Most people following and contributing to the rolling story of Clydeport and the Loch Striven raft have little idea of what cold lay-up involves – for the ship owner and the lay-up and maintenance crews.

Everyone is interested in this and the general feeling is that Maersk, the owner of the 6 ships in Loch Striven, is a very different company from Clydeport.

For Argyll asked a shipping industry insider, with relevant expertise and experience, not now working in the industry, to write for us on what goes on in preparing and living on a ship in cold lay up.

This contact has, in the past, had some knowledge of Loch Striven, and so seemed, from every perspective, the right person to explain what goes on.

We asked. He agreed. He now takes us behind the scene of a very specific world.

Container shipping in recession

The container ship business – like the economy itself – gets hit from both sides in a recession.

Some companies shipping their goods to markets outside their own country go out of business or reduce production in response to falling demand. This means less tonnage for the container industry to shift.

In the shipping industry you have to think and plan on long timelines because new ships take their place in a line of orders and building them is not quick.

Because of this, orders for new ships are placed long before anyone gets wind of a downturn. So shipowners are left with their new orders on the blocks, to be paid for and heading for service in a world where there is little or no work for them to do.

It’s not hard to imagine the financial impact of that one. You already have a fleet at sea with trade running down and you are contracted to pay for new additions coming down the slipways in an almost sadistic sequence.

Where a contract is in the early stages, it can be possible – and financially more survivable – to take the hit of penalty payments and cancel. But this is often not possible and some new container ships today are coming into fleets to go straight into lay-up.

When, in a major recession, there is not enough trade for most fleets to sustain the movement of the full number of container ships, there are two action options for ship owners. Their choices will be made on expert predictions on the depth of the recession in question.

• Hot lay-up – this takes a ship out of operation but keeps it in a state of readiness to come back into the market quickly when things improve. This decision is likely when a recession is expected to be short.
• Cold lay-up – this takes a ship out of operation for about a year to eighteen months. It requires some form of mothballing of major systems, all of which will have to be reversed when the ship is to be brought back into commission – and no one can guarantee that this will be a trouble-free process. Cold lay-up is an expensive business and companies only opt for this when a recession is expected to be long and the cold lay-up costs, spread over a significant time, represent a saving on hot lay-up costs for the same period.

No shipowner wants to see a multi-million dollar investment cold, idle and unattended but in a recession like this one, there is no alternative.

No ship owner will prolong cold lay-up. It’s a situation where a ship costs money in order to earn none. It’s paying to protect an investment that will earn again in the future.

Cold lay-up locations

Shipowners will want to bring a laid-up ship back into commission as soon as possible and start generating revenue again from their investment. This raises important issues around where the cod lay-ups are located.

Ideally, ships are laid up in places where there will be trade to be had to hand when things pick up. Ideally too, there will be specialist engineering and technical facilities available nearby should problems arise in bringing a ship out of a long cold lay-up.

The actual cold lay-up anchorage needs to be safe and with stable and sheltered weather conditions. There’s no point courting trouble by anchoring a ship or a raft on cold lay-up in a location vulnerable to prevailing weather systems.

Then shipowners look for somewhere that isn’t too warm, isn’t too cold, isn’t too wet, isn’t too dry, these mild conditions are the best for long term lay-up.

Too warm water encourages the growth of weed on the hull – which will need to be removed before a ship can re-enter service. Too much humidity in the air degrades accommodation and machinery alike.

Step forward Loch Striven – it answers all of these needs.

The expertise in repair and fitting are to hand in Glasgow’s shipyards, ready to assist in overcoming any problems in emerging from cold lay-up.

Although it’s not what it once was, the port of Glasgow is still a major port. So cold lay-ups in this location will leave a ship on the doorstep of a reviving economy.

Cold lay up management

In the case of fleet owners, it is likely that that several ships will have to be taken out of commission in a deep recession.

It costs significantly less per ship to raft up several than it does to anchor a single ship in cold lay-up. In a raft, one ship – a designated ‘mother ship’ – can serve others, running power from its generators to them all.

