Latest Newsletter  

This newsletter is prepared every three months and features news, views and interviews related to the nautical activity in New Zealand. If you have suggestions for content or story ideas, please email them to us, and we will develop the items into newsletter topics. Meantime we hope you enjoy reading this. Check back every two months for the updated version. Previous newsletters are also held on this website under the Archive Newsletters heading.

Latest Newsletter: May - July 2012

 

TITANIC 100 YEARS ON… AND STILL ARGUMENTS CONTINUE

After an entire century that included two high-profile government investigations and countless books and movies, the debate continues on what really caused the Titanic to hit an iceberg and sink on that crystal-clear chilly night.

Maybe there’s more to blame than human folly and hubris. Could it be freak atmospheric conditions that caused a mirage or an even rarer astronomical event that sent icebergs into shipping lanes? Those are two of the newer theories being proposed by a Titanic author and a team of astronomers. But the effort to find natural causes that could have contributed to the sinking may also be a quest for an excuse anything to avoid gazing critically into a mirror, say disaster experts and Titanic historians.

New theories and research are important “but at its most basic what happened is they failed to heed warnings and they hit the iceberg because they were going too fast,” said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

With this week’s 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking, the interest in all things Titanic is steaming faster than the doomed cruise ship on its maiden voyage.

One of the novel new theories says Titanic could have been the victim of a mirage that is similar to what people see in the desert. It’s the brainchild of Tim Maltin, a historian who has written three books about Titanic. The latest, an e-book titled “A Very Deceiving Night” emphasizes how the atmosphere may have tricked the Titanic crew on a cloudless night.

“This was not avoidable human error,” Mr Maltin said from London. “It’s just about air density difference.”

It was a beautiful clear night and for a couple of days, there had been something strange going on in the air over the North Atlantic, reported by all sorts of ships, including the crew on Titanic, Mr Maltin said.

The unusually cold sea air caused light to bend abnormally downward, he said. The Titanic’s first officer, William McMaster Murdoch, saw what he described as a “haze on the horizon, and that iceberg came right out of the haze,” Mr Maltin said, quoting from the surviving second officer’s testimony.

Other ships, including those rescuing survivors, reported similar strange visuals and had trouble navigating around the icebergs, he said.

British meteorologists later monitored the site for those freaky thermal inversions and said 60 per cent of the time they checked, the inversions were present, Mr Maltin said.

The same inversions could have made the Titanic’s rescue rockets appear lower in the sky, giving a rescue ship the impression that the Titanic was smaller and farther away, Mr Maltin said.

Physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher at Texas State University have another theory in Sky &Telescope magazine that fits nicely with Mr Maltin’s. Mr Olson who often comes up with astronomical quirks linked to historical events said that a few months earlier, the moon, sun and earth lined up in a way that added extra pull on earth’s tides. The earth was closer to the moon than it had been in 1,400 years.

They based their work on historical and astronomical records and research in 1978 by a federal expert in tides.

The unusual tides caused glaciers to calve icebergs off Greenland. Those southbound icebergs got stuck near Labrador and Newfoundland but then slowly moved south again, floating into the shipping currents just in time to greet the Titanic, the astronomers theorized. Mr Maltin said the icebergs also added a snaking river of super-cold water that magnified the mirage effect.

Tides and mirages may have happened, but blaming them for Titanic’s sinking “misses the boat,” said Lee Clarke, a Rutgers University disaster expert and author of the book “Worst Cases.”

“The basic facts of Titanic are not in dispute: The boat was going too fast in dangerous waters,” Mr Clarke said. If Titanic had stopped for the night because of ice like the British steamship Californian did, “tides and mirages wouldn’t have mattered.”

On April 14, the day it hit the iceberg, the Titanic received seven heavy ice warnings, including one from the Californian less than an hour before the fateful collision. The message said: “We are stopped and surrounded by ice.” Titanic sent back a message that said “Shut up. We are busy.”

