chengkp75

The same thing as has happened now. She would have stopped to evaluate the damage, and then proceed on one azipod. 95% of ships only have one propeller, and cross the ocean every day.

Yes. They may have locked it while the ship was stationary, and are now proceeding with it in "trail". Not sure how well they would do with it operating while directionally locked, and using the other pod for steering, so they may need to think about removing the blades on the locked pod to reduce drag while they get the parts to repair the azimuthing system. But, yes, repairs to the azimuthing system could all be done while in service (mostly in port, where the slipstream does not want to swing the pod around while they are working on it).

That would be a USCG investigation, who may or may not call in the NTSB for assistance. Also, the class society will do their own investigation on behalf of the flag state.

Just so everyone knows, I don't do notifications. Been reading the thread, so I'll give some long distance diagnosis. There are two systems in an azipod; the propulsion system (motor and propeller) and the steering system (the small motor and gears that rotate the entire pod around so the propeller faces in different directions). From the description given, it sounds like the steering on the starboard pod has failed. When one pod is "tracking" (following the course), and one is veering side to side, this will cause vibrations. Even with the starboard pod stopped, if it is not locked facing directly aft, there will be vibrations from the other pod, and this may or may not change with the ship's speed (as Jimbo noted, vibration eased at higher speed). Depending on what broke, will determine what can be done, and how long it will take. Frankly, I don't see this steering problem as requiring a dry dock, as the azimuthing system is inside the ship. Also depending on what broke will determine if they can lock the pod facing aft to proceed onward, maybe doing cruises at slow speed on one pod. Many countries, including the US, will require a tug escort for an azipod equipped ship that only has one pod working, as there is no redundancy in steering anymore. This is one of the problems with pods, you are combining propulsion and steering into one unit, and if the propulsion part fails, the steering part is a failure as well, since rotating a dead pod around does nothing for steering the ship.

But, this incident involved the absolute corner of the ship, which means it struck in a very narrow spot, so even if the fenders went down to the bottom of the pier, the ship could have very easily struck between the fender on the corner of the dock, and the next set of fenders along the dock, about 6-8 feet apart, and the result would have been the same. Striking just off the fender, on the end face of the dock would produce the same result, the fenders here are even further apart. Unless you are going to cover the entire pier with rubber, there is always a chance of striking concrete. And, while the "terminal" was built for Virgin, the pier has been there a long time.

Was this pier specifically built for this ship? If not, then it would be generic placement. Also, the height of the fenders above the water, and where this fits on the ship depends on the state of the tide.

The ship is always responsible for damages done to a stationary object (whether a dock or another ship). The Pilot, unless it is proven that he/she was grossly negligent, would not be responsible. The Captain has responsibility at all times, and authority at all times, and can relieve the pilot if he/she feels the pilot is placing the ship in danger.

Absolutely.

Look at the writing on either the tag, or engraved on the back of the device. If it mentions "VPN" or "VPR", and gives a voltage for that (like 300v), then the device is surge protected. The 200w ones that Bestek sells currently are surge protected.

I noted a couple of more things watching it again. The mooring lines look white, with a short blue section shackled to the end at the dock. This is pretty standard, the short section is called a "pennant", and is supposed to have less breaking strength than the main mooring line, so that the pennant should break, and only the pennant needs to be renewed. That isn't what I'm seeing here, so someone goofed on purchasing the pennants. The ship will have extra lines, maybe not a full set, but a good few. Also, we don't know how long the lines are in total, or where they broke. They can "end for end" a broken line (get the end that is on the mooring winch, tie an eye into it, and shackle the pennant to it for reuse), or splice two broken lines together. Not 100% as strong as original, 70-80% if done right. It doesn't look like they had extra lines out.

From the size of them, I think they are the port's gangways. They looked very flat to me. One thing I noticed from the video was the mooring winches "rendering" (the brake on the winch should be set to "slip" when a force less than the breaking strength of the line, so that it pays out rather than breaking, but it looked like the crew were trying to set the brakes harder as the ship moved off the pier, and this caused the lines to break.

And, if they had skipped the pier, they would have tendered, and that would have been shut down during the high winds.

The gangways are aluminum, the ship is steel. Steel wins. There would have been only one generator on line in port, not enough to even start the propulsion, but getting more on line only requires a phone call to ECR, and about 2 minutes to get the generator started and online. Starting propulsion would then take a further 3-4 minutes, it's not just pushing a button. It all depends on how quickly the wind sprang up. If it was a squall, it could have happened in an instant, without much warning.

Most likely. It is easier to make money on a new ship, than to do so on older tonnage. Just some of the luxury lines.

