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PostPosted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:38 am 
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Hello there,
as I noticed Tim was quite interested in this (and the old thread got erased by the hackers) I decided to restart it.
Tim, I do take a camera with me and take pictures of ships we pass. I also have some small, low quality movies of the LPG tanker I sailed on.

Here are some pictures from the passing of Singapore, Singapore must be the best opportunity to take pictures for us! Everyone in a narrow passage and no pilots to keep you from taking pictures!!! (normally it isn't really allowed to take pictures on tankers of any sort, well, certainly not on deck).

Here are some of the not-biggest, but very average ships:

Oh, this one is taken in Portmouth during Trafalgar200, this guy came to midgen about every ship in the Solent... Luckily there was a tugboat standing by :thumbs_up_1:

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Somewhere in the South China Sea, we met 4 of the exact same ships every day one of them! Really funny. LNG obviously is the future.

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Results of the booming container market to China.
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The end of an excellent day, became even better. It was a Sunday, so I had a day off (meaning only 8 hours of work and not 10 or 12), so I sacrificed some sleep for this great opportunity for pictures! It also helps when your captain cooperates and lets the officers call you when a warships is coming :big_grin:

The Cosglory Lake (a Chinese flagged tanker) with one of the Singaporean Corvettes)
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Two Singapore Navy vessels sprinting to reach port before night!
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Regards
Roel

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:30 am 
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Location: turning into a power-hungry Yamato-models-munching monster... buahahahaha...
Very impressive pictures, Roel! Particularly the size comparison of the Cosglory Lake and the Victory corvette is interesting indeed!

Thanks for sharing! :thumbs_up_1:

Jorit

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:14 pm 
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These are great pictures. :thumbs_up_1: I would love to spend some time on deck and see all these ships live. We should preserve these in case of another hack attack. Do you mind if I take these and work them into the photo archives?

I spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans watching the ships swing around Algiers Naval Base. But very few of the really large ships were seen.

I have noticed that you can collect all kinds of merchant ships in 1/1250 scale, but the ships in 1/700 are few and far between. I would love to see some Container ships and Tankers in my favorite scale. I say this as I sit here and watch the Modern Marvels show on containers.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 4:05 am 
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No problem to preserve them. I still have them too if necessary (which we don't hope!).

As for the size of the containers, they are increasing, the largest one up till now, with 8,500 TEU (Twenty-foot Unit) entered Zeebrugge two days ago. She's 330m long, 42,3m wide and a draft of 14m. Still a rather "narrow" ship, but the fact that such ships can still maintain 25kts is quite amazing!
Tankers are much slower, because it is more economical to have such a slow speed. They generally make 14-17kts.
Here are some pictures from inside LNG tankers:
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These are the Kvaerner-Moss tanks, the so-called "Ice cream cars". The "balls" are only connected via that top, where the piping is connected to the Deepwell pumps in the tanks. On the lower side the tanks are put on blocks and are generally "loose" in the ship. That is because this spherical shape gives some changes in volume with the temperature, they need an extra 30cm when unladen as the temperate differences can be quite large.
The reason for using such tanks however is a good one. They decrease the "boil-off", which is the evaporation of the gas, which is then taken away to prevent the pressure rise and used to fire the boilers for the steam turbines. The other great advantage is that, if the tanks are filled 98%, like normal tanks, the Free Floating Surface gets a lot smaller. This means the stability improves.
LNG is quite dangerous as it's transported at a temperature of -163°C, that is why the material of the tanks is special. In the larger tanks above, the prismatic tanks, they are made of a material called Invar, which means Invariable. It doesn't really change volume with differing temperatures.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 4:09 am 
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And of course some "big-boy" pictures, courtesy of the Hellespont company themselves (took them from the ship's computer when I was there):
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And those are NOT small tugboats :thumbs_up_1:

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:48 am 
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Lovely photo,s Roel. :jump_1: :jump_1: :woo_hoo: :woo_hoo: :wave_1: :thumbs_up_1: ARH

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:30 am 
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Neptune,

In that last picture of the unloaded Hellespont, how fast/efficiently can she move when it looks like most (over 1/2) of her propellor is out of the water. I know these are not fast like warships, but it doesn't seem like you'd get too far with that little of the propellor in the water. Thanks.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:11 am 
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Hello Mac, simple, she can't move...
This is not the "unladen" condition, this is when she just came from the wharf, no fuel, no ballast/cargo etc.
Normally she is about 150,000t in ballast, which corresponds to an average draft of about 11m-12m. The ballast is laden in the way that she has a serious positive trim of about 3m, which gives her an aft draft of about 13m, enough to put that 10m propellor under water.
In a storm, the propellor blades sometimes slip out of the water and then the engine just drops silent. Automatically it stops to prevent a huge torsion of the propellor shaft. (which in case of a typhoon is VERY annoying as that centre of the typhoon kept coming closer due to our constantly failing engine!).

