Maritme Monday 28/11/2016

[John Arton]

Here is GCaptains maritime Mondays newsletter. Interesting bit on ship scrapping in Morecombe of all places plus some decent other stuff.
Maritime Monday for Nov 28th, 2016: The Ugly Chickens – gCaptain
rgds
JA

[Ivan Cloherty]

The founder of G-Captain is an American Master Mariner or in today's parlance A Class1 unrestricted certificate, alas I must say when having watched some of his talk videos (as well as some written statements) his knowledge of maritime matters maybe a little bit wanting. He was amazed by OHBC 's (Open hatch bulk carrier) as he had never heard of them but thought they were the ideal bulk carrier for all bulk cargoes because of ease of access for loading and discharging gear, and I thought yup! right on buddy! have you ever thought about loading a cargo of grain in one of those, no hopper wing tanks and hatch ways to act as feeders as the grain settles on passage, or loading iron ore with no hopper tanks at tank top level to reduce free surface conditions etc. He made a statement that there were fewer OHBC vessels because they were more expensive to build than a conventional BC (Bulk Carrier), as they had to use thicker steel neither of which in fact is in true. He was unaware (seemingly) that OHBC and BC were built for different trading patterns entirely, the OHBC built primararily for palletised type of cargoes, bundled timber, paper bales as well as containers etc etc and BC were built for free flowing homogenous bulk cargoes which need their free flowing characteristics restricted for ocean passages.