For this week’s pick of Bizarre Marine Technology we wanted to go with Glacier Blankets but, although they would likely be transported to the Artic on ships, the relationship to marine transport is thin. But don’t worry, we have an equally interesting technology for you today… ocean tubes. We’ll let Atomocean, the company developing this technology, explain: [Continue Reading →]

You have a PASS Device for your shipboard fire team..right?? Why not break it out of the gear locker during confined space entries?

For those who have never seen one, a PASS device (sometimes called a Man Down Alarm) contains a motion sensor and high pitched alarm. The firefighter clips it on his bunker gear and if he passes out the motion detector senses his lack of movement and sets off the alarm. It also has a panic button that can be pushed to inform the scene leader the team is in trouble or to help the back-up team locate a lost firefighter.

We all know how unreliable UHF radios are during tank inspections. While the old trick of banging a wrench 1 time to signal OK, 2 times to signal GET OUT and 5+ times to signal SEND HELP works inside the tank it won’t an unconsciousness victim. At a cost of around $225 these devices are an inexpensive way to protect your life. [Continue Reading →]

In an effort to bring our readers more “green” stories, we take a look at the worlds first wave farm off the coast of Portugal. dvice.com brings us more on this new technology that is powering over 1,500 homes.

There’s power in them thar waves! That’s why Portugal built Agucadoura, the world’s first wave farm off its coast, consisting of three Wave Energy Converters [also known as Pelamis P-750 machines] generating a total of 2.25MW.

The elongated metal contraptions bob up and down with the waves, while internal pistons, attached to the sea floor, remain stationary and pump hydraulic fluid. This drives electric generators, whose power is brought ashore by underwater electrical cables. The wave farm is now tapping into enough constant, renewable energy to power 1500 homes.

Who knew there was so much power in the ocean waves? If we laid these 459-foot orange caterpillars all over the world’s oceans, we could tap 2 terawatts of power, twice the consumption of the entire world. That’s not exactly practical, but a smaller-scale rollout of such generators might be a clean power alternative, ready to be snapped up by an energy-starved planet. More info and photos HERE

The farm officially opened in September of 2008 using three Pelamis P-750 machines capable of generating a total of 2.25 MW, with capacity set to increase to 21MW after a second phase is introduced.

More Links, Photos and Video’s…..

[Continue Reading →]

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.)

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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.

We have some exciting news from the team at KVH Industries. Here’s a clip from their press release:

Taking a major step toward expanding availability of the mini-VSAT Broadband service, KVH Industries, Inc., (Nasdaq: KVHI) today announced that it has signed a 5-year agreement with GE International Holdings, Inc., (also known as SAT-GE) to lease satellite capacity on its GE-23 satellite to provide coverage in the Pacific Ocean via the satellite’s North Pacific Ku-band Beam. Expected to go live in December 2008, the new coverage area will include Alaska, the west coasts of Canada and the United States, Hawaii and extend into Asia. It represents a significant expansion in the availability of the increasingly popular mini-VSAT Broadband Internet and voice service as well as the latest milestone in the KVH and ViaSat joint effort to provide affordable mobile broadband connections around the globe.

“The extension of mini-VSAT Broadband coverage into the Pacific will allow us to support a significant portion of the world’s shipping lanes, including blue water coverage between Asia and ports in the U.S. and Canada,” said Martin Kits van Heyningen, KVH’s chief executive officer.

VSAT is the technology that allowed our founder, John Konrad, to start this site while still shipping. While he was based in the Gulf Of Mexico his drillship utilized this technology to offer wireless internet in the accommodations of his ship. This worked because the vessel had a long term contract within the footprint of a VSAT provider. Ships operating internationally have been less fortunate relying on INMARSAT to relay basic email due to the prohibitively high expense for purchasing the satellite receivers and paying for bandwidth on a metered rate plan. [Continue Reading →]

No this isn’t going to be a post about china’s new submarines…. instead we look at designing ships to be quiet for more relaxing purposes.

Eurodam News, Holland America’s newbuild blog, shares the secret;

When Zuiderdam, the first Vista-class ship, entered service, it quickly became evident that the aft part of the main restaurant had higher-than-usual noise and vibration levels. On all Holland America ships the aft section of the main restaurant is located above the propellers, but on Vista-class ships the main restaurant was located three decks lower and therefore is closer to the propellers.

Fincantieri engaged Danish consulting company Odegaard & Danneskiold-Samsoe to work with the shipyard’s noise and vibration department to develop a solution. They hit on the idea of installing an air-injection system that would create a cushion of air bubbles between the propellers and the hull to absorb some of the noise frequencies that would otherwise be transferred directly to the hull. A similar system had been installed on private yachts before, but the technology had never been tried on a large cruise vessel.

