On Christmas day, the Captain of the Russian research vessel ‘Akademik Shokalskiy’ with a complement of 74 persons onboard,comprising of scientists, crew and a number of members of the world’s media,sent out a mayday as his vessel was beset off Eastern Antarctica...

Not everyone here at Witherby Publishing has a maritime background and when you’re working on something technical that can be a real drawback. It is one thing to read about engines, propeller shafts and generators and quite another to have experience of working with them, at the very least, to have seen one up close.

Grain LNG visit By Gillian Macrosson
As the Publishing Manager at Witherbys, my background is in publishing and not in shipping. To help me learn more about the shipping industry, I recently attended a fascinating panel meeting for the Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators (SIGTTO) in London, followed by a trip to National Grid's liquefied natural gas (LNG) installation at Grain LNG on the Isle of Grain peninsula on the River Medway in north Kent.

I was at a meeting last week where I bumped into someone I’d sailed with more than 20 years ago.  Many of you will know how it goes at that point; drop in standards, blah blah, things not like the good old days, blah blah, etc.

Many radar and ARPA sets carried onboard modern vessels have the capability for the OOW to enter 'ARPA maps' and to retrieve previously prepared maps.  Although the setup varies between manufacturers, and it can often be quite fiddly to lock the overlay, such maps on the radar screen are a useful tool when monitoring the vessel's progress throughout her passage.

In the late 1980s, as a cadet at Nautical College, each autumn as night classes resumed college lecturers would give navigation and chartwork classes to budding yachtsman. However, what seemed to irritate the lecturers was that, while they had spent many years learning navigation skills and had spent many years at sea, they were not themselves deemed qualified to charter a small yacht! 

Mighty ships upon the ocean
Suffer from severe corrosion,
Even those that stay at dockside
Are rapidly becoming oxide.

In the world of specialist technical publishing, more time is spent searching for the perfect image that conveys what the book is about than any other graphic imagery task. Occasionally you are able to create something completely unique for your publication, which leaves the world in no doubt as to what that book is about. One such instance happened last month, for the 2013 edition of the ‘Passage Planning Guide Malacca and Singapore Straits’.

At the conclusion of the inaugral ECDIS Revolution Conference, held during November 2010 in London, one of the key statements made was that many of the concerns of delegates (either real or perceived) could be satisfactorily resolved by adequate and proper training.

Since July 2010, ships sailing through an ECA have been required to burn 1.0% Low Sulphur Fuel Oil (LSFO)