The Ship That Lay Down On The Job

The "MV Cougar Ace" on a routine voyage from Japan to US/Canada Pacific  coast ports virtually capsized in mid ocean in good weather and sea conditions.

At first the media reports reported calls from the ship saying she was taking water and listing, if you can call this a LIST!

The story now coming to light is that whilst complying with US regulations that ships must change ballast water before entering US waters something went wrong with the ballast transfer operations.  Too put it mildly.

Below a series of photos mostly from the US coast guard website and some media reports.

Strangely the area is close to the Alaskan shipwreck story on this site.

"Crew needed must have one leg shorter 'n tother."

Bosun get the the Boot topping paint out.

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Zoom-Zoom, Splish-Splash: The Odd Tale of the Cougar Ace and Its Automotive Cargo

Date posted: 08-28-2006

Look around. See anybody? Anybody at all? Well, that person, male or female, knows more about boats than I do. Yet for reasons I can't explain, I'm just fascinated by the situation regarding the M/V Cougar Ace, the 654-foot ship that flipped on its side in the North Pacific, with 4,813 cars aboard.

The facts: The 13-year-old ship, flying the flag of Singapore, left Japan full of cars, stacked on 14 levels, and tied down with nylon straps, en route for Vancouver, then Tacoma, Washington, then a port near Los Angeles. Apparently 60 percent of the cars aboard were 2007 Mazda 3s, 30 percent were Mazda CX-7s and the rest were a smattering of other Mazda models, plus some Lexuses, Mitsubishis and Toyotas. On July 23, as the Cougar Ace approached U.S. waters, the crew began the very routine process of discharging ballast water, to be replaced by fresh ballast water.

As you might imagine, PCC ships ("Pure Car Carriers", as they are called; drop that into the conversation, or your column, and people might mistakenly think you know what you're talking about) are comparatively top-heavy, and ballast down low helps keep them upright. Periodically during the trip, a ship has to change out its ballast water because taking on ballast water in one spot and discharging it a few thousand miles away could introduce harmful marine life from one part of the ocean into another, thus initiating a Robin Cook novel.

For reasons not yet revealed, as the Cougar Ace transferred ballast, it did not properly take on new ballast, or at least did not distribute the ballast properly, so along comes a li'l wave and the next thing you know, the ship has flopped over at a 75-degree angle on its side. Its port side. Port is left. See? We're learning together. Talladega Superspeedway's turns are banked at 33 degrees, so you can imagine what 75 degrees is like.

The first priority, of course, was the crew of 23 — two Singaporeans, 13 Filipinos and 8 Myanmars (Myanmar is the former Burma). At night, 230 miles from the nearest land — the tip of Alaska's Aleutian Islands — ship steward Saw Kyin walked out of the bathroom and suddenly slid down the deck until he was able to grip the railing, just feet from the ocean, he told the Anchorage Daily News. He was dangling there, naked, with a fractured right ankle and a left leg broken so badly the bone was sticking out through the skin. Fellow crewmen rescued him, and they were all rescued 23 hours later by the U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard.

Then the priority turned to the ship itself. Its owner, Mitsu OSK Lines of Japan, hired salvage crews to try and secure the ship, which drifted for 312 nautical miles, fortunately in the general direction of the Aleutians. The tug Emma Foss towed the Cougar Ace 25 miles, then the Sea Victory took over, towing it 472 nautical miles to Wide Bay on Unalaska Island. Early on, a naval architect named Marty Johnson, part of the salvage team, was preparing to leave the Cougar Ace and unhooked his safety harness. He slipped and fell, hit his head and died. He was 42. To those of us observing all this with amusement from a million miles away, the story became far less amusing.

Unalaska is the biggest city in the Aleutians, and the 11th largest city in Alaska, with a population of 4,400. The central industry is fishing — on the Unalaska Web site, the most frequently asked question is, "How do I get a job on a crab boat?" Indeed, nearby Dutch Harbor bills itself as the busiest fishing port in the world — and it may have taken a bit of a selling job to local citizens to assure them that the arrival of a still-listing Cougar Ace would not present a problem, as pretty much all of the 142,184 gallons of fuel oil and 34,182 gallons of marine diesel fuel were still aboard; a major spill would be a disaster, and suddenly, there would be no jobs at all on crab boats. A public briefing for local citizens seems to have calmed fears before the salvage headquarters relocated to the Unalaska Sheraton Inn.

On August 16, the salvage company had finished its job. By pumping water from the Number 9 deck on the port side into ballast tanks on the starboard side, the Cougar Ace righted itself. Almost. "The vessel still has a small list to port to contain the small pockets of water still onboard, but is well within the vessel's normal operating parameters," said the salvage team, which turned the Cougar Ace back over to Mitsu OSK, the owner. According to the Journal of Commerce, the Coast Guard said that most decks of the ship "suffered vehicle damage and that all vehicles must be re-secured," which is bad news for Mazda, worse news for Mitsu OSK and its insurance company. Still, once the Cougar Ace is towed to a "discharging port" — possibly Vancouver — where the cars can be unloaded, it seems likely the Mazdas won't be a total loss. At the very least, you'd think a lot of Mistu OSK executives will be driving new, if slightly dented and damp CX-7s.

