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chengkp75

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    Retired to Maine
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    Former cruise ship Chief Engineer

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  1. At double occupancy typically the cruise fares cover all the overhead. Onboard spending provides the profits
  2. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, further down the bay, that ships would also have to pass under, is only 186 feet high, or the same as the Key bridge, so raising the Key bridge would do nothing.
  3. The Patapsco river at the point where the Key bridge is, is 1.6 miles wide, whereas the Whitman bridge's longest span is 2000 feet. Since the Key bridge's longest span (what collapsed) is only 1200 feet, that means there are 1.4 miles of pilings in the river supporting the bridge spans between the shipping channel and shore. And, in fact, the clearance below the main span of the Key bridge is 185 feet, while the clearance under the Whitman bridge is only 150 feet. While the Whitman bridges total length of 2.2 miles is longer than the Key bridge, as noted, all but 2000 feet is over land, while all of the Key bridges 1.6 miles is over water. While there are suspension bridges that have spans much greater than either the Key or Whitman bridges, the problem comes with whether the land under where you want to place the support piers can withstand the weight and suspension forces of the bridge. Chesapeake Bay is alluvial, and I'm not sure how far down bedrock is, that would be needed to support a bridge with over a mile of span.
  4. Let's see, first we have to tear up the dock to reinforce it to carry the weight of these cranes, and add the rail tracks they roll on (in the mean time tearing down the passenger terminal to run the rails and have space to run the cranes up and down the dock). Then you need specialist cranes to dismantle these cranes where they are (and I don't know of any just laying around spare and unused), transport them by water (so that means the idled Baltimore cranes can't be used since the channel is blocked), and then have the specialist cranes reassemble them at the new dock. Might be done in 1-2 years.
  5. The vast majority of container ships are not self-unloading, meaning they have no cranes onboard, and rely on shore cranes to load/unload. Haven't seen too many container cranes around passenger terminals. Seen anything like this around passenger terminals?:
  6. Yes, all of these container ships will be lining up to dock at a passenger terminal to unload their containers down the boarding ramps, and store the containers in the baggage area of the terminal.
  7. That would be a question for the USCG Captain of the Port, Baltimore, who sets those requirements.
  8. Until the channel is 100% cleared of debris by the Corps of Engineers, no ship will traverse it, but once clear, there will be no limitation on number of ships.
  9. As I said, Synergy is the operator, so their P&I insurance will need to cover the expenses of the bridge repair. I have to apologize that I'm not answering in full, I'm getting the run-around from the power company about our loss of power Saturday night in the ice storm up here, and still no power, and a blocked driveway.
  10. Just looked at a few posts here, been mainly on 4 other threads, mainly concentrating on the RCI forum. Maersk is the charterer, but this was not a "bareboat charter" to Maersk, where Maersk would have supplied the crew and taken control of all operations of the ship. Instead Maersk merely chartered the ship from Synergy Marine merely to carry cargo for Maersk, so Synergy is responsible if they have bareboat chartered the ship from the owner Grace Ocean.
  11. Cruise fares basically cover the overhead. Onboard spending gives the profit.
  12. Not sure about her "vintage" as she is only 9 years old. All ships are required to have two steering systems in order to provide redundancy. They are identical electro-hydraulic systems, one powered from the main switchboard, and one powered from the emergency switchboard. The emergency switchboard is powered from the main switchboard under normal conditions, but when the main switchboard goes black, the emergency switchboard will disconnect, the emergency generator will start, and provide power to all the emergency circuits, including the one steering motor. A hydraulic accumulator that would be large enough to move a rudder on a ship of that size (medium-large) for anything more than a few moments would be the size of a couple of the shipping containers it has on deck.
  13. While the MDOT maintains the bridge, and will be responsible for the rebuilding, the US Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for the shipping channel under the Key bridge, so they will be the lead agency involved in clearing the wreckage.
  14. And, I saw my first knowledge of this incident at 0530 Eastern, and found out at that time that there were only 8 potential casualties.
  15. There was likely no questions about the ship's generators. A fuel pump can seize on an engine at any time (especially when the load changes from what the engine has been experiencing for a while (like going from just hotel load in port to using thrusters). A seized fuel pump can drag the plant down to blackout, even with another generator online, as there would be while under pilot's orders.
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