Launching of ship “EDT Hercules” 

in La Naval from Sestao (Spain)

Ship type PSV for shipowner EDT from Cyprus

On  23th  July “La Naval” from  Sestao performed the launching of the ship “EDT Hercules” for the Cyprian group EDT  and her delivery will be made in the next spring, although previously she will be preceded by the one of her twin ship, presently  in the fitting-out quay.

The launching was normal although with the rare arrangement of being launched by the bow, due to the forms of the ship that are very fine at  the stern which would make it difficult her launching by this end as  is normally made.

Dimensioning a merchant ship

 With the program GetxoNaval

GetxoNaval program  objective is to  allow making  quick, approximate calculations necessary to define the dimensions of a merchant ship. This program can be used basically in two different ways:

• To make an estimation of the main ship dimensions based on  its size, defined, for example, by deadweight, number of containers, volume  of cargo spaces etc.
• To make a calculation of different particulars (deadweight, speed etc.) of a ship whose  main dimensions are known, either  because they have been defined in the previous point, or for being a known ship but one or several of her capacities are unknown.

Clicking  following link you can access to the program GetxoNaval  hosted  in Google-Sites.

GetxoNaval

Preliminary dimensioning

Cargo ships

In my post of April 9, 2010, I presented a form to get a preliminary dimensioning of cargo ships once the user defined her type and a goal particular, deadweight, cargo volume or containers number, depending on the selected type. I have revised the form to be used and I present now its second edition.

To use this procedure click on following 

                                                   "CALCULATE"

Training Sail Vessels of Bilbao River

Speech from Juan José Alonso Verástegui

On last 6th March the Dr. Naval Architect D. Juan José Alonso Verástegui issued a presentation of subject theme in the "Maritime Museum Ría de Bilbao", within the acts to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

A full account of his presentation, together with my comments,  is to be found in my blog "Oteando desde Getxo", and a copy of his most important documents can be found hereafter.

Stability of deck barges and pontoons

In a previous post I included an approximate procedure to estimate the stability of cargo ships in the preliminary design stage, but a blog reader pointed out to me that it was not good enough for the special case of   deck barges and pontoons , which are artefacts carrying all load above the deck. Due to this so special condition these floaters (they are not conventional ships) have received a different stability consideration in the IMO  regulations and I have been preparing a specific procedure for estimation of their stability.

In the form that opens by clicking the following link, GetxoNaval ship dimensioning program is open and selecting the deck barges stability tag, the user is requested to input a few data of the barge / pontoon and he gets a suitable information about its stability in the specified loading condition. After the form a user guide is shown and a results interpretation.

Begin calculation

WindFlip: A barge to transport and position wind turbines

Innovative System from WindFlip AS

 Electric generation by wind turbines is increasing dramatically in Europe and other areas and placement of turbines at sea (offshore) is one of the booming posibilities due to the increased performance and environmental advantages that are got. However transport operations and placement of wind turbines at sea pose a significant cost and require the use of special vessels dedicated to these tasks.

 Recently, new ideas are being released to solve or ease these problems and one of the most recent is the use of special barges, towed, low cost, as the type called WindFlip.

 WindFlip is a simple barge which loads the complete wind turbine, is towed to its site at sea and there is ballasted and flipped by stern up to the vertical and then the turbine pedestal end is buried in its working position. WindFlip is unballasted then by injecting pressurized air in the tanks and proceeds returning to port. So simply said it seems easy, but I suppose it will be quite complicated, nevertheless it seems a bright idea and hopefully satisfactory.

This video briefly shows an outline of the operation, where nothing can be seen how to move the turbine from its location on shore up to its place on WindFlip, but I do not think it will be a big problem.

A typical WindFlip is about 100 m long and 30 m wide and such a barge could carry a complete wind turbine of 65 m and 15 MW  power.

WindFlip uses an old idea, the pivotting ship type named FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform), to solve a new problem. The FLIP is as old as 1962 and was used by the United States navy as an ocean research platform, providing to the involved scientists  a still and comfortable workstation, compared to that offered by a ship floating and moving among the waves. The Ship-Technology.com site describes and shows the ideas and reality of this ship.

Container vessels capacity

In the form that follows the cellular container vessel dimensions are input and her 20 ft TEUS capacity is estimated
This 2nd. edition fixing some errors and adding drawing of Containers in holds

Click to begin calculation

(updated on 21 Feb 2012)

"La Naval" shipyard of Sestao(Spain) launches the "Joseph Platou"

 "Fall-Pipe" type vessel for Jan de Nul

On August 3, 2012 "La Naval" shipyard, in Sestao (Spain), of the CNN group (Construcciones Navales del Norte =  Northen Shipbuilding) proceeded to launch this vessel for the Belgian shipowner Jan de Nul, a regular customer of this shipyard which has already delivered a twinship, "Simon Stevin", and several suction dredges, including the two largest in the world, in its class, "Cristobal Colón" and "Leiv Eiriksson". About these ships I already included posts  stressing their notability and the "La Naval" capacity to build such a high technology ships and competing worldwide with major shipbuilders .

