A visit to Malta: Ken Kirby

September 1st, 2014 by JCB
Posted in Articles, Technical and Training | No Comments »

My daughter’s wedding in Malta meant a two-week holiday in the sun, but I didn’t plan to spend it all lying by the pool. I wondered if it would
be possible to visit Malta Pilots while I was there, so before leaving I dropped them an email.

On arrival at the hotel in Mallieha bay there was a note to contact Joe Brincat of Malta Maritime Pilots. Joe arranged for another Pilot – Captain Stephen Cauchi who lives close to my hotel – to get in contact. So a couple of days after arriving in Malta I was in Stephen’s car winding our way through the lanes of Malta to Valetta where Malta Pilots are based. He took me for a drive around the Valetta side of Grand Harbour where a cruise liner and a naval ship were in port. I could see the dry dock across the other side which had a tanker in, and an oil rig in the ship repair yard. Large roll on roll off vessels come from and sail for Sicily but do not meet the PEC criteria, so with all that traffic the pilots are kept quite busy. We then went on to the Malta Mediterranean Maritime Research and Training Centre (mmrtc.com.mt) in Valetta.

The pilots in Malta are a 16 strong co-operative who have set up their own simulator and training centre where they run courses on ship handling, ECDIS and STCW requirements. They have two DNV certificated Marin full mission bridge manoeuvring simulators (Mermaid 500) and six Kelvin Hughes Manta Digital ECDIS systems, along with lecture rooms capable of holding up to 25 candidates, and they have full DNV quality management accreditation. I was given a 300 metre cruise ship to take into Grand harbour, swing and bring it out again. The first run with no wind, the second with 25 knots of north-westerly. Usually when a pilot manoeuvres a ship in and out of port they know the port and manoeuvres well through a thorough training programme, so it was quite an exciting challenge to go into a completely unknown port with no idea of what I would usually do. Joe was a great help advising on speeds and telling me not to let the head swing to starboard further than the dome towering above Valetta before coming to port again to chicane through the outer and inner breakwaters. The 210 degree projected visuals were very good and the handling felt as good as any simulator I had been on. Joe was very knowledgeable and it was a pleasure to talk about the problems we encounter manoeuvring large ships and how we must take into account tug use, pivot points and wind effect to complete an efficient and safe manoeuvre.

My next simulated mission was to bring a 400 metre long ultra large container ship into Marsaxlokk (The ‘X’ is pronounced ‘sh’ so Marsaxlokk becomes Marsa shlock, which means south harbour). Marsaxlokk is situated in a natural harbour on the south-eastern coast of Malta. There is a power station on the north side of the bay, a well-known fishing village, which has a popular Sunday market (lovely prawns) in the middle, and the freeport on the southern side of the bay. 2140 metres of quay face supports 23 container cranes, 19 of which are super panamax and capable of taking the largest container vessels in the world. The harbour is dredged to 17 metres and with very little tide in the Mediterranean is capable of taking vessels with drafts up to 16.5 metres. 95% of the 2.7 million container throughput is transhipment so, with the island’s position in the centre of the Mediterranean, the strategic benefit to shipping companies is evident. Gigantic ships can send their containers ashore to be re-loaded onto tiny 300 metre LOA feeder ships for the more restricted ports in Europe and the USA. Current customers include CMA CGM’s 400 metre LOA ships and Maersk ships, but not currently the ‘E’ or ‘triple E’ class. There are also some tanker berths and an offshore tanker facility inside the bay.

Space within the bay is quite tight to swing a 400 metre LOA ship. With the configuration of the berths I decided to swing to port using two tugs of 70 tonnes bollard pull. I had to manoeuvre between the anchored tanker using the offshore facility and some large circular structures in the sea which form a fish farm (tuna). The manoeuvre on the simulator felt realistic and the visuals were good. However, I was probably not using the looking astern facility as well as I should so my check aft was a bit late – confirmed by a voice from the control desk – “Don’t worry we have good fenders here!” The computer printout clearly showed my manoeuvre for final analysis.

I can’t thank Malta Pilots enough for their warm welcome and for letting me play on their simulator. I was not aware that they had such fine facilities and I would thoroughly recommend using them for training courses. Although Malta may not currently be top in your mind when choosing a training facility it does give you a very pleasant environment, excellent facilities, plenty of sun, and with current rates for travel and accommodation pricing which might be worth considering.

Ken Kirby Senior Pilot, Harwich Haven Authority