Is it any wonder that all those folks in Hawaii hate the Jones Act, when Matson does this, year after year after year?  Read their announcement here.  The additional revenue is described as it is every year as being required partly to cover increased operating costs and partly to pay for investment in new capital assets, such as ships.  November 25, 2013.

VT Halter Marine has delivered the first of four Ambassador Mk. III Fast Missile Craft to the Egyptian Navy.  Read the report in Defense News here.  The ENS S. Ezzat, is a 600-ton, 200-foot boat that does comfortably over 40 knots and carries an awesome range of weaponry, including eight Harpoon missiles.  We could use a few of these in the U.S. Navy, maybe.  Would they not be much more cost-effective in coastal waters than either design of LCS?  And we ought to be selling them worldwide as well.  Halter could ramp up its assembly line to, say, six boats a year, all of standard design for optimum efficiency, and then the Navy could arrange for any mods required by the end users.  November 20, 2013.

Our ineffable Maritime Administration is planning to contribute $900,000 of the taxpayers' money toward the cost of converting the Horizon Spirit to LNG-fuelled propulsion.  Read the announcement here.  It's not a bad idea in principle, you understand, but why pick a 33-year-old ship that started life as a LASH barge carrier, and not a modern ship?  And is this ship not going to be converted in China?  We're going to give Horizon $900k to spend in a shipyard in China?  Has nobody at MARAD read the opening clause of the Merchant Marine Act lately?  November 7, 2013, revised November 8.

Matson Navigation has signed with Aker Philadelphia for two 3600-teu containerships.  The contract price is $418 million for the pair, with deliveries in, would you believe it, the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2018.  No rush, apparently.  Read Matson's announcement here and Aker's here.  Not much about the design in either release, except for the now standard stuff about being LNG-ready.  I assume that Aker's design is a Korean design that's been tweaked to meet Matson's requirements.  We will learn more later, no doubt.  Good for Aker, anyway.  Good for Matson too: at least they're moving in the right direction, however slowly.  November 7, 2013.

P.S.:  When I said "No rush", I was referring to Matson.  I realize that these deliveries are driven by Aker's backlog of tankers.  Matson could have got earlier deliveries from any of the other bidders.  Price, design and other factors were apparently more important to them than schedule, and one can conclude, therefore, that they are in no rush.  November 8, 2013.

There are, in fact, four barges - BAL0001, BAL0010, BAL0011 and BAL0100.  Note the binary structure of the four numbers: how cute!  They are owned by a company registered in Wilmington DE, called By and Large, Inc.: BAL - get it?  They are 250-foot heavy-duty deck barges built in the past two years by C. & C. Marine & Repair, in Belle Chasse LA.  They were originally named CIB 721 thru 724 and owned by CIBCO Barge, a company run by Tony Cibilich which charters out barges built by C. & C.: they have at least two more of this size.  November 6, 2013.

The Jones Act is 93 years old and appears to be immune to attempts to modify it.  But what's the strategic argument for it today?  Could it be improved?  What would Adam Smith say?  We've made lots of modifications to the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, some positive (Nixon, Clinton), some horrendously negative (Reagan).  Why not the Jones Act?  November 2, 2013.

The more one thinks about this idea of a conference to develop a National Maritime Strategy, the more discouraged one gets.  It will be a joke and nothing will come of it.  There are so many aspects of the problem, so many vested interests, so many obstinately entrenched positions, so few people who are genuinely open-minded.  Maybe the conference should focus on defining a series of tasks for a limited number of small working groups.  Or maybe it should just turn the whole challenge over to the Marine Board and reschedule the conference as a review of what they come up with.  November 1, 2013.