Weekly News Summary for October 16-22, 2006:
Coast Guard Issues Notices On Physical Exams For Mariners
The U.S. Coast Guard has published two notices relating to physical examination requirements for merchant mariners. The notices are based on National Transportation Safety Board recommendations issued after an accident involving a Staten Island Ferry in New York Harbor in 2003. Ten passengers died and 70 were injured in the accident.
In one notice, the Coast Guard said it has available a draft Navigation and Vessel Inspection Circular (NVIC) to replace the existing NVIC 2-98, “Physical Evaluation Guidelines for Merchant Mariner’s Documents and Licenses.” The new circular, which will be numbered if and when it becomes effective, is entitled Medical and Physical Evaluation Guidelines for Merchant Mariner Credentials (MMC).
Comments on the proposed circular are due November 27. They may be mailed to Docket Management Facility, Department of Transportation, 400 Seventh St. S.W., Room PL-401, Washington, D.C. 20590-0001….
Sea Point, the proposed container dock at Mile Marker 12.2 Above Head of Passes (AHP), is uniquely suited to service the international container trade with its location on the Mississippi River, said Robert “Bob” Amoss, an executive with Amoss Trading Services and a Sea Point insider.
While domestic point-to-point container-on-barge service has had some reasonable success, he said being an integral part of the international movement of cargo makes Sea Point a much easier service to sell from a marketing standpoint.
“No other port gives the carriers who will be calling at Sea Point the cost advantage into certain markets,” said Jim Amoss Jr., Sea Point’s president and chief executive officer, and Bob’s father.
Carriers like to balance cargoes with the container loaded in both directions, he said. While the majority of containers leaving the U.S. from the East and West Coasts are empty, Amoss said more than half of the containers loaded onto ships at Sea Point will carry cargo that has traveled down the Mississippi River on barge.
Initially, the majority of Sea Point’s inbound containers will be barged in a “controlled loop,” headed upstream to one of the six railheads in the New Orleans area or for close-in destinations such as the upriver Port of South Louisiana and the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, and returning containers from those points to the container ships at Sea Point, Jim Amoss said….
AEP River Operations renamed one of its towboats Bob Blocker last year, in honor of its senior vice president-sales and marketing, and the company, based in Chesterfield, Mo., held a ceremony at the St. Louis riverfront recently to commemorate it.
“When Mark (Knoy, president) and Keith (Darling, senior vice president-boat operations) approached me about renaming the boat, my first reaction was ‘Can I think about it?’” Blocker said at the ceremony. After all, he said, the only time you hear about a boat is when something bad happens, plus the honor typically means either you’re about to retire, get fired or die, so he wanted to mull it over.
After some consideration he went back the next morning and proclaimed, “it’d be a pleasure and a great privilege,” he told the crowd.
The ceremony was held September 29 at the Material Sales Company dock in St. Louis, preceded by a lunch at Kemoll’s Restaurant on the top floor of the MetLife building downtown.
A threat of rain nearly forced the proceedings into the vessel’s engineroom, which would have been a first, but Mother Nature cooperated enough to allow the event to continue outside, next to the boat on a barge with chairs set up for the 100 or so guests….
“It was comparable to Grafton,” remarked B&H Towing Company’s Safety and Compliance Director, Stan Knight, as he described the number of people touring one of his firm’s towboats during an open house conducted during Paducah’s “12th Ever” Barbecue on the River festival September 30.
Knight said 600–700 area residents toured their 4,600 hp. Mary Harter during the eight-hour period the vessel was docked at the city’s public landing at the foot of Kentucky Avenue. The turnout was similar to the number of folks touring B&H’s Andi Boyd during the recent Grafton (Ill.) Towboat Festival, he noted.
Tom Druitt, director of human resources at B&H Towing, is president of the Waterways Industries Association of Paducah, which coordinates the marine-related exhibits and attractions brought in as part of the event. The annual three-day barbecue festival draws about 40,000 spectators and participants. Included under the tents and awnings erected along the city side of the Ohio River floodwall were 45 barbeque cooking teams competing for prizes along with 36 other food vendors from area churches and community service organizations. All profits were dedicated to favorite charities of the competitors and vendors.
Druitt said because of the current shortage of available boats, it was difficult for any company to take a vessel out of service long enough to accommodate the tours. He was very complimentary of MEMCO Barge Line for whom the Mary Harter is towing. He said the boat’s tow was dropped at Tennessee River Mile 3 and the boat was brought down to the city front for the tours, after which it picked up its tow and continued toward Cairo….
U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) invited Rep. John T. Duncan (R-Tenn.) and House Water Resource Committee staffer Jimmie Miller to tour water resource projects in Southern Illinois. Accompanied by St. Louis District Engineer Col. Setliff and Joe Kellet, the St. Louis District’s chief of project management, the group toured by helicopter the Kaskaskia River watershed and the Mississippi River area in Costello’s district. Rep. Duncan is the chairman of the House Water Resources Committee and Costello is the ranking Democrat on the committee. Jimmie Miller is the chief of staff for the committee.
At Evansville, Ill., on the Kaskaskia River the party boarded a towboat doing dock switching at the Gateway FS grain elevator. Duncan and Costello each got a firsthand opportunity to steer the vessel.
At a reception and dinner in Evansville, a presentation was made to the group on the importance of the Kaskaskia River and how the stakeholders work together for the common good of the river….
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