| TITAN EXCLUSIVE |
 |
 |
 |
| Tuesday, 29 July 2008 10:21 | |||
Shipwrecks and sunken treasure. Man's fascination with tales of the high seas conjures up a kaleidoscope of images - some of pirates holding Spanish conquistadors at bay and Greek explorers traveling the Silk Road in search of red fabrics as rich as Thai rubies. The history between man, Mother Nature and vessels is romantic and mysterious,a tale woven with colorful legends, superstitions and extraordinary circumstances.Today, those stories continue to be woven in remote places where treasures may be shipped in steel containers, rather than in stronghold boxes and the main characters are professional divers, salvage masters and technical experts. Their goal is complicated and execution is almost an art form - so much so, that few people dare to confront Mother Nature's fury, the mechanical intricacies posed by both modern and dated vessels or situations created by human error. The experts at TITAN Marintime, though, are more than ready for the challenge.  From Yacht Broker to Salvage Expert
David Parrots life has taken many different turns but each takes him back to the place where it all began the sea. The 63-year-olds life at sea began when he was just six weeks old and he moved aboard his fathers schooner in Newfoundland.During the 1960s and 1970s the New Englander was involved in the yacht brokerage business. But after 15 years in that line of work, he needed a change. In 1980, Parrot founded TITAN as a one-tug towing company. He became interested in tug boats after reading the book The Grey Seas Under by noted Canadian author Farley Mowat. The non-fiction book detailed the adventures of a salvage tug and its crew from 1930 to 1948 in Canadas maritime provinces. The New England native also sold a few tugs as a broker. Parrot admits the yacht business was profitable and it was a decision he made carefully. It was a lucrative business and my wife had a hard time with my decision, Parrot said from Coos Bay, Ore. where TITAN is handling a project. She didnt understand why I wanted to leave that for this grungy job. I did it because selling boats on a one-on-one basis to people who didnt really use the boats didnt appeal to me anymore. TITAN soon began making a name for itself. They were the new kids on the block and often took salvage jobs more as challenges even though they defied business logic. In 1982, TITAN completed its first project. At first they were simply sub-contractors of a Dutch firm working on the project. When the Dutch firm bailed out due to financial reasons, TITAN stepped up the challenge. The success marked the first of many for the company. The once-undercapitalized firm began expanding, buying more equipment, including tugs, barges and cranes which made TITAN a formidable salvage and wreck removal firm in the Caribbean. As the company grew in size and began handling jobs in more diverse locations, it became evident that having a lot of equipment was a moot point if it was far away from the location where the job was located. Business partner Dick Fairbanks joined Parrot in 1988 and TITAN was taken to new heights. Against established norms, TITAN began selling their tug boats and other equipment and instead invested in the best, portable fly-away equipment. When they needed tugs, they chartered them from other companies. It works much better this way, because unless you have 1,000 tugs, you never have them in the right place at right time during an emergency, Parrot said.  The concept of chartering equipment has been well-received by TITAN clients. A majority of salvage companies own their own tugs and equipment. For clients, this means equipment often needs to be transported from far-off locations to the project, which sometimes jeopardizes a salvage job because of the time element involved. Transporting equipment also adds cost.It works out better for our clients and the insurance companies like it because they know were looking out for the best interests of their clients. Other companies try to force them to use their tugs, Parrot said. The lack of such equipment has made TITAN very mobile and allows the company to operate in every corner of the globe. The companys three strategically located facilities in Pompano Beach, Fla., Singapore and the United Kingdom ensure TITAN is able to respond anywhere, quickly. With noise in the background as workers continued to set up equipment in Oregon, Parrot reminisced about his journey from the one-tug company to a major international player. In 2005, Crowley Maritime Corporation acquired TITAN. Todd Busch, a longtime Crowley employee, was named vice-president and general manager. Parrot and Fairbanks stayed on board to help guide the company and are still intimately involved in the business. It was a long struggle but I havent regretted it, Parrot said.  Isolated Islands, Beached Boats and Tourist Attractions
