Business relationships between the Martinos and Vafias families have deepened, with the two sides agreeing a long-term chartering deal between them for yet another aframax tanker.
Both sides confirm Ioannis Martinos’ Signal Maritime has fixed Stealth Maritime’s 116,300-dwt aframax Sea Hymn (built 2011) on a bareboat charter deal.
The ship is now trading in Signal’s fleet as the Signal Alpha.
“We enjoy an excellent relationship with Signal and Thenamaris [another Martinos firm] and that’s why five of our managed aframaxes have been fixed to them recently,” Stealth Maritime chief executive Lambros Babilis told TradeWinds.
Both Babilis and a Signal manager, however, decline to reveal any details on the charter’s duration or rate.
In late March, TradeWinds reported that Stealth had chartered out three aframaxes to Signal — the 105,000-dwt Signal Puma (built 2005) until 2020, the 113,000-dwt Signal Cheetah (built 2009) until March 2018 and the 113,000-dwt Seadelta (built 2009) until January 2018.
Four months later, the cooperation expanded to include a fourth aframax, the newly built 113,600-dwt Signal Maya (built 2017), which Signal fixed at undisclosed terms.
Signal is a spin-off from Thenamaris. It was set up three years ago with the aim to combine traditional shipmanagement practices with advanced digital analytics.
Signal usually outsources safety, quality and technical management to Thenamaris, including Stealth accounts for five of the eight ships that Signal is managing. The rest of Signal’s fleet includes two product tankers and a panamax bulker.
