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More about general average liability for cargo owners – potentially daunting…
Apr 19, 2024Today I’ll revisit a concept I talked about on Monday’s show.. General Average – an ancient maritime principle that governs how losses in a ship disaster are shared between stakeholders. I was talking about the containership Dali and what sort of liability cargo owners on that ship could face. Turns out quite a bit. Disasters are a reason why most companies shipping cargo have insurance against this sort of event. If they don’t, it could be devastating.
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Port of Woodland to add marine terminal on the Columbia River
Apr 18, 2024Continuing our discussion about changes in ports and cargo service on the Columbia, today we’ll talk about the decision by the Port of Woodland to buiild a marine terminal and being serving cargo ships for the first time. The port has a partnership with a cement company that will help make it happen.
We’ll talk about what an official port district is, compared to a private port, and also about the ebb and flow of cargo services on the river.
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Could Astoria take over container service here on the Columbia? Unlikely.
Apr 17, 2024Today we’ll talk about a listener comment regarding the Port of Portland’s decision to suspend container service this fall out of its Terminal 6 facilities. A person suggested that containers be shipped out of Astoria instead. We’ll talk about why that is highly unlikely. Mostly, it’s a matter of highly expensive infrastructure. Equipment costs are huge, and such a change would profoundly alter the character of Astoria.
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Port of Portland announces end of containership service to Terminal 6
Apr 16, 2024The big maritime news locally this week is the announcement by the Port of Portland that they will end container ship service to the Port’s Terminal 6 as of October 1. The decision will mean the Columbia River will no longer have container service, since Portland is the only port with the infrastructure and equipment to handle containers. Carships and bulk carriers will continue to call on the Port.
Portland has gained and lost container service over the past two decades. The most recent round of container service began during the pandemic, when the Port of Portland served as a overflow port for overcrowded ports on the West Coast. The service has continued with several container ships per week transiting the river.
According to this week’s news reports, that service will cease at the end of September. The hope is that this will only be temporary.
Photo: Port of Portland’s Terminal 6 container cranes. Credit: M.O. Stevens, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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The expensive law of “general average” and how it applies to cargo ship disasters
Apr 15, 2024There’s an ancient tenet of maritime law that is cropping up in reports about the catastrophe in Baltimore harbor with the containership Dali. It’s called “general average,” and it has to do with who pays when a ship runs into expensive trouble during a voyage.
This law can force those customers whose cargo is on the ship to help pay for the cost of the disaster. Mostly it ends up being a complex negotiation between many insurance companies, but it could be an expensive caveat for small businesses who may not have insured their cargo sufficiently.
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The close of our series on USCG rescue swimmers
Apr 12, 2024This week we’ve heard a series from the Ship Report archives on USCG rescue swimmers. Today ends that series.
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More about Coast Guard rescue swimmers
Apr 11, 2024We’re hearing a weeklong series about USCG rescue swimmers this week. Today is part 4.
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Rescue Swimmer series continued
Apr 10, 2024We’re hearing excerpts this week from an interview I did with a USCG rescue swimmer based at Air Station Astoria.
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More on rescue swimmers
Apr 09, 2024We’ll delve more into the lives ofUSCG rescue swimmers today with this look into the Ship Report achives, as I continue to recover from this plague of a cold that has me in its grip.
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The work of USCG Rescue Swimmers
Apr 08, 2024Today, we’ll take a look back in the Ship Report archives at a great interview I did years ago with a local USCG rescue swimmer.
In the meantime, I’ll work on getting over this bad cold that has put me flat out on the couch for the past few days.
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