Meanwhile, his yacht remains drifting somewhere in the Southern Ocean.

Bernt Luchtenborg, 56, was five months into an attempt at twice circumnavigating the globe, both solo and nonstop, when his 15.84m yacht hit “an underwater object”, he believes might have been a whale about 800km southwest of Stewart Island on Sunday night.

Rescue came in the form of luxury cruise ship the Seven Seas Mariner, which plucked Luchtenborg from his yacht, Horizons about 8am on Tuesday.

The liner arrived in Milford Sound and berthed briefly before leaving again yesterday morning. A Milford Sound Visitors Centre spokeswoman said seven passengers disembarked, but she did not know if Luchtenborg was among them.

Environment Southland harbourmaster Kevin O’Sullivan said it was unlikely the yachtsman had left the ship.

“He would need to be cleared by customs and biosecurity officers, and in Milford that’s unlikely to happen.”

The liner is scheduled to arrive in Port Chalmers today.

A large-scale rescue was launched after Luchtenborg radioed for help saying his rudder had been damaged making it impossible to sail or motor the yacht.

Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand search and rescue mission co-ordinator Dave Wilson said a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion search aircraft, which flew from Auckland, passed over the stricken yacht, before diverting the cruise liner from its passage to Milford Sound. The liner met Horizons about 8am on Tuesday.

The rescue had been an international effort, Mr Wilson said. “The yacht was technically in Australian search and rescue waters but was physically closer to New Zealand. We worked with the Australian search and rescue authorities to ensure we launched the best response.”

Mr Wilson said when Seven Seas Mariner picked Luchtenborg up, his yacht was afloat 650km west of Stewart Island and, because it was a potential hazard to navigation, a warning was issued by Australia.

Translating his blog from German, Luchtenborg says he hopes his insurers will pay to charter a boat to look for his yacht and, if it is found, tow it back to New Zealand for repairs.

On my visit to the shipyard, the ship’s gleaming white turrets of steel and glass dwarf the gantries and cranes perched alongside. Though the ship is 95 per cent finished, many fittings are missing and, as I move through the interior, I continually have to duck wiring, step over cabling and avoid workmen.

I get a better sense of the size of Oasis only when I emerge on the top deck, which provides view over Turku harbour.

“We made the ship 50 per cent bigger than anything we’ve ever done, in fact any other cruise ship out there, because we had so many things we wanted to do,” the chief executive of Royal Caribbean, Richard Fain, says. “On Oasis of the Seas, working together with the architects, with the shipyard, with our own engineers, we’ve been able to make much better use of the space than ever before.”

There’s certainly plenty of space – the ship is 360 metres long and 65 metres wide. The Oasis story is one of large numbers and cruising firsts.

There is the ship’s capacity, for a start: 6300 passengers and 2165 crew. There’s the accommodation: it includes 2706 staterooms, some of which span two decks and feature floor-to-ceiling windows with ocean views. The plant life: 12,000 plants, including 56 trees, some more than seven metres tall. The activities: on-board surfing, scuba diving, ice skating, shopping. And so the list goes.

Fain anticipates that the size of the vessel and the scope of activities and facilities will entice passengers on all budgets. Certainly he is encouraged by ticket sales despite the economic climate.

To accommodate all those people, the ship is divided into seven “neighbourhoods”, including Central Park and Royal Promenade. And there is no shortage of things to keep passengers entertained.

Among the attractions are an aqua theatre pool 5.4 metres deep, two rock-climbing walls, the obligatory casino and 21 swimming pools and jacuzzis. There’s also a carousel, ice rink, themed bars and restaurants, high-end shops, a nightclub, a Rising Tide bar that ascends three decks while you sip your martini, a wedding chapel, scuba diving lessons, two wave-flow riders for surfing, a jogging track, library and roaming entertainers.

Entertainment also includes stunt divers, swimmers and actors performing in the 50-metre-wide outdoor pool amphitheatre designed to seat 500 guests.

Royal Caribbean’s schedule has the first Oasis cruise starting in early December in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with ports of call that include Charlotte Amalie in St Thomas, Philipsburg in St Maarten and Nassau in the Bahamas.

Ready for that voyage is Captain William Wright, who began his seafaring career aged 16 and has taken the helm of several new cruise ships on debut at Royal Caribbean.

He had a sneak peak at the ship’s performance during the pre-launch “floating out” ceremony last November.

“It’s clearly one of the most stable ships we have built,” he says. “The size has allowed us to … demonstrably increase the safety of the ship, which is really nice to know. It helps us captains sleep at night.”

Other safety features include smoke and heat detectors and a Hi-Fog water mist fire-extinguishing system.

The ship will have three doctors, five nurses and one medical assistant on board.

It is equipped with 18 life boats – or “rescue vessels”, as Wright prefers to call them – each with a toilet on board. “That’s a first, I can assure you,” he says (source: www.theage.com.au).

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Maersk Line on Aug. 24 warned rival ocean container carriers it is prepared to fight a rate war to defend its market share.

