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Viking Sky

14K views 55 replies 20 participants last post by  Lao Pan 
#1 · (Edited)
Was it a fuel(water in the fuel), cooling or an electrical problem that blacked her out.

Being multi engined it would have to be a common fault and most systems there is redundancy, particularly on a cruise ship.

The copter pilots did sterling service in those conditions.

Did anybody see the video in the piano lounge, nothing screwed to the deck but the piano, though I wonder about that despite the sockets its feet were in.
One passenger nearly got decapitated with deckhead steel panels dropping down.
Why did they not evacuate that space.
Not many lifeboats these days ( back to Titanic ) on cruise ships, just life rafts, that work ok on a millpond, but not in seas like that, just because everybody wants a balcony without a restricted view. Perhaps they would change there minds if they had to have abandoned ship.
And whose idea was it to replace lifeboats with liferafts? The shareholders eventually because they can charge more for those cabins, so more profit. Titanic again. And what's Class and the Regultory Bodies doing about it? It's going to need another Titanic disaster for a change of rules. Don't they ever learn.
A New Zealand organisation worked out there are roughly 2 cruise ships lost ( sunk or fire) each year.

You are better carrying a cargo of frozen mutton than human cargo.
 
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#34 ·
#31

As to any liability of those on the bridge, I recall that even as long as thirty years ago that any ship proposing to enter the Mersey was required to make a positive report of "no defects" or otherwise to declare any relevant defects before attempting to enter. Check-lists, cross-checks and double checks (as on an aircraft flight deck) are surely even more intense today aboard any cruise liner?

It is difficult to see (or believe) that anybody on the bridge of Viking Sky would have made the decision to proceed in the conditions prevailing if he had been given the slightest idea that the main engines might be even a little faulty.
 
#37 · (Edited)
None that I can see so fare Barrie but I am sure that is one reason we all eagerly await the end to our armchair (perhaps that should be pilot or captain's chair) speculation by getting to the administration report. I still have my money on ill-executed/analysed redundancy

Following the El Faro I would view all such with spectacles that detect missing witness from the main third party players.
 
#39 ·
E-S. Does you interest come from the possibility the design levels are subject to the sort of improvised adjustment (maladjustment) suggested elsewhere on this thread? I don't remember such things being done (I would have thought I was nosey enough to know despite it not my business) if you did this sort of thing what else was there? Boilers?

I do remember adjusting delay timers to allow for a roll but the level itself was by float or capacitor probe. True I cannot remember a high level alarm but equally I would not have had that experience if the practice was to overfill?

The Gotaverken concept was to pump from sump to tank and then from tank to engine. Presumably the sump to tank might loose suction (fairly serious, scrolls if I remember) but the concept would seem to be proof against the failure mode envisaged here?
 
#40 ·
Indeed David, a proper "Dry Sump" system, there still appear a lot of unanswered (or even unaddressed) questions.

It would be interesting to see the makers recommendations for delay timings and those programmed into the system, both at building and at the time of incident. Casting my mind back here, but I've a feeling that on a Norcontrol system, if you altered timings on the keyboard it showed on the datalogger BUT if you had the key and altered the outstation no record was printed (I found this out after a near miss following tinkering by one watchkeeper and then removed all the keys that lived in the outstations).

I have little confidence in the investigation finding the root cause and even less of it being properly shared.
 
#41 · (Edited)
Duncan, I think you are illustrating complication disguised as sophistication. I only had a brief introduction to the Kongsberg IAS (Umm Bab trials) but if I remember correctly changes to the local PLC outstations was synchronised centrally (perhaps with some cycle delay - pity the vapenfabrikk don't join these threads).

However wouldn't that be either difficult to do as the rolling period changes with loading condition as well as the external excitation.

Perhaps we should not air our unprofessional ignorance too much or some software expert will try and integrate the loading and sea states into the programme to make it 'fool proof'.
 
#42 ·
Duncan, I think you are illustrating complication disguised as sophistication. I only had a brief introduction to the Kongsberg IAS (Umm Bab trials) but if I remember correctly changes to the local PLC outstations was synchronised centrally (perhaps with some cycle delay - pity the vapenfabrikk don't join these threads).

However wouldn't that be either difficult to do as the rolling period changes with loading condition as well as the external excitation.

Perhaps we should not air out unprofessional ignorance too much or some software expert will try and integrate the loading and sea states into the programme to make it 'fool proof'.
Thank you David, a very astute observation "complication disguised as sophistication" much evident in mobile phones of today, abetted by continual revisions of MS products that are especially designed not to be forwards compatible, ensuring a continued market!!

I can't remember who's system was fitted on a ferry I was on, but it retired to the pavilion, bat under arm one evening and refused to display anything other than MS solitaire on the screen - played a mean game but not much use on helping monitor the plant.
 
#43 · (Edited)
Manufacturers cannot economically provide a GUI that is not Windows based. Although a few years ago now an LR presentations on what was wrong with the implementation of IAS (and there was a great deal) included that our (merchant) industry does not present to MS as a large enough customer to share the technical details of their products much beyond that they consider appropriate to hand out to game player customers. Hardly a recipe for escaping systems failures or, indeed, testing for them.

I was very interested to see the explanation of a Visionmaster systems failure (very promptly and reputable dealt with by Sperry at the time). When AIS is interfaced with the display the data from the remote stations was processed without any/enough gatekeeping. A date string passed by a faulty AIS shore station included an invalid date derived from its (ie the remote) GPS input. Something like a February 29th in a year which should not have had one. The operating system either detected this as an error or simply could not handle it and crashed. Without disconnecting the AIS input the system could never have been restarted while the erroneous station was in range. A clear example of how data, not intended to be malicious, may disable a system from off one's own ship.
 
