Viking Jupiter [VIDEO]

[Jim Avery]

This is quite costly for Viking.  What I read says the ship will not sail till all the technical inspections are completed.  One story referred to a "fracture" of the shell plating.  I assume not large but still this will require the Classification Society Surveyors, divers, Port State inspectors and at least some repair of plating if it is, in fact, separated at all.  This always takes time.  Already they are putting passengers up in hotels, again according to reports, and who knows what travel arrangements will be needed for current and next cruise or two passengers.  I hope the Captain is cleared as any "incident" can be career limiting.

[Heidi13]

Jim - hopefully only cracked welds and/or tripped frames. Even if below the WL, it's amazing what divers can perform these days. We have swapped out blades, entire bow thrusters and welded hull cracks.

 

Looks like she is still at the pax terminal, on the West Berth.

 

Hope they get everything fixed quickly and LR provides fitness to sail.

[tampatramp]

I Felt really bad about this especially since we're sailing on the Jupiter in April until I read the Maritime Bulletin. There's a container ship fire in Venice, a Latvian freighter aground in the Black sea, two fishing vessels burned (1 sank, 11 dead) , a german freighter cut in two by a passenger ship, and a Croatian tanker blocking the Suez canal. [https://maritimebulletin.net/2019/02/15/luxury-cruise-ship-viking-jupiter-damaged-in-maiden-voyage/]

But I do feel bad for the VO passengers on its maiden voyage.

[stretchcruz]

Thanks!

[OneSixtyToOne]

2 hours ago, tampatramp said:

I Felt really bad about this especially since we're sailing on the Jupiter in April until I read the Maritime Bulletin. There's a container ship fire in Venice, a Latvian freighter aground in the Black sea, two fishing vessels burned (1 sank, 11 dead) , a german freighter cut in two by a passenger ship, and a Croatian tanker blocking the Suez canal. [https://maritimebulletin.net/2019/02/15/luxury-cruise-ship-viking-jupiter-damaged-in-maiden-voyage/]

But I do feel bad for the VO passengers on its maiden voyage.

 

I assume you are on the April 25th sailing?

Here is the roll call thread, in case you missed it.

Along Europe's Western Coast

[tampatramp]

18 minutes ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

 

I assume you are on the April 25th sailing?

Here is the roll call thread, in case you missed it.

Along Europe's Western Coast

actually on the April 6 sailing but thanks for the roll call reminder. I will remind the captain to be careful when docking (a skill I haven't quite mastered myself).

[Heidi13]

3 hours ago, tampatramp said:

 I will remind the captain to be careful when docking (a skill I haven't quite mastered myself).

With sufficient horsepower, docking a ship, it isn't much more challenging than parking a car - provided the wind isn't blowing.🙂

[tampatramp]

7 hours ago, Heidi13 said:

With sufficient horsepower, docking a ship, it isn't much more challenging than parking a car - provided the wind isn't blowing.🙂

that's good to know. I'm good at parking, I guess I'm lucky my car has brakes- I should have ordered ones for my boat. I wonder why the Jupiter captain/pilot didn't just hit the brakes, back up, and try again.

 

[OKCowboy]

We were on the Viking Star shortly after her maiden voyage. There were lots of Viking executives on board and I expect there were similar high ranking personnel on board the Jupiter at the time of this accident. I anticipate Viking will make appropriate accommodations and hopefully will not cancel but one or two upcoming cruises. We're on board for the April 25 cruise and I encourage all booked passengers to sign up for the Meet and Mingle, where you can get more insights into this incident from the officers.

[60andhappy]

We are on the March 9th sailing.  Fingers crossed!

[GSP-parents]

Cruise trackers now show Viking Jupiter making 13 knots from Piraeus to next port of Heraklion, as per its schedule.  Apparently damage to ship not affecting schedule.  All good.

[chengkp75]

Hey Jim and Heidi, late to the party.

