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-   -   Test Drive Report : 73m long Rolls Royce powered ship (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/commercial-vehicles/57878-test-drive-report-73m-long-rolls-royce-powered-ship-4.html)

this is so much more relevant to Team bhp than threads discussing mobile phones and laptop config's. It'll surely be interesting to see more such topics of discussions. Keep it going captain.

Few queries which i had

1>So do you guys keep a note on the depth of the water throughout?
2> Have you ever gone in a frozen sea? This query came after i saw ships somewhere near russia which needed a lead ice breaker to tow them

Some more are running in my head but will quiz write it down later.

1>We have to constantly monitor the depth. Actually what's relevant is the depth of water under the keel. Look at the pictures of Concord I fully loaded. It's got almost 10m of the ship under water.
2>I've gone to frozen seas many times. All ships can't go into ice. They have to be ice class (special strengthening). Navigating in ice is quite tricky. Sometimes if you get stuck, the ice breaker may take a day to reach you. Happened to us once. So what did we do? Well just lowered the gangway. Got the barbeque set and had a barbeque on the frozen sea.

Slightly OT, but I found these vessels intriguing:

MV Blue Marlin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Semi-submersible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Do you have to do it even on routine routes or for new routes only?

Theoratically we have to do it all the time. Of course in the middle of the sea, the depths are a few thousand metres so we don't care much. If the route is passing close to land, that's where it becomes critical. No difference if you're going there first time or the hundredth time. We have to keep monitoring.

Ok that explains well. What I meant by routine route is that in such cases you already have an idea as to where you have to monitor & where not while in a new route you may have to keep checking more frequently, right?

its really nice to see such threads than usual stuff , keep going captian...

@pedrolourenco
You are a lucky guy dude!
You probably have the largest of vehicles to drive around and also the widest roads.
And thanks for sharing this unique drive experience, which most of us must have not experienced.
Keep rocking!
Cheers!

And very easy to get lost ! Unless he makes good use of advanced navigational aides, ain't it captain ? :)

The roads are wide but sometimes it gets congested specially near Singapore, in the Baltics, English Channel and a few other places. Remember we're at full speed and no brakes.

Navigational Aids are just aids. They make life easy but you can't totally rely on them. That's why they still teach us the old ways too.

You mean by plotting your course with the help of the sun, moon, stars and all that stuff not to forget the good ol faithful magnetic compass ?

The Magnetic Compass is compared with the Gyro Compass at regular intervals. Every Watch (Shift) the officer has to calculate the Compass error using either the sun, moon or stars. Calculating the position using the sun and stars is also done sometimes and compared with GPS.

Reminds me of a joke in the Readers' Digest couple of decades back. The father would use the calculator and then use fingers to confirm the accuracy, and the son would use the fingers to make the calculation, and then confirm with the calculator!! (of course, it was better worded in the RD).

BTW, folks here would like to know about the ricks in the Indian waters:-

The Hindu Business Line : Make separate traffic lanes for fishing vessels, ports told

To complicate matters, sInce most of the fishing vessels are of wood, they would be invisible on the ship's radars. The Cochin Port trust had taken an initiative to get something - even used oil cans (they used to come in tin plate containers way back) of metal on top of a fishing vessel, to make them "visible" on radars. But they would get stolen when the craft was "parked" on the shores. The plan ultimately fizzled out. And there are some fishing craft - ship collisions off Kerala coast every year. Sometimes, fishing craft drop anchor in the deep seas (within 25 nautical miles ;-) ) which coincides with the international shipping channel around here, compounding the risks. Experienced skippers of course, knew the channels, the problem was usually with skippers from TN - Tutricorin and Colachel, who frequently operate off Kerala coast.

Nice to read about a ship out here.. I guess not many shippies in here.. which company are you working for ? Ive done 5 yrs with Maersk. My previous ship Estelle Maersk had a 14 cyl engine developing 100000+ BHP . yup more than one lakh bhp ! Its an insane figure when compared with cars :)