Mr Clarke said people keep looking for additional causes “because if it’s nature or God, then we’re off the hook, morally and practically.”

Yale disaster expert Charles Perrow said he found the mirage theory plausible, especially because cold air played visual tricks that were a factor in a 1979 airplane crash in Antarctica that was originally blamed on pilot error.

Steven Biel, who wrote “Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster,” said he understands the search for other reasons.

“There’s something appealing about retrospectively gaining control over an event that’s centrally about uncertainty and contingency and lack of control,” he said.

 WAHINE DAY HIGHLIGHTS WHEEL FOR MUSEUM 

April 10 is Wahine Day - the day in 1968 when a fierce storm hit Wellington, causing widespread damage and leading to the foundering of the Wahine off Barretts Reef.

Now the wheel of the Wahine -a piece of New Zealand maritime history - is set to become a museum exhibit, all the way from the spare bedroom of a Christchurch retiree’s house. Its anonymous owner wants to give it to the Museum of Wellington City & Sea, which already has several Wahine artefacts on display.

The Christchurch man, who was on the first tug that went out to help the stricken ferry in 1968, wants to remain anonymous, but said he was able to “acquire” the wheel not long after the sinking.

“There were three wheels. I managed to acquire the ship’s wheel, and the right bow rudder wheel somebody else grabbed,” h e said .The third wheel was damaged during the disaster.

The wheel had acted as a pet-proof barrier in his home - keeping his dog out of the spare bedroom. However, the man had to have the dog put down last week because of ill health, and the wheel “had just been lying around”, he said. He had been considering giving it to the Wellington museum for several years.

The wheel was put to more appropriate use on occasion, appearing at a seafarers’ reunion in Christchurch several years ago. Redcliffs resident Terry Knight, a friend of the wheel owner, borrowed it for the reunion, and took an interest in its history.

He spoke to Kenny MacLeod, the Wahine helmsman who was at the wheel when the ship struck Barrett Reef, shortly before his death in 2009.

“I said we’ve got the wheel off the Wahine. He said his last recollection was lying on the deck, holding on to the bottom of that wheel to prevent being swept down.”

The wheel owner plans to approach the maritime museum soon and offer it the relic.

Photograph: Iain McGregor/ Fairfax NZ.

MARITIME NZ CHARGES RENA OWNERS

Maritime New Zealand has charged the owner of the Rena over its grounding on Astrolabe Reef.

Six months after the event, Greece-based company Daina Shipping has been charged under two sections of the Resource Management Act which relate to the discharge of harmful substances from ships in the coastal marine area. The charge carries a maximum fine of $600,000, and $10,000 for every day the offending continues.

Daina Shipping Co is the registered owner of Rena, and has overall responsibility for the operation of the ship.

The charge has been laid in the Tauranga District Court and is expected to have its first call on May 25. The Rena’s master and second officer have already pleaded guilty to charges laid by Maritime New Zealand last year and they’ll be sentenced on the same day.

Rena Update: 27 April 2012 - 11.20am

Maritime New Zealand advise that Svitzer salvors have made good progress in removing containers and cargo from Rena throughout the past week.

Salvage

• Dive operations to remove smaller pieces of debris and cargo have been undertaken. Divers are cutting into parts of the submerged stern section to gain access to containers for removal.
• There are currently moderate to strong winds and swells of between 2-3m at the Astrolabe Reef. The weather conditions are forecast to ease over the weekend.

