Cruising ships

An approximation to their dimensions

In my post of April 8, 2010 in this blog, entitled "Preliminary dimensioning of merchant ships," I included a procedure to calculate a first approximation of most significant particulars of 9 different merchant ship types, but I omitted a very important one, which is the passengers cruising vessel (hereinafter Cruising Vessel (CV)). One friend suggested me to extend the procedure to include the CV, because of the interest presently have these vessels, which are among the few that can successfully compete in Europe with eastern shipyards. Following this suggestion I have prepared a preliminary CV's dimensioning procedure, but I warn from just now that the data I base on have been obtained from Internet sites and some of them are not quite reliable, as I shall comment further on.

Estimating ship's powering 

L.K. Kupras' method 

At the initial stage of a ship's design a propulsion power estimation is to be done to ascertain that the vessel can sail at the specified speed. As the ship design development progresses, models tests are usually performed in a hydrodynamics tank, which serve to optimize the hull form, adjust the propeller(s) design and ensure the speed/power prediction for a proper choice of the propelling engine(s).

¿ How much does a ship weigh ?

Archimedes' principle

This question is deliberately ambiguous and what intends to ask is how can you get the weight of a ship, referring, of course, to a large ship, that can not be placed on a balance. It also refers to the weight of a real floating ship  already built and it is not considering here the weight estimation during the ship's design phase.

Safe Return to Port

Jaime Oliver's lecture in RINA

At the end of last February an international conference entitled "Design and operation of passenger ships" was held in London, at the RINA's headquarters (Royal Institution of Naval Architects), whose 52 lecturers from 10 countries developed, in 14 papers, a series of new ideas and thoughts on the development of ships technology. 

Ballast-free ships

In the realm of ships, ballast is a fixed or transitory weight that must be placed on board to solve or alleviate what I name " ballast-related problems" (BRPs), what means those problems that can fixed by using ballast. For example, BRPs are a poor ship's stability, insufficient or inadequate drafts, propeller(s) incomplete immersion, excessive ship movements at sea, etc.

"Begoña del Mar"

A new ship model from Juan Carlos Gorostiza

 A few days ago Guillermo Avanzini sent to me an information on the new model built by our mutual friend Juan Carlos Gorostiza, about whose wide and remarkable production I posted an entry in this blog here. 

This time it comes to  the ship  "Begoña del Mar", third  in a series that was built in the 60's for the Company Equimar Maritima and was built in Corbasa (Santander)  at 1970.