Could be jitter. Such a large change is a bit unrealistic. We will see if it changes again (or not).
On the charts, zooming in shows the shape of the vessel and you can measure the heading ; it is 285° on MarineTraffic and 290° on Vesselfinder. It did not change.
But no fears, the port anchor is down…
The degrees displayed on the screen are the course, normally at 0° for a docked or grounded ship. A change of course must be jitter.
There should be a small lateral movement too, from the tides; the port side of the vessel goes up and down, which translates to port and starboard movements on top of the castle.
For this place, VesselFinder is better than MarineTraffic…
PS:
Now, ‘Alp Defender’ is in a working position on the (higher) portside of ‘Stellar Banner’, near the bridge.
1 Like
Questions remain, e.g. how many side tanks are flooded and why (up or down flooded) and is the engine room dry, etc. The angle of heel seems to be >20° so it is difficult to work on the ship. Priority should be to reduce the heel, which can be done in different ways.
1 Like
The circumstances surrounding the grounding remains unclear, but information indicated that the ship hit the bottom at low tide as it was heading out of the canal at the port of Maranhao.
Divers have found a 25-metre long area damaged on the starboard side of the hull near the bow. Water was entering the ship, but due to the heavy currents in the area divers have not been able to assess where the ingress was.
The local police are investigating whether the ship hit an unidentified object on the seabed, as the shipowner claimed, or whether the vessel had departed on its journey with a defect that had not been spotted. They wanted to understand how, when it left the channel, it hit something or if it was already damaged.
The offshore tug ‘ALP Defender’ (IMO:9737242), which has been contracted by the company Polaris Shipping, owner of the ‘Stellar Banner’, to remove part of the 4.000 tons fuel from the VLOC which has been stranded for two weeks at the coast of Maranhão, had arrived on site on March 10. The AHTS was deployed from Gabon and has a storage capacity of more than 3.000 cubic meters. The oil removal plan was approved on March 9, but due to the unfavorable weather conditions in the region, the Brazilian Navy decided to postpone the start of the work to March 12. The operation was expected to last five days.
As of March 12, the tugs ‘Bernard’, ‘Bigua’, C-Atlas’, ‘Fazendao’, ‘Napoc Iguatemi’, ‘Navegantes Pride’, ‘Renaud’, ‘Smit Charrua’. ‘Starnav Altair’, ‘Starnav Mira’, ‘Telescopium’ and ‘UP Agua Marinha’ were gathered around the ‘Stellar Banner’ besides the ‘ALP Defender’. Quite a crowd…
2 Likes
In order to reduce the heel I would ballast some port side tanks.
Gee, Captain Amazing … I wonder why no one else has thought of that! You ought to hop the next flight down and save the day for them.
1 Like
So why not do it? Or is the engine room flooded?
Assuming the ship is fully laden with iron ore, I wonder if there’s enough reserve buoyancy to allow counter-ballasting.
If ever, why shouldn’t they have done it ‘en route’?
It may be necessary to ballast the port side, to sit flat and stable; to relieve the starboard bilge region from the continuing movements by tides and currents…
More better…In order to reduce the sinking, I would remove some of the water from those tanks that are full of the seawater.
2 Likes
The ship hasn’t sunk yet - it is aground - and the world’s best salvage company is there to sort it out. I only wonder what a small tug is doing alongside port aft.
Probably boarding people to execute the de-fuelling operation.
Hm, according Vessel Finder there are 10 (!) ships drifting around Stellar Banner.
I really wonder what happens with M/S Stellar Banner and all assisting ships around her.
Latest news here.
Just seen now:
The LU motor hopper ‘Leeuw’ is along the port side of the ‘Stellar Banner’.
Another one, the NL ‘Jan Blanken’, is waiting nearby.
The big NO off-shore construction vessel ‘Normand Installer’, working there too, should be able to dredge iron ore from the bulker’s holds, and discharge it into the waiting hoppers.
Then, the hoppers can dump it somewhere.
Just to lighten the starboard side of the ‘Stellar Banner? Even this alone would be a huge work…
2 Likes
A newcomer is alongside ‘Stellar Banner’:
The 235 meter MH-bulker ‘Alfred Oldendorff’, self-loading and self-discharging.
She could be used to bring the iron ore back to the loading port Ponta da Madeira.
The two motor hoppers are still there, but they can just dump the ore offshore…
PS April 29:
The ‘Alfred Oldendorff’ is with her port side along the ‘Stellar Banner’; along her starboard side is the motor hopper ‘Jan Blanken’.
It seems, they use Alfred’s efficient, purpose built, deck equipment to transship the iron ore from the bulker to the hoppers. As they do here >>>
If no hopper is alongside, they can continue emptying the bulker and stock the ore onboard.
This is a very interesting incident. I assume the ship owner was H&M and P&I insured and has declared General Average after hitting something, so the cargo owner’s insurance must now pay the combined effort of getting the ship afloat again and into port and the cargo delivered somewhere. P&I has maybe already paid for getting the bunkers off the ship?
Does anyone know the insured values of ship, cargo and bunkers and underwriters involved?
Is the engine room still intact?
The ship owner is of course still in charge of everything. His ship has just stranded and has plenty problems. One easy solution is just to abandon the ship! It becomes a new island outside Brazil and anyone can come and pick up bits and pieces.
Interesting case. The weather seems good, so personally I would try to patch up the hull damages from outside so you can re-float the hull by pumping out water. To offload cargo doesn’t help much.
Video footage of the cargo extraction…
1 Like