Container and debris recovery

• The Braemar recovery team is investigating reports of debris washing ashore on Great Barrier Island.
• Braemar NZ Operations Manager Neil Lloyd says that staff will respond accordingly, deploying a fast response craft and clean up teams to deal with the matter.
• Meanwhile, clean up operations on the Coromandel are continuing. Methods for collecting plastic beads have been finalised and will be into action next week, as the weather improves.
• On Matakana Island, debris has been collected and stockpiled ready to be heli-lifted for disposal. The air lift is scheduled for next week, along with further efforts to clean up plastic beads from island beaches.
• With the latest recovery efforts, the total number of containers received ashore from Rena is 762 - this is made up of 661 removed from the decks and holds of Rena, and another 101 retrieved from the extended area around the wreck, and the shoreline.
• This week alone, the Braemar/Unimar recovery team has recovered the wreckage of more than 30 containers - including container sections and some cargo.
• A further 40 containers are in pinpointed locations yet to be recovered and sonar surveys are continuing over a wide area.

Oil spill response

• Surveys by oil spill response personnel of areas previously affected by oil have continued this week.
• Small amounts of residual oil have been observed in some areas between Mount Maunganui and Papamoa. These have not required clean-up operations but the sites will continue to be monitored by survey teams.

 (Image credit: LOC).

 ’COMMUNITY AT LARGE’ VESSEL AT WHITANGA

The largest privately owned residential yacht on earth, aptly called The World, will anchor at Whitianga over the weekend, and is expected to stay for two days… and the region’s tourism boss hopes it could turn the town as a destination port.

At 196m, The World is almost as long as two rugby fields. It is the only private residential community-at-sea, whose occupants can travel the globe without leaving home. The 12-deck ship with 165 cabins will anchor off Whitianga.

Destination Coromandel chief executive Graeme Osborne said The World’s residents would be ferried from the ship to the port at Whitianga. He said its arrival was encouraging for the town which is aiming to stake a claim as a destination for cruise ships.

“This is encouraging to continue, and even increase, our activity in the cruise sector… our aspiration is that this will be the first of many,” said Mr Osborne.

About 140 residents lived on board and Mr Osborne said they were generally wealthy who purchased a berth on the ship in the way people would normally buy an apartment.

“Generally speaking it’s a long-term arrangement as opposed to someone just hopping on a ship for a cruise.”

The World’s website states it is home to 130 families from the United States, Europe, South Africa and Australia, all of whom have a personal stake in the ship. The families circumnavigate the globe every two to three years following an itinerary that they select.  The community offered the “ultimate combination of luxury travel with world-class dining, custom tours and enriching cultural events”.

The website Greatestrealestateblog.com said a timeshare one-bedroom 30sq m cabin aboard The World carried a price tag of US$256,000 and a 780sq m luxury apartment on level D sold for more than US$12 million.

The ship has a shopping centre, an art gallery, sports facilities, an enormous spa, a 6000sq m casino, hospital, and a private educational centre with professors and lecturers.

BIG NUMBERS

Flag: Bahamas ; Weight: 43,524 gross tons; Length: 196.35m; Beam: 29.8m; Draft: 6.7m; Decks: 12; Top speed: 18.5 knots; Average Stay: Residents spend an average of four months on board every year. Crew: An international complement of long-standing crew, including about 260 experienced staff from 40 countries.

(Photo by Brett Phibbs.)

 $173m limo-yacht makes a splash

The latest in luxury super yachts to hit the market is perfect for the undecided - or the person who just wants it all.

The super-sleek Sovereign, designed by Swedish company Gray Design, combines the best of land and sea transport. It comes with a limousine to match - and there are on-board cranes to lift it off and pop it on dry land…..And the vessel is decked out to look like a super-sized version of the limo it carries.

Spread amongst the three decks are 10 guest suites, a golfing green, a nightclub, a private cinema and a helicopter pad.

 Armani furniture completes the super-luxurious look and to top it off, the Sovereign is kind to the environment. A massive wind turbine and solar panels are used to generate enough power to run the yacht.

The Sovereign is still in the engineering stage but will enter production soon, boss Eduard Gray said.

BOATING ETIQUETTE AROUND DOLPHINS

While most people are looking forward to a relaxing summer holiday in the Bay of Islands it is the busy time for our dolphins.