Which, in view of previous and comparable incidents, makes this an unusual story. In March, 1972, a cargo ship that happened to be carrying 300 Dodge Colts wrecked just off Vancouver Island in fog. Though about half the cars were removed from the ship, the rest became the subject of individual salvage operations by local citizens in fishing boats, who emerged with bits and pieces, and even engines, from the Colts before the ship broke apart and sank.

In May, 2004, the M/V Hyundai 105 sank south of Singapore after colliding with an oil tanker. Lost at sea were about 3,000 new Hyundais and Kias, plus a thousand used Japanese cars bound for Germany. And in December 2002, the best-known car carrier disaster occurred when the Tricolor — a Norwegian carrier with 2,862 Volvos, BMWs, Saabs and other European cars — sank in the English Channel after colliding with another ship. Because the Channel is so busy, the Tricolor was raised, but only after being sawed in pieces. There are photos around of new Volvo XC90s, cut in half.

By comparison, then, everyone was lucky at how the Cougar Ace incident turned out. Everyone but the late naval architect Marty Johnson, whose death is a reminder of just how dangerous that business can be — that these cars don't just turn up in our driveways. There's a grassroots effort afoot to rename the Cougar Ace the M/V Marty Johnson, once the ship is rehabilitated. That would be an appropriate tribute.

You can give the prop & the rudder a quick Soogee too!

 Joking aside the ship is obviously well looked after, modern underwater paints repel marine growth and keep the ship fuel efficient.

Being so far over I imagine because of lubricating oil problems it will be impossible to start the auxillary diesels to run the ballast pumps to bring her up right again

THE REPORT FROM THE US COAST GUARD

Coast Guard says Cougar Ace is stable and listing 60

degrees near Aleutian Islands, Alaska

The Cougar Ace maintains its position 240 miles south of Adak in the North Pacific Ocean. As of noon Tuesday, the ship is listing 60 degrees to port. The keel and the propeller are out of the water.

It is stable, and does not appear to be sinking.

After accomplishing the primary mission of safely evacuating the stranded crewmembers, the Coast Guard continues to monitor the vessel for possible environmental threats and hazards to navigation. For this purpose, the Coast Guard cutter Rush is on scene with the Cougar Ace. A small boat crew, deployed from the Rush to more effectively observe the Cougar Ace, described the oil sheen around the vessel as "very light".

No one will be permitted to board the Cougar Ace at this time.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation is monitoring the situation, and has offered their help if it becomes necessary.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, the vessel's owners, have contracted a commercial salvage company. The salvage company is expected to arrive on scene within a week.

Mitsui O.S.K. will also be responsible for further transportation of the rescued crew members.

The Coast Guard is actively engaged with state, local and tribal officials in making preparations in case the salvage company requests to tow the vessel into Alaskan waters.

Plenty of space for Quoits or deck tennis.

Weather getting up.

And below after a lot of towing and salvage operations (see first story) she sits almost upright again.

Just a slight port list now until they sort the final problems out.

It will be interesting to get the story of the salvage operations and details of how the thosands of cars on board fared.

More later hopefully.

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FROM THE ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

Ship's crew rescued

NORTH PACIFIC: All 23 people aboard the listing Cougar Ace were retrieved by helicopters.

By LISA DEMER

Anchorage Daily News

Published: July 25, 2006

Last Modified: July 26, 2006 at 01:23 AM

Nearly two dozen crew members were hoisted to safety in rescue helicopters late Monday night from a giant car-carrying ship that had listed onto its side in the North Pacific Ocean, according to the Alaska Air National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard.

The 23 crew members of the Cougar Ace, wearing red survival suits, perched on a wall of the ship's superstructure in choppy seas as two Air Guard HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters and a Coast Guard helicopter lowered slings and pulled them to safety. The rescue operation began shortly after 9 p.m. and was completed by about 10 p.m.

"They did pack them in, as many as they humanly could, into all three helicopters," said Maj. Mike Haller of the Air National Guard. "They did it one at a time, and quickly."

The helicopters then headed for Adak, about 230 miles away.

The Singapore-registered Cougar Ace, carrying nearly 5,000 vehicles, had sent out an SOS Sunday at 11:09 p.m. The 654-foot vessel had begun to list and was taking on water, according to the Coast Guard. By midafternoon Monday, the Coast Guard reported that the ship was listing to 90 degrees, almost flat on its side in the sea.

