Dutch owned ship Eemslift Hendrika in trouble off NW Norway

Footage from the rescue op, complete with crew jumping overboard:

Rest assured the crew are getting trauma counselling at their hotel.

The fishing vessel “Veststeinen” with home port in Måløy has on Monday followed with “Eemslift Hendrika”. Just before midnight, skipper Jarl-Magne Silden writes on Facebook that they have left the casualty .


Rough sea:Picture of “Eemslift Hendrika” and rescue helicopter taken by fishing skipper Jarl-Magne Silden on “Veststeinen”. PHOTO: JARL MAGNE SILDEN

Boskalis are getting involved now, they have been busy recently, they were one of the companies involved with the Ever Given.

Latest at 1430 hrs.:

Boat fell off deck

Eemslift Hendrika was loaded with service boats that were going to Trøndelag when the load shifted and the ship later lost engine power. The boats, which were loaded on the deck of the ship, were clearly visible in several of the pictures that the Main Rescue Center Southern Norway has sent out of the abandoned ship.

At 1 pm on Tuesday afternoon, the Norwegian Coastal Administration announced that one of the boats on deck had fallen into the sea and was 1.3 nautical miles from the Dutch cargo ship.

To the newspaper IntraFish , emergency director Hans-Petter Laahne Mortensholm at the Norwegian Coastal Administration confirms that this is what appeared to be the largest of the boats in the cargo, a green service boat belonging to the service company AQS. According to VG, the boat will have a value of NOK 66 million.

Forecast for Svinøy Lighthouse:

Dive!

Helicopter rescue of the crew members under difficult circumstances. At the end one swimmer.

From the Maritime-Bulletin link in the first post >>>
…The ship with cargo of boats on upper deck is en route from Bremerhaven to Kolvereid Norway, it is these boats which shift and caused heavy list….

I cannot detect a shift of deck cargo in the earlier videos, not even the later lost AQS-boat.
Shift of a heavy cargo or water ingress in the single hold?
‘Amasus’ calls these small ‘Eemslift’ ships ‘heavy-lift’ (two 150t cranes).

I had seen a sister ship working cargo. They use a sort of outrigger, a water filled container on a lever entering the hull, to counter the heeling force of the cranes reaching out to the dock.
Unfortunately no help in a storm!

It was some thrusters stowed below deck that shifted first according to earlier reports.

Here is the latest:

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Update 2030 hrs.:
Two tugs are on their way to the casualty “Eemslift Hendrika”, which is now 40-50 nautical miles west of Ålesund. The salvage crew will be flown out on Wednesday morning.
Hans-Petter Laahne Mortensholm, emergency director at the Norwegian Coastal Administration, told Sunnmørsposten at 6 pm on Tuesday that the Norwegian Coastal Administration has been presented with a plan on how the salvage operation of “Eemslift Hendrika” will be carried out.

  • The rescue crew is coming to Vigra Airport tonight, and it will be ensured that they are flown out to the casualty tomorrow morning. Now we hope that the weather conditions give the rescue crew the space they need. We hold KV “Sortland” by the casualty until the operation is finished.
  • The plan is to start the rescue operation on Wednesday morning.**

BB Ocean has changed destination to Eemslift Hendrika:


ETA 0500 hrs. tomorrow.

Have not identified the second vessel yet.

PS> Boka Princess is in the area, heading for Kristiansund:

Drift pattern since the abandonment:


She is heading for Stad, about the worst spot on this part of the coast.

It rather begs the question as to why they were out in such crappy weather anyway.
Our company is constantly badgering the Masters to sail in stupid weather to arrive at places that you can’t enter because of the wind. Well, mostly because of the rocks but you get my drift (sic).
However, there is no commercial pressure, only self derived pressure, apparently.

Later in the day they found the 24m long work boat, calmly 1.5NM behind the Eemslift Hendrika. 20210406_195351

The Normand Drott (former Rem Gambler) is also going to assist, it is 50 miles away from the vessel.

This reminds me of my abandon ship checklist. Just before hitting (ESD-0), unique to MODU(s), which is basically a rig shut-down with a few features like EHBS for the BOP, the emergency towing sea painter is deployed off the stern before getting in the lifeboat. The thought process is if you do abandon, you leave an opportunity for a tug if the vessel remains afloat after abandonment. The last thing you want to do is make two emergency situations out of one. For drillships, you are generally operating around areas with multiple offshore assets. Having a destitute unmanned drillship drifting down on your TLP is not a good thing… basically, making another abandon ship situation.

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Maybe this vessel doesn’t have any emergency towing arrangement?

In hindsight perhaps they could have deployed both of the anchors with as much chain as possible, but it was perhaps too dangerous to go to the forecastle area due to the weather. The anchors would have slowed down the drift and perhaps caught the seabed if the got close to shore the water is about 200 meters deep where it currently is. The AHTS could then have grapneled or j-hooked for the ships anchor and tried to tow it by the anchor chain.

How they get a tow line on just now is a problem, perhaps they could shoot an rope with an LTA behind the accommodation block to pull a chain across the back of the accommodation block then tow it with a chain aft of the accommodation. Either have a tug at each end of the chain or connect each end of the chain to a tri-plate and one end of the tri-plate to the tow wire arrangement.

Yes I see that Normand Drott has bypassed her declared destination, Måløy, and is now heading out to open sea just south of Stad.
That is some muscles, although not much is needed for this salvage.

PS> BB Ocean is just passing Ålesund and Princess is closing on the location from the south.

I doubt very seriously that the vessel has emergency towing gear in the context I mentioned. Outside of tankers and rigs, most cargo vessels just require “procedures” for the purpose of loss of power situations, not necessary vessel interaction/recovery without a crew onboard, or the equipment mandate to support it. Although, it would certainly be a good option to have at this point. I would have no issue towing this vessel, if at (or less than) deck edge immersion, into a calm Fjorg. The Norwegian authorities will most likely have a problem. I remember towing a large Secunda barge into Halifax in the early-90’s. I was an AB at the time. The Canadia Navy prohibited the Captain from bringing the destitute barge into the port because of the fear of it sinking. The Captain entered anyway. The boat was arrested immediately by the Mounties. There was a nice little write-up in the Professional Mariner back then. On a positive note, I was about 20 years old at the time, single, and Halifax was a wonderful place to be!

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I would be surprised if she was fitted with more than two bollards either side of the centreline with a Panama lead at the bow. The bollards of a greater SWL than other deck equipment.
The forecastle didn’t look like a fun place to be.
Insurance wires went out of vogue about the same time as I moved on upstairs from the forecastle and that was a few summers ago.

Normand Drott has changed her destination to Eemslift Hendrika, while the Princess is still maintaining Kristansund as her destination.

So now that it’s abandoned, are there not salvage rights to it? Someone should make some money if this thing rides out the storm…

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The service boat AQS Tor is still afloat:

Dramatic launch

The service boat was built in Croatia, and it was AQS that bought it from Moen Marin. It is 24 meters long and specially equipped to work with moorings.
The company is both relieved and surprised that the boat still stays afloat.

  • When we heard that it had fallen off the ship, we were of course very unsure of how this had gone. But when we saw the video images on TV2, we discovered that it remained floating. We are of course very happy about that. It’s about values ​​here, but also with the environment in mind, it is of course best if we can salvage the boat, Ribsskog points out.
    The boat has so far not been christened. But the launch is done - in a dramatic way.
  • It is actually designed to withstand sideways launching. It may have been beneficial and contributed to it now seeming to be salvaged, he says.