“Lots of people enjoy seeing the dolphins and that’s really cool,” says the Department of Conservation’s Bay of Islands marine mammals ranger, Karen Mitchell, “but they are wild animals and really do need their time out from people, especially during the holidays.”

Karen asked that boaties in the Bay respect a few simple courtesies.

“We really like to give all dolphins and whales a break, so we ask people to leave them alone between 11.30am and 1pm. This means they can do what they need to do without having to worry about any boats around them,” she said. “Boats approaching dolphins should come in slowly - at ‘no wake’ speed - from behind. Please do not drive through a pod or cut them off.

“Remember no more than three boats at once within 300m of dolphins. Please wait for your turn and keep it short and sweet - around 10 minutes - so that everyone has an opportunity to see the dolphins. Please don’t swim with calves (less than a metre in length) or juveniles (less than two metres); they’re just too little to know how to cope with us.”

“We are all looking to eat, sleep and relax over the holidays and it’s important that the dolphins get enough rest from boat interaction as they may get tired which can affect their health and reproduction”, said Ms Mitchell.

New Director charts clear course

Steering MNZ on a course that sees it regarded as “an intelligent, modern regulator” is the tack new Director Keith Manch ( above) intends to take over the next five years.

Stepping into the Director’s role vacated by Catherine Taylor last December, Keith said he is looking forward to the challenges and opportunities ahead - despite starting in the midst of MNZ’s response to the Rena grounding.

“From all I’ve seen, MNZ responded very well to the Rena grounding, with support from many other central and local government organisations, international counterparts, the local community and iwi. While there will always be things we can learn, practise and do more effectively next time around, that’s actually quite a good space to be in, because it means we are focused on continuing to build a quality response to these sorts of events.”

However, Keith said the work of the organisation is much broader than just the response to the grounding and its impacts.

“So much of the focus has been on Rena that one of the key challenges for us as an organisation has been to keep that in perspective. It is a critical issue, but it’s only one part of what the organisation is about.”

With his career spanning 20 years and a range of regulatory roles in the public sector - most recently as head of the Real Estate Agents Authority - Keith is excited by the opportunity to work for MNZ.

 ”As an organisation, MNZ has an incredibly diverse, interesting and signi cant role to play in an important sector, with a critical focus on safety, security and environmental protection. That focus couldn’t be more important when you look at what happened back in October off the coast of Tauranga.”

Coming into MNZ at a time when the organisation is dealing with a number of crucial issues, Keith has been impressed by the dedication and professionalism of staff.

“What I see is an organisation with a very good mix of skills and experience, with people focused on doing the best job they can amid the pressures and tensions that most regulatory environments have.

“I also want to assure the critics that MNZ strongly values people with maritime skills and experience - as well as those with a range of other skills that are critical to running an effective regulatory agency.”

A key priority for MNZ will be to continue in the direction the Authority has already set, including implementing the MOSS and QOL projects, and ensuring that a fair and sustainable funding model is in place so that MNZ has the capability to fulfill its functions. Another important focus will be on continuing to engage and build relationships with industry.

“What is clear, when meeting with people inside and outside the organisation over the past few months, is that we certainly all have the same interests. Everybody wants safe, secure and clean seas,” he said.

“There is a lot of positive discussion within the organisation about focusing as much as possible on engaging with industry. This means quality information-based engagement to support people to do what they need to do. But, balanced against that, as an organisation we shouldn’t be afraid to take direct action where it’s warranted.”

While there are already many excellent relationships in place, others will present a greater challenge.

“What I have been observing is that there are some extremely positive relationships that are focused on joint problem-solving and improving things,” he said. “But at the other end of the spectrum, there are less positive relationships, based on the use of our regulatory powers, where the challenges are different.

“I’m the first to acknowledge that there’s a lot of history between the organisation and the sector, and we can’t discount that, but it’s about having a professional focus. My view is that as a regulatory organisation, we should always approach things from our common interests and work through the positions we have respectively, in a constructive way.

