Another Goliath

[Tony Morcom]

Another goliath of the seas was seen in the port of Tyne this week, Courtesy of our friends at gCaptain:
World’s Largest Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Strolls Into Tyne

By gCaptain Staff On October 5, 2012



The world’s largest wind turbine installation vessel, the 14,739 DWT MPI Adventure, strolled into the Port of Tyne in the UK on Thursday to pick up some wind measurement equipment to be installed off the coast Blyth near a proposed wind farm site.
The MPI Adventure has been chartered by SeaRoc to complete mast installation for the National Renewable Energy Centre’s Offshore Anemometry Hub (NOAH) located approximately 3 nautical miles off the coast of Blyth. The job includes the installation of a 635t tripod foundation, a 100t platform and 25t meteorological mast. Once completed, the NOAH platform will collect the necessary environmental data, including wind and marine measurements, to inform the development, construction and operation of the proposed Blyth Offshore Wind Demonstration Site located nearby.
Measuring 138m long by 40m wide, the MPI Adventure is designed to transport, lift and install wind turbines and their foundations using a main crane with a 1,000 ton lifting capacity and six legs that can reach 72 meters down.

[Tony Wilding]

Many strange looking Ships about now, especially the new XBow Ships, bow looks like an ancient Mediterrean ship.lots being built , Shell are interested for new Tankers.

[Gulliver]

Thanks for that Tony, a very interesting good quality video that.
Here's my cartoon depiction of the smaller 4-legged variety !E-Ship1.jpg


I was fascinated by the other video on the Tyne- the car carrier St.Petersburg- certainly getting away a bit from the older box type design You could pretend you're flying it !
ST.PETERSBURG-Car Carrier


A bit of techno info:-
Japanese automaker Nissan has unveiled its eco-friendly transport ship: the 21,000-ton City of St. Petersburg. Thanks to its unusual design, which features a semispherical prow that's claimed to reduce wind resistance by up to 50 percent compared to a conventional vessel, the City of St. Petersburg is expected to cut annual fuel usage by 800 tons, which will reduce CO2 emissions by 2,500 tons.

The ship has room to haul up to 2,000 vehicles and will hit the waterways to transport cars and trucks to Northern Europe and Russia from the automaker's factories in the United Kingdom and Spain. In a fitting move, starting in 2013, the City of St. Petersburg will transport battery-powered Nissan Leafs from the Nissan plant in Sunderland.




Best Regards



Gulliver

[Tony Morcom]

As you rightly say Davey. Here's one of what many of us would consider still to be a fairly normal ship.

[Tony Morcom]

Courtesy of our friends at gCaptain

Dockwise Vanguard in the HHI Drydock

By Rob Almeida On December 17, 2012

dockwise-vanguard.jpg

Dockwise Vanguard, Image courtesy Amarcon,


Launched last month at Hyundai Heavy Industries, the Dockwise Vanguard is the largest heavy lift vessel ever built and is currently undergoing sea trials.

While carrying loads in excess of 100,000 tons across thousands of miles of ocean, motion monitoring, response prediction and heavy-weather decision support are some of the critical data sets for the bridge watchstanders to monitor. To provide the operators with this data, Amarcon, a long-time client of Dockwise and ABB subsidiary, announced today that they will be outfitting the Dockwise Vanguard with their OCTOPUS-Onboard system.
OCTOPUS-Onboard combines wave measurements, weather forecasts, and navigation data like speed, course, RPM and the voyage plan, with ship characteristics, loading conditions, and motion sensor measurements. This facilitates continuous monitoring as well as simulation and forecasting of the ship responses and performance. Warnings can be instigated for possible hazards and their consequences. As a result, OCTOPUS-Onboard makes the main tasks of the officer on watch easier, by giving support for safe and economic navigation, damage avoidance and route planning.
The OCTOPUS product line is part of ABB’s Vessel Information and Control (VICO) systems suite which incorporates a full range of automation and advisory solutions specifically for marine applications, based on ABB’s field-proven process automation technologies.
Leon Adegeest, founder and General Manager of Amarcon commented on this order, ”For Amarcon, it is exciting to deliver our decision support software to a vessel of this magnitude, that can carry anything from a ship or drilling rig, up to an entire Floating Production Storage and Offloading unit.”