The SAAF Forum

SA Agulhas(1) This maybe the subject of another thread, but I have seen SA Agulhas(1) tied up at the berth that "Smit Amandla" normally occupies next to the Elliot Basin in Cape Town for the last few days on the way home from Paarden Island.
I dont ever recall seeing her there at that pier before. Maybe she is de storing Smits gear etc?
My question is she also going round to Simons Town to the SAN before her disposal or has her future been decided? I hope not to the beaches of Alang

Up at dawn for the Easter sunrise over False Bay…all the Fisheries Protection Vessels in Harbour this Sunday morning.

Will the Agulhas II also be managed by the SAN together with the DAFF's Fisheries boats?
Besides Agulhas, what other large boats and ships does Environmental Affairs have?

There is a perfect opportunity here to combine the maritime assets of two different government departments into a single flotilla - which should trim the overheads and management workload substantially.
If this "trend" is brought to its logical conclusion with other state departments boats also joining in we will end up with a "Navy Auxilliary" type of Coast Guard organisation. But politicians can usually be relied on to not do the logical thing.

I bet you that the Environmental vessels will be transfered to the navy and become the start of our IPV/OPV fleet. They just need to be painted grey and have a few low cal. weapons fitted. Watch this space...

My 5c...

Can't see the Ellen Khuzwayo there - she's a peculiar looking little vessel. Didn't she make it into harbor on time?

Just want to correct a bit of mixed up information here: The Sarah Baartman and the three Lillian Ngoyi class boats do not belong to the Department of Environmental Affairs. (DEA not DEAT - Tourism was split off as a separate department some time ago.) They belong to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF). They also own the "Marine Research" ships seen in the pics above but unfortunately their website pages about vessels are "under construction" - http://www.nda.agric.za/doaDev/fisheries/index.html

The DEA owns SA Agulhas and the soon to arrive SA Agulhas II - do they own any other ships or "significant" boats?

@ Rodger the Doger: Correct

I don't however see the navy running the fisheries reasearch trawlers though. Would be strange seeing navy personal running a fish trawler.

BTW, I see what looks like two "Strikecraft" in the water. There was only one in the water during the navy festival.

What are the two boats on the other side of the pier from the Ngoyi class boats?

Nevermind - they are the River class minehunters.

According to http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?o ... &Itemid=30 the Fisheries ships are currently being "audited" by the Navy before they start operating them.

There are 2 strike craft in the water but only one is commissioned (both are operational). A lot of the crew for the DAFF boats come from the strike crafts. Since they have 3 crews but only 2 boats in commission. The research boats will be manned by the Navy for now. I will say the accommodation on board them is great. Puts the frigates to shame.

One of the reasons the personnel retention is better in the merchant marine than the navy.

As I understand it the navy is merely going to run these vessels on behalf of whatever department they belong to and they will not actually become commissioned naval vessels. Things a little unclear here and the various press releases have only muddied the waters.

The sailors will be Navy but the people counting the krill and measuring the snoek will be from DAFF's Fisheries Research department.

Has far has I know we have to commission them to sail them. Something about SAMSA tickets that we do not have. But we will just be a taxi. I am not a fisherman

That's really interesting.

It also makes sense. SAMSA regulates safety issues to do with (amongst other things) the manning of merchant vessels in SA. From what sob says, if the SAN wanted to operate these as civilian vessels, our SAN crews would have to have SAMSA certification... which they don't, so we will have to operate them as naval vessels.

This raises two issues:

1. To operate these as naval vessels, do we really have to commission them as South African Ships? Clearly they don't have to be grey to be SAS (compare the Protea). But can't we just commission them with a pennant number (e.g. P123, A123 or whatever) rather than calling them all SAS Ellen Khuzwayo and so-on? For instance, before the T-Craft were commissioned as SAS Tobie and Tern and Theotherone, they just had pennant numbers and no names; likewise the crash boats. I'm scared that if we styled them all "SAS", we would de-value what it is to be a commissioned naval vessel. May just be nit-picking on my part, but I'm of the old school that thinks tradition and ceremonial and all that really means something.

2. Why can't we get to a situation where SAN personnel are SAMSA certified or can obtain such certification? On the bridge-watchkeeping side, the normal route to SAMSA certification is an HND course (at the old Cape or Durban Tech), plus sea-time and an examination, but one could negotiate exemptions for the courses that the navy people do at MWS and at the Military Academy. And an exemption already exists for holders of a naval bridge watchkeeping certificate to operate tugs and pilot boats in coastal waters. I think the Navy's fear would be that, were our BWC holders automatically SAMSA certified, they would all leave the navy and join Safmarine or Portnet (just like the SAAF loses pilots to SAA)! To counter that, the exemption can be something like that which exists for Royal Navy officers to become certified with the UK Maritime and Coast Guard Authority (UK's SAMSA): someone who has held a BWC in the rank of lieutenant for five years can have their experience and qualifications reviewed by the MCA to determine what more they need to do to get an MCA ticket. If we did the same in South Africa, we could make sure that our bridge watchkeepers give us something like 8 yrs service (3 as a subbie and 5 as a lieutenant or above) before they exit and go work in civvie street. The bulk of the watchkeepers we need are at lieutenant and lieutenant commander level, after that there is a natural drop-off anyway as not everyone can go on to commander and a job as OC. So why not create a natural route whereby people can exit at lt cdr and go over to the merchant navy... or to what may be the new coast guard!

Sob, do you think you can tell us what the ranks are of the OC's of all the DEA and DAFF vessels?

You don't have to tell us their names, but I'd be really interested to see what their ranks are.