Interesting visit to the shipyard

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Interesting visit to the shipyard - 11/29/2004 7:16:59 PM

JTGEN

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Last week I went to our local shipyard for a tour in their newest launch.

First I thought it would be the worlds largest Cruise liner for the Caribbean cruises an Ultra-Voyager class ship with two on order from the shipyard with 148 000 tonnes. But that one was still in the beginning of the construction and so the Queen Mary will hold her place as the largest for a while longer. The last 5 cruise liners also made for the US market here were before the launch of the new Qeen Mary the largest cruise liners in the world.
http://www.ship-technology.com/projects/queen_mary/
One from here
http://www.ship-technology.com/projects/mariner/

Instead they had allmost finished work on the worlds largest ferry for a route between Oslo in Norway and Kiel in Germany. It was no less impressive piece of engineering. But with a price tag of 300 million Euros it should be.

The ship was allmost finished with a lot of crew allready aboard to train themselves with the systems as mainly some of the technical checks were still going on the ship and it still needed a thorough cleaning. But with about a week to delivery it was a bit frantic there.

And I must say it looked good. Flashy in Euro style, so not too flashy like the Cruisliners a la Las Vegas that are made to US customers in Caribbean with a bit different taste than in Europe. But the level was really good with a much higher standard of finish than in normal car carrying ship, but that was what the customer wanted. And lots of demanding structural challenges.

And we got a proper tour allso to the spaces like the Bridge where you can not let people in anymore with the new set of regulations due to the terrrorism.

AND OF COURSE IN THE BRIDGE COMPUTER USING WINDOWS WAS A TEXT 'ERROR' in it

It was interesting to see how much high tech is incorporated into a modern ship. They still had most of the panels open as the engineers were still working on the systems and so it was wisible how much electronics there actually is in there.

And allthough in our sailboat there is also a GPS-computerized map-autopilot system, the scale of it was immensly different.

A great experience. For the tour in the mega cruiseliner wit allmost 100 meters more to it and double the tonnage, I'll have to wait an other year. But we allready got a promise to get to see it too.

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 11/29/2004 7:32:58 PM

Belisarius

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Sounds cool. I like the QM2 if nothing else because she, unlike the caribbean cruisers, were designed hull first and everything else had to be fit into it. A sort of "outside-in" approach rather than the more popular "inside-out". That makes here completely sea worthy while the box-like supercruisers don't fare too well in hard weather and have to seek port.

Didn't know the new ferry was going to traffic the Kattegatt and Skagerrak! That's right in the neighborhood.

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 11/29/2004 7:48:01 PM

JTGEN

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Yeah, the problem with these ships is that you need a lot of decks to fit everything from the cabins to 3500 guest and 1500 crew on board with a bit nicer cabins than in military ships. Then you need to fit the swimming pools, casinos, skating rings, theaters, gyms, shps etc to the ship.

Now the draft is a problem because you can not make it go too 'deep'. So in the shipyard the had these huge blocks of prepared shipcomponents from aluminium for the upper levels to reduce the weight and maintain stability. But aluminium is way more expensive than steel and it is not easy to join aluminium to steel by welding.

The building is interesting to see too. The sip parts are prefabricated in assembly halls indoors. Then a huge crane(over 100 meters high and wide) lifts them out through a ceiling that opens up and lifts them to the assembly drydock to be joined to other parts. It can lift modules of 600 tons. The crane itself is a good landmark when sailing as it visible to long distances.

Also for example the cabins are not made at the yard nowadays. The company has a separate cabin module factory in a neighbouring county to prefabricate them. then they are just fixed to the ship. So the interior work does not need to be done at the yard. they also make cabins to competing yards too, In Germany, Italy, France etc.

The problem with Queen Mary is that with its way of using space, the price per cabin goes way up and makes it far more expensive. Apparently the new 148 000 ton giant costs at least 600 million a piece, up from about 500 million a piece on the previous five cruiseliners they made.

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 11/29/2004 7:53:57 PM

Belisarius

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Yeah, economy is ofcourse the driving factor in design. The logistics process must also be pretty impressive, getting everything to the right place at the right time.

I was thinking "shouldn't that be the W�rtisl� yard in �bo", and then I saw your profile. �bo, Turku...whatever!

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 11/29/2004 8:10:28 PM

JTGEN

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Yeah it helps to be a local and to know a few marine engineers. Actually many, since there is also many design companies that design ships made elswhere, like in US and Japan. So plenty of them to go around.

