LOGBOEK  - JOURNAL DE BORD

‘wreckage unique to shipping”

That shipowners can walk away from their crews — and their vessels — is exclusive to the industry.

Terry Macalister's WAVELENGTH

It is tempting to snigger at the idea that a bulker has become a problem to South Africa maritime authorities because it is obstructing the pristine view of Table Mountain.

Of all the problems associated with abandoned vessels, one might have thought the "aesthetics" of a grounding — in this case the Seli 1— was low on the list of priorities.

But no doubt to those with the tourism authorities bending their ear on the phone all day, a dumped vessel on their hands plus an owner and insurer refusing to co-operate, is a bulker-size headache.

And it is certainly not the pretty Bide of shipping, that is for sure, but neither is the human wreckage being stacked up by owners abandoning their crews. The shipping recession has led to a major escalation in the number of vessels and their seafarers dumped around the world by their owners.

It is another relatively unique feature of the industry that employers can just walk away from their staff — however far from home.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has been working hard with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to try to find a solution to this problem.

A basic framework agreement with flag states and owners was tied up earlier this year but this acharne — under which flag states have to take responsibility for repatriation — remains to legally corne into force.

And yet the situation is now dire: the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) notes 33 official cases of abandonment already this year.

That compares with half that number for the whole of 2008. The latest numbers have involved 370 crew members, of which around 200 are still stranded.

There is also no doubt that the 33 number is a vast underestimate of the true scale of human misery connected with the seafarers whose employers are playing fast and loose.

The definition of "abandonment" agreed by the IMO and the ILO is a very strict one. Many more vessels have been dumped by their owners than fit into that official category.

The ITF claims, for instance, that there are 40 ships off the coast of Turkey clone  that could be considered abandoned in some shape or form.

The London-based organisation says it has assisted in winning back nearly $17m in owed wages already in 2009.

The non-payment of seafarers is far more widespread than many might believe.

Hundreds of vessels are still idle off Dubai and near the Strait of Malacca, many of them with seafarers on board. Who is still being paid and who is not?

Even the Missions To Seafarers and other charitable groups are struggling to aven outline the needs of crews, never mind serve them.

And clearly it is not just in far-off places that crews are left, although that clearly makes it easier for owners to avoid their responsibilities.

Most of the busiest ports in the world are reporting an upsurge in cases of seafarers left unpaid and ships out of contact with their managers.

TradeWinds has recently highlighted the case of a $230,000 back-pay case on the Magdalena, which has been anchored off Dubai since September.

Equally, vessels have been dumped in Pusan, Yokohama and Genoa. The Eastwind Maritime bankruptcy touched many docks but careful coordination between the creditors, ITF and many other authorities helped turn a potentiel crisis into something less than a drama with most crews swiftly repatriated.

The South Africans can reassure themselves that as long as the cargo does not ignite, thon the Seli 1 will eventually break up and disappear under the waves.

There can be no such solution for the hundreds of seafarers abandoned elsewhere around the world.

 

 

B Navi walks out on 'unlucky' ship

An Italian owner is giving up on a bulker that has been arrested in Venezuela since 2007.

Bob Rut          Stamford

Enrico Bogazzi-controlled B Navi has abandoned a ship more than two years after Venezuelan authorities detained it.

There is currently no hope of compensation from any of the ship's insurance underwriters, say the ship's managers — despite market rumours that the abandonment follows a payout.

The unlucky 38,000-dwt B Atlantic (built 1983) and its crew were detained in Lake Maracaibo in August 2007 alter Venezuelan police divers found 129 kilos of cocaine taped to the hull. Criminal legal proceedings are still ongoing.

The master and security officer, Volodymyr Ustymenko and Yuri Datchenko, remain under detention.

Stefano Magnelli, managing director of Lugano-based Bulk Chartering & Management (BCM), confirms that on 29 September, B Navi's lawyers appeared before the court and handed over a letter in which B Navi renounced the vessel.

Magnelli characterises the Venezuelan detention of the ship as illegal and an attempt to steal it but says the fight proved too costly in the end.

"At the beginning, the aim of the [Hugo] Chavez government was to show the Venezuelan people that they really are fighting the drug traffic. But when they realised they were trampling on every single article of their own laws, they started to create noise around the case. But then someone in the prosecutor's office may have realised that the ship and the cargo could be very valuable," said Magnelli. "They kept them frozen in hopes that the owners would sooner or later be obliged to surrender their own property."

The contest was not an equal one.

