Trabzon Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement for the Eastern Black Sea Trade

Inspection services for ships at Trabzon

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Where gauging happens at Trabzon

At the commercial port, ships are gauged alongside during cargo stays. General cargo ships give access to holds as they are emptied, hatch covers can be measured on the deck, and ballast tanks that the crew have emptied and ventilated can be entered once the master issues the permit. Container feeders stay for a shorter time, so we concentrate on a defined list: a few tanks, the ballast and fire main piping, or deck areas near the hatch corners. Terminal security and access passes are arranged through the ship's agent.

Ships at anchor are reached by launch, with the usual dependence on sea state. Work is ordered so that the most valuable items are measured first, and any remainder is carried over to the next call or to a yard. For smaller craft built or repaired at boatyards along the coast, gauging can be done on a slip or at a repair quay, where hull plating is accessible from below and the structure can be measured with the vessel out of the water. Larger merchant ships usually dock elsewhere, and their readings from Trabzon support the steel estimate.

• Trabzon port general cargo berths — hold, hatch cover and coaming gauging on coasters and multipurpose ships during cargo work
• Container terminal berths — short-window tank, piping and deck gauging on feeder ships between rotations
• Anchorage off the port — deck and ballast tank readings on ships waiting for berths or weather, by launch through the agent
• Small-yard slipways along the coast — hull plating checks on fishing vessels, tugs and workboats hauled out for repair
• Pre-docking readings for a yard in the Marmara — an organised steel scope delivered to the superintendent before the voyage west

Port state control and transit trade on the eastern Black Sea

Turkey participates in both the Black Sea MoU and the Mediterranean MoU on port state control, and ship safety and ports are administered by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure through its harbour masters. Small general cargo ships and coasters are inspected often, and structural findings such as wasted hatch covers, corroded coamings and holed ventilators are among the commonest. A deficiency found at Trabzon is typically a prompt for an owner to commission gauging of the nearby steel before the next inspection.

Trade through Trabzon depends on the border crossings and political conditions of the wider Caucasus and Central Asian region, so volumes and schedules can change quickly. The Black Sea lies outside the emission control areas, so ships here follow the global fuel limit, with the Mediterranean ECA only entering the picture for vessels heading west through the Marmara. Ships that go on to EU ports need a valid Inventory of Hazardous Materials and report under EU ETS, but those rules mainly affect paperwork and docking decisions rather than the gauging method.

Wherever a ship is outside a sulphur emission control area, the global 0.50% sulphur cap applies, and many of the ships calling at Trabzon meet it with an exhaust gas cleaning system rather than compliant fuel. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it corrode quickly in service, especially on open-loop systems, and are worth adding to the gauging scope.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Trabzon

A gauging job at Trabzon runs the same way whatever the ship type. The sequence below is what the superintendent, the attending surveyor and the yard can expect from us.

Trabzon has its own airport with domestic connections, and the team usually travels via Istanbul, though Ankara is another connecting point. From the airport the port is a short road journey. The agent arranges terminal passes, safety briefings and launches for the anchorage, with crew lists and certificates sent ahead. Indian passport holders need a Turkish visa, so we begin the application once a call is likely and keep the validity wide enough to cover weather holds and changes to the ship's schedule.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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