The shipyard invited me to attend this launching, that I thanked especially in these times of shipbuilding drought , as evidenced by the absence of a keel laying after this launch, as was to be the norm in old good times when shipyards laid the keel of following ship waiting her turn in the queue of orders. I have news, unconfirmed, that "La Naval" will finish the construction of two medium-sized vessels begun in the late Seville shipyard, what will lead to an easing of shipyard situation in the absence of "serious" contracts, matched to its proven category and capacity. I hope that the "tax lease" system  resolves soon, after many months of stand-by, without which the shipyards in this country would have many difficulties to survive.

In this post about the "Simon Stevin", first ship of this series, I summarized the main features of this vessel whose dimensions are

Overall length (m)	191,50
Breadth (m)	40,00
Depth (m)	13,20
Draught loaded (m)	8,50
Deadweight (tonnes)	32.500
Speed (knots)	15,50
Crew	70
Propulsion
Azimuthal propellers	4 x 4.500 Kw
Retractable propellers	2 x 2.000 Kw
Electric generators	5 x 3.300 Kw

Delivery of "Joseph Platou" is scheduled for early next year.

I wish I had taken pictures and video of the launching from the other side of the river, but as I saw it from the guests platform visibility was very poor and I include here some photos of the event only as a recollection, nothing to be with quality.

Ship launching seen from the visitors platform

Which sails quicker the rowing boat "trainera" or "trainerilla" ?

The great mathematics magazine + Plus Magazine, in its May 2012 issue published an article entitled "Outer space: Canoeing and kayaking", authored by John D. Barrow, which raises the question of whether these boats run more or less when they double the crew, which we do not know in advance because if the propulsive power is doubled so does the displacement and therefore the hydrodynamic resistance.

+ Plus presents simple and reasonable equations to estimate the variation of this resistance and determine from it the necessary power increase, which compares with the increased power provided by the additional rowers. He gets a theoretical conclusion that  a double crew boat increases its speed by 8 to 10%, what matches well with the actual data recorded in kayacs and canoes races. This conclusion appears consistent with the intuitive impression we have that larger similar boats are faster than smaller ones. 

A new website about Naval Architecture

In the February issue of the Spanish journal Ingeniería Naval (Naval Architecture) they report the creation of a new website entitled "Revista del Sector Marítimo. Ingeniería Naval" (Journal of the Maritime Sector. Naval Architecture), whose stated aims are to "... encourage news update daily and flexibly, enabling readers to easily find news of interest through tags that allow you to select all news related to a topic."

This website is in this URL "Ingeniería Naval"

The journal editorial keeps saying they have tried that the new website be accessible from the largest possible number of devices in addition to PCs, such as tablets, already in operation, and smartphones, which will be soon.

Index of sections of the website is this

• Home
• Information
• Maritime news
• Maritime energies
• Magazines
• Subscription
• Reports
• Ships
• Applications
• Sitemap

The preceeding items are subdivided, in some cases, into lower levels and in particular, subscribers have access to the full contents of the journal "Ingeniería Naval" (Naval Architecture), on all its numbers since 2004 when the digital version was created, that is also handed over annually on a CD.

The inclusion of RSS allows you to add news to feeds readers and share them on social networks like Facebook and Twitter and to connect to the video channel of Naval Architects at Youtube.

I think that this site is very well presented with large and handy information and although it is currently a complement to "Ingeniería Naval" paper magazine edition, I think, is my opinion, that it will not be long until they retire the latter from the market, because, contrary to the opinion of some friends of mine, I think that although currently books and publications coexist in digital and paper formats, the very next generations will know the latter only in museums.

My congratulations to the AINE President, José Esteban Pérez Garcia and to the Journal Director, Belén García de Pablos, together with all their team, for the creation and promotion of this new publishing media, which I hope will help to reactivate the decayed shipbuilding situation in our country.

First and last aircraft carriers

The first one

By chance I found an online article (Ref.1) about the first aircraft carrier in naval history, i.e. the first ship on which an aircraft landed and took off. It was the cruiser Pennsylvania, of the U.S. Navy, and the first landing on its provisional flight deck occurred on January 18, 1911, in San Francisco, California, by a biplane aircraft Curtiss, piloted by Eugene B. Ely , a U.S. professional civil pilot.

Should cruise ships have a double hull ?

Considerations on the Costa Concordia accident

The recent accident involving the cruise ship Costa Concordia on the Italian coast of the Giglio Island is producing the usual questions that arise after any disaster affecting human lives. It is the question of whether the safety of the facility in question is sufficient, be it either a ship, aircraft, train, skyscraper etc. Clearly there is not a complete safety in any order of life, but it is also clear that any current safety level can be improved and the issue is deciding when and where the laws and regulations governing safety are to be changed to get better expectations.

History teaches us that mankind is learning the hard way. When we suffer a great accident is when we consider that perhaps safety provisions are not adequate and should be analyzed in detail and realism to decide whether they should be improved.

Ship lightweight Calculation

(In cargo ships preliminary design)

Introduction

The calculation of the ship lightweight and her center of gravity is one of the basic tasks to be performed in the ship initial design stage, where it is advisable to be able to perform quick, approximate calculations, allowing to quickly analyze many alternative dimensionings. In this blog I present a form to enter the main dimensions of a cargo ship from which the program computes, approximately, the ship lightweight and center of gravity height broken down in Steel, Equipment and Machinery. Results are limited to ships up to 320 m. length between perpendiculars and aspect ratios should be normal.