Short Sea Shipping in the EU

We sailed from Southampton on the Tokyo Bay the difference between the manifest and ship’s draft was 2000 metric tonnes. Fortunately, we had capacity to ballast down. Nowadays ballast tanks are minimised to save cost, inspections and coatings such that we now have a situation with tankers that they can use sea water as ballast in cargo tanks in an emergency and the main issue with doing that is lack of shore receiving facilities. So now we are reverting to the ‘70’s…