Maritime Vessels Directory

Tankers carrying Iranian gasoline that was confiscated by the U.S. government and became embroiled in a court ownership battle have struggled to discharge in the United States, shifting course over the last week.The U.S. Department of Justice last month seized over 1 million barrels of Iranian fuel on board four privately-owned tankers bound for Venezuela, part of Washington's efforts to disrupt trade between the two sanctioned nations.The fuel has been at sea ever since, aboard two separate vessels that took the fuel in July and have zig-zagged at sea as they search for a terminal to discharge.

Orcas behavior of battering sailboats off Spain and Portugal baffles expertsThere are many mysteries in the maritime environment.  For Sailors along Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic coastline, there has been a recent series of puzzling incidents involving apparently aggressive orcas.While orcas are not known to attack humans, they can cause damage to boats.  In a series of incidents along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts between Gibraltar and Galicia, groups of orcas have been recorded swimming near sailboats and other vessels, and in some cases acting together in such a way as the people on those boats thought themselves to be in grave danger.

Saudi Arabia warned the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that an "oil spot" had been seen in a shipping transit area 31 miles (50 km) west of a decaying tanker that is threatening to spill 1.1 million barrels of crude oil off the coast of Yemen.The Safer tanker has been stranded off Yemen's Red Sea oil terminal of Ras Issa for more than five years. The United Nations has warned that the Safer could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.In a letter to the 15-member body, reviewed by Reuters, Saudi Arabia's U.N.

The keel laying ceremony for the first of Swan Hellenic’s two new ice-class expedition cruise ships took place in Helsinki today. This saw the first 347-ton block of the ship – newly arrived from Klaipeda, where it had been outfitted and painted – being set on the keel over coins to bring good luck in accordance with ancient maritime custom.Swan Hellenic announced during the ceremony that the ship would be christened SH Minerva in honor of the company’s first purpose-built vessel, named after the Roman goddess of creativity and wisdom.

Finland's Wärtsilä reports it has won a contract for the delivery and integration engineering of two retractable thrusters and a dynamic positioning (DP) system for the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) icebreaker CCGS Amundsen.Wärtsilä, which booked the order in July, said it was able to meet the CCG’s requirements to fit the equipment in the existing space of the 98-meter-long Arctic Class 3 Medium Icebreaker, the only vessel in its class to be fitted with retractable thrusters and DP. The new thrusters will be integrated with the existing bow thruster, which is also a Wärtsilä product. The equipment is scheduled for delivery in September 2021.