Rafting ships belonging to a single shipping line can also cut the number of crew (and their costs) required to maintain the ships while they are in cold lay-up, and it contributes to a more varied life for crew involved as they will have more colleagues within reach than if they were on a single ship.

Going into cold lay-up

In the beginning of establishing a raft of ships going into cold layup there’s a lot to do. This includes:

• getting the electric power across on from one ship to another;
• shutting down and preserving the various piping systems;
• draining and cleaning the sewage system;
• turning off the water, especially if there is a chance of freezing temperatures;
• turning out the lights or reducing them to a bare minimum.

The main aim is to reduce the power consumption on the raft to cut its running costs.

Then there is the work of preparing the ship itself for long-term cold lay-up.

Paint jobs are needed to protect against rusting in a long period spent out of service and in a single location.

The Main Engine needs to be cleaned internally and have some preservation work carried out, for example removing the fuel injectors and cleaning them.

Lay-up manuals give so many procedural options that it can be mind boggling. Some recommend going to the n-th degree, removing all of the components and cleaning and preserving them individually. This, of course, takes a lot of time and money. An alternative is to clean the major parts and monitor the condition of everything else, taking action as and when specific issues arise.

The latter is today’s preferred option as it means re-activation time should be shorter and, as there is a team staying with the ships, they can keep an eye on everything. In the past the ships were left unmanned so taking the engine to pieces was then the favoured option.

The most basic housekeeping is also a necessary part of cold lay-up.

The fridges need emptying and cleaning. The galley needs cleaning. All the cabins need to be cleaned and the bedding stripped, washed, dried and put away.

The out going team who deliver the ship can do a lot to help, like getting the cleaning done. But some of it still needs to be done after they’ve gone.

The overall requirement is that all of the jobs need to be done methodically and in the right order. Otherwise it will be chaos.

When the ship is cold

Once a ship is cold then it is a matter of going round daily making sure things are as they should be. Carrying out routine checks and tests,

Dehumidification is a general necessity, protecting the integrity both of the accommodation blocks and the machinery. Moisture in the air causes damp that ruins bedding and rusts machines.

The main engine needs to be regularly turned and lubricated. The pumps need to be run. The deck machinery (winches and cranes) need to be checked and moved. All the ropes holding the ships in position need to be checked for chaffing and damage. The anchor chains need to be moved every month or so for the same reason.

The auxiliary engines need to be run regularly too, but that is more easily done and only takes a small amount of time.

Some of the less needed machinery can be shut down completely, stripped and preserved.

On the mother ships a lot of the equipment is warm and in use but its main engine still requires to be turned and lubricated. Its generators are constantly running and so will need some maintenance.

It’s all about routine. The aim is to keep the ship in the best possible condition so that it can be ready for action more quickly
when the market revives.

Life on a raft

Monotony is the key word.

Routine rules when a ship is in operation too but then you have movement, changing sea conditions, arrivals and departures, the sense of purpose.

None of the things that give texture to a day and to a voyage are present in cold lay up.

And while the available community in a raft is bigger than when a maintenance crew is on a lone ship in lay-up, it’s still thin.

There are personal hobbies. Sometimes but not always, there is access to the internet via mobile phones, to keep in touch with the outside world and with friends and family. Sometimes there are cheap phone calls home.

Satellite dishes are visible in photographs of the Loch Striven lay-ups, so there may be Sky TV (or similar). And there will be radio. Lay-ups abroad mean that internet radio is used for access to English language stations

All these things can help to combat the sense of isolation.

Trips to town help but in the Loch Striven location there will be reduced opportunity for this sort of diversion.

This is not the way any seafarers want to spend their lives.

The photograph above, by Paul Hadfield, shows part of the Maersk-owned raft of 6 ships currently in Loch Striven. These are, from the left, Bentonville, Baltimore, Sealand Performance and Beaumont. Boston was added to the shoreside of the raft, to the right alongside Beaumont. The last and recent arrival, Brooklyn has been added to the outside, alongside Bentonville on the left.

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