Podcast #26: Heading for change – Safe Mooring
This month we focus on improving the safety of mooring operations together with Almos Boldizsar and Veronika Aspelund. Between them, they give us plenty of useful information about rope selection and maintenance, research and design developments, and upcoming regulatory changes.
Mooring operations are one of the most routine but dangerous tasks for those both onboard the ship and quayside. To gain insight from two different perspectives, we discuss the topic with a marine surveyor and a rope manufacturer, giving a broader view of where we are at present and where we are heading in the future.
Almos Boldizsar is a former deck officer with plenty of first-hand mooring experience, who has come ashore into the role of Marine Surveyor at Van Ameyde Marine in Rotterdam, where he is now involved in condition surveys and investigates various mooring-related incidents. He is passionate about safety awareness and about creating open human connections.
Veronika Aspelund has 18 years of experience in shipping, beginning her journey at Norwegian ropes manufacturer Timm, where she gained industrial-related skills ranging from sales, marketing, operations, and business development. When Wilhelmsen acquired Timm in 2015, she was put in charge of managing the mooring ropes product portfolio, and now in her present role as Ropes Business Director for Wilhelmsen Ships Service, Veronika is instrumental in the ongoing development of safer and sustainable rope solutions.
If you want to know about rope selection and maintenance, research and design developments, and upcoming regulatory changes, then have a listen!
0:00 Introduction
0:46 About Veronika Aspelund
3:09 About Almos Boldizsar
4:40 What are the biggest hurdles we face in improving the safety of mooring operations?
12:33 Choosing the right lines and maintaining them
19:18 Retiring and recycling lines
24:35 The upcoming amendments to SOLAS
29:45 Research & design: future developments and solutions
36:28 Snap-back zones