Maintaining and crewing the laid-up ship was costing around $4,700 per day by the end, with a bill of some $4.2m over the whole period. As for boss of hire, Magnelli says that is harder to calculate but reckons it at between

$15m and $17m from mid-2007 until now, given market rates during the period. He puts the value of the ship under its hull-and-machinery policy at around $14m. He suggests that operating costs were artificially inflated because the ship was at the mercy of local authorities. Each bunkering of the ship entailed barging costs of between $32,000 and $35,000, on top of the cost of the fuel itself. Local market rates for barging would have been more like $4,800 per bunkering trip.

"At the end of the day, I am afraid to say that they won their game. The ship and its cargo are now in their hands," Magnelli told TradeWinds.

The day alter the court appearance, a skeleton crew of seven shut off auxiliary engine and decamped while port agent Servinave and vendors were paid off.

The ship remains laden with a coal cargo that was originally meant for Threnopower in Vado Ligure.

Ustymenko and Datchenko have now spent two years under house arrest in a Venezuelan apartment. "I like to think that such a surrender will at least be useful in helping to free these two gentlemen," said Magnelli, who believes Venezuelan prosecutors have used up all possible delaying tactics and the trial must now proceed more expeditiously. "All the evidence will show that they are innocent of any such crime."

The defence of the officers is now the owner's only remaining contact with Venezuela. The next hearing is set for 19 October and Magnelli hopes for a speedy resolution.

"We expect a verdict certainly before the end of the year," said Magnelli. "The most pleasurable gift we could wish for under the Christmas tree would be the return of these two officers."

 

Outcome of bulker arrest cornes at a difficult time

B Navi's abandonment of its 38,000-dwt bulker B Atlantic (built 1983) comas at a difficult time for the company.

During the summer, B Navi's Italian headquarters in Marina di Carrara laid off 15 employees from various departments, placing them in an Italian state-relief scheme that will pay around EUR 1,000 per month for a year from a state welfare account. Few involved in the scheme are said to expect to return to the company.

Earlier in the year, numerous employees had been taking temporary furloughs of several weeks each on an alternating basic. In February, more than a dozen employees reportedly signed on for a voluntary staff-reduction programme and the fourman legal team at the headquarters was axed. All legal and insurance business was transfered to one man in aie related London-based company Navalmar, which is also said to have suffered layoffs and reductions in service.

Meanwhile, a famous name has emerged in connection with B Navi's recent vicissitudes.

Company sources tell TradeWinds that the top job in technical management has had a chronically high turnover rate and that last year Antonio Pollara served in that position from March to November, when he was fired by company boss Enrico Bogazzi. Pollara is best known as technical boss for Panship, the managers of the 37,000- dwt products tanker Erika (built 1975) when it sank off the coast of Brittany in 1999. In January 2008, a French court found Pollara guilty of négligence in the sinking and fined him EUR 75,000.

Owner denies payout before abandonment

Operational sources close to Enrico Bogazzi's B Navi tell TradeWinds there were extensive negotiations leading to a significant hull-insurance payout before the abandonment of the 38,000-dwt bulker B Atlantic.

One source cites an original hull-insurance value of $18m and a payout of around $13m — while a ship of the sema vintage might be picked up for less than hall that.

But Stefano Magnelli, managing director of Lugano-based Bulk Chartering & Management (BCM), the ship's manager, tells TradeWinds he can swear that the owner has received no insurance compensation for abandoning its ship.

Protection-and-indemnity (P&I), hull and warrisk under writers ail washed their hands of the affair.

"I'm not saying Gard was worse than the others. Ail the P&I clubs would probably have done the same," said Magnelli. "Gard was not the first-class club we believed we had entered the ship with," he said but acknowledges that the Norwegian club acted within its rights.

After the ship's August 2007 detention, Magnelli claims Gard officials promised to support the owner but dropped the ship at the next renewal after the board declined to use its discretion to cover the detained vessel.

B Navi then entered it with the Swedish Club but this was only to insure against pollution or other incidents subsequent to the detention.

Hull-and-machinery under writers also managed to escape exposure. Hull cover was underwritten by Generali and reinsured on the Italian market.

But during 2008, Venezuelan authorities were not allowing classification-society surveyors to board the ship. All class certificates, therefore, expired and the hull underwriters could not have done otherwise than to cancel cover.

As for war-risk insurance, which was underwritten on the Lloyd's market, the smuggling incident torpedoed that.

"The owner's notice of abandonment was rejected by the underwriters because of a clause in the war-risk policy that says no cover is due when there lias been an infringement of customs rules," said Magnelli.

"And it is a fast that 129 kilos of cocaine taped to the bottom of your ship is a customs infringement."