Never Sea Land brings us the largest engine ever built:
The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan’s Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.
It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.
The cylinder bore is just under 38″ and the stroke is just over 98″.
The engine weighs in at 2,300 tons and is capable of delivering 109,000 horsepower.
The largest piston in the world!
More Enormous Piston Rods.
“DU-Sulzer 12RT A96C” translated to “One large MFD”
Today Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned named the first Q-Max (266,000 CBM) LNG Carrier, “MOZAH”, the world’s largest LNG vessel built to date. The special ceremony was held at Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Geoje Island.
Muhammad Ghannam, Nakilat Managing Director, said; “The naming of the LNG carrier “MOZAH” is a very special and key milestone for Nakilat as we are celebrating the very first of our 14 Q-Max ships. “MOZAH” is also the first of twenty-five wholly-owned LNG carriers in our fleet of 54 vessels which are being built in the Korean shipyards to serve Qatar’s massive LNG expansion projects.”
“MOZAH” will be used to ship LNG produced by Qatar Liquefied Gas Company Limited (II), known as Qatargas 2, to customers in Europe.
The Q-Flex and the even larger Q-Max are a new generation of LNG mega-ships. The Q-Max has 80 percent more capacity than conventional LNG carriers with about 40 percent lower energy requirement due to the economies of scale created by their size and the efficiency of the engines. Q-Max LNG carriers are unique and purpose built for Nakilat, the sole owner of the vessels. “MOZAH” will be on a long-term charter to Qatargas.
Click HERE for a virtual tour of the shipyard which built her.
Some 1,200 passengers aboard the Clipper Pacific are enjoying an unexpected extended stay in NYC, while the cruise ship is being detained by Coast Guard for multiple safety issues in New York Harbor.
The 637-foot ship, en route from Greenland to Venezuela, was boarded by Coast Guard Sunday morning for a routine safety inspection, only to reveal significant hull damage and numerous other discrepancies. Newsday.com reports:
The inspection of the Clipper Pacific, which began on Sunday and ended Tuesday, found that the ship’s hull was leaking, the Coast Guard said. The inspection found 66 safety problems on the ship, including damage to the lifeboats and life jacket issues.
A commercial diving company has made temporary repairs to the hull, but the Coast Guard ordered the 637-foot ship to remain in the harbor until further repairs were made.
Luckily for the passengers, they are able to come and go as they please while the repairs are being made.
UPDATE:
The NYTimes tells us:
The Coast Guard held the ship at Pier 92 on the West Side until most of the safety problems had been fixed.
After the ship’s operators agreed to have the hull repaired in dry dock in Tampa, the Coast Guard cleared it to leave, said the spokeswoman, Petty Officer Third Class Barbara Patton. The ship, which is affiliated with Peace Boat, a nonprofit group in Japan, had come from Greenland and was bound for Venezuela after a scheduled stop in New York.
“There was significant damage to the hull,” she said. “They need to go into dry dock, and their dock of choice was down in Tampa.” Continue Reading…
Ever wonder how graphic designers create cutaway illistrations of ship? Khulsey.com clues us into the secrets HERE. Once you learn about the process click HERE to see close up images of the final product!
Cruise West’s Spirit of Glacier Bay is reported to have run aground in Glacier Bay. The US Coastguard is attending the incident. There are no injuries and hull integrity has not been breached, although a boom has been deployed as a precaution. The reason for the grounding is still unknown. Passengers are being transferred to the departure port of Juneau, and the vessel is expected to re-float at high tide.
This weeks big story in the world of cruise ship is Holland America’s unveiling of it’s newest and largest ship, Eurodam. The Eurodam will be the 80th ship in HAL fleet and the first to use dynamic positioning abilities to hold the ship in a precise position. This technology was unthinkable 134 years ago when Holland America launched its first ship the Rotterdam. MS Eurodam is set to sail its inaugural season in Europe followed by cruises in Canada and New England in the fall and the Caribbean in the winter.
This week Gene Sloan of USA TODAYS’s Cruise Log Blog will be blogging live from Europe at the unveiling of The Eurodam. Here is what he had to say about the new ship earlier this week.
The historic line will be showing off the vessel in Europe starting this weekend in a series of events from Southampton, England to Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
The 86,700-ton Eurodam, which has one more deck than the ships in the company’s last series, the Vista Class, will be christened on July 1 in Rotterdam by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Its maiden voyage, a 10-night cruise from Copenhagen, Denmark, is set for July 5.
We have been closley following the build progress on the ship’s blog and have written more than a few aritlces on her thoughout the process. You can read these posts HERE. News and Links
How is a cabin is built in this day of containerization and commodization? Remotely of course. Eurodam News, Holland America’s blog showcasing the shipyard activities around their latest new build project, brings us photos of the stateroom installation.
Of potential interest to readers of this blog the method shown here is very similar to how accommodation blocks are built aboard modern commercial ships. In conjuntion with this trend is the movement towards equality among crew members, which means the Captain’s cabin is often identical to that of the most junior crew member minus the extra rack. This is in stark contrast to my first ship, a Wrecks Act tanker built in Japan, which contained bunkrooms for junior crew members and a four room (day room, office, sitting room, cabin) suite for the Captain.
It’s also not only the cabin that is built remotely and installed on site. Often entire accommodation or specialty modules are built by separate companies and placed atop the hull, which itself is built in parts and transported within the shipyard (photo example). Examples include Transocean’s newest drillship the Clear Leader, Polar Tanker’s latest ships and the Semi-Submersible Development Driller II shown in this Leirvik modular fabrication brochure.
The titan of the industry, however, is Aker Yards’. Their cabin division produces over 9000 cabin and bathroom units annually. Cruise Critics gives us an inside look at their “Cabin Factory”;
In the tiny town of Piikkio, nestled in farm country some 20 kilometers from the shipbuilding city of Turku, Aker Yards Cabins has been building pre-designed cruise cabins for 20 years. Here, panels are assembled to make walls and ceilings. Toilets are installed and shower floors, made of hard plastic and designed to resemble colorful mosaic combinations, have been pre-made and are ready to be laid in bathrooms. Entire technical systems — each cabin has its own — are put in place. Telephones, mini-bars and even electric sockets (providing access to European and American currents), along with data ports, are all snugly outfitted into a vanity desk/wall unit that’s arrived from a furniture factory elsewhere in Finland.
Even the beds hang tightly from the walls.
If you’ve ever cruised on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance-, Voyager- or Freedom-class ships in anything but a huge suite, you’ve stayed in one of these prefabs.
To read more on Aker’s “cabin Factory” click here and for the instillation of these type of modular cabins click here. Photos of the final product can be found here.
The operation to recover hundreds of bodies inside a sunken Philippine ferry has been suspended after a highly toxic pesticide was found to be on board.
Ten tonnes of endosulfan were illegally in the cargo, destined for a Del Monte pineapple plantation, officials said.
Whether the ferry operator, Sulpicio Lines, knew of the toxic cargo is unclear, though a senior official warned it could face prosecution.
Only 56 of more than 850 passengers are known to have survived the disaster.
Toilets are installed and shower floors, made of hard plastic and designed to resemble colorful mosaic combinations, have been pre-made and are ready to be laid in bathrooms. Entire technical systems — each cabin has its own — are put in place. Telephones, mini-bars and even electric sockets (providing access to European and American currents), along with data ports, are all snugly outfitted into 
The operation to recover hundreds of bodies inside a sunken Philippine ferry has been suspended after a highly toxic pesticide was found to be on board.
