«It is incredible that in 2024 in the port of Naples and in the maritime compartment of Campania, fast vessels and ferries still moor in the windrow, as Nero’s helmsman did two thousand years ago. In the end it is always and only the poor commander who pays.” Raffaele Aielloa life spent between command bridges and important desks first as armament commander of Tirrenia and then CEO of Snavsays that it is profoundly unfair to place the responsibility solely on a man who has to steer a vehicle at the mercy of gusts of wind, with antiquated maneuvers and without ground infrastructure.
«More than a year ago – underlines Commander Aiello – I suggested to the Port System Authority to position piers perpendicular to the Beverello quay to make moorings safer and also faster. They are docking solutions used for years in Northern European ports.” Today at Beverello mooring is practiced in the swath, and vehicles that do not come alongside the quay, such as the “Isola di Procida”, involved in the collision on Friday morning, are forced to drop the anchor at the bow and move backwards in reverse to place the stern to the dock. A slow and dangerous maneuver as we have seen.
In practice the only fixed point, before attaching the stern lines to the cleats, is the anchor which does not prevent drifting in case of wind. Of course you can balance it with the engines, but if the gust is sudden everything becomes more difficult. Two investigations have been opened into collusion, one by the Prosecutor’s Office and the other by the Port Authority and there could be developments in the coming days. «With the comb piers – he underlines the commander Aiello – everything is safer because the vehicle sits alongside the piers. It is even conceivable to use rubber rollers capable of holding the vehicle without even using the ropes.
And that’s not enough. With the piers on both sides, disembarkation and embarkation operations would also be speeded up. While on one side we proceed with disembarkation, on the other we could already be embarking. The shipowners had presented their own project for the Beverello and would have implemented it with their own funds. That project also included comb piers for safe mooring. The path of the public project was chosen. That’s fine, but we need to intervene, and quickly, also on the moorings.”
It must also be said that, several times, the president of the Port Authority, Andrea Annunziata, reiterated the desire to intervene with new infrastructures also on the Beverello quay. The comb piers solution seems to be the most suitable to solve the problems. Shipowners should then take a further step forward by standardizing the type and size of vehicles used on fast lines. Providing moorings for catamarans, for example, is different if single hulls are used.
Today the range of vehicles used is very vast: it ranges from catamarans that moor alongside, to single-hull boats that have doors at the stern and also vehicles that dock at the bow, entrusting stability to the motion of the propellers to remain stationary. An approval of the vehicles would also facilitate maneuvers in the ports along the coast.
