I am thinking that a train can run with one person on a crew, with the help of computers, why not ships well 3 people, 2 drivers, and one cook! If the railroad can do it why not shipping
Probably because ships can be further from help during their voyages, the ships officers are reponsible for making sure the ship’s cargo is balanced, you don’t want to do a Cougar Ace off the Aleutians. Shift on, shift off for 20 plus days straight would wear any one down.
John,
What happened to that ship full of thousands of cars heading for Vancouver that listed 90 degrees south of the Aleutians several weeks ago ?
The crew was retriming by adjusting water in the balleast tanks when something went wrong. The ship is being towed back to port and may be there by now. Mazda made a big PR Boo-boo by saying that the autos would be inspected for saleability. They should have announced that the cars would either be stripped for parts or scrapped.
Oops, what I meant was one of the giant container ships. Thanks.
Here is Picture of Emma Mearsk after techincal sea trials, ship is still empty but is enormous.
http://www.faergejournalen.dk/landgangen/maersk.jpg
and Here a Picture of 12 Cylinder Warzila RTA96cflex engine, the Emma Meark has 14 cylinder of same type.
http://www.dieselduck.ca/images/engine_room/Machinery/rta96c.htm
Was it one of her not yet completed sisterships that was badly damaged in a shipyard fire earlier this summer?
JB
It appears that October’s referendum to expand the Panama Canal faces surprisingly stiff opposition in Panama:
Registration to the NYT is free.
Yes the second ship in the series had a engineroom fire which shot up to the bridge and burned out part of superstructure and electrical instalation of bridge.
The superstructure was removed and replaced by the completed superstructure of the third ship, saving the delivery date of the second vessel.
I find it strange that no one has commented on the Panama Railroad which was completely rebuilt by Kansas City Southern RR and operated and financed by KCS & two other parties. Ships too large to transit the canal were to drop their loads at one end of the canal where they would be transported by rail across the isthmus to be reloaded at the opposite port. Locomotives are former Amtrak locomotives shipped I believe from New Orleans. I believe there are also passenger cars on this train. Can anyone fill bme in if this train is now operational for transporting cargos from ships or do the docks still have to be built for loading and unloading their containers.
This post panamax has nothing to do with giant containerships now being built.
Transporting by rail at Panama Canal and loading and unloading can take upto 4 days. to much of a delay for most freights, may just as well unload at west coast and directly ship by rail, just from any west coast container port…
Its interesting however that the Panama Canal company is thinking about upgrading the canal and built bigger locks and dredge out some of canal to accommodate ships bigger container ships.
I agree with Dutchrailnut re the 4 days for shipping by rail across Panama. However KCS has put a great deal of investment restoring the rail line, which I believe is now operational. Is this rail line just going to carry tourists, Panamanians and local Panama freight. Are ports being constructed at each end of the canal to handle trans-shipment by rail? Does the railroad now have the freight cars to handle these containers? I can not see why KCS would spend so much on this venture if they did not see a return on their investment.
According to the New York Times story (above), Panama wants to widen the canal to accommodate large container ships. So the relevant question to me is if they widen it and add capacity that pretty much puts KCS out of the canal transshipment business, right? That is unless they can make their passenger service extremely popular. When I mentioned the railroads opposing widening the Canal KCS seemed to me the railroad with the most to lose.
Mileage on the Emma Mearsk is approx 250 T/day of HFO
HFO is the lowest quality of fuel available (and therefore the cheapest)
HFO is currently $ 360 / Ton
If calculated over 13000 Containers, fuel costs have reduced signifcantly per container due to increase in vessel size, but are still a large factor of operational costs.
Crew pay is diffrent to US salaries, as US salaries are twice what anyone else might earn in shipping worldwide, nevertheless the sometimes outrageous workrights which Unions have agreed upon for US sailors. Hardly any shipping company wants to live up to these standards as long as they can have same quality of sailors (or better) with european standards
Crew of 13 is a minimium according international laws and IMO rules.
1 Captain
3 Nautical officers
3 Engineering officers
1 Cook
1 Steward
4 Able seaman
Very often more people are carried, due to maintance onboard.
Main engine is a 14 Cyl. 110000 Hp, but there are also 5 auxiliary engines of total 20000 kW, as well as a complete heating system, fresh water generator, ballast system, etc. Just ordinary houskeeping of engineroom and deck (cleanliness and upkeep of paintwork) consumes ennough time to keep all hands busy during a week.
Watches on board are 4 on, 8 off. Total 8 hours of watch. Besides these 8 hours, the officers put inan extra 2 to 4 hours to do administrative and safety tasks, such as upkeep of lifeboat, fire extinguishing system, upkeep uof relevant nautical data changes in charts and publicatons etc.
You see, it a complete different story to driving a train and then go home to sleep over night as the maintainance crew takes care of the trains and railroads to have them ready for the next train haul.
Both worlds are different, but similar too in work stress and responsibility regarding safe arrival atc.
Wednesday september 13 I waited half a day, from 14.00 to 20.30 pm (to dark for pictures) to see this ship leave the harbor here in Rotterdam. It was supposed to leave at 15.00 but didn’t show up until well after I left the pier at Hook of Holland [:(!] (which is opposite the container terminals at Maasvlakte). Well, the company was good and the weather excellent (got a sunburn too[;)]).
I did see 2 other big container ships, one from Evergreen and one from China Shipping Line. The distance between them was less than 1000 meters. The first went to the ECT terminal and the second to APM (Maersk terminal). It has been said that you can get even more containers on the Emma Maersk than stated before (11.000 according to Maersk and 13.500 by experts), maybe even 14.000+.
greetings,
Marc Immeker