Marine salvage work has an air of romanticism. Or at least thats what most people envision. People are attracted to the romance, but its by no means a career choice for the average person. Its a very hazardous and risky business that requires highly skilled employees, said Rich Habib, TITANs director of salvage. Its also a very interesting business. When a ship is grounded, sinking, or experiencing trouble, near land or far out to sea, insurance companies and underwriters call one or more of a handful of salvage companies in the world to see if they are capable of handling the job. From then on its a race against time. Were not the only ones who get the call. Its usually who can run faster and make an offer to help the baby who is turning blue, said Mauricio Garrido, managing director of the Americas. You have to make them feel comfortable that you have a handle on the situation and can succeed, because at the end of the day its a matter of trust and forming relationships. For TITAN forming that relationship is extremely crucial and seems to have worked. The underdog of salvage companies, TITAN often competes with salvage companies that were established 150 to 200 years ago, according to Garrido. Financially, negotiations are also risky, as most salvage agreements are made through the Lloyds Open Form (LOF), an agreement which allows salvors to conduct salvage operations without negotiating prices. In short, the no cure, no pay contract means salvage companies dont get paid unless they are able to complete the job. Salvage companies have to foot the bills during the project before they get paid by the insurance companies or ship owners. Sometimes the operational costs can reach tens of millions of dollars. That was the case during the APL Panama salvage job in Ensenada, Mexico, one of the largest refloatings of a laden containership ever undertaken. TITAN safely delivered the 52,267 dwt ship with a capacity of 4,038 TEU to its owners in March 2006, less than three months after the ship went aground. All project expenses which involved transporting specialized salvage gear from various depots in the United States and overseas were borne by TITAN, including all the subcontractors. Some of the significant items included in the mobilization were 20 truckloads of salvage gear, five 300-ton hydraulic pullers, seven tugboats, a flat-deck barge upon which the pullers were mounted, three crawler stick cranes of varying sizes, a SkyCrane helicopter and a dredge, plus support staff and the salvage team. Although, the company is still young, the team behind its success is the best in the business. TITAN has a unique ability to solve the challenges encountered, due to the vast experience of the team. Most of our key personnel have been at TITAN many years and have done many salvage jobs. One of the interesting things in our business is every job is different; no two jobs are the same. Every time the phone rings, it is a new adventure, with new challenges and difficulties, Busch said. A quick glance over TITANs resume proves that the TITAN team has been around the block - or world - more than once. Busch effortlessly lists off the places TITAN has made an appearance. There was the trip to Tristan da Cunha; Palau, Micronesia; Mukalla, Yemen; the Magdalena River in Barranquilla, Colombia and Ensenada, Mexico, among others. TITAN is also currently working on projects in Gibraltar, the English Channel and Cancun, Mexico. The salvage projects have been diverse and the challenges unique. Each project has given team members an opportunity to refine their skills and perfect the craft of marine salvage. With a half-smile, half-smirk, while eating lunch at a Chinese restau-rant in Pompano Beach, Busch wasnt shy about bragging about his teams proven track record. The record includes completing jobs that other salvage companies couldnt successfully complete. In late 2006, TITAN was contracted to refloat the A Turtle, a 10,500-ton semi-submersible platform that went aground in Tristan da Cunha. The island, dubbed the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, is located in the South Atlantic Ocean, 1,750 miles west of South Africa and 2,088 miles from South America. The group of islands is made up of Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible Island, The Nightingale Islands and Gough Island. About 270 people, who share just seven surnames, live on the island, which is only accessible via a seven-day chartered boat ride from Cape Town, South Africa. The platform became separated from a tug, which was towing the rig from Brazil to Singapore for repair, before it became fetched up on the Island. After another salvage companys efforts to refl oat the massive structure proved unsuccessful, TITAN was awarded the job. Within 75 days, the TITAN crew successfully restored buoyancy, lightened and refl oated the rig. The platform was later scuttled offshore in deep water at the owners request. Mark A. Russell, an underwriter for Gard Services in London, worked closely with Busch and Parrot on the A Turtle job in Tristan da Cuhna. In a recent interview, Russell recalled the challenges TITAN was able to overcome. The biggest challenge was overcoming the remote aspect of the job location and the small frame of time TITAN had to complete the job due to weather