In order to maintain momentum on Cordage Institute standards, guidelines, and test methods during this time, online Technical Committee Meetings will be held on Wednesday, October 14^th and Thursday, October 15^th.

These meetings will tentatively be held between 10am and 1pm EDT on each day in consideration of the various time zones of CI Members, and actual meeting times will be confirmed based on how much time each Subcommittee and Task Group will need for their meetings.

Please mark your calendars for these meetings. Once meeting times are finalized, an invitation with information on joining the meetings will be sent to CI Members.

Please mark your calendar for the Cordage Institute’s Annual Conference and 100th Anniversary Celebration on May 18-20, 2021 at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

On June 3-4, 2020, the Cordage Institute held its first Virtual Technical Meeting. The two-day meeting consisted of Technical Subcommittee and Task Group meetings, as well as a meeting of the full Technical Committee.

Yale Cordage, a longstanding leader for synthetic rope and cable solutions, has been acquired and recapitalized by River Associates Investments LP, alongside Yale management. Tom Yale, Chief Executive Officer and second-generation owner, will be continuing on as a board member and shareholder while he transitions out of his role as CEO of Yale Cordage. Bill Putnam will continue as President with Drummond Boord as Vice President of Operations and Sam Cooper as Vice President of Sales.

“It was important to me to find a partner who appreciates the product creativity and applications innovation that lies behind the strong reputation we maintain with our customers and in the markets we serve. River Associates impressed us with their transparency, their unwavering intent to partner with the management team, and their decades of experience investing in owner-led businesses. This gave us confidence that they would respect and preserve the Yale legacy and add great value through our partnership,” said Tom Yale, CEO of Yale Cordage.

“Tom, Bill, and the rest of the Yale team immediately struck us as smart, ethical and hard working. We’ve found these character traits in the managers of all our best performing investments over the past 30+ years. Yale not only has an impressive history and respected name in the industry, but also tremendous potential for growth. We know that our partnership will be collaborative and steady in preserving the Yale legacy and respecting the team while also exploring a number of exciting growth avenues,” said Mike Brookshire, Managing Partner of River Associates.

River Associates was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Chattanooga Tennessee. It is a private investment firm focused exclusively on investing in superior performing, niche product manufacturing, founder-owned companies and has 30 years of experience in closely partnering with management teams. The partners and professionals at River Associates have diverse backgrounds including operations, finance, accounting, commercial banking and investment banking.

Bill Putnam, President of Yale added, “I look forward to a strong, growth-oriented relationship with River for years to come. We believe their broad experience will help us take Yale to the next level for the benefit of our employees, customers, and supplier partners.”

Dear Friends,

As the measures imposed by the pandemic COVID-19 are being eased across Europe, we need to address our “new life” with social distancing and all other necessary measures.

In respect to that, Eurocord has been actively pursuing the continuation of its activities through videoconferencing, with very positive support from all of you!

We thank you all for that and hope we can meet personally again in the near future.

We also recently had our first-ever General Assembly by videoconference, and I’m flattered by your confidence to continue as president of our Board for another year.

Let me assure you that the Board will continue to do its best to take Eurocord towards the future as we prepare for our next Conference in June 2021 in Vienna, Austria. We are working hard to make sure we’ll have a fantastic and unique Conference to remember for years to come.

Enjoy summer and have a wonderful holiday season!

Stay well and safe!

2020 is definitely developing as a strange year! For the first time in Eurocord’s history, we will have a General Assembly in “remote control”, thanks to the possibilities offered by Videoconferencing. And your numerous attendance is heartwarming. Admitted, we have some exceptional events to concur (approval of the prolongation of some of our Directors’ mandates with 1 year), and one might have the impression some parts of the world-economy fell to a standstill. Nevertheless, nothing is less true for our sector! Truly, we will all have faced logistical worries and cumbersome social organizations, but our business has all in all, resisted remarkably well to the awful effects of this pandemic. I remain extremely admirative towards the serenity and the ability to face adversity in all our members’ companies! Next year (June 6th to 9th 2021) we will have the opportunity to get together again in Vienna and I sense this will be a great event. Save the date right now.

In sailing, rock climbing, construction, and any activity requiring the securing of ropes, certain knots are known to be stronger than others. Any seasoned sailor knows, for instance, that one type of knot will secure a sheet to a headsail, while another is better for hitching a boat to a piling.

But what exactly makes one knot more stable than another has not been well-understood, until now.

MIT mathematicians and engineers have developed a mathematical model that predicts how stable a knot is, based on several key properties, including the number of crossings involved and the direction in which the rope segments twist as the knot is pulled tight.

The webinar was the third in Riviera Maritime Media’s Tankers and Terminals: Gas Carriers Webinar Week, part of an ongoing series of webinars.

The introduction of MEG4 to replace MEG3 guidelines has created confusion as shown in one of the polls in the webinar, where 55% of the attendees felt that transitioning existing ships to the new guidance was the biggest industrywide MEG4 challenge and 30% opted for understanding rope testing certification requirements. The remainder (15%) felt that mooring system condition monitoring created issues. Overall, a confused picture.

Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) technical adviser, nautical, Capt. Sanchay Srivastava sought to bring clarity by explaining the background to MEG4 and why it replaces MEG3. The change was due to an accident in 2015, when mooring lines were used to reposition an LNG carrier. The subsequent report highlighted fundamental issues regarding modern hi-tech mooring lines, their use in practice and the human issues surrounding their usage. This led to OCIMF forming a workgroup and updating the guidelines to MEG4.

You don’t need a vivid imagination to picture the dangers of a falling tool. A small 1” socket falling from a height of only 30 feet can cause great bodily injury, or even death, if it strikes someone.

Now picture that socket falling from a height of 300 feet. Clearly, anyone in its path is in serious danger – a scenario no one wants to imagine.

While many recognize the strong need for a profession-ally-designed tethered tool system for technicians working at height, there’s never been a true standard for industries to follow until recently. A new standard covering the use of tethering systems for retrofitted tools is providing technicians with some guidance for securing tools. Hopefully this movement will lead to the new guidance in the area of engineered attachment points on tools as well, as they provide a safer, more effective, and practical solution for working at height.