Sunday, December 18, 2011

roundup

Lots of Maritimey things going on this week.

One big one for me is that Seaboats got bought by Kirby marine. Although Seaboats is a small company, this is Kirby's first major purchase of an oceangoing fleet since they bought K-Sea last year. The Seaboat fleet will presumably be folded into K-Sea, which is good for K-Sea, since their fleet is primarily made up of used and abused or worn-out pieces of shit that no one else wanted. (with some exceptions, but really, their asset inventory reads like a Tijuana used-car lot).
At any rate, my employers were in negotiations to but Seaboats, but something happened and they walked away. K-Sea picked up the deal, but Kirby promptly shitcanned all the employees. I'm not sure if this was done ipso facto or if it was done with the aim of allowing the employees to reapply for their jobs and thus end-run any continuity issues with regards to pay or benefits. Regardless, K-Sea is going to be strengthened for having made the purchases.

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The American Phoenix (pictured below, photo courtesy of Mid-Ocean Marine) seems to be coming along well.
This was the ship originally partially built and financed by my last employer, who went tits up a few months after I left the company (Coincidence?). She's scheduled to be ready for sea trials in the next few months. I once entertained fantasies of an officer's slot on this ship, but that was a lifetime ago.







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Finally, one upside to the utter lack of leadership in Washington was that the Fed finally sold new leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the first least sale since the BP disaster. Apparently Conoco-Philips was the heaviest investor for the 191 blocks covering 21,000,000 acres, scoring 75+ of the blocks for $157 million.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As one of the "Shitcanned" Employees with decades in the industry and a decade and a half With Seaboats, I can tell you this-We had No Knowledge of this before the "Sorry Guys, We Sold Out. Sorry about that. Get your Shit off the boats. K-Sea should hire you. Bye!"

The rumor around town was Vane was buying us, a position Adamantly denied by the "Office".

I figure Kirby offered more $$, $42.3 Million in CASH!! No Doubt more Nickles on hand than Vane has.

Our Equipment has already been observed to be in nicer condition than ANY existing K-Sea Equipment by the upper Management of K-Sea.

Physicals and Pre-Employment Training Completed, a number of us sit on the sidelines anticipating just how well the New "Shoe" Will Fit!