#44 ·
Despite all the software, sensors , roll delays etc, there is no excuse for running an engine on minimum sump capacity, be it wet or dry sump. Ships roll, some to a greater or lesser extent and shipbuilders and savvy owners would know this. Plus these things can be calculated.,
Unless things have changed in engine and and system design in the last 25 years then running the sump at the max mark, should not be a problem, or you have a poor design of engine then the sump level should not rise
(unlike many auto diesels ) but drop (but good old fashioned watchkeeping would prevent a shortage of oil), so this problem should not have happened. As was found by the Norwegian ( BOT), hence the levels were quickly rectified on the rest of the the fleet.
So in effect it was the bean counters policy that caused this, not even the Supers', but he he would carry the can , if one needed carrying.

Like most industries , as soon as bean counters or shareholders poke their nose in, then things go awry.
You hear horror stories on this forum of how ships were run by the owners and normally any owner scrimping did not run successfull ships and make good profits as they often broke down, so loosing revenue, but a line that looked after its staff , supplied spares and were good feeders and a happy staff do a good job for the company.
This may not have applied to Viking as it was a private company and Norwegians are good seaman like Britain was, but some accountant was perhaps trying to maximise profits.
 
#48 ·
Unless things have changed in engine and and system design in the last 25 years then running the sump at the max mark, should not be a problem,...

...Like most industries , as soon as bean counters or shareholders poke their nose in, then things go awry.
One thing that has changed is the cost per ltr of Lube Oil - I am not familiar with the Sump capacities on these machines, but say you could reduce the level from 14 tonnes to 10 tonnes per machine - times 4 at about £2.50 per ltr - that would be a saving of £40,000 on oil in service.

Colour of oil is going away from that golden treacle colour - the Premium Turbine oils and Hydraulic oils that I now deal with are water white (Gas to Oil)
 
#45 ·
LO sump/service tank levels

Before my retirement I was working as C/E for the worst company I had experienced in over 41 years at sea. They ran offshore support vessels.
That Co. had a policy of keeping L/O tank levels as low as practical.
Much cheaper you see, less oil in use and less oil in storage.
And yes I had two engine failures. One when the ship rolled or pitched and the pump sucked air the engine shut down. Another when the rough seas stirred up the debris in the tank and that destroyed the L/O pump followed shortly after by the engine itself.
 
#46 ·
This Viking incident reminds me of what we used to do with the lube oil on the little MV Navua with a five cylinder trunk piston Shulzer engine of 1500 HP.
The golden treacle colour of new lube does not take long to discolour and degrade once in service but our house proud second engineer, Peter Hewer, was determined to maintain the ship's main engine lube in the cleanest possible condition .
In port and at sea in flat calm conditions much of the sump tank oil was pumped up to a large holding tank situated on the forward engine room bulkhead that walled the twin P&S deep tanks and was directly above fuel and lube oil purifiers . The tank had a high wattage outflow heater
The routine was to fill the header tank from the sump then continually circulate the well heated oil through the purifier until it regained some of its golden glow. If the weather roughed up while at sea the oil was quickly lowered down to maintain a high sump level and conversely in port the header tank was filled to its max and the purifier ran unattended through the night even when on shore power in order to continually batch clean the lube.
It was surprising how clean the oil became with this treatment regime and it was a relative pleasure to climb into the crankcase that still showed its yellow coloured build paint treatment through the film of gold!
Other ships did not follow Peter's 'housekeeping ' ideas that resulted in an engine room that resembled an ice cream parlour.

Bob
 
#52 ·
Plus loss of service and revenue, cancelling bookings, the PR disaster, loss of life and the list goes on.

The battle was lost for the sake of a nail in the Generals shoe.

£40k is just 3 cabins revenue and she holds 930 pax in 465 cabins, the cheapest possibly £6K per cabin each person for 13 days in the Penthouse Veranda cabin which is middle of the range.
 
#55 · (Edited)
Lao Pan, that was a failure of management, not the accountants who are only responsible for the collection of figures for the management to consider. Making difficult decisions whether or not to act on one particular set of data, rather than one of the alternatives, is what the managers are paid for.

In the early 1990s at Marconi Marine we scrapped spare parts and materials from our stores valued on the books at over £1M. Things like spares for Oceanspan transmitters, Vigilant auto-alarm receivers, Seagraph echo-sounders, Radiolocator Mark IV radars, Lodestone direction-finders and the like, all long out of production. The space occupied by the central stores was reduced by over 80%, staff reduced from 7 to one man. Some of the stuff scrapped was over 40 years old, still in 'as manufactured' condition and original packaging.

The negative effect on the business was almost zero, since the annual turnover value of items issued from that stock was a fraction of the cost of housing and administering it.

Of course the elephant in the room was the accountants' valuation of all that unwanted material at over £1M, not its retention.
 
#56 ·
Lao Pan, that was a failure of management, not the accountants who are only responsible for the collection of figures for the management to consider. Making difficult decisions whether or not to act on one particular set of data, rather than one of the alternatives, is what the managers are paid for.
Unfortunately now a days, most organizations are run by accountants (except in Germany where they are mostly run by engineers - that might tell us something) and they just don't look at the big picture - but they spend a fortune paying other accountants to audit every penny spent and question it.
 
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