New Build woes

[John Arton]

Any of you here ever taken a new build out of the yard and experienced major woes.
Worst I had was when 2nd mate and joined a new build panamax bulker in Copenhagen. At first everything within the yard was hunky dory with the Danes assisting us in all ways but after official hand over that was it, we were given 24hrs to load all the owners stores and equipment on board as the yard had refused us permission to start putting any owners gear on board before hand over. That meant that as 2nd mate I had 24 hrs to load/unpack and place in place the full navigational outfit of all world wide charts, publications etc and to ensure that the voyage charts were corrected up to date with about a months or more corrections to do.
The radio room was still being fitted out and we had all dry stores, food, linen, crockery deck and engine stores and spares to load and it was all meant to have been done in 24hrs with no shore carnage available. The only crane on board was the engine room crane aft of the accommodation block. Eventually the owners got an agreement off the yard that we could stay for a further 48 hrs but they charged them horrendous quayage fees, refused the use of a shore crane and the use of the shipyard canteen to the ships crew.
As it was February the main deck had not been painted so we sailed with a team of yard painters who were going to paint her on the voyage to Brazil (should have taken extra beer as they all drank like fishes) plus a gang of radio fitters from Radiofusion fitting the main radio station.
On the voyage down the chief engineer was always complaining of water in the fuel so on arrival in Brazil we had L/R down with X-ray gear testing the water ballast hold welds that were adjacent to the fuel tanks. The captain then decided that he reckoned that many of the deck plates were de-laminating so more tests using x-rays were done. Result, huge bill but no cracks or de-laminations found. On top of this huge bill the Chief Officer spent his annual stores budget on hard wood for supposedly building rope gratings (read in actual fact, his greenhouse) plus conveyor belt material for wheel house and alleyway covering plus god no what else.
Slow steamed all the way to Japan with the Chief Engineer still moaning about water in the fuel.
The cause of this became apparent whilst discharging in Japan (Kakagowa if I remember correctly). When ballasting one ballast tank overflowed and thick fuel oil came pouring out of the vent followed by ballast water, fortunately it was dark and the small amount that went over the side quickly got blown away on the current (Phew).
It was obvious that there was a leak between this fuel tank and the ballast tank so it was into emergency dry dock in Japan where it took nigh on a week to get the fuel tank emptied and hand cleaned in order for it to be inspected and repaired. On inspection it became quickly obvious what was the cause as there was a perfectly circular hole about 3 inches in diameter in the bulkhead between the ballast tank and the fuel tank. It was not for any pipe line or cabling so we reckoned it had been cut out to pass temporary lighting or air cables through during building and it had been overseen when doing final inspections. The actual cut out was on the deck below the hole and had actually been painted over when the coatings in the ballast tanks had been applied. All this resulted in a very pleasant week in a shipyard in southern japan in a small town, possibly Kashima but am not sure. Cannot think where we went to after discharge in Japan but possibly down to Aus for coal. Ship was a standard B and W Panamax and very nice accommodation but was a right work up for 6 months until we got all the problems sorted out.
Anyone else had similar experience.
rgds
JA

[Peter F Chard]

John, Was this ship built without cofferdams -- to have common bulkheads between tanks holding different liquids sound wrong and against all good shipbuilding practice that I am aware of, cheers Peter in NZ.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Peter it was not necessary to have cofferdams between fuel tanks and ballast tanks on dry cargo ships/bulkers, cofferdams were sometimes fitted to specialist parcel tankers on dedicated trades, but John doesn't say what era he was talking about, I'm talking 50's to 80's rules may have changed since then

[Peter F Chard]

Ivan, You are probably correct although Class rules varied from society to society. All the dry cargo ships I sailed on from the UK had vegetable oil tanks, generally for tallow and all fitted with steam heating coils and they always had cofferdams. Cheers Peter in NZ.

[happy daze john in oz]

Sailed on the NZSC Paproa just after a major refit. Not sure what was refitted but we had some real problems. Mainly electrical as it would appear some of the wiring to pumps had been incorrectly fitted. Push the button for one pump and another would start up. Then just out of the canal we spent three days adrift with engine problems and water shortage down to two pints of fresh per man per day until we reached Oz. Some desalination plant wiring was also wrong. Great voyage with salt water soap.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Read today in my American Maritime bulletin, that US Navy crews are now only taking out ships on 'Shake Down Trips' during daylight hours because of safety reasons. 'ATTENTION, NOW HEAR THIS.. THIS IS NOT A JOKE' a lot of countries are going to be able to sleep easier at night now!!, knowing that US Navy only sails during the day.

[John Arton]

Peter, Ivan
That bulker came out of the yard in Feb 1977 and it is still common to find many ships with fuel oil tanks adjacent to ballast tanks in the double bottoms without a cofferdam between them.
As Ivan says its mostly down to class rules but my last outfit built a series of chemical tankers starting around 2000 where they trumpeted that they were the most environmentally safe ships as the bunker tanks were all surrounded by cofferdams. The bunker tanks were all aft surrounding the engine room.
rgds
JA