Ship design...rants and raves

I have a lot of respect for the people out there who design vessels and are able to figure out how to make ships do what we need them to.

There are times, however, that I wonder what the designers have against the people working on vessels.

How does a large scale project happen? Who has the say in what kind of propulsion, thrusters, etc.? Does the customer get involved in these details or is it up to the ship designers to figure out what kind of engines, drives, and thrusters are necessary for a vessel to accomplish its goals?

An area of concern for me is watching the new-build trends. There are a lot of diesel-electric DP 2 vessels being delivered that have a horrible tendency to loose everything at once with minor software issues or single electronic failures, such as a tripped breaker (DP 2 classification doesn't help at all when all of the drive motors shut off at the same time).

My hat is off to the designers who thought out the vessel I am on (other than the lack of bow thruster power available). With having four engines clutched into two shafts and driving the two electric bow thrusters off two, separate, shaft-driven generators, we have an incredible amount of redundancy. I have had engines totally fail and been able to continue an anchor job without interruption.

Many of the newer vessels seem to be designed with 'maximum fuel efficiency' as the driving factor to the extreme that they only function when all vessel systems are operating perfectly. Loose one system and the vessel is not able to complete any work and must limp back to the beach for repair. What happened to designing systems for when things go bad?

I promise that if anyone designs me an AHTS with extra horsepower, thruster capability, winch capacity, or stability - I won't use them for evil purposes.
--Chuck

 

On one test run one of the new Staten Island ferries simply stopped , went dark.

With the builders brainacks aboard they got it restarted , but NEVER could explain the fault. Some FUN!

FF