QE2 Reflagged

[Andrew McAlpine]

There was a report this evening on BBC news that the QE2 has been re flagged in preparation for her sailing to South Africa to act as a floating hotel for the world cup.

She will now fly a flag on convenience namely Port Vila, which is on the south pacific island of Vanuatu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VanuatuMapExCIA.jpg

Port Vila is the home port for vessels under this flag and it is likely this flag was chosen as it is one of the few flags that would be happy to register a 40 year old vessel, usually the limit is 20 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/8225638.stm


Regards
Andrew  :-(

[Mark davies]

Andrew, there is no age limit on flagging a vessel. There are age limits  for  trading tankers As long as she can pass her Flag State surveys she can go on and on.

[Arnes]

Yes Smoggy, there is an age limit, as Andrew point out. Not many registers are willing to accept a vessel more than 20 years to enter their registry, even if all certificates are OK and all surveys has been passed.
But in one way you are right; if a vessel already are within a registry, she can stay as long as she passes her Flag State surveys, even if she reaches 30 or 40 years of age, or even more.

Regards, Arnes

[Phil Tate]

No Arnes, you are wrong.

The is no age limit, as long as the vessel passes the inspection then it will be accepted. There may be cases where individual countries have a policy of not accepting vessels over 20 years of age, but that is no the norm.

Vessel are reflagged every day, many of them well over 20 years of age.

[Arnes]

No, I am not wrong at all.

I am well aware that reflagging happens every day, even with old vessels.

What I pointed out was that there is not all registers, which still accept ships of more than 20 years of age, even if all inspections are passed.
My company tried flags like Malta, Cyprus, Panama and Bahamas without success. Even with class in DNV, all certificates OK and all inspections passed, there was no use in trying. "Sorry, your vessels are too old for our registers", was the answer we got.
So we ended up with Barbados-flag.
Also we could try Comores, Cook Islands, Mongolia, North Korea, Georgia etc. etc., countries like this has no age limit.
So I know for sure that many registers operate with an "age-limit"

Regards Arnes

[Christian Br]

But then this is the policy of the different flag states, as you pointed out Arnes.
There is no international legislation saying that they should not allow vessels over a surtain age.

[Phil Tate]

Well perhaps if you had gone to reputable flag states then you might have got the vessels flagged. Countries like Canada, USA, UK etc etc all accept ships older than 20 years old, maybe because they have much stricter regulations than the flag states you mentioned above.