Tanker runs into reef up north

[webbfunk]

Apparently the tanker was going full speed when hitting the reef. Anyone know how fast one of these would have been travelling?

We went past one a while ago up at 1770, as it was heading into Gladstone, and it seemed to be going faily quick for its size.

[tugger]

its not a tanker but a bulk carrier loaded with coal from gladstone harbour and the average speed is 14knots which isn't fast compared to our little runabouts but with its size it has alot of inertia that would have drove it a fair way onto the reef. these foreign ships have poorly trained crews a lot of the time as they get the cheapest labour they can find in the world on the other side of the scale australian crews are amongst the best trained but are being priced out of existence. with us living in an island nation it will come to a stage when there will be next to no aussies sailing around our coast which then we will be at the mercy of foreign ships which can dictate to us what price we'll pay to have goods moved by them. with aussies ships in the past regulating the tariffs of goods movements and with this case having more care about our coastline. aussie ships now move less than 2% of our own cargo and often get shafted from even moving cargo from 1 australian port to another aussie 1. with the reef it should be manditory to have pilots aboard which are aussie skippers that have that expertise in that area to transit inside the reef.

mark

[tomca]

I don't understand what the big deal is. The greenies have most of the reef locked out from being damaged by Joe Citizen. The government is concerned with locking out rec fishers from the reef, but no need to worry about big ass ships running the gauntlet from Gladstone up past Rocky amongst the reef.

Remember what the EPA said about Moreton Island? The sun and water will break down the slick soon enough.

[Davo_Dinkum]

its not how fast a ship dose

its more the size and weight

imagine something that big and heavy and what it takes to stop it .

[yoyo]

He was doing about 14 knots and, going by course plots printed in the paper and online, looked to have been trying to take a very sneaky shortcut to eliminate time and fuel from his journey.

What a clown...........

But hey fellas, don't stray 10m inside a green zone with a bait in the water otherwise a natural catastrophe awaits!

[hooked_on_trout]

Yes a Chinese coal carrier.

The cargo of that ship is very important to the economy of Australia.

No doubt the government would be cautious of how to treat this.

[uglyfish]

The most likely scenario is they were on auto pilot and went of coarse,they either didn't have someone one on watch or the bugger on watch went to sleep too.

[tugger]

ships are always on auto pilot once you leave the habour limits and there would have been 2 guys on watch but its the navigation part where they fall down when we would come through the reef on a aussie ship foreign ships would follow us because they are hopeless at navigating in a narrow passage or even when they had a pilot and he would draw a line for them to follow on the charts they would not deviate at all even to avoid a collision when the pilot was having a nap on long passages through the reef as it takes 4 days to travel from torres strait to gladstone.

[uglyfish]

Send the bastards out wider then,if they can't navigate..How come they don't have a pilot going threw these narrower channels mark?

[baheath]

Interesting how quiet the Feds have been on this.

Usually if there is an environmental issue on the reef one of the federal politicians would be all over it like a rash - but I'm guessing that because this is a chinese coal carrier (and we have already been told by Bejing "not to comment in a negative way" about things they do that we don't like - like the Rio Tinto issue, internet censorship [oh - that's right - we're following their lead on that]) we won't hear much from Garret & co.

And the Qld Govt is saying a million dollar fine! Gee - $500 bucks for fishing in a green zone or $1 million for destroying one?!? WTF!

Grrrrr....

[tugger]

i dare say that it will eventually become mandatory to take a pilot as it is the insurance will not come near that company now with this incident on the reef unless they carry pilots now as i have found each company has only 1 chance then they come down hard on them and will not insure you.

as for the federal goverment not doing anything they have done nothing about this for decades with either side of goverment in power and the last 1 that hit the reef and was stuck for weeks near cairns that they had to be blast the reef out from under and destroy and large area. this all happened on the last liberal goverments watch and they did nothing about it then except for getting rid of more australian ships more than any goverment in the past. doing hundreds of aussies out of jobs while giving assistance to these foreign ship owners and making it extemely dificult for the aussie ships to trade as we have to register our ships here, pay taxes here on wages and fuel while the foreign ones got exemptions. this goverment in at the moment has had a shipping inquiry and is winding back slowly the damage that the last goverment did including the strengthning on the australian maritime safety authority which was practicaly made useless by the last liberal govt.

i've worked on aussie merchant ships for over 20 yrs and know this industry very well and have circumnavigated australia many time and like me my fellow aussies know the coastline well and what the weather can throw at you here. these foreign ships don't make the news till something like this happens then it highlights how fragile our coastline and the enviroment is when it is threatened like this but this is only a fraction of what can happen it only lost 2 ton of fuel. tankers can carry 100000 ton of oil like the foreign ship the kirkie which it's bow fell off in western australia then a few of my mates with the salvage operation risk there lives saving our coastline by jumping from a rig tender onto this ship to attach tow lines to get it away from the coast in 1991.

aussie ships for aussie cargoes

thanks for reading and thats my rant over

mark

[Do$tylz]

^^ mark that's some good info. I wouldn't call it a rant.

[baheath]

I remember unloading an oil tanker about 25 years ago on the Brisbane River.

German Officers, Indian subs and Nigerian crew - no common first language and everything done with hand signals! Made the emergency radios on the dockside pretty useless.

Even then they were flying under foreign flags to avoid paying Aussie wages - and I can't imagine it has gotten any better in the intervening years.

You'd think pilots would be mandatory up the Queensland coast in reef waters.

[tomca]

I worked for a company that helped unload gypsum from ships and the way they worked together to pick the excavators up off the wharf and lower them into the holds was truly frightening. Seriously, I have seen smarter monkeys, and like Baheaths observations, no common language. The clean uniforms spoke Spanish and everyone else was African or filipino, or wherever the cheapest wages come from. As for the hand signals, there was no standard to it, it wasn't uncommon for huge damage to be sustained by the equipment as it was used as wrecking balls. So little suprise they struggle to keep their vessel from hitting stuff.

[HookedOnTackle]

I heard that they weren't so much off course, there is a small channel which leads out and as others have said, saves fuel and time. Cept they screwed up big time.

I remember back when that vessel that unloaded all the fuel oil off moreton, bribie and the like, when the owners were told they were paying for the clean up, they said "no thanks" and i doubt they have paid for it yet.

all this "protection" just seems to mess with those who want the best for the reef/waterways

[noname]

to be honest, i've stopped worryin bout all this kinda crap, cos the qld govt don't seem to give a toss, so why should i, give em enough rope i say, stupid bloody politicians, try goin to another country and see how all these boat ppl get treated, i don't mind it they are prepared to do a days work but these bastards don't, thats my grief, and if you doubt it come to my place and i'll bloody show ya how the stupid govt is lookin after these piss ant bastards, so screw the reef and all who hit her, and that womble bligh! stupid unauthorized bitch.

society's to blame.

yeah right.

actually! think about it.

rob