You got right with the yard, though the original W�rtsil� went bancrupt early 90's and the lot was bought cheap by the Norwegians, with a help of Finnish guy, who got his name in the yards name

. So its Kvarner Masa Yards nowadays, with Masa being the short of Martin -the guy who saved the yard back then. Nowadays there has been some new mergers so good knows what it is gonna be called in the future.

W�rtsil� makes nowadays just propulsion systems, like huge 40 000 kW Engines for the ships and for Powerstations. they are just closing the plant down and shifting the production to Italy. God knows why, cause the plant here has been profitable, unlike the plant in Italy where they are shifting the production. R&D and maintenance will stay though. Maybe it is because the engine plant happens to be prime property for residential developement and lay off costs in Finland are far lower than in Italy

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 11/30/2004 10:29:15 AM

Belisarius

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Ah, thankx for the update!

Seeing the competition from Asia, I'm surprised they've managed to run the shipyard for so long as it is. Ours disappeared years and years ago, Karlskrona is the only one left and they build navy vessels only. It actually is engines I connect W�rtsil� with, those are some huge machines!

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 12/3/2004 4:41:20 PM

JTGEN

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The good thing about building cruiseships is that the South Koreans, nor really the Japanese either, have the sufficent technology knowledge for building these ships. Or at least the companies operating them do not have faith in those shipyards being able to make these ships.

Koreans make a lot of ships, but one single huge cruiseship gives about the same turnover to the yard as 5 supertankers, and they give jobs to a lot of people around here.

The good thing about W�rtsil�, even though they shifted the plant from here(conspiracy theorist might say because they had to in order to secure a huge powerplant contract in Iraq as Finland did not join, but Italy did

), is that they still have on Plant in Finland, in Vaasa. They make there fast speed Diesels and now the medium speed and low speed(former sultzer) diesels are made in Italy.

The advantage we have here over the asians is a lot of technology capability. Not just the shipyard and engineers and engines(also the Koreans buy a lot of engines from W�rtsil�), but also propulsion systems like 360 degree rotating propeller systems. And then everything from cargo handling onboard and offboard the ship. So a lot of clustered information.

And all of this is really a result of military ship building. In Sweden they just concentrated too much on that, whereas here it has been just a side business that also allows new technological advancement that can be shifted then to commercial shipbuilding(ofcourse the Finnish Navy has never been big enough to sustain a yard on itself). The local yard got the technological boost in the 30's when they built a couple of panssarilaiva or 'panzershife' maybe a more understandable word for the navy along with submarines which were the prototypes for the coming German U-boat program with type II being a staright version from a design for a Finnish Navy and type VII an enlarged version of a type for Finnish version. This was done 'secretly' together with Kriegsmarine that was not allowed to build Submarines but wanted to maintain the technical capability in case... And the case came with Hitler. There is an interesting book on this written in Swedish by swedish speaking finns(and I read it in Swedish only to learn that it was also awailable in Finnish, good in effect that refreshed my swedish, but with notable lack of submarine terminology it was a pain in the...).

It also stated that the test drives of the subs had plenty of German 'assistants' on board. Later these guys ended up being U-boat captains so that out of the first 8 WW II U-boat captains 6 had been along with the Finnish subs. So a fair amount of blaim for the level of German U-boats falls into Finnish hands, allthough Germans also co-operated with Turkey and Spain with submarines, though not that extensively. But those building projects gave the local yard (and Helsinki one too with one small submarine built there) a significant boost in tecnological capability. And with effort put there since, it has lasted.

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 12/4/2004 10:49:36 AM

Belisarius

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Interesting. The Swedish industries got much of their submarine knowledge the other way around: A sunken brand-new type XXI German sub was salvaged just off the west coast. The Allies demanded it to be handed to them, and Sweden complied....after dissasembling and documenting the entire thing meticously.

Of course, it was the machinery in the type XXI they were after, allowing higher underwater speed and underwater cruising without needing to surface that often.

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RE: Interesting visit to the shipyard - 12/10/2004 6:10:42 PM

JTGEN

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yes, I have heard of that. Was it somewhere near G�teborg? U-boat escaping allid ships to Swedish waters and not been allowed to leave and so they scuttled the boat, but to low water. Great catch.

The finnish U-boat program included also at the start some scutteled boats. British had 5 subs in Helsinki in ww1. Then as the Russians got out of the war, the brits had no ports in baltic and so they sunk their boats outside Helsinki. Apparently one was not that badly damaged, and so it was brought back up, but newer really fully renowated, since it was already out of date.

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