M/V Sunmar Sea

That is the former Coastal Ranger. An old YO.

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She spent the years from 1956 - 69 in “Veritas ruten” between Oslo and Trondheim carrying general cargo on a regular scheduled service. (Veritas ruten).At that time she was under Norwegian flag.
She MAY have carried sand a gravel as the Rødsand (1969 - 85) but not very likely. She NEVER flew the German flag:

I don’t have any details of what she was doing in the years as Rødsand, but she was still under Norwegian ownership and flag until 1982, when she was sold to an unknown British company that changed to name to Rodsand.
How she ended up on the other side of the Atlantic is not clear, but:

https://skipshistorie.net/Haugesund/HAU238DSVeritas/Tekster/HAU23819560100000%20HOMBORSUND.htm

https://skipshistorie.net/Haugesund/HAU238DSVeritas/Tekster/HAU23800000000001%20historie.htm

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Wow, that’s some history. I was lead to understand that it was used as a dredge while the Rodsund but the company who put it to work as an agricultural products (pot) hauler kept together crates of spares that were still with her in ‘86. The main bearings were rebabbitted but the old German factory tech preferred original equipment from the salvaged spares. Did a lot of flywheel barring and in and out hand scraping, a lost art now. Bosch pumps reshimed to the factory spec from original engine manual. I used to climb the inside of the stack and flip the hatch on top to star gaze while underway.

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It must have been '86. Something related to controlling the prop pitch was what I understood.

I was mate on the Snowbird when they called the Coast Guard. I, and presumably everyone else in MF/HF range, listened in on the radio. I was on watch and heard them say they had both anchors down and a full gale was pushing them towards shallow water.

Saw them a few days later alongside at Sand Point in the Shumagins. Never heard how they got there.

There was a Russian trawler anchored outside the 12 mile limit in the Shumagins and the Sea had arranged to take a load from them. They couldn’t go on their own power so we went out to get the load but after a couple hours, change of plans and we ended up making them up on the hip and pushing them out to the trawler and back.

That ship and crew didn’t seem like the typical operation you dealt with in Alaska. At one point the mate told me it was his first trip to Alaska and he was used to working in the Caribbean barefoot .

8 posts were split to a new topic: EX Army FS Snowbird

I’m not sure about the cargo gear but just everything forward was new.

Maybe Freighterman can verify but I think the section between the two red lines was the section where the hull widened out.

Do you know anything about MV

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© Chris Howell


The pallet loader was on the port side. Spent some time as mate hoping that the office had forgotten where I was onboard her.

Big finger trouble the name was MV Vagan.

…and two or three steps up onto the main deck of the forebody. The transition section housed the new gen/refer equipment.

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Yes, that is where the hull tapered from the forebody made in 1986 to the stern made in 1956. Because of the peculiar look, some people mistakenly thought the boat had sponsons.

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This one?
image
Good ol Norwegian short sea ship in North Sea trade:
https://skipshistorie.net/Trondheim/TRH112NorCargo/Tekster/TRH11219670400000%20VAGAN.htm
Originally operated by a company in Northern Norway that was part of the Coastal Express service Bergen- Kirkenes v.v…

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Just out of curiousity; how could a Swedish built ex Norwegian Short sea/Coaster that was caught smuggling become a US flag “Fish Tender”??
Are those exempt from the Jones Act?

One more question; anybody know which flag she was flying at the time of arrest? (She was British owned)

It’s considered “U.S. built” for legal purposes.

if the vessel is forfeited to the U.S. Government as a drug, customs or other “seizure”, then when purchased from a marshal’s sale, will become “U.S. built” for all purposes.

From here:

https://www.maritimelawcenter.com/html/arrest_of_vessel.html

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Was hat how the Sunmar Sky was US flagged?

Yes, but it is a little complicated. The Rodsand was seized for smuggling drugs. Sold at U.S. Marshall auction. Therefore, now American hull. Then perhaps 2/3 of vessel was scrapped. A new forebody–the majority of the boat–was built in Seattle and attached to the the much smaller, once foreign, now American part. So was she mostly American-American, or mostly once foreign-now American?

The Jones Act makes for some interesting situations.

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By the way, we still own the Coastal Trader. Another former Sunmar boat. Sunmar did the same deal with her. Drug-seizure foreign vessel, therefore de facto American hull. Sunmar cut off everything forward of the engine room bulkhead, keeping the superstructure. Then they built an entirely new forebody, only in this case in Korea. But remember the stern section, which was once foreign, was now American. The foreign forebody, which was most of the vessel, was welded to the now American stern. This, according to the USCG regulations off 33 years ago, made the entire new vessel American.

I don’t know if the regs have been changed since then.

We had to do the same things to her as we did with the Sea: fair in the step between the wide forebody and narrow stern section. Re-power. Re-configure the cargo gear. Eventually rebuild the accommodations from scratch.

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This one?

She appears to have had a colourful history,

Yes, that’s her. You can see in the photo the size differential between forebody and stern. A comfortable little ship.

Sounds a bit like the OSVs and railroad barges that became modern US flag Factory Trawlers in the 1970s and 80s,

Fading into memory is the gold mine that was the Bering Sea fishing industry of the 1980s. Crabbing and bottom fishing went on with relatively few regulations compared to today. Fortunes were made. There was mad scramble for investors to get in on the loot, and it was faster to repurpose old boats to fishing than make new fishing boats, though that went on too of course.

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