conditions. Russell said he had good communication with TITAN who kept him well-informed of the progress of the project. I think under the circumstances, TITANs work was very good. I have no complaints, Russell said. In terms of the weather, there was a particularly limited weather window, because at the end of February it starts to turn to winter. The New Carissa, a project in Coos Bay, Ore. provides another current example. The New Carissa, 640-foot wood-chip carrier, ran aground during a February 1999 storm, just north of Coos Bay. Several attempts by another company to salvage the ship, which later settled about 150 yards from the beachfront, have been unsuccessful. The initial salvage company was unable to refloat the ship before it split in two. After refloating the bow section, explosives and machine gun fire were used to try and sink the vessel in deep water. Both of those attempts failed and finally a U.S. Navy submarine sunk the forward section of the ship with a torpedo, but the stern section remained on the beach. Another salvage company attempted to remove the stern section, but failed. Eight years later, TITAN experts are working on cleaning up the mess. The vessels 1,500-ton stern remains half buried off Coos Bay while a separate section containing an 800-ton cargo hold and fuel tanks, is buried in over 30 feet of sand some yards away. Senior Naval Architect Phil Reed, TITANs director of engineering, is in charge of overseeing the technical aspects of the project. He helped plan the operation with Shelby Harris, the salvage master on the New Carissa project and Rich Habib. Habib, a master mariner, began his career at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1973 and holds an unlimited master license, the highest license a mariner can obtain. The plan for salvaging the New Carissa, according to Habib is going to require the Karlissa A and Karlissa B, TITANs own 14,000-square-foot-barges, to be positioned near the stern of the New Carissa. The six legs on each barge will be jetted into the ocean floor and provide a stable work area for crew. The interesting part will begin when multiple 300-metric ton hydraulic pullers are used to lift up the 1,500-ton stern from its partially buried position in the surf. TITAN pullers are hydraulic pulling machines that have set the salvage company from other salvage companies who rely on tugs demonstrating one example of TITAN innovation. Assuming a typical harbor tug is capable of 20 to 50-tons of pull; one TITAN puller is capable of doing the job of six to 15 tugboats. When comparing the pullers to the most massive salvage tugs, which are often 200-feet-long, expensive and hard to come by, TITAN pullers still come out on top. The most massive salvage tugs are only capable of 100 to 150-tons of pull making a single puller equal to two to three of those specialty tugs. The puller is not the only piece of innovative equipment being used for the current project. Busch explained that Harris, with the help of others on the salvage team, developed a cable car, which works similarly to a gondola, to transport crew members and equipment from the beach to the platform barges. We use the word titanizing, Busch said, explaining how team members often think outside the box and are open to exploring alternative, unconventional methods in approaching job challenges. In Coos Bay, the surf is often rough and could potentially be dangerous for workers as they have to get on and off the jack-up barges. Environmentalists in Oregon also appreciate the concept because it allows workers to accomplish the job without disrupting the beach and its wildlife. It Takes a Special Breed Salvage masters and workers each bring a variety of life experience and salvage expertise. Many are professional divers, welders, engineers and heavy equipment operators. Some have spent 12 hours at a time in wetsuits, working underwater without a meal break. Some have slept intents in mosquito-infested areas. Parrot even recalls a job where divers had to work alongside rotting chicken that was soaking in warm Caribbean waters. Harris is a prime example of a typical salvage professional at TITAN. Hes a trained diver, rigger, welder and equipment operator. A true jackof-all trades Harris, like many others, has grown with TITAN and has worked up to his current position as salvage master. Salvors are highly intelligent workers who tend to have a little bit of MacGyver in them, the character on a popular 1980s ABC actionadventure television show who used science and wit to solve problems. The type of people we have are a special breed quite frankly, Parrot said. For every person we keep, we go through 10 to 15 before we find someone who lives and thrives with it and could deal with the foul conditions. The difficulty and high stress also tend to weed out the less knowledgeable salvors. They are drawn to the difficulty of the work and they stay, Habib said. They tend to be difficult to manage because of the hazards of the job and theyre not very forgiving of people who dont know their facts. For them, this work is a matter of life and death. 
|