The insurance aspects of the incident(s) are of course interesting! The ship owner says:
[I]"The company has insurance coverage for damage to the vessel with a deductible of approximately $30 million as well as insurance for third party personal injury liability subject to an additional deductible of approximately $10 million for this incident. The company self-insures for loss of use of the vessel.
A damage assessment review of the vessel is currently being undertaken to determine how long it will be out of service. The vessel is expected to be out of service for the remainder of our current fiscal year if not longer. For the fiscal year ending November 30, the impact to 2012 earnings for loss of use is expected to be approximately $85-$95 million or $0.11-$0.12 per share. In addition, the company anticipates other costs to the business that are not possible to determine at this time."[/I]
Source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=140690&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDA5NTAxNDItMTItMDAwMTEwL3htbA%3D%3D
So there is H&M and P&I insurance but no LoH insurance. It would be interesting to know who the leading H&M underwriter is and under what conditions the ship is insured. The deductible ~$30 million is very big. It evidently means every incident costing less than ~$30M is paid by the ship owner and the underwriters are not concerned, e.g. if the ship was seaworthy? Now we may talk about a ‘total loss’ (value? $500M?) and the question about seaworthyness should be looked into. Because it is really possible that a seaworthy, correctly built ship worth $500M can become a ‘total loss’?