Dockwise Yacht Transport has been in the boat delivery business for 21 years. Their semi-submersible vessels operate world wide.

Launched in April of 2008, the China Built heavy lift ship Yacht Express is the world’s largest float-on float-off yacht carrier (Video). This amazing ship has opened a regular round-trip service between Florida and the Mediterranean. 18 yachts worth in total some £78 million are being carried aboard the 209m long vessel on its inaugural voyage. Here is information from the owners: [Continue Reading →]

 

 Dockwise Yacht Express: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Related Posts:

• Emma Maersk’ s Wartsila-Sulzer Super Ship Engine – Part 2
• Dockwise Yacht Transport Ship “Yacht Express” – Interesting Ship Of The Week
• Name The World’s Largest Cruise Ship
• Cunard’s Three Queens Visit The Big Apple
• World’s Largest Cruise Ship – Keel Laying Ceremony

The maritime and ship-building industry has a constant need to move the world’s heaviest loads between ship and shore and even employees  the biggest crane in the world. But the true workhorses of the industry are the heavy lift cranes used to move mega-blocks, large sections of newly constructed ships, around shipyards throughout the world. The following are photos of the cranes and rigging that do the truly heavy lifts. 

The task is to lift the whole bridge sections, each weighing approx. 3500 tonnes.

[Continue Reading →]

Related Posts:

• Largest Crane In The World – Amazing Photos
• Jumbo Crane Collapse – Incident Photo Of The Week
• First Lift – World’s Largest Crane In Action
• FPSO Delivery Photos – Heavy Lift Transport
• Oleg Strashnov Heavy Lift – Interesting Ship Of The Week

Maunsell’s army sea forts were more specifically designed to repel smaller aircraft flying in to attack rather than to lay mines at site. Each fort consists of a cluster of smaller units arrayed in a group. Each group had one spotlight tower and the rest of the units had guns mounted all around to give maximum range. Each fort was connected by bridges to the others in the cluster but was also structurally autonomous – presumably in case one were to be successfully targeted and destroyed. Since being decommissioned, a number of these forts have been used for pirate radio broadcasting stations. [Continue Reading →]

Related Posts:

• Early Aircraft Carriers
• Mega Moves – The USS Intrepid Returns Home
• An American Down Under finds Pride of Australian Navy
• Women in the US Navy – Centennial
• A gCaptain Halloween – Navy Ships in Razzle Dazzle Costume

When we think of early Aircraft Carriers, most defer to the US Navy converting Jupiter (Collier # 3) in 1920 to CVI Langley. Commissioned in March 1922, Langley was the U.S. Navy’s first conventional aircraft carrier. In October-November 1922, she launched, recovered and catapulted her first aircraft during initial operations in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas.

The history of Aircraft Carriers dates back to 1806 when the British Frigate HMS Pallas was used as platform to launch kites that dropped leaflets over France.

During the (American) Civil War, Union Forces converted the coal barge George Washington Parke Custis to launch hot air ballons to conduct reconnaissance. The barges never worked off shore.

The Union Army balloon Washington aboard the George Washington Parke Custis, towed by the tug Coeur de Lion.

During World War I, a number of countries used Balloon Tenders. [Continue Reading →]

Related Posts:

• Ready or Not, the George H. W. Bush Carrier to be Commissioned This Weekend
• Sea Forts of England
• Mega Moves – The USS Intrepid Returns Home
• An American Down Under finds Pride of Australian Navy
• Women in the US Navy – Centennial

University of Michigan researchers are investigating a radical new design for cargo ships that would eliminate ballast tanks, the water-filled compartments that enable non-native creatures to sneak into the Great Lakes from overseas.

PhysOrg.com is reporting that an alternative to current and proposed tank cleaning methods.

Here’s an excerpt:

“In some ways, it’s more like a submarine than a surface ship,” Parsons said. “We’re opening part of the hull to the sea, creating a very slow flow through the trunks from bow to stern.

“You’re continuously sweeping water through the ship and out,” he said. “So you’re always filled with local sea water, not hauling water from one part of the world to the other.”

The U-M ballast-free ship concept was conceived in 2001 and patented in 2004. It is intended for new-vessel construction only.

The full PhysOrg.com post is here.

(Ed. note: My guess is that this system could be used for cooling as well. A special thanks to BitterEnd reader Cherei in San Antonio for point me to this post.)

___________________________

This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

Related Posts:

• Preventing Oil Spills – Alternatives To Double Hull Ship Design
• Wartsila METHAPU – A Fuel Cell For Ships
• Alternative Energy From Our Oceans
• Launching Kite Power
• Underwater Ocean Turbines

Stunning, dramatic shipwreck photography by Donibane Sanjuan. See more here.