“We won’t allow anyone to take our market share by systematically undercutting our prices … we are ready to … battle on prices,” said Nils Andersen, chief executive of Maersk’s Copenhagen-based parent A.P. Moller-Maersk.

Maersk is the world’s biggest ocean carrier with an estimated market share of around 15 percent, ahead of Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Co. and France’s CMA CGM.
Andersen’s warning, in an interview with Danish newspaper Dagbladet Borsen, comes just days after Maersk reported a second quarter loss of $402 million against a year-earlier profit of $198 million. First half losses climbed to $961 million.

Second quarter freight rates were down 34 percent from a year ago, but Maersk forecast modest increases in the current quarter.

Maersk is reported to have cut its rates through the second quarter to protect market share despite a rate restoration program introduced on April 1.

The carrier today unveiled a series of rate increases on its intra-Americas services from Sept. 1, claiming they were necessary “to continue providing a first class service … in an environment where the operating costs remain on the rise and current rates are below sustainable levels.”

The largest increases are on routes from North America to/from the West Coast South America — $300 for a 20-foot equivalent unit and $600 for a 40-foot equivalent unit effective Oct. 1.

There will be smaller rate rises of between $50 and $200 per TEU on routes between Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the east and west coasts of South America from Sept. 1 (source: www.joc.com).

]]> http://www.thinkmaritime.com/2009/08/24/maersk-%e2%80%9cready-to-battle-on-prices%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://www.thinkmaritime.com/2009/08/22/the-worst-jobs-in-history-the-maritime-age-part-4/ http://www.thinkmaritime.com/2009/08/22/the-worst-jobs-in-history-the-maritime-age-part-4/#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:49:54 +0000 admin http://www.thinkmaritime.com/?p=1034

He said it might be held consecutively with the world junior boat race, the Formula Future, which Malaysia had bid to host next year.

Malaysia first held the F1 Powerboat Championship in 2001 in Tanjung Puteri, Johor followed by at The Mines Resort in Seri Kembangan near here in 2002 and 2003 and the last one at Putrajaya Lake Club in Precinct 8 Putrajaya in 2004.

H2O was informed by F1 Powerboat Championship promoter Idea Marketing S.A of Italy that it had won the bid to host the race last month, Yahya told Bernama.

He said H2O had also been given the nod to hold both races at the Maritime Centre in Precinct 6, Putrajaya by Putrajaya Corporation president Tan Sri Samsudin Osman.

“The Maritime Centre in Precinct 6 is more suitable than other precincts in Putrajaya as the lake is bigger,” he said. On Malaysia’s bid to hold the Formula Future in Putrajaya, he said the result would be known in December.

On the interest shown by Melaka and Terengganu to host F1 Powerboat Championship, he said if they were serious about it, the race could be held there alternately with Precinct 6 Putrajaya.

Although Malaysia had never played host to the Formula Future, national contenders won the championship four times — in 2004 (Lisbon, Portugal), 2005 (Lisbon), 2007 (Leer, Germany) and 2008 (Ravenna, Italy). Malaysia did not defend their titles at the Pushkin Formula Future in St Petersburg, Russia from Aug 17 to 19 due to the H1N1 scare (source: themalaysianinsider.com)

Either way, Morris Architects has proposed exactly that:

There are approximately 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico varying in size, depth and mobility that will be decommissioned within the next century. If a deck on one of these rigs is about 20,000 square feet, then there is potentially 80 million square feet of programmable space just off the coast of the United States. The current method for rig removal is explosion, which costs millions of dollars and destroys massive amounts of aquatic life. What if these rigs were recommissioned as exclusive resort islands? Could the Gulf be America’s “Dubai” and the rig the artificial island on which to build it? This project examines the possibilities of creating a self-sufficient, eco-friendly high-end resort experience in our own backyard – the Gulf of Mexico.According to Curbed LA, the hotel rooms themselves “are pre-fabricated, designed to be transported out to the rig as a standard cargo container.”

Once there, a new world of luxury interiors unfolds above the continental shelf – apparently an ideal environment in which groups of semi-nude women can watch James Bond films.

Of course, if the real Dubai is any model for what might actually happen with such a resort, then we’ll probably see dozens of oil rigs partially converted to luxury hotels only then to be abandoned by their construction crews and investors.

As the lands of southern Louisiana continue to disappear into the Gulf, heavily armed refugees on fishing boats will move out to sea, recolonizing the derelict structures. There will be campfires at night, burning driftwood, and specialty gardens.

Within four or five decades of inconsistent contact, the Library of Congress sends out a new, 21st century Alan Lomax to visit those thriving offshore subcultures and record their folk songs and oral histories.

He discovers a sort of new Kalevala, written by dwellers of empty structures at sea, somewhere between creation myth and national folk history. The Kalevala of Abandoned Oil Rigs.

Alas, it turns out to be a latter day Ossian – that is, he just makes the whole thing up.

Or, of course, the economy will recover, this plan will work, and within a decade you’ll be suntanning on a platform in the Gulf of Mexico, reading Self (source: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com).

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