A fire broke out in the engine room of passenger/vehicle RoRo Isle of Inishfree on Friday March 3rd while it was travelling from Dover to Calais.
Three lifeboats and a French salvage tug were launched after the fire broke.
On March 5th, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) succeeded in its efforts to refloat the grounded container ship MSC Istanbul and the vessel has resumed its journey.
A Chinese bulker has sunk in Strait of Tartary near the Russian port of Vanino after being damaged in a collision with heavy ice flows.
The vessel, Yong Xing 56, had been caught in the ice since February 19 and issued a distress call on February 23, prompting a rescue operation. Reporting indicates the the 33,000 DWT ship was carrying a cargo of alumina.
It is a seasonal phenomenon, these regular warnings about ships’ machinery grinding to a standstill on account of something nasty having been introduced into the bunker tanks. The consequences of off-spec or non-compliant fuel are generally dire, ranging from wrecked machinery, to expensive operations to purge the system and rid the ship of the filthy stuff, which never should have been aboard in the first place, if the proper precautions had been taken.