Courtesy of The Christchurch Press

Casting off

Peter Montgomery, has invented a vacuum mooring system which makes hawsers redundant. He talks to Gerry Evans.

It is small wonder that alumnus Peter Montgomery’s new vacuum mooring system initially met some resistance from ship owners. His brilliant concept for mooring ships is now working successfully on the interisland ferry the Aratere, and on many other ships worldwide. But the idea is as revolutionary to the maritime industry as space travel would have been to the pilots of Tiger Moths. His system does away with mooring ropes, and the ship is held alongside by a powerful vacuum system.

Ship owners have always been conservative, especially the European ones. They resisted steamships. The Finns and the British had square-rigged sailing ships, which were sailing the seas carrying cargo long after other nations had changed to steam. It took the Second World War to convince them that ships could be built by welding instead of riveting. They thought a welded ship would break its back in heavy seas and would not stand up to Atlantic gales. During the Second World War, American liberty ships, often built in three days, were welded, and were still sailing the sea 20 years after the war ended.

Many ship owners also refused to fit radar to their ships until the sixties. They were convinced it would cause accidents by making officers neglect to keep a good lookout. Steel hatches and hydraulic hatches were also resisted, as was automatic steering, and any other labour saving device.

To understand just how revolutionary Montgomery’s invention is, you need to know how the present mooring system works. Ships are normally moored by sending heavy hawsers to the quayside, which are then secured to bits (or bollards) embedded on the wharf. The hawsers are mooring ropes. They are fixed to winches on board that heave the ship alongside the quay. It is a dangerous procedure because it places a great strain on the ropes, which sometimes part under the strain, dismembering crew members or mooring gangs handling the ropes on the quayside. When a nylon rope parts under strain it will slice through steel as though it wasn’t there.

The new system is a great saving in time for ship owners. Mooring a ferry, for example, can take up to 15 minutes, which, over the course of 24 hours of operation of a ferry, can amount to a several hours. The old system also requires all the deck crew and the deck officers to be present when the ship is moored - which breaks the sleep of those off watch.

Peter Montgomery’s invention has changed all of that: no ropes, no men, and no winches groaning as they tighten the lines. His system, initially marketed by his small Christchurch company, Mooring Systems, is changing work practices in ports throughout the world.

The impetus for the invention was an incident he witnessed when he was a deck officer in the 1980s. “I was in Melbourne on a Tasman Express Line cargo boat, discharging paper pulp,” he says. “We were shifting the ship to the dry-dock when one of the nylon mooring lines parted and killed an able seaman. It was a shocking moment. I still remember it vividly, and that was more than 25 years ago.

“He was a nice guy and hadn’t long been married. I wrote to his wife to express the feelings of all aboard the ship, and give our condolences. Then I started thinking that there must be a safer way of mooring ships. It has taken years of design and trial and error, but it is now up and running. We will continue to refine and improve the system but it has already made the mooring of ships a safe practice.”

All the same, Montgomery appreciates that it is a big investment to make. Typically, it will cost around $2 million, rather more than a set of mooring ropes. Those costs will be recouped over a period of years, with savings from greater safety, productivity and speed. However, Montgomery acknowledges that it is a big decision for a port operator or a shipping company to remove ropes and go to an unfamiliar vacuum system.

Before offering the system on the world market, Montgomery and his team first had to overcome an early hurdle: how to design around the different structures of wharves worldwide. That solved, he then started the hard slog of trying to convince multinational companies that the investment was worth their while. Frequently asked questions included whether the company would still be there in a year’s time, and whether Montgomery’s group could support the product from the other side of the world.

An impressive number were convinced. Clients now include Australia’s top shipper, the Patrick Corporation, which has two vacuum mooring systems, Britain’s Port of Dover and the St Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation. The Port of Salalah in Oman is testing a system.

In April last year the company signed a contract worth up to $45 million to supply the United States Navy with another of its products. Working with an American partner, Texas-based Oceaneering International, Montgomery’s team will develop mobile sea bases, to provide high capacity transfer of 20-foot containers between big ships at seas.

Toll New Zealand is using the mooring system for the ferry Kaitaki and it is also in use on the rail ferry Aratere. Wellington Harbourmaster Captain Mike Pryce is convinced of its value and admires its ingenuity. “One item of equipment which has been working well are the ‘iron sailors’. There are four units, all fitted on the port side, and grouped together in twos. Each unit consists of two square-section rubber pads. Which, when gun port doors in the ship’s side are hydraulically lifted inwards and upwards, extend outwards through the opening and make contact with steel plates specially fitted to the wharf. These plates are supported by wires and pulleys and can move vertically over a limited distance.

“When contact is made, a vacuum is mechanically produced, ‘sticking’ the ship to the wharf. It is all done solely from the bridge, with the Master merely pushing a button marked ‘moor’ to extend the pads, and ‘unmoor’ to retract them. That is amazing!

“It usually takes a few minutes for anyone seeing the system in use for the first time to realise what is different about the berthed ship – there are no mooring lines out. And at sailing time, there’s no early warning of departure, which used to be given by linesmen in high-visibility jerkins who made their way up to the bollards and stood by to let go. Now the only indication is a burst of smoke from both funnels as she suddenly pulls away from the wharf.”

Peter Montgomery is well equipped to make a success of a maritime-based world business. He learnt his craft on New Zealand ships, sailing as a cadet on Union Steamship vessels and is a qualified Master Mariner. He also has a Masterate in Business Administration, graduating from Massey in 1995.

In early February his company officially become part of an international group, merging with the Netherlands-based Cavotec Group to form Cavotec MSL Holdings. Cavotec MSL Holdings will be 80 percent owned by 65 shareholders of Cavotec, with New Zealand shareholders holding 20 percent.

Cavotec companies have customers in 30 countries, and seven manufacturing plants in Canada, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Australia, and Germany. Cavotec have predicted the mooring system will be worth billions and its new chairman, Stefan Widergren, is confident that what are now called MoorMaster products are increasingly gaining recognition as a state-of-the-art mooring system for ferries, roll-on-roll-off-vessels and container ships.

For Montgomery the merger also brings much needed organisational and financial support.

He remains in charge of the bridge in the local company, renamed Cavotec Moon, as a subsidiary of Cavotec MSL Holdings, and will be one of three local directors on an eight-man board.

In the meantime he is already a hero to New Zealand shareholders who have seen the value of their shares increase nine-fold over the last six years. He took the trouble to ring more than 300 of those shareholders during the merger negotiations to explain why it was a good move.

Montgomery describes his work as “not a job but a way of life” and he is already planning future projects: His goal is to create a stable of about seven innovative MoorMaster products.