 

I checked some registry sites, and found it interesting that the Viking Star has a stern thruster, but none of the rest of the class do.  Interesting decision by Viking.  From my perspective, it looked like they were coming in pretty hot, and the wind was blowing onto the dock.  At the speed she was traveling, I would expect a good bit of heel from the Becker rudders if used aggressively.  But I would say that the snapped line is what caused the allision, with the sudden loss of pulling the stern away from the dock.  The reports I've seen, here on CC, the Greeks say only that some fenders were removed, so I doubt there was very much damage to the ship, dented plates and some tripped frames, but if they were the large, square rubber fenders, there might be just enough deflection of the plates to be a "cosmetic" only repair.  Class survey is almost always required when you hit something, and it seems to have been completed without delay to vessel.

[chengkp75]

Just to add to Heidi's comments, most ships have gone away from steel mooring wires, we use synthetics that are smaller in diameter than the steel wires we used to use, and about twice as strong.  Even so, when using high strength lines (wire or synthetic), you typically have a short "tail" of a material that is of lesser breaking strength than the main line so it is the "sacrificial" part that breaks, not the main mooring line.  Broken lines and "snap back" is so prevalent, that we are required to mark areas on deck where this might happen, to warn crew before entering these areas.  I've always hated those enclosed mooring stations on passenger and RO/RO ships, they really can become coffins.

[Jim Avery]

Glad you made it , Chief.  Always enjoy your input.🍸And interesting that they finally added a stern thruster.  Captain Knutsen never seemed to miss one but then some have a hard time leaving a dock without multiple thrusters.....

Edited February 18, 2019 by Jim Avery

[Heidi13]

Thanks Chief.

 

Haven't had a stern thruster since I left P&O. My last big Ro/Pax had high lift Becker rudders & CP props, so I never really found a need for a thruster. With the Becker rudder, on the ahead shaft almost hard over, I had the equivalent of a 10,000 HP thruster. Putting the rudders hard over with the CP's pushing ahead, I could get a little sternway.

 

Not sure about Norway's Flag State delegation to Class, but if Transport Canada has implemented the process, I assume most major Flag States have as well. It is certainly easier dealing with only 1 surveyor rather than the old days when we had to report to both and get repairs signed off by both.

 

For mooring lines we used nylon sampson-braid, with a short 3/4" wire snotter and for applications where we weren't warping on a capstan - Amsteel Blue

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

Ok, as a non-seafaring engineer, I’m curious why they don’t parallel the sacrificial link with a slack, stretchable line to arrest the recoiling main line when the sacrificial link breaks?

[Jim Avery]

17 minutes ago, Ragnar Danneskjold said:

Ok, as a non-seafaring engineer, I’m curious why they don’t parallel the sacrificial link with a slack, stretchable line to arrest the recoiling main line when the sacrificial link breaks?

 

18 minutes ago, Ragnar Danneskjold said:

Ok, as a non-seafaring engineer, I’m curious why they don’t parallel the sacrificial link with a slack, stretchable line to arrest the recoiling main line when the sacrificial link breaks?

Will have CHENGKP75 give the final answer but from a practical standpoint, it would have to be very strong to arrest the sudden load and ship's lines have to pass through chocks, fairleads and fit over bollards sometimes with several other lines so a section of heavy slack lines would complicate issues somewhat.

[Heidi13]

3 hours ago, Ragnar Danneskjold said:

Ok, as a non-seafaring engineer, I’m curious why they don’t parallel the sacrificial link with a slack, stretchable line to arrest the recoiling main line when the sacrificial link breaks?

Having parallel lines would not work on most mooring decks where lines are warped on drums, turned around bits and also could hinder applying a stopper to take the weight of the line while it is secured.