As the rescue commenced, the seas were at 10 feet with 30-knot winds. Haller said chopper crews described those conditions as "very sporty."

"The fact you are 15 stories up in the air bobbing up and down is challenging for everybody on board,"  Haller had said earlier in the day.

Coincidentally, the Coast Guard, state environmental officials and other experts in shipping and safety are meeting this week in Anchorage to figure out how to better respond to -- and prevent -- disasters on the maritime super-highway between Asia and the West Coast.

Neither the Coast Guard nor the ship's owner, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines of Japan, could say Monday what had caused the Cougar Ace to turn on its side.

"We are still attempting to sort that out," said Greg  Beuerman, a New Orleans-based spokesman for the  company. "Our primary interest is in the health and safety of the crew." Crew members are from the Philippines, Singapore and perhaps other countries, he said.

The crew couldn't do anything more to try to stabilize or right the boat and needed to abandon it, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Eric J. Chandler. One crew member suffered a broken leg; that was the only significant injury reported.

Haller said the person with the broken leg was expected to be flown to an Anchorage hospital. The rest of the crew would be flown to Kodiak, the Coast Guard said.

The ship left Japan last week and had been scheduled to arrive Saturday in Vancouver, British Columbia, Beuerman said.

Rescue efforts were hampered Monday by choppy seas with swells of 8 to 10 feet, 35 mph winds and blowing rain that periodically cut visibility to just a few miles.

Rescuers dropped life boats from a C-130, but the crew couldn't get to them.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Todd Lightle co-piloted the C-130 that left Kodiak around 1:15 a.m. Monday. It was cloudy and dark when the plane got to the ship about 5:40 a.m., he said.

"All I could see was a big gray blob on the surface,"

Lightle said. "We couldn't even see it until we were  almost on top of it."

The C-130 dropped three life rafts, he said, but "the vessel drifted right over the top of them." They tried to drop a fourth raft directly on board to give the crew something to hang on to if the ship went down. But it also dropped in the water, and the crew couldn't scramble down the steeply sloping vessel to get to it,

It was "an awful situation," Lightle said.

Then, the Alaska Air National Guard sent two Pave Hawk helicopters from its base in Anchorage along with two HC-130 rescue tankers to refuel them midair.

The Guard also sent another C-130 with extra rescue gear. The Coast Guard also sent a helicopter, which had to stop and refuel along the way.

A bulk carrier ship, the Ikan Juara, was standing by to assist the Cougar Ace crew, the Coast Guard said.

Earlier, the Ikan Juara's crew tried to tie on to the car carrier, but that was too treacherous, Haller said.

The clinic and community center in Adak prepared hours before the rescue to receive the Cougar Ace's crew. Cots, blankets, food, oxygen tanks and a hypothermia unit were readied in case anyone went into the water.

Meanwhile, the ship appeared to stabilize on its side and might not sink, according to the Coast Guard and the ship's owner. "There is an ongoing discussion of salvage versus abandonment," Beuerman said.

The ship is carrying 430 metric tons of fuel oil and 112 metric tons of diesel, according to the Coast Guard.

Observers could see a sheen spreading two miles from the ship, but a small amount of fuel could have leaked out simply from the vessel being on its side, the Coast Guard said. It did not appear the fuel tanks had ruptured.

The ship is in international waters, but if it were to sink or break apart, pollution would probably drift into U.S. waters, so the Coast Guard will monitor the owner's actions to make sure "an environmental catastrophe doesn't occur," Chandler said.

In Anchorage, the events put an edge on a workshop being held Monday and again today to assess safety in Aleutian ports and waterways.

"It will be the issue again and again with these large vessels going through U.S. and even Alaska waters," said Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor in the marine advisory program who has called for a risk assessment in the Aleutians for years.

The workshop's focus is mainly on safety in the Aleutians, but any improvements would extend to the ship traffic farther south, where the Cougar Ace ran into trouble, said Leslie Pearson, spill response program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Solutions include better tracking of vessels to help safety officials see problems early as well as placement of powerful tugboats in strategic spots to respond to disasters, Steiner said.

Issues may go beyond that to problems such as crew fatigue, said the Coast Guard's prevention chief in Alaska, Capt. Steve Hudson. And crews also may need more familiarization with Alaska waterways, he said.

The Cougar Ace's owner, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, is a large, Japan-based marine transportation company with car carriers, bulk carriers, tankers, ferries and cruise ships, according to the company Web site.

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Editors thoughts; You have to 'Doff yer lid' to the Americans they have the gear and the expertise for these rapid respnse long distance rescues in those hard Arctic latitudes, big coast guard vessels, big planes and most importantly big helicopters with large carrying capacity and something i hadn't heard of before until this story, helicopter tankers for refueling the other choppers working oin the rescue, who else could do it, no one I have heard of anywhere.

it's good to know they are there for the ships on that busy modern day trade route