So, in this very empty condition, she can't sail, but in reality she will almost never reach this state of emptyness, only when entering dry dock, and even then there will be some weight of the growth on the hull.

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 6:33 pm 
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Neptune wrote:
And of course some "big-boy" pictures, courtesy of the Hellespont company themselves


This looks like a sister to the ship featured on Superships on the Science channel. What a monster! I think she would look better if those bridge wings extended all the way to the sides.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 5:54 am 
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Yes Timothy, this is a sister of Ti Europe. They were called Hellespont Metropolis, Hellespont Tara, Hellespont Fairfax and Hellespont Alhambra. The Tara has become Ti Europe, the others are called Ti Asia, Ti Oceania and Ti Africa (I think Ti America was dropped for fear of Terrorism, but I'm not sure of that).
And indeed we were always jealous when ships with these huge bridgewings passed us. The most stupid thing about this is that you actually need a "Bridge Wing Exemption Certificate" for this... They always need papers for everything I guess. The missing bridgewings were compensated by cameras for mooring though. Six cameras were constantly monitoring everything during operations. During sailing they were taken off.
Normally tankers are painted in green or red, but these have a new trick, White. Hell for the eyes when you don't wear sunglasses. But it prevents cargo evaporation in a large degree, so it seemed to be worth the pain!
A picture shown before:
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Here is a self-unloading ship we met when travelling to Ti Europe in US.
These are complicated and hence very interesting ships, equiped with conveyor belts and special equipement in the holds to be capable of unloading themselves via the large thing in the middle. These are very good ships for less advanced ports.
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And here is Cygnus Voyager from Chevron. She came alongside to take a part of the cargo. This method allows for large tankers like the Europe to operate (as they are too large to enter most ports) and it offers a lot of flexibility for the companies, they could wait with their decision of the destination of the oil, something impossible if they work with a pipeline and buoy.
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Cygnus was only one of the four similar vessels we have filled.

Unfortunately the age of "Superships" (I don't have Science channel, I guess it was interesting!) has passed. Oil is nearly finished and as the predictions are ranging from 30-50 years, most companies are not willing to invest in new large ships. Take in account that these ships are not at all the largest ever built, Yahre Viking for example was even 80m longer than Europe and 2m broader! Some other ULCCs in the past were bigger too. But for now these four sisters are the largest double hull tankers around (which in fact already indicates the slight decrease in size of superships). Hellespont has ordered a 4million barrel ULCC now though ( the four sisters are 3.2million barrel ones), so that one will probably become the biggest soon.

Container ships will probably grow further now. The studies have shown that 12,000 to 13,000TEU vessels can be built. These would measure 380m on 57m (the maximum range a container crane can reach at the moment) and still retain a speed of 23kts. Superships for the future I guess.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:22 pm 
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I think the Superships show has been shown on Discovery Channel and maybe others. I will try to record it next time it comes on.

They discussed the blinding white paint applied to the Hellespont Fairfax. The ship was shown from it's building to it's launching. I was surprised to learn that there is no gearbox and the propeller is direct coupled to the engine. So to stop, you have to stop the engine. It was reported to take 2-1/2 Kilometers to come to a stop! I wonder if this engine can be reversed in an emergency? If not then you better have one helluva captain at the helm.

The show confirmed what you wrote earlier about the Ti Europe in it's unballasted state. They showed the Fairfax blowing sea water from her hold in a pump test. I can't help but think that that would be the perfect solution to the Green peace protesters.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 6:47 pm 
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BTW Neptune, what is happening with your scratchbuilt Tanker and where did you get the plans?

