Stena ferry drifting without power yesterday

[matchmaker]

Resolved now, but could have been nasty in poorer weather

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotla...

[Huntsman]

matchmaker said:

Resolved now, but could have been nasty in poorer weather

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotla...

I really dont get how that happens?

I dont know much about commercial ships, but they have a day tank for fuel? Separators? Many tanks? Maintenance schedules? Redundancy in every system?

What could be the cause?

[tank slapper]

Could easily be fuel contamination, or an unlucky mechanical failure to a system that happens to affect both engines.

[westtra]

Electric power supply problem would be my guess.

[mikR]

westtra said:

Electric power supply problem would be my guess.

I agree. That ship is powered by Rolls Royce jet turbines (thrust by water jet) so simple electrical failure would probably shut both engines down.

(Poor) Wiki link:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_Sea_Servic...

[matchmaker]

mikR said:

westtra said:

Electric power supply problem would be my guess.

I agree. That ship is powered by Rolls Royce jet turbines (thrust by water jet) so simple electrical failure would probably shut both engines down.

(Poor) Wiki link:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_Sea_Servic...

No - it is a conventional diesel & props ferry.

[Stu R]

She runs a brace of Pielstick V16s, probably dumped all the lube oil into the bilges before going up in smoke

There's a whole bunch of stuff that could cause a ship stopper.

[Stu R]

mikR said:

westtra said:

Electric power supply problem would be my guess.

I agree. That ship is powered by Rolls Royce jet turbines (thrust by water jet) so simple electrical failure would probably shut both engines down.

(Poor) Wiki link:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_Sea_Servic...

Rest assured she doesn't have any RR jets hidden away, and isn't the HSS. She's a rotten old SeaFrance tub given a lick of paint after Stena took over.

[mikR]

okay okay. I got it wrong it wasn,t the HSS. It was the "slow boat to hell" exactly where I should be going for getting that wrong.

[MK1 GIT]

Stu R said:

She runs a brace of Pielstick V16s, probably dumped all the lube oil into the bilges before going up in smoke

There's a whole bunch of stuff that could cause a ship stopper.

Pielsticks are great. Good enough for u-boats good enough for a ferry.

But yeah could of been one of many things that caused the problem.

[Hooli]

We were on that boat not too long ago, I thought it seemed in better nick than any channel ferry I'd been on.

[Mr Dave]

Its better than the ones they used to have, my god they were dire. And expensive, its not much further than the Calais crossing but at times over 6 times the price.

OK I know the channel crossing is a lot busier and so on but that doesnt make it any easier to pay for.

[Huntsman]

Stu R said:

She runs a brace of Pielstick V16s, probably dumped all the lube oil into the bilges before going up in smoke

There's a whole bunch of stuff that could cause a ship stopper.

Really?

I have a motorboat with two engines, everything is separate, batteries, fuel, filters, cooling, transmisions, shafts, everything, would be pretty odd circumstances for both to fail.

Why not set up a ship the same?

[matchmaker]

Huntsman said:

Stu R said:

She runs a brace of Pielstick V16s, probably dumped all the lube oil into the bilges before going up in smoke

There's a whole bunch of stuff that could cause a ship stopper.

Really?

I have a motorboat with two engines, everything is separate, batteries, fuel, filters, cooling, transmisions, shafts, everything, would be pretty odd circumstances for both to fail.

Why not set up a ship the same?

I used to be a crew member on an RNLI lifeboat (an Arun). As you might imagine everything was as failsafe as possible.

One Sunday morning we set out on an exercise. It was a nice day with good weather. After a few minutes the port engine started to overheat so we shut it down and continued on the starboard one but within a very short time it too began to overheat. We shut it down as well and fired up the emergency generator to provide electrical power until we checked the cooling systems out.

We shortly found the cause - both of the cooling water intakes of the main engines were blocked by large numbers of tiny jellyfish. Once we'd cleared them all was OK.

But suppose it had happened out on a shout, on a lee shore and in a gale?

That happened to probably one of the safest types of vessel afloat - so there are plenty of possible causes of problems for "normal" vessels.

As an aside, Torness nuclear power station had to be shut down recently for a similar reason.