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  • Writer's pictureMare Greco

John Faraclas: ‘Chartering Manual’ makes a big splash


Photo courtesy of Hellenic Shipbrokers Association

This specialist shipbroking book is now the fifth volume* residing on my bedside table!

You all know how particular I become – and I am on many issues and in relation to the many books I read and then study – also for reviewing same with the allaboutshipping team and with other colleagues in the past.

Now this book could appear at no better time and serves both as a beacon of intelligence, having in-depth analysis and explanations of various issues for all practitioners and more importantly it should be the text-book so to speak in all maritime universities and academies for deck and engine cadets and officers; and needless to say how useful it is for students of law and ship finance. It’s the way and the simple shipbrokers “dialect” in which it is written also that counts for a lot – being in my past life a shipbroker I give the thumbs-up for this directness that governs its pages…

Going through these 400 pages, one by one, I found the book benefiting from a very consistent layout; a landmark book without any further question and one of the most useful to appear in a long time. Captain Nick Pentheroudakis and Thomas Pagonis have produced a manual that should be taken as a seminal text in every shipping school of business all over Planet Ocean. The advantage comes from the fact that both authors had a successful career with the international and Greek shipping community, which is perhaps the most challenging in the world, working in many capacities – owners' broker, charterers’ brokers, bank brokers and shipmanagers’ brokers. The advantages of seafaring are paramount here and Nick Pentheroudakis’s experience at sea comes into its own.

Good to see an important reference to the ship sales and purchase sector too.

The big thing here is that, unlike books written by legal people that are with all due respect complicated and understood by the few, this one is accessible and easily absorbed so to speak by a wide spectrum of those close to this key part of the global economy.

Shipbrokers are the best diplomats and certainly with all due respect, the Greeks are among those at the top of the tree… and this is clearly reflected in this superb reference work.

If The Prince by Machiavelli is the Bible of realpolitik, the Chartering Manual is the Bible for those who want to avoid many of shipping’s risks and achieve the right fixtures and earnings and smooth all payments without unnecessary disputes!

*The other four are: Plato’s Republic, the New Testament, Lily Zografos’s The Antignosis and The Venetian Mask by Marie Ghisi.


The book "Chartering Manual by Practitioners" is available here

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