The Holiday Season

Today's blog is courtesy of the gentle proddings with a not so sharp stick from an old friend. Thanks Mike!!



With the holiday season rapidly approaching, the impending disappearance of key people is having its usual unnerving effect. Can you get that contract signed in time, do you really have to mobilise the vessel on Christmas day, where will I get the charts from? All the usual small things that make owners lives miserable at this time of year, and even more so for the operations staff.



There is also the customary flurry of activity as people try to clear their desks before they fly off to home or the beach. The down side of all this activity packed into a short period of time, is the realisation that if your boat is not fixed in the next few days, there's a very real possibility that it will be in the same place until mid January. Not much fun for already beleaguered owners.



But enough Christmas cheer.



It seems that some large International owners must have been taking note of my favourite subject. Yes of course, scrapping. There have been various reports of 1970's tonnage beginning to head to the breakers, and others, of some even quite late built tonnage being laid up.



It was only a matter of time, especially as it has become almost impossible to finance these old vessels by what willing buyers there are out there.



This is a good start, but the trickle needs to turn into a torrent to really have an impact on the woeful day rates out there.



We don't have the advantage of the predictive abilities of the Mayan peoples here at the shophouse, or the long count calender (a reference to the movie 2012 in case you're not a disaster movie fan), but we do sense a certain optimism creeping in for Q3 onwards next year.



This could be real, or it could simply be the resilient souls of the oil patch taking an optimistic view, but whichever it is, it can't come soon enough.



Working on the basis that this is more than likely to be the last of our irregular postings for 2009, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all 6 of our readers a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New year.

I'll try harder next year.