Carnival Splendor

[vic mcclymont]

Carnival Splendor according MSN News is anchored off of Los Angeles with engine problems, she cannot make full sea speed.
A specialist is flying to carryout repairs and hopefully she will sail Monday.
Are ships getting to complicated for sea going staff to carryout repairs?
Vic

[Keith Tindell]

Will they have REAL engineers on board Viv ???, in our day they had to cope with everything, kt

[Keith Tindell]

Addition to above, some years ago a friend bought a Moody yacht, brand new from the boat show in Southampton. I went to the yard to pick the boat up with him and sail it back, I am not an engineer by the way, but the salesmen gave us an introduction to the boat, and i noticed that apart from the engine box would not allow a starting handle to be swung, there was no starting handle to the diesel engine (25hp), when i asked, he said modern engines don't need it and don't fail !!!, he was offended when i laughed at his stupidity , wellcome to the new world i thought, kt

[happy daze john in oz]

The main problem with such ships is the complicated computer systems.
Gone the days when a piston had to be changed or a new gasket fitted.

Engineers now are more atuned to electronics rather than mechanical attributes.
As we all know one small computer glitch can bring so much to a standstill.

[David Anderson]

Carnival Splendor according MSN News is anchored off of Los Angeles with engine problems, she cannot make full sea speed.
A specialist is flying to carryout repairs and hopefully she will sail Monday.
Are ships getting to complicated for sea going staff to carryout repairs?
Vic

Most likely electronics, though there should be a clever enough Electrician on-board
to cope with it assuming he has the parts.

[John Arton]

Having sailed on one ship with diesel electric propulsion, albiet only a small chemical tanker, it is not so much an electronic officer you require to fix the problem but more a computer size. The systems required to turn the electrical output from the diesel electric generator sets into the electrical power to run not only the hotel load along with the load for all the navigation equipment etc but also the propulsion units are all computer controlled. On the vessel I was on, if for some reason you asked the propulsion motor to suddenly increase , or decrease, its power such as when berthing you required a quick burst of full ahead/astern to get you alongside, then the computer would stop that as it read it as overloading the system and it would automatically put the whole set up into what was called "half load" and to reset the system the chief engineer had to examine lines of code on the computer to find the line that had put the system into half load. You could still manouever but only at low power and with slow alteration of the engine telegraph. Coming from a conventional vessel fitted with c.p.p and beckar rudder where if necessary you could shove the c.p.p control from stop to full ahead/astern in one quick movement to being on the diesel electric one where you had to slowly alter the engine telegraph was a bit of a learning curve especially when berthing as it needed to be done with slower telegraph movements.
Rgds
J.A.

[Keith Tindell]

Reading that John, i don't know if you saw the program this week on the oil rig divers, the mother ship had a computer controlled engines, to keep on station right above the dive bell, the diver had left the bell on his long umbilical air and hot water supply line, when the mother ship lost the computers, and immediately drifted rapidly off station, causing the diver on the rigs supply line to snap, leaving him with about 15 min supply of bailout air left. The mother ship had great difficulty getting back anywhere near on station mannually. The rescue of the diver was nothing short of a miracle. We rely on computers so much these days, kt

[Ken Atkinson]

On a Reardon Smith ship we were crossing the Pacific to transit the Panama Canal when one of our turbo-blowers threw a wobbly. We asked for a spare rotor which was duly sent along with a super and maker's man to fit it which we found insulting having changed one in the past. As it turned out we anchored with a slight movement in the swell and the maker's man sat on a stern bollard quite ill so we completed what we intended with little thanks and no extra money after all that was what we were there for. After going slow with the imbalance we were glad to speed up again although electronic problems can cause problems that apart from changing a circuit card the ship is often ill equipped to fault find and if the ship is unmanned .........

[Richard Keith Roberts]

Reading that John, i don't know if you saw the program this week on the oil rig divers, the mother ship had a computer controlled engines, to keep on station right above the dive bell, the diver had left the bell on his long umbilical air and hot water supply line, when the mother ship lost the computers, and immediately drifted rapidly off station, causing the diver on the rigs supply line to snap, leaving him with about 15 min supply of bailout air left. The mother ship had great difficulty getting back anywhere near on station mannually. The rescue of the diver was nothing short of a miracle. We rely on computers so much these days, kt

Computers in control? We only have to look at the Boeing 737 MAX and they are still grounded.

[happy daze john in oz]

The last time my husband went to see his mum in UK he flew Qantas. After they landed in Heathrow the pilot calmly informed the passengers that the plane had just landed itself!!!

As a result of previous bad experience with them they are now bottom of my never to fly again with list.