…As Finnlines Buys Back MS Europalink***
South Korean families of the missing crew members of the ill-fated bulker Stellar Daisy, which sank off Uruguay in March 2017, are calling on the authorities to continue the search and rescue operation for the missing seafarers.
The South Korean ship was carrying 24 crew members, eight South Korean and sixteen Filipino sailors, when it sank in the South Atlantic, some 3,700 kilometers off Uruguay.
Two Filipino sailors were rescued on April 1, while the remaining 22 crew members remain missing and are presumed dead.
The victims’ families have set up an organization which has been campaigning over the past nine months for the search and rescue operation to be resumed in order to determine the cause of the sinking of the vessel.
The families insist the vessel’s blackbox needs to be found in order to determine what caused the sinking and for those responsible to be held accountable.
So far their efforts haven’t been very fruitful and they are asking for international support in order to encourage Korean authorities to act and designate the needed funds to resume search efforts.
The families believe that there is still hope that survivors may be found as two life rafts from the vessel remain unaccounted for.
In addition, they are asking from the U.S. Government to release the information they gathered during their search for the survivors, including photos and videos of a life raft sighting by a U.S. Navy airplane on April 8, 2017, in order to determine whether any sailors managed to escape the shipwreck.
The outdated bulker had split in half following a hull crack causing shifting of cargo and subsequent sinking of the bulk carrier. Just a few days after the incident, Polaris Shipping, owner of the ship, confirmed that another of the firm’s vessels reported a crack on the outer hull of a tank.
As a result, the company said that it had launched inspection of all its operated vessels.
The company’s premises were also raided as part of South Korean Coast Guard’s investigation into the incident, the aftermath of which has put into the spotlight the company’s operation of the vessel and its conversion, along with the alleged “slow reaction” to distress calls sent from the ship at the time of the sinking.
World Maritime News Staff; Image Courtesy: Shipspotting
In the meantime, in response to growing volumes, Finland-based RoRo and passenger services operator Finnlines has decided to expand its fleet with MS Europalink, a Star-class passenger-freight vessel.
Specifically, Finnlines’ Swedish subsidiary, Rederi Aktiebolaget Nordö-Link, bought the 2007-built ship from the Grimaldi Group on January 26, in accordance with the purchase agreement signed earlier.
Back in 2013, the ship was sold by Finnlines to the parent company because of insufficient volumes in the Baltic. However, volume trends have reversed and the vessel will join the company on the Germany/Sweden trade.
As informed, MS Europalink will be fitted with exhaust gas scrubbers in mid-March and it will start sailing under the Swedish flag on the Malmö–Travemünde route.
The vessel, which has a capacity of 4,215 lane meters and 554 passengers, will undergo refurbishment in the public areas, according to the company.
Last year, the company launched an investment program to lengthen four of its Breeze-series RoRo ships, including the two optional ones.
The first lengthened vessel from the batch, MS Finntide, was delivered to the company in November 2017.
Finnlines said that the second vessel, MS Finnwave, has also completed lengthening and is now 30 meters longer. The capacity of the vessel is now 4,192 lane meters, which means that the lengthening added 1,000 lane meters. MS Finnwave has returned to the normal traffic on Uusikaupunki/Turku–Travemünde route.
By the end of May, a further two vessels, MS Finnsun and MS Finnsky, will be lengthened.
World Maritime News