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 5:06 am 
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The engines is ALWAYS coupled to the engine in merchant ships. It takes an extremely long time to reverse (although times got better now), as you first have to stop the engine, then go to dead slow astern, slow astern, half astern and full astern. Add to it that this renders the ship unsteerable and you get an idea why we never test such things.
It actually needs 4,800m (4.8km) to come to a stop if fully laden and coming from full ahead.
So in an emergency, there is some trouble and reversing is a pain.
As you might know, these ships sail on Heavy Fuel Oil. In the earlier days, the HFO was only used for high speeds, when coming to manoeuvring speed, they had to switch over to Marine Diesel Oil. So, reversing the engine took a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time, as you first had to reduce, then switch to other fuel, slow down more, stop, reverse and so on.
This was caused by the fact that HFO isn't really liquid at normal temperatures. There are a bunch of steam lines running through the double bottom to keep it liquid. The same counted for the engine, so Diesel was used at low speeds (and lower temperatures). Nowadays, due to cost, there is a steam system fitted to keep the HFO liquid during slow speed/manoeuvring speed.
Basically you can reverse the engine in a true emergency, but then you have to take into account that you have just wasted the entire ship and that a new engine will have to be fitted afterwards.

The Seawater test is not important to Greenpeace, those were just tests before those tanks had ever seen any oil. The seawater is not affected then. Those pumps can by the way load 5,000t/h, three of them makes 15,000t/h. Centrifugal pumps driven by steam turbines.

As for the model, she's still there, waiting for some touches. I was working on the pipelines, when I found out the diameter wasn't correct. So I'll have to do some extra work with my pictures etc.
The plans of a ship are always onboard, it's entire library itself. I took pictures of the plans with my wide angle lens and I can zoom in on my computer screen to have it the right scale.
(don't have Discovery Channel here either, they wasted our entire tv programmes by going to digital television).

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 1:48 pm 
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Neptune wrote:
The Seawater test is not important to Greenpeace, those were just tests before those tanks had ever seen any oil. The seawater is not affected then. Those pumps can by the way load 5,000t/h, three of them makes 15,000t/h. Centrifugal pumps driven by steam turbines.


I meant to keep them at bay. I know that is not nice. :eyebrows:

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:01 pm 
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Haha, the Greenpeace guys. Never had trouble with them, not that we'd care actually... What have they done for us? I think oil transport are a bit more important for the world and progress than Greenpeace :big_grin: The orders were: give a blast on the horn, but DON'T deviate from the course, if the vessel ahead of you sees you, he'll move out of the way :thumbs_up_1: Easy, but efficient. And we were more careful than the others, we tried to keep a long distance, but other ships kept coming close to take pictures or asking us whether the ship really was 380m long...

The "official" onboard reason for the white paint is by the way a bit different from what I told you. The "official" version goes like this:
First officer: "Do you know where they paint the environment white too?"
Me: "no"
First officer: "In a loony house, to keep the patients quiet!"

Due to your question, I restarted (partially) working on the Europe. I've done some IG lines to the ballast tanks with Iron wire, although I can't get this stuff straight... I will use cut off parts of railing for the smaller Crude Oil Washing lines. I'm also working on the main cranes and P/V breakers. Will have to stop soon due to the coming Exam period though.

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Roel

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:12 pm 
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Any chance I can talk you into seeing those plans? I'd love to build on in the divine scale (that's 700 scale for the rest of you). Better yet, talk a resin mfg. into producing one, so I don't have to do the hard work.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:40 pm 
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Sur you can talk to me. But you probably can already come up with a reason why I'm not offering these plans, can't you? I couldn't find the linesplan of the hull either, otherwise I would have already started building one in 1/400. That's basically why I did 1/700 (basically I started with a 1/1200). But the rest of the plans along with my many pictures are of great help to me. I'll see what I can do and consult some other people for this.

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 2:34 pm 
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You got mail Timothy.

Here are some more pictures to illustrate how huge this is:
The superstructure and I'm standing, together with the Apprentice Officer on the starboard Bridgewing, indeed those two dots you see there...
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Some of the strange trees you find in the metal forrest (a pressure Vacuum valve to avoid over/underpressure in the tanks during operations):

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Dense part of the forrest near the manifold:
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These pipes are huge, 76cm in diameter, I had to scratch off some tape someone left on them while putting the coloured band on the pipes. That took a while to get all around... :mad_1: (funny job though as it was nice weather).

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:28 pm 
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I'm still trying to imagine how much PE and piping it would take to make a 1/700 kit look good.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:13 am 
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Are you saying my model doesn't look good??? :big_grin:
I agree, it would take a LOT of PE, everywhere railing and piping. I think those P/V valves will be hard too... I'm not sure whether I'll put them on, or just some small sticks/pieces of stretched sprue instead.

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