A fleet of NATO ships berthed at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town recently attracted hoards of shipspotters, both young and old, prepared to queue for hours until they could get their chance to board the ships and have a look around.

It wasn't just the public following the fleet's movements with avid interest. When the news filtered through that South Africa's new submarine, SAS Manthatisi, had "sunk" the NATO fleet during exercises with the South African Navy off the Cape coast, there was deserved coverage in both the national and international media.

This was also recognised to be a very big deal for the South African Navy and each member of the SAS Manthatisi ship's company was congratulated by Acting Flag Officer Fleet, R Adm (JG) R.W. Higgs, for their contribution to this historic event.

"To be able to frustrate detection by NATO nations is no mean achievement, it speaks of the excellence of the equipment we acquired for this purpose," Defence Minister, Mosiuoa Lekota told journalists at a press conference on board the SAS Amatola.

The needs of the container and freight logistics industry received attention at a recent conference held in Durban. Although poorly attended the content of the papers presented was by all accounts good and the overriding theme was that it was urgent that the freight logistics chain is improved and bottlenecks reduced. Our Durban correspondent, Terry Hutson, was there and reports back on page 12.

A presentation about the Western Indian Ocean marine highway development and coastal and marine pollution protection project, presented to delegates attending the Hydrographic Society's Technical Awareness Seminar in June, proved to be such interesting reading that it was decided to share this with you. We were not able to carry all the graphics because of space limitation but we nevertheless hope you find the presentation (on page 24) enlightening.

As we went to press, we heard of the plight of the general cargo ship, Amul, en route from Port Elizabeth to Durban. The crew of 18 abandoned the ship when she was about 20 miles off the coast of Port St Johns and had begun taking large amounts of water. The Smit Amandla salvage tug went to her rescue in time to tow the stricken vessel away from the coast off Mazeppa Bay and were holding her some 38 nautical miles off the coast. The salvage team also planned to board the vessel to undertake a survey of her condition. The crew were subsequently rescued by the Irtych, a fishing trawler, and Rosa Tomasos, a products tanker.

To conclude, although Transnet’s roll-out of its new branding has been somewhat low key, the company is now ready to position itself as a “focussed freight transport company” (see page 22). It has also realised how important trained people are to the business. As Tau Morwe, CE of Transnet Port Operations commented recently, “without developed people, the equipment is useless.”

Editor

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The 'Smit Lloyd 33', one of specialist marine services company SMIT Amandla Marine's anchor handling tug supply vessels, is on a long-term contract with PetroSA. This affords SMIT Amandla Marine the opportunity to maintain the good business relationship it has established with this client.
The contract runs for a period of three to five years. In terms of this contract the 'Smit Lloyd 33' is the safety standby vessel at the FA Platform some 60 miles south of Mossel Bay and doubles up as the standby EM buoy intervention vessel for PetroSA.