Via Dark Roasted Blend
[Continue Reading →]

Related Posts:

• FPSO Delivery Photos – Heavy Lift Transport
• Largest Crane In The World – Amazing Photos
• Running The Houston Ship Channel – At night
• Crane Photos – Heavy Lift Cranes & Rigging
• Battling Arctic Ice – Ship Photos

Ship Name: RCMP vessel St Roch (pronounced “Saint Rock”)

Vital Statistics (1944 configuration):
Length: 31.8 m (104’3”) Beam: 7.5 m (24’7”) Draft: 3.25 m (10’8”) Tonnage: 196.5 t
Hull: Douglas fir with Australian gumwood outer hull; rounded hull to allow ice to slide underneath; steel plate covering bow
Power source: 150 hp Union diesel, 6 cylinder; schooner rigged
Built: Burrard Drydock Shipyard, North Vancouver, 1928 (Charles Druguid design with modifications by Thomas Halliday)

St Roch was built specifically for the RCMP to patrol the Arctic. The ship was named after the Quebec east riding of Ernest Lapointe, then Federal Minister of Justice responsible for the RCMP. Launched on May 7, 1928, she began a long and successful career that ended in 1950 when officially retired from duty in Halifax. St Roch sailed through the Panama Canal in 1954 to return to Vancouver.

What was the significance of St Roch?

• First vessel to sail the Northwest Passage from west to east (1940 – 1942)
• First vessel to complete the Northwest Passage in one season (1944), also making it the first to use the more northerly, deeper route and to complete the Passage in both directions
• First vessel to circumnavigate North America
• Survived 12 winters stuck in the ice for 10 months at a time
• King George VI awarded the prestigious Polar Medal to Henry Larsen and the crew who sailed during the 1944 voyage
• Declared a National Historic Site (1962)

What was the RCMP’s role in the Arctic? [Continue Reading →]

Related Posts:

• Ship Photo of the Week – USCGC Healy and CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent
• OmniTHRUSTER and The USCGC Healy
• Icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer – Interesting Ship of The Week
• Canada & U.S. May Extend Security Measures Past Games
• Concordia Post-Mortem: Safety, Preparation Go Together

The Juneau Empire is reporting:

A cruise ship scraped the bottom of the Tracy Arm fjord Wednesday morning, forcing its crew to cut short its trip and call the U.S. Coast Guard for assistance.

The Spirit of Alaska called the Coast Guard around 8 a.m. Wednesday, Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read said.

The boat is owned by Seattle-based Cruise West, which says on its Web site that the 143-foot boat has a “shallow draft” that makes for “optimum wildlife viewing.”

There were 41 passengers on board and 22 crew members, Read said. He said there were no reported injuries.

After hitting bottom, the boat anchored and waited for an inspector from the Coast Guard and a commercial diver to survey the damage to the boat, Read said.

He said the Coast Guard had dispatched two boats and a helicopter to assist the boat. A tugboat was scheduled to pull the Spirit of Alaska back to Juneau on Wednesday evening, according to the Coast Guard.

A spokesman for Cruise West said Wednesday afternoon that the Spirit of Alaska was on the second day of a seven-day trip that was to start and end in Juneau.

The complete Juneau Empire post is here.

___________________________

This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

Related Posts:

• Spirit of Glacier Bay – Cruise Ship Hard Aground in Alaska
• Queen of the West Fire this AM
• Pasha Bulker Incident Report – Nearly Unbelievable
• Louis Majesty’s Incident Video – AIS Data Plotted
• ATB is Largest Ever to Transit Alaskan Waters

(Ed. note: Wired . com is featuring a post comemerating the Battle of Midway)

Japanese fleet carrier Hiryu is seen shortly before the United States Navy sank it during the Battle of Midway.
Courtesy Kazutoshi Hando, U.S. Navy

Today, Wired Magazine remembers the Battle of Midway;

1942: Without ever sighting one another, Japanese and American task forces engage near the Midway Atoll, marking the turning point of the Pacific war and ringing down the curtain on the battleship as a dominant offensive naval weapon.

The Battle of Midway began only a month after the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, which was the first time two opposing fleets slugged it out without making visual contact. Airplanes, specifically the dive bomber and the torpedo plane, were the weapons that made this possible and changed the nature of war at sea.

As a result, aircraft carriers now emerged as the most important ships in the fleet, relegating other surface ships to carrier-escort and picket duty, and — in the case of the battleship and heavy cruiser — to shore bombardment in support of troop landings.

You can find the balance of the post here.

___________________________

This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

Related Posts:

This admittedly isn’t the newest military tech on the block, but I just couldn’t help writing it up. Russia makes the world’s largest military hovercraft dubbed the “Zubr.” It displaces 621 tons and can haul twice the payload of similar boats from the US Navy (somewhere around 150 tons). 

With production dating back to 1988, the last Zubr looks to have launched in 2004. Capable of carrying multiple tanks and a nice mix of 140mm rocket pods, 30mm cannons and air defense missiles, the Zubr can cruise for 300 miles before rapidly deploying troops and equipment close to shore. Scratch that. Directly on shore. In other words, it’s just like that R/C vehicle you lusted after in the ’90s, but it’s way bigger and actually good for something. Or, in this case, potentially very, very bad.

via Gizmodo.com

___________________________

This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

Related Posts:

• USNS Impeccable Incident Video Released
• China Sends Patrol Ship, Yuzheng 311, to South China Sea
• US Navy Vs China An Impeccable Incident – A Video Explanation
• USNS Impeccable – Harassed by Chinese Navy + FAQ
• New Star – Russian Navy Sinks Commercial Ship