Maritime News and Comment

September 2007

    THE FERRY TO NOWHERE.  USA Today took on Senator Stevens and the dreaded Lockheed Martin today, dumping all over the high-speed ferry currently being built by Alaska Ship & Drydock, in Ketchikan AK, for the Navy.  Read the article here.  September 28, 2007.

    BATH TO BUILD FIRST DDG 1000.  The Navy has apparently decided that Bath Iron Works will build the first ship of the DDG 1000 class - the future USS "Zumwalt".  This is a reversal of the original plan and a good decision.  Read the original AP report in the Navy Times here and a more informative Reuters report here.  Contracts awarded for the design and advance procurement of this ship already total almost $2.5 billion and that does not yet include the construction contract itself.  September 25/26, 2007.

    GAO PREDICTS CVN 78 COST OVER-RUN.  In the most surprising news of the millennium, the GAO says that the Navy's new aircraft carrier will cost more than is currently budgeted.  No kidding!  It appears that the $11 billion that was budgeted for CVN 78 - only three times the cost of another carrier of the "Nimitz" class - will not be enough.  Read the GAO report here.  September 24, 2007.

    SUPERFERRY DEAD IN WATER.  The new Hawaii Superferry, billed so ungrammatically as "A Whole New Way to Get Around the Islands", is not getting around anywhere this morning, as a result of howls of protest from environmentalists and others.  Read the coverage on the ferry company's web site, here.  It's fairly amazing that the people of Hawaii are so short-sighted: are these the same folks who apparently don't have any problem with Malaysian-owned NCL America and who love to pay the Matson/Horizon premium on everything that's shipped from the continental U.S.?  September 24, 2007.

    DEEPWATER PROSPECTS.  Two interesting perspectives on the future of the Coast Guard's Deepwater program can be found here and here.  The first, from the Coast Guard itself, touts the contractual changes they've made: but surely these are all things that should be standard practice?  Is there nobody left in the Coast Guard who remembers how to run a major acquisition?  According to the second source, from National Defense magazine, apparently not.  September 23, 2007.

    LCS 4 TO BE TERMINATED?  The Navy Times is reporting that GD and the Navy are in talks concerning slowing down construction of LCS 4, the second of the two LCSs being built by Austal USA.  This smells like a termination for convenience, comparable to the termination of the Lockheed/Bollinger LCS 3.  Read the article here.  September 22, 2007.

    CROWLEY RETURNS TO HALTER.  Sources say, as they say, that Crowley will announce tomorrow that it has ordered another 2+2 ATBs from VT Halter Marine, only these will be 330,000-barrel (about 44,000dwt) monsters.  Halter's already building a series of ten 185,000-barrel ATBs for them.  More news tomorrow, maybe.  September 20, 2007.  No announcement yet from Crowley but VT Halter's parent company, ST Engineering, revealed today that the contract is for three, not two, ATBs.  The vessels will be 600 ft. by 106 ft. by 54 ft.  The per-barge price is about $85 million.  Deliveries will be in the second halves of 2011, 2012 and 2013: good grief, a shipyard with a commercial backlog running out six years!  Read ST's announcement here.  September 27, 2007.  Crowley's announcement, later in the day, reveals that the three 16,320-hp tugs will be built by Dakota Creek Industries.  It also reveals that these ATBs will have a service speed of 15.1 knots: so they are the same size as OSG's ships and half a knot faster!  Read Crowley's announcement here.  September 27, 2007.

    K-SEA GOES TO MANITOWOC.  In something of a surprise, K-Sea Transportation has signed an LOI with Manitowoc Marine for a 185,000-barrel ATB.  The price is said to be $68 to $70 million, with delivery in the fourth quarter of 2009.  The deal includes an option for a second unit.  Until recently, all K-Sea's ATBs and inshore barges were built by Bollinger but a few weeks back they ordered 4+4 50,000-barrel barges from JeffBoat and now this.  Read K-Sea's news release here.  September 20, 2007.

    ISC BUYS A PCTC.  International Shipholding has bought a -year-old 6400-unit Panamanian-flag PCTC and will bring her into the US flag fleet.  No details available yet, but it was a yen deal, so the ship was presumably Japanese-owned.  Read the 8-K on their web site, here.  September 20, 2007.  The Masters, Mates and Pilots newsletter reports that the ship in question is a new one, called "Green Bay", built by Toyohashi Shipbuilding and delivered to ISC's Waterman Steamship subsidiary last month.  She will replace the 23-year-old Russian-built "Atlantic Forest" in the MSP.  Now why couldn't ISC have told us that?  Some companies appear to believe that it's in their interests to be as opaque - the opposite of transparent - as possible.  Strange people.  September 21, 2007.

