Southern Cross News

The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday commissioned its newest national security cutter, USCGC Stone (WMSL 758), during a ceremony at Coast Guard Base Charleston, in South Carolina. Adm. Karl Schultz, the commandant U.S. Coast Guard, presided over the ceremony.Built by Huntington Ingalls Industries' Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Miss., Stone is the ninth legend-class national security cutter in the Coast Guard's fleet.Legend-class national security cutters are 418 feet in length, 54 feet in beam and 4,600 long tons in displacement.

As the novel coronavirus and its impacts continue to spread across America, U.S. shipbuilders, by and large, continue to build. While most yards have been deemed essential to marine transportation and/or national security and have been able to maintain operations, the situation at and around every shipyard is different, and there are several builders across the country that have had to temporarily suspend activity. In either scenario, it’s far from business as usual for America’s…

Marine News recently visited the Blount Boats facility in Warren, Rhode Island. While the year 2019 might be the ‘year of the woman’ in the eyes of the International Maritime Organization, the two women at the head of Blount Boats – Marcia & Julie Blount– have been a driving force in the U.S. boatbuilding market for decades. As Blount’s celebrates its 70th anniversary, read about the storied yard’s promising future.Founded in 1949, Blount Boats is a full-service shipyard with a customer base comprised of a variety of commercial and government entities including the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S.

Rhode Island boatbuilder Blount Boats said it has signed a contract with South Ferry Company to construct a new steel passenger/vehicle ferry for Shelter Island, N.Y.The 101’x 40’ double-ended ferry, to be named Southern Cross, will be built to carry a deck load of 260,000 pounds. The vessel will be a sister ship to two other Blount-built ferries designed by DeJong & LeBet for South Ferry, the Sunrise delivered in 2002 and the Southside delivered in 2009.Main propulsion will be provided by two Caterpillar series C-18 Tier III & IMO II Certified each rated at 470 HP at 1,800 RPM.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL; President & CEO: Junichiro Ikeda) announced the delivery of the LNG carrier KUMUL at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd. (Hudong) in Shanghai on April 29. A naming ceremony was held at the shipyard on April 8. The KUMUL, which was ordered by MOL subsidiary Gemini LNG Shipping Limited (Gemini), is the last in a series of four new-building LNG carriers ordered by MOL to provide LNG transportation for projects in Papua New Guinea. ExxonMobil (*) . This project is deeply rooted in China at many levels — it marks the first time a Chinese shipyard has built LNG carriers ordered by a non-Chinese shipping company…

Almost 200 members of the Australian Navy, Army and Air Force are joining forces with personnel from across the region in a major humanitarian relief exercise in the South Pacific, says the Australia Defence Force (ADF). ExerciseCroix du Sud, which is French for “Southern Cross’, is being hosted by France in New Caledonia. The scenario is based on the devastating aftermath of a category four cyclone. The challenge for the allied forces will be to assist the local community with humanitarian relief and security as well as coordinating the evacuation of Australian citizens and foreign nationals. The Commander of the Australian Contingent…

Enrique de Sendagorta Aramburu, Honorary President and founder of the engineering and technology group SENER and President of the SENER Foundation, was presented with the Kingdom of Spain Entrepreneurial Career Award by King Juan Carlos I on Wednesday, June 4. This prize is awarded by the Entrepreneur Society in Madrid (Círculo de Empresarios), the Economy Society in Catalonia (Cercle d’Economia) and the Basque Entrepreneur Society (Círculo de Empresarios Vascos). The ceremony took place at the Royal Palace of El Pardo with the presence of Marcelino Oreja…

GasAtacama, energy provider to metal producers in Chile's Atacama desert, has lined up eight potential U.S. natural gas suppliers for a proposed import terminal on its Pacific Coast, but uncertainty about energy demand has delayed deals, CEO Rudolf Araneda told Reuters on Thursday. GasAtacama plans to build a $350 million offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal that would take shipments of the fuel to help create 500 megawatts of electricity for power-hungry miners in the mineral-rich north.

In the late morning of 26 August the EUNAVFOR Norwegian warship HNOMS Fridtjof Nansen received an emergency call form the Italian m/v Southern Cross that she was under attack from pirates. The Southern Cross was transiting the Gulf of Aden, some 80 nautical miles south of Al Mukkala. HNOMS Fridtjof Nansen and the helicopter of the South Korean warship Daejoyoung from CTF 151 responded directly to the situation. While the Fridtjof Nansen and the helicopter were approaching, the skiff with five people on board broke off the attack after having fired several shots to the pilot house of Southern Cross and escaped to the south. The EU NAVFOR German warship FGS Bremen also launched her helicopter to join the search for the pirate skiff.

U.S. Coast Guard crews helped a Boston-based tug crew on Nov. 9 after they grounded their vessel near Buzzards Bay, Mass., around 1 p.m. No injuries were reported of the three crewmembers aboard the tug Southern Cross. Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England received a radio call from the tug reporting that the engine room was flooding and could not be controlled. The crew said they planned to beach the vessel to keep it from sinking. A Jayhawk rescue helicopter crew launched…

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration said that it has made arrangements to remove the last of several high-priority vessels from the James River Reserve Fleet. The agency has awarded five ship-disposal contracts worth a total of $2,161,610 to North American Ship Recycling of Sparrows Point, Md. The departure of Cape Charles, Pride, Scan, Southern Cross, and Sphinx will bring the number of ships leaving the James River to 66 since January 2001. The Sphinx, a cable-layer built in Japan in 1944, is the only World War II-era ship in this group of five. The condition of the Sphinx made it a high-priority ship for the Maritime Administration for several years, but disposal was delayed while charitable groups tried to raise money to save it.

The fates of six ships from the James River Reserve Fleet are in limbo after a Maryland salvage yard that was supposed to scrap the vessels abruptly closed and its owners disappeared. North American Ship Recycling Inc., near Baltimore, won federal contracts in August worth $2.1m to dispose of the government-owned dinosaurs. But the yard, which opened in 2004 amid much fanfare, including a celebratory speech from then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, shut down without notice sometime last month, leaving behind two of the Virginia "ghost fleet" ships and plenty of questions. To protect against a fuel spill, government-hired crews have since installed rubber booms around the two abandoned ships…

To those not familiar with the New York metropolitan area — the eastern end of Long Island is demographically multi-faceted. Traveling east on the Long Island Expressway, (the Island' main thoroughfare), the 118-mile long island, splits into two "forks," the North and the South. With the hamlets of Greenport and Orient Point situated on the easternmost points of the island on the north, the South Fork boasts the tony Hampton villages and the historical village of Montauk Point — literally the end of the earth before reaching the whitecaps of the Atlantic Ocean. While the two forks may differ in reputation and history — they have one similarity — a small island "sheltered" in between.