The order for the entry of ships from Malamocco to Marghera has been signed: stop to the three tugs and reduced speed

VENICE. Wind limits halved for entry into the Malamocco harbor entrance, and a first cruise ship immediately jumps. These are the first effects of the new ordinance issued yesterday by the Port Authority of Venice.

Long awaited, until today there was no document regulating the access of cruise ships to the Petroli canal. This measure is all the more urgent especially after the government’s decision in July to remove the large ships from San Marco and Marittima and move them to Porto Marghera, pending the definitive offshore solution. Among the most important innovations, the forecast of more stringent wind limits for navigation along the Malamocco-Marghera canal, which until now has been crossed by merchant ships and cruises only in the days of Redentore.

Wind and weather conditions were among the points to be investigated for the port system authority, which is why a study was recently commissioned to a Danish institute to underestimate the risk of navigation in favorable weather conditions. Another issue to be resolved concerns the enlargement of the Petroli canal. The fact is that if until today along the Petroli canal and in the Giudecca canal the wind limit for the entry of ships was 30 knots, the new ordinance provides for a limit of 15 knots for ships of tonnage greater than or equal to 75. thousand tons. The limit rises to 20 knots with ships between 60 and 75 thousand tons, to 25 knots with ships between 45 and 60 thousand tons, and to 30 knots with ships under 45 thousand tons.

Precisely as a result of the new ordinance (but also of weather conditions that for days had already been giving bad forecasts), for today the docking of the Eurodam ship of the Holland America company has been canceled. It is an 82,000-ton cruise, 285 meters long, with fewer than a thousand passengers on board. Its landing was foreseen in the Vecon quay. Due to the wind, however, the ship will set sail for Trieste.

The due article of the ordinance also provides for speed limits of ten knots for navigation from the harbor entrance to the traverse of the mouth of the Cunetta canal, near Fusina; six knots, on the other hand, from Fusina to the mooring. On the other hand, there were five knots of speed allowed for the entry of cruise ships into the mouth of the port of San Nicolò and for the passage in the San Marco basin and along the Giudecca canal.

In the presence of particular weather conditions such as to compromise safety, the captain of the ship will be able to adapt the speed to the ship’s steering. Another novelty concerns the use of tugs. There will have to be two, forward and aft, to escort the cruise entrance to the port.

Therefore, the obligation of the three tugs present for the entrances in the Lido port mouth falls, an obligation foreseen after the accident of the MSC Opera which in June 2019 crashed into the San Basilio quay. In detail, for ships over 75,000 tons, the two tugs have a power of 80 Bp (bollard pull in tons) for the bow and 90 for the stern, 50 for both with ships between 45,000 and 75,000 tons, 30 and 50 Bp, finally, for ships under 45,000 tons.