Big Boat

[Willy Nilly]

I like a big ship and if forced into a career change would look into at least doing some work on one.

With the help of Google I found this monster http://www.worldslargestship.com/ the logistics of just building the thing is mind boggling, never mind operating it/them

[wildcat45]

What was the section they moved out at the end? Another ship?

[tomash]

Ha Ha Ha

Typical of Maersk to order 5 of these and then the bottom falls out of the container market.

Plus the fact that they cant offload anywhere in the US.

So while it may be the biggest ship it may well end up as the biggest white elephant too!

[Taffer]

Despite the size, it's still just a box ship with not much in it.

More interesting are the large offshore construction vessels, drillships, well intervention vessels, etc., filled with more advanced systems and gizmos, and carrying out more interesting jobs than shuttling ISO containers from A-B:

http://www.allseas.com/uk/19/equipment

http://www.subsea7.com/content/dam/subsea7/documen...

http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Discoverer-Enterp...

[T S Magnum]

"World's largest ship"

Obviously these (that are roughly twice as big by displacement) aren't counted by Maersk. How convenient for headline grabbing.

[Fishtigua]

It's a bit of a bugger when the middle falls out.

[ciaranthemurph]

Having worked on the G-Class ships which were the largest in the UK fleet at the time (300m LOA), I can say that I wouldn't much care to work on something like that any more. I can't access that website properly but I think it has two smaller engines rather than one single big engine, so it's nothing particularly exciting from that point of view either.

The offshore heavy lift/intervention stuff is far more interesting from an engineering point of view (for me anyway). These big containerships are pretty simple, just big empty boxes that float!

[wildcat45]

doogz said:

At the end of what? Which video?

They moved the dry dock gate out of the way, well, removed it completely and towed it out of the way.

Very shallow draft when they towed it out, obviously still very light, but it probably wasn't all that stable either as a result.

The speeded up vid of the ship being built. I was watching it at work so was a bit distracted. I am sure there was a section f ship that left after the finished vessel.

[ninja-lewis]

wildcat45 said:

The speeded up vid of the ship being built. I was watching it at work so was a bit distracted. I am sure there was a section f ship that left after the finished vessel.

You're right. There was a section of another ship behind it in the dry dock. Possibly one of the other Triple E class ships beginning construction. Mærsk are expecting delivery of 10 Triple E ships in the next year or so.

[wildcat45]

A proper production line.

Wonder what built quality is like. Clearly these ships will be built to a price. I take it they have a pre-determined life span too.

I recall a lot of VLCCs don't last long.

[T S Magnum]

ciaranthemurph said:

The offshore heavy lift/intervention stuff is far more interesting from an engineering point of view (for me anyway).

It pleases me no end to hear this - being a smug offshore lift engineer!

My current place of work (taken last Thursday):



Previous place of work (note the size of the people on the quay!):



The actual largest operating ship in the world (as far as I understand). An absolute monster. Also previous work:



[/smug mode]