Winter laying up services from t.ward shipping

The North Sea isn’t the most hospitable of oceans at the best of times but when winter hits it can be really difficult for many vessels to get anything done. Faced with the dilemma of carrying on through adverse conditions or just giving it a break over the colder months and starting again when things get easier, many shipping companies and owners take the pragmatic decision to lay up their vessels for the winter and leave them to be looked after by experts.

It’s actually extremely common in the oil and gas industry for ships to seek refuge in a port over the months of December and January, especially in the North Sea – and so laying up can be a cost-effective way of looking after your assets.

‘Laying up’ is a term that just means your vessel is neither being actively used nor repaired, and there are two types of lay-up – hot and cold.

A Hot Lay-up involves keeping the ship anchored and with a very small crew. If you keep your vessel in hot lay-up, you’ll also keep some of the generators or other machinery ticking over too, and this is one of the favoured ways to lay up a ship temporarily as it’s a short term measure which is easily reversed. Once you decide to get the ship back out onto the ocean again, it’s normally a fairly swift and easy procedure which means you don’t lose money from having it inactive any longer than necessary.

A Cold Lay-up is a full shut down of the vessel. You won’t leave a crew on board or any machinery running while it’s laid up in port, and you’ll need a secure place to lay it up as there’ll be nobody on board. If you choose to lay your ship up for a longer period of time, and/or shut it down completely, it can take a while to get the ship running again, but with help from experts you can get it operational as quickly as possible.

If you decide that you want to lay your vessel up over the winter, t.ward can offer a long or short term laying up service for any of its East Coast Scottish Ports -particularly Leith. We are more than happy to assist you and your crew with the process of dry docking to make the process go as smoothly and as efficiently as possible, and we would be delighted to advise you about any anchorage and layup services you require.

Edinburgh Charity Helps Syrian Refugees

The plight of the Syrian refugees has touched the hearts of many of people, and here at t. ward shipping we were glad to be able to do our bit to help this worthy cause in September. Local charity Edinburgh Direct Aid – a small voluntary international charity - wanted to ship a container to Beirut for the refugees, and we were delighted to help them. We loaded the 40 foot container ready to be shipped to where it’s needed at the end of September.

"I've not seen piles like this since Kosovo," says EDA founder Denis Rutovitz of the current stock of donated aid.

The shipment contains winter clothing and supplies desperately needed by the refugees. By the time it was ready to ship on 23 September, the charity reported that it had been almost completely filled with supplies donated by the generous people of Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Direct Aid has been carrying out valuable work in Arsal, a small town in the Lebanon that’s close to the Bekaa Valley and the Syrian border. Tensions are very high in the area at the moment because Islamic State is close to the town, even though it’s protected by Lebanese military checkpoints. It’s estimated that Syrian refugees outnumber local residents of the town by three to one, and the situation is becoming critical.



Found this little chap among the donations today - we think he'll make a small somebody, somewhere, very happy

Many children have no access to education in the area, so the charity is trying to support residents and refugees, by expanding refugee access to education in informal Syrian schools. To stop the town’s young adults being driven towards joining Islamic State, the charity is also setting up seven vocational training courses for young Syrians with 30 per cent of the intake being set aside for young Lebanese who also need help. Special workshops are also being set up just for women in the camps to complement some of the vocational training subjects on offer.

It’s hoped that by supporting and helping people in the camps, it will stop them from making the perilous journeys across Europe that have proved so dangerous recently. The charity says; “We do what we can with our very limited funding to offer some hope and opportunity for the 80,000 in this appalling situation. Maybe this will make some of them think twice about making a desperate journey to Europe, a journey they may not survive.”

For more information on the work of Edinburgh Direct Aid, go to their website at:
http://www.edinburghdirectaid.org