“Ultimately, though, we are accountable and responsible for ensuring compliance with the law and various rules, and should not hesitate to take action when we need to.”

Keith is a strong supporter of working with the industry reference groups that MNZ already engages with. He is keen to maintain and build on those relationships, and values the support and constructive advice they provide.

“One of the ways in which MNZ plans to increase engagement with industry is through the use of sector reference groups. This was an initiative that proved successful in supporting the recent MNZ Value for Money and Funding reviews.

“MNZ also has critical relationships with international organisations such as the International Maritime Organization, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and other agencies, including those involved in oil spill response, which we will also be looking to build on.”

Alongside this, Keith said he is looking forward to attending various industry conferences and meetings over the next few months.

“That kind of engagement is one of the highlights of having a job like this. While we aren’t always going to see eye to eye, it’s about listening to the sectors, understanding their perspectives and trying to make sure we can be as effective and constructive as possible in achieving the outcomes we need to.

“As a modern regulator, the focus should be - and is - on ensuring we effectively manage risks and solve problems, which requires us to have really good information on which to base intelligent decisions about when to intervene and when to take action to get the best results. That’s a key strategic focus for the organisation, and work is already being done on that.

“While as an organisation MNZ might be diverse and complex, I would like to see us working together more clearly to achieve our vision of MNZ being an ‘intelligent regulator’, which means picking the right things at the right time and being an organisation that contributes to the strength of the maritime industry.”

New Minister of Transport wants to keep fatalities down

 By Hon Gerry Brownlee 

Recent developments in the maritime sector have certainly made for an interesting introduction to the transport portfolio.

MNZ’s ongoing response to the Rena grounding in the Bay of Plenty highlights the importance of New Zealand continuing to maintain a safe, secure, clean and sustainable maritime environment.

It also highlights the importance of MNZ’s role as the regulatory agency responsible for continuing to protect New Zealand’s interests and ensuring that maritime standards are maintained. The government remains committed to this goal.

MNZ also continues to have an integral role in other areas. For example, its work with industry on developing a new Qualifications and Operational Limits framework will provide New Zealand seafarers with relevant, appropriate and modern qualifications that meet their needs.

The introduction of the new Maritime Operator Safety System - or MOSS - will also help ensure New Zealand has a more robust domestic commercial vessel safety framework, which is simpler for operators to follow and provides the regulator with greater oversight.

The ever-increasing growth of recreational boat ownership and activity on the water is the focus of ongoing commitment from MNZ and other water safety agencies, with support from government, to promoting and enforcing good behaviour on the water. This is being achieved through various initiatives.

While the vast number of Kiwi boaties are responsible, the number of fatalities and accidents over the summer shows that some New Zealanders still aren’t getting the safety message. I urge all boaties to act responsibly on the water. As you will know, it is the skipper’s responsibility to ensure the safety of those aboard and to be aware of other water users.

We know that the majority of pleasure craft-related fatalities are the result of drinking alcohol, failure to carry lifejackets or emergency communication equipment on board, and failure to check weather conditions. It’s up to everyone to do their bit to help keep the number of boating fatalities down.

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT 

We continue to get good “traffic statistics” from NZMS Alumni members. Consistently, since May last year we have been receiving over 20,000 hits per month. Our record month of traffic is still June 2010, when we achieved over 30,000 hits but any traffic of over 20,000 hits shows good use and support. We watch those “stats” closely.  Google Analytics gives us very good data about site patronage, and this helps us plan the website to the best benefit of members.

The support shown by students and graduates from the NZMS courses give us a lot of confidence in building the Alumni, and we are delighted with the positive feedback we have received.  We are still pushing ahead to build membership too, so please keep telling your friends and colleagues about the NZMS Alumni website, and encourage them to join up…..And keep the feedback coming in. We appreciate each and every email we receive from members. We hope this newsletter keeps you up with the play….