"Amorella" aground at Aaland

[Tomas]

The big ferry "Amorella" is aground outside Aaland.
The reason said to be an electrical failure.
Pictures can be found here.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=10141354

Tomas

[Captain Ted]

I wonder when I read follow up stories that ferries with 2000 passengers still do not have a power back up system which is "ALL" the time available and kicks in within a second when the primary system fails. I mean those ferries and that area,,they passing islands and narrows on daily bases. A problem like that with a following grounding should be in the "planning" and to be anticipated one would think.
Or is my thinking wrong ?

[ozzy76]

Hello Ted.
I was on a Panamax Container ship.
It was just one year old in 2002.

We were in the middle of the Pacific, with no shipping traffic and all of a sudden the ship blacked out causing the Main Engine to stop.
As I said there was no traffic and everythng was fine within a few minutes electric power was restored and the M/e was restarted within 30 minutes max..

But the reason behind this blackout was electronics.  A sensor was showing a high temperature in the bearing of a diesel driven alternator (generator)  And for this reason; the Electronics decided to shut down the affected engine and blacked out the ship.
I thought this was an amazing stupid programme...It should have sounded an alarm and allowed an engineer to parallel a genny and then unload the affected Generator (Genny)
If it had of happened in shallow water or traffic it could have caused a collision..I've always felt it would be better to destroy a generator than risk a ship.

So, It's a case of electronics been programmed by people with no practical experience of shipboard life..AS in Engine alarm SOLUTION: Stop Engine..It shouldn't be that simple. A human can make better decisions..Even at 3 A.M when an alarm sounds and the Engine room is UMS.An on duty engineer would be better able to respond than electronics.

In a postscript to the tale..It turned out that the bearing in the alternator was fine ..It was the sensor that was Kaput..Crying wolf..When there was none.
If the electronics were programmed to start a second generator etc..then it would have been OKay..But then..How come the classification rules ..Don't demand this line of  electronic code in the rules??  It would be perfectly do-able. IMHO

[Captain Ted]

@Ozzy

ships are of course builded on the cheap, companies who let them build are not in the business to let make jewels. Most ships I was on had the bare essentials and that,s it.
Electronis and automatisation was starting in the 80,s the only way to eliminate crews. Renown companies like Hapag-Lloyd were in the front rows of doing so. Problemn was that on each ship I ever sailed we had anyhow, with then reduced crews one man at all time in the engine room because the electronics and automatisations did not work as intended. That meant not that more crews were send back on the the ships. I sailed my last container ships
between 2005 and 2008 and when we sailed up the european rivers, Elbe/Weser/Thames/Mass/Schelde or ARG, Rio del la Plata etcetc,we took all automatisations out and drove the whole story on manual, that was the only way to reach port in a safe way.
As for classification companies,,peoples forget that also they are companies who are in the business to make money and therefore sometimes not "too" strong on rules enforcing. And don,t forget, when a shipping company operates 100 ships and the classification company is too strict, then the possibility of change to another classification company is not to be outruled. In the 70-80,s that was standard, one went to the DD, repairs were sky high and would take 3 weeks and next one saw a new classification and 4 days later the ship sailed again. Today it is much stricter, but nevertheless still a business to make money which limits in some cases possibly the enforcement factor now and then.