That 6-12Mw of power is total for the port. A typical cargo ship will use 0.7-1.0Mw of power, while a cruise ship will use 6-8Mw of power, just for the hotel load (even mid-size ones). Underway, the load is 50-90Mw of power. One of the questions I always have about shore power, and one that is not answered by the article, is what is used to generate the shore power? Is it really "cleaner" than the ship's power, or is it merely shifting the greenhouse emissions to another location where the power plant is?

If you look at the specifications, the solar panels have a generating capacity of 40kwp (which is peak generation), yet the propulsion is 2 x 340kw motors. The batteries are 800kwh, so I don't see it going at full speed for more than an hour (800kwh storage vs 680kw motors) and then the lights go out, without using the generators, since the solar panels would need 20 hours to recharge the batteries. Take a small cruise ship like the Silver Whisper, <400 pax, which requires 15,500kw for power, or 20 times the batteries in the "silent yacht". At current watt densities for solar panels (about 175 watts per square meter), this would require 89,000 square meters of solar panels to power the ship. If you want to have solar panels like the "silent yacht", which is a rectangular, flat area above the boat, taking Silver Whisper's length and beam (meaning the panels would overhang the bow and stern quite a bit), you get an area of 4750 square meters, or 5% of the required generating capability. While solar assisted cruise ships could be viable (not sure about economically feasible), a solar powered ship is just not. With today's technology, solar power generation is a "low density" (I belong to a "community" solar farm, which takes acres to generate 6,000kw), while a ship is a "high density" power user. Continuing with Silver Whisper, her power usage is 3,200 watts per square meter (going with the rectangle, not the actual ship's waterline area), or 18 times what solar panels alone could produce. I remember that Oasis of the Seas, or one of her sisters was fitted with solar panels over a good area of the ship, and all it could do is power the Central Park area lighting.

I worked a RO/RO ship for years, see this photo: The ship carried autos, tractors, construction vehicles, farm vehicles, regular 20' and 40' cargo containers loaded on low-boy trailers (even double stacked), and M-1 Abrams tanks for the US Army. We also carried locomotives imported from Sweden for the NJ Transit Authority, again carried on low-boy trailers. The ship has two large ramps on the stern that go from the ship to the dock, and virtually anything that can fit through the doorway can roll on or off.

But, here you fall afoul of the international nature of the maritime industry. Let's say, as per your example, that the US wanted to be all warm and fuzzy and very "green", and decided to give subsidies for keeping older ships in service, over scrapping and building. So, they give a subsidy to a company that pays no US taxes, to prevent a scrapping that will take place in another country (taking away the livelihoods of those workers), and to prevent a shipbuilding process that will take place in another country (same for the workers here), to get a ship "reconditioned" again in another country, benefiting some workers in yet another foreign country. Even countries that build ships typically don't scrap them, so even if Italy wanted to give the subsidies, there would be fallout in other countries.

This only affects piping inside the ship. Remember, when the ships first restarted, there were Princess ships that had spent a lot of time anchored off Mexico, and then when they went to cooler waters, the dying mussels and barnacles in the sea water pipes (that had grown there while the ship was inactive), clogged the piping and caused overheating of the engines, and ruined itineraries. The outside is taken care of by use of copper based paint, which also releases toxins to the marine life attempting to attach to the hull. Some ships have gone to teflon based bottom paint, that provides a surface too hard and slick for the marine life to attach to.

It all depends on the business model the cruise line uses. The now defunct Pullmantur line was moderately successful buying older ships from the mainstream lines and operating them for years. What their profit margin was, compared to the original owner, I don't know. Marco Polo operated for 55 years, apparently turning a profit. It also depends on what you need to do to "recycle/upcycle" the ship. Remember, maritime regulations are generally not retroactive, so older ships do not always have to meet new requirements.

Virtually every ship afloat uses some form of cathodic protection for the hull. They will use a combination of "galvanic anodes", typically aluminum anodes welded to the ship in places like thruster tunnels, ballast tanks, and sea chests, and "impressed current", where an electrical current is fed to an aluminum anode, and the system attempts to maintain a given voltage between the anode and the hull (about 140mv). The impressed current anodes last 5-10 years, the galvanic anodes about 5 years, so replacement is part of the drydock procedures. In the relatively few salt water pipes that ships have (designers try to minimize the salt water piping to minimize corrosion), many ships use an "impressed current" system not only to control corrosion using an aluminum anode, but also marine growth by using a copper anode (the copper ions from the anode are toxic to the marine life).