For the rest of the article click HERE.

This article was originally posted in October 2007

We recently showed you the video game Ship Simulator 2008, the “realistic” (we haven’t tested this claim) simulator game for your PC, but today we point you towards another product from the company Vstep; RescueSim. Here’s the short description from the RescueSim website;

RescueSim allows emergency response teams to prepare for incidents in a virtual working environment. Under the guidance of your own instructor, any incident can be realistically simulated. Crews experience the incident as they would in real life. They determine the best response strategy, implement it and then observe the consequences of their decisions.

The training platform can be supplemented with industry-specific training modules that include environments, scenarios and equipment relevant to that industry. Today, modules exist for Ports; developed with the Port of Rotterdam and Rotterdam Harbour Fire Department, it includes training incident scenarios with various vessels and industrial fires.

While we still recommend any organization in need of this type of training contact our friend Tom Guldner at Marine Firefighting Institute, we look forward to learning more about this product.

If any gCaptain readers have experienced Ship Simulator 2008 or RescueSim, please let us know what you think!

A vessel found in 700 AD, several centuries before the Vikings ruled Norway, the Oseberg ship from approximately 800 AD and the knarr from around year 1000 AD all have one thing in common; their rounded bows were the inspiration for Ulstein’s latest design, the x-bow container ship.

This design is not new, launched last year the Bourbon Orca was the first vessel launched with Ulstein’s revolutionary bow design. Now the company is set to incorporate this design into a new class of short-sea shipping vessels. A company press release: [Continue Reading →]

OPA 90, the legislation enacted after the Exxon Valdez incident mandated double hull technology, essentially wrapping a second hull around the first, on all newly built tankers. While this has been mostly effective and (had it been mandated for use on container ships) would have prevented last year’s San Francisco Oil Spill, it fails to protect the environment during catastrophic groundings. Mo Husain of MH Systems, Inc. has recently worked on perfecting alternative means of “loss of containment” prevention. He tells us:

CONCEPT MADE SIMPLE
Imagine a Straw…

The underpressure concept is best understood by making an analogy with which most people can identify. Imagine sipping water half-way up through a straw and sealing off the top of the straw with your fingertip. A simple principle of hydraulics allows the water to be held in the straw at this level until the finger is released.

This same principle allows oil to be contained within the hull should a rupture occur in the tank. When a tanker is loaded, the oil level inside the tank is higher than the surrounding seawater level. This causes a higher pressure to exist inside the tanker due to hydrostatic pressure. Normally, when a hull is ruptured, the pressure inside forces oil to flow out up to the level of the surrounding seawater (discounting density). Using AUPS, this complete loss would not occur.

The system equalizes the pressure inside and outside the tanker at the rupture point by applying a slight underpressure of 2 to 4 psi in the ullage space of the tank. As oil flows out, it is replaced by seawater up to the rupture point only. Oil loss is held to a minimum as all oil above the rupture point will remain in the tanker. In the event of an accidental grounding bottom rupture, AUPS would prevent virtually all oil spillage from the tanker.

For a comprehensive look at this system click HERE and for the work Mo is doing on Ballast Water Treatment visit his company’s blog found HERE.

Also see our related post History’s 10 Most Famous Oil Spills.

Under military testing since 2006 the US Navy’s M80 Stiletto was put into action this week. Marine Link reports:

The Pentagon’s high-speed, shallow-draft “Stiletto” ship, designed and built by M Ship, completed a successful 6,000 nautical-mile deployment on a drug interdiction and apprehension mission in the waters off Colombia, the Bahamas and the Florida Straits. The deployment was capped off by a dramatic, high-speed chase of a “go-fast” boat in shallow waters near the Florida coast that resulted in the apprehension of three suspected smugglers. Continue Reading…

The ship was designed in San Diego by a private racing yacht builder. In contrast to a traditional V-Hull design the Stiletto’s M-Hull channels passing water under the vessel to provide lift, creating a smother and stable ride for its passengers, an important considering that nearly 1/3rd of Navy SEAL’s are medically discharged within 10 years due to the G-Forces applied to their bodies. The vessel is also equipped with state of the art electronics controlled by the clustered supercomputer housed in one of the hulls.

Our forum had some discussion last year over whether or not the 27M vessel should be reffered to as a ship. The old maritime addage “A ship can carry a boat but not vis-versa” might answer the debate considering it’s capable of launching, while underway, a 11M RIB from the stern. What are your thoughts on the matter?