    YOG REEFED OFF DELAWARE.  YOG-93, a WWII-vintage yard oiler, built by RTC Shipbuilding in Camden NJ in 1945, was sent to the bottom as a reef recently.  Read the story here.  September 18, 2007.

    SAN FRANCISCO TO CONSOLIDATE FERRY SERVICES.  In a move that will create a leviathan of a ferry operation, the California state legislature has passed a law that allows the Bay Area Transit Authority to take over all the local ferry services in the region.  Intelligent rationalization or excessive bureaucracy?  Read the San Francisco Examiner's report here.  September 14, 2007.

    DUTTON GOES FOR SCRAP.  MARAD has sent the USNS DUTTON, (T-AGS 22), the former "Tuskegee Victory", built by Oregon Shipbuilding (Hull #1244) in 1945, for scrapping.   Read the press release here.  September 13, 2007.

    WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH LPD 18?  Loyal readers will recall our competition to find a use for LPD 17.  None of you suggested using her as a car carrier.  I mean, you had lots of great ideas, but none of you suggested using her as a car carrier.  So, guess what, the Navy is using LPD 18, the USS NEW ORLEANS, as a car carrier.  I am not kidding.  A billion-dollar car carrier.  MSC has a contract with Matson to move cars to and from Pearl Harbor and it has a fleet of quasi-commercial ro-ro ships of its own.  And if that's not enough, there are commercial ro-ro ships in the RRF, available on five days' notice.  But no, let's use a billion-dollar assault ship.  Read the Navy's press release here.  I reproduce the photograph and the text here in full, because I suspect that they may not be on the Navy's web site for long.

70911-N-4965F-002 PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (Sept. 11, 2007) - USS New Orleans (LPD 18), background, passes the USS Arizona Memorial at Fleet and Industrial Supply Center, Pearl Harbor. The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship is in Pearl Harbor to transport military personnel’s privately owned vehicles to the mainland United States. The ship, commissioned in New Orleans March 10, 2007, is homeported in San Diego. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class James E. Foehl (RELEASED)

September 12, 2007.  Several regular readers have rushed to point out to me that carrying "POVs" (personnel-owned vehicles), on naval ships, when the space is available, is standard practice and is "very economical".  Yeah, right.  September 13, 2007.

    CAN AN LCS BE A WMEC?  According to an article in "Inside the Navy", the Navy and the Coast Guard are talking about merging the Navy's LCS program with the Coast Guard's Offshore Patrol Cutter (WMEC replacement) program.  Now there's a good idea.  Given that the much maligned LCS, even at its new price, still costs much less than Northrop Grumman's National Security Cutter (WHEC replacement), this could lead to substantial cost savings.  The two ships are supposed to be interoperable, so why not?  All kinds of commonality advantages, not to mention quantity savings.  Assuming that the OPCs are built by the LCS contractors, that is, and not the other way around.  Now if they could just find a way to get ABS out of the naval shipbuilding business, we'd really be making progress.  September 10, 2007.

    NGSS IMPROVING?  According to an article on DefenseNews.com, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems is improving its construction process on the Coast Guard's horrendously expensive National Security Cutter.  Sounds good?  Read the story here.  Oh, dear, they appear to be changing the build strategy with each successive ship, a sure recipe for increased, not decreased, costs.  I mean, I'm all for continuous improvement and if their original build strategy was wrong, they should change it, but they've had this contract for years, they should have frozen the build strategy ages ago.  Does nobody at NGSS know anything about planning any more?  September 10, 2007.  I have been chastised for criticizing NGSS for trying to improve the process.  I'm all for improving the process.  I'm not for changing the process with every ship.  This is not intelligent shipbuilding, this is idiocy.  Is it any wonder that NGSS  appears to be building ships on a negative learning curve?  September 13, 2007

    ACL BUYS EBDG.  American Commercial Lines, the parent company of JeffBoat, is buying Elliott Bay Design Group, the innovative Seattle-based naval architects.  Read the press release here.  All the usual pablum about those magical "synergies", but what's the point?  It must be the money talking.  September 7, 2007.

    PHILLY FLOATS OUT #3.  Aker Philadelphia has launched the third OSG tanker, the future "Overseas Los Angeles", and started fabrication of the sixth.  Read the press release here.  September 6, 2007.

    CONRAD TO BUILD FERRY.  Conrad Industries has won a contract from the Texas DoT to build a 70-car ferry for the Galveston crossing.  Read the press release here.  September 6, 2007.

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