
In the wake of the MSC Napoli incident, a lot of the news media attention was focused on hull integrity, or the lack of such. Most people will know that, over the years, we have published several articles on our hull maintenance philosophy and how that can be put to use to mitigate hull structural failure risks, and in particular side shell fatigue.
Will the ships we build today be the best choice for the future? Will carbon trading and rising oil prices put technically sound ships at a disadvantage in the future business environment? These were some of the questions being discussed at the Greater China Container Ship Forum in Hong Kong.
The container sector asks how it can roll with political and social changes to run commercially viable and environmentally acceptable business, writes our Special Correspondent.
Over the past few years, the volume of bearing damages have increased. Such damage may be very costly due to delays in delivery, high repair costs and expensive off-hire during repair. In extreme cases, damage to a bearing may even lead to loss of propulsion, which in turn could lead to loss of lives and property. In response to this, DNV has launched a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to perform full-scale measurements on an 8,600 TEU container vessel in order to calibrate the current Rules.
In April of 1956, Malcolm McLean sailed the Ideal X from Elizabeth, NJ, to Houston with containers lashed on board. From that point on, containerisation was in full swing, creating an engine for global commerce unlike any the world had ever seen before.
The first four months of 2007 saw unexpectedly positive developments in charter markets, as documented in indicators published by broker houses such as Howe Robinson, Clarkson, Braemar, and Harper Petersen. Since the latest low in the first week of January, the level of charter rates has increased by about 20 per cent.