It's not that the ship is considered for scrapping at 15 years, but that the economic equation changes, and so business decisions need to be made as to how to market the ship, what to do about renovations, etc. No, while there are considerably more safety regulations for passenger ships, and there are some structural regulation differences, there really isn't anything that separates a cruise ship from a commercial ship as far as hull structure goes. They all use the same steel, and, in fact the steel of a commercial ship tends to be far stronger than a cruise ship. Consider that the largest ship ever built, the Seawise Giant, while only 23% larger (GT or volume) than the Oasis of the Seas, it could carry as cargo more than 5 of the Oasis class ships (564,000 deadweight tons, the Oasis weighs about 100,000 tons).

I'll only cite my 46 years in the industry as my references. I don't care what the guy who never cites any references, or even answers direct questions wants. While the older ships were marginally profitable before the pandemic, the debt service on them when idle, carried over to whenever they would return to service made them uneconomic. Sure, there are things that can be done to make a ship more economical, and "greener", but these would be things like new bottom paints or air lubrication of the hull, but these are only working the "margins" of efficiency, for great investments, unlike say power cells to fuel the engines, which can provide a much more efficient and "green" operation, but which would also require gutting the engineering spaces and literally starting over. All of the metallic parts of the ship are recycled (steel hull, copper wire, pipes, valves, aluminum). Most of the rest is not (land fill, incinerator). Ships have not been allowed to have any real hazardous material in them for decades, though there is always some that slips in from unscrupulous suppliers. Fuel tanks are cleaned prior to the scrapping process, as the cutting could cause the tank vapors to explode. How "green" the scrapping is, depends on where it is being done, and the places that do scrap most vessels do it cheaply for a reason. I believe that the EU has passed a law saying that if a ship is built in the EU, then the owner must ensure it is either scrapped in the EU, or ensure its scrapping meets EU requirements. Shipbuilding is a dirty business, but as I said, international regulations don't allow hazardous materials to be used in shipbuilding these days, regardless of where the ship is built, enforced by the class societies. Yes, just like the SS United States is in very good condition, hull-wise, after 70 years afloat. And, it is after 15 years that the cost of maintaining the hull structure and piping starts to take off, exponentially. The difference is in the steel. Old steel like the SSUS, the Titanic, or your first cruise ship had relatively weak steel (compared to today's steels), so everything had to be made thicker and heavier to withstand the loads. This thicker steel allowed for greater corrosion to happen before the steel was considered to need replacement. Today's steel is stronger, so a thinner steel can be used to carry the same load as the thicker, older steel. This thinner steel makes corrosion a more important consideration, and this is why the class societies have found that at 15 years of age, they start taking more and more NDT (non-destructive tests) of the hull plating, frames, and welds to see whether they can still sustain the anticipated loads. Not really. As I said, a lot of the ship is recycled, but a lot is also disposed of. But, just remember, that cruise ships account for about 5% of the world's tonnage, and there are always ships being sent to the scrapyards.

Whether the operator has a valid ham radio license or not, that transceiver operating on the frequencies it does, comes under the ship's Radiotelephony certificate, and the Captain would need to be aware of the presence of the unit, and agree that it is acceptable to operate it under the ship's license. All communication equipment, even down to hand held radios must be listed on the certificate, with a few minor exceptions.

First off, surge protectors are not needed on ships. Where do the power "spikes" that trip a surge protector come from on land? Either lightning, or a blown pole transformer (don't recall from my time in Scotland whether they use pole transformers or not). Due to the ship's ground being separated from the hull of the ship (what would be "ground" or "earth" on land) to prevent electrolytic corrosion, lightning passes straight through the hull to the ocean, without interacting with the ship's electrical system at all. I have been on several ships that were struck by lightning, and we never had anything electrical, let alone electronic damaged. This includes the ship's navigation equipment, the engine room automation, radios, ship's computers, etc. The second thing is that the ship's "neutral" wire is not connected to "earth". If you take a voltmeter, and read between "hot" and "earth", on a ship, you get 110v (for a 220v outlet), not the 220v you have on land. Also, between "neutral" and "earth" it is also 110v (making 220v between hot and neutral). This is done so that equipment that develops a ground fault can be deteced, even if the ground fault is on the neutral side. These ground faults lead to electrolytic corrosion of the hull and fittings, and need to be repaired as quickly as possible. Now, suppose that a 440v motor goes to ground, that voltage is now on the "ground" connection, so the semi-conductors in the surge protector, that connect the hot and neutral to ground to "dump" the voltage, now see a continual voltage above what they are rated for in continuous service, and will fail. When they fail, they tend to go into "thermal runaway", overheat, and cause the power strip to melt and burn. That fire hazard is real, documented, and why they are not allowed.