 

If a parallel line is used, my assumption is that it would be a secondary sacrificial line to the wire snotter. If the snotter parted the secondary line would require a significant strength to absorb the recoil forces and since the original forces causing the original parting may still be applied, the secondary line could also be parted. In my experience, you hear the tug power up and see the weight coming on the line, which goes bar tight, sings and then explodes all in a couple of seconds. If you aren't diving for the deck by the time it goes bang, it might be too late. Also the tug is often still ramping up when the line parts, so the parallel line would then part, now we have 2 lines to miss.

 

Even without a tug induced line parting, I suspect the parallel line would need considerable strength to handle the dynamic loads of the line parting, when it was slack. I have experienced somewhat similar examples when alongside with an off-shore wind, or when a large ship steams alongside and sucks the ship off the berth.

 

Mooring lines fwd & aft should be secured with equal tension, so they each carry the load. However, this is virtually impossible to get totally correct. If the ship is pulled off the berth, the lines go tight, with the tightest line taking most weight. If it parts, the ship moves further off the berth & weight transfers to remaining lines, with additional lines parting, as they take the dynamic load. I have experienced this twice - San Juan due to wind and Southampton due to large box boat not slowing down. These were 8-strand poly, which have excellent elasticity.

 

Even lines with high elasticity cannot handle high dynamic loads. If load is applied gradually, they perform well, but not with dynamic or shock loads.

 

Good idea, but don't see how it would work. 

[chengkp75]

In addition to what Jim and Heidi have said, the reason to have the "sacrificial" link is so that there is some part of the mooring system (bollard on dock, mooring tail, mooring line, chock, bitt, or mooring winch) that is the least expensive to replace, and that breaks at a tension less than those other parts.  When line is secured on the mooring winch drum, the brakes are tested and set to the same point every time to give a "rendering point" where the brake will slip before any other part of the system fails.  But when secured to a set of bitts, or when it comes under dynamic loading like Heidi mentions, the load can become more than the system can take, and something breaks, hopefully the tail.  Now, if you have a parallel slack line that was parallel to the tail only, essentially going from the mooring line eye to the bollard on shore, when  the mooring tail breaks, in order to stop the recoil, the parallel line must be significantly stronger than the tail, since the dynamic force will be greater, and you've now removed your weak link from the system and shifted the failure point to possibly something else in the system, like tearing the bollard off the dock, or cracking the welds on the bitt on the ship.

 

I've experienced the "progressive" snapping of mooring lines in Nikiski, Alaska, and have also torn bollards from docks as well, when things weren't done properly.

[SeesAtSea]

Hi Jim and Heidi13, as a laymen (laywoman) I found your comments regarding the Jupiter mishap in Piraeus interesting, even though most of it was over my head! It appears you two are quite knowledgable about the workings of cruise ships. I have a question, a little off topic...somewhere I saw a link to viewing ‘live feed’ from the Jupiter but can’t seem to find it again. Would either of you have the link? I enjoyed watching. My husband and I will be on the March 9 sailing and can’t wait. This will be our first experience with Viking. Thank you in advance for your help.

[Heidi13]

2 hours ago, SeesAtSea said:

Hi Jim and Heidi13, as a laymen (laywoman) I found your comments regarding the Jupiter mishap in Piraeus interesting, even though most of it was over my head! It appears you two are quite knowledgable about the workings of cruise ships. I have a question, a little off topic...somewhere I saw a link to viewing ‘live feed’ from the Jupiter but can’t seem to find it again. Would either of you have the link? I enjoyed watching. My husband and I will be on the March 9 sailing and can’t wait. This will be our first experience with Viking. Thank you in advance for your help.

I looked for web cams on the Viking website, but don't recalling seeing them. Might try starting a new thread with this in the title, as it should get more views.

[wabamun]

Try this.

 

https://viking.panomax.com/jupiter

[SeesAtSea]

Thank you Wanamun!!! That’s it!

[SeesAtSea]

Oops Wabamun, fat fingers😜

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

Hmmm, I have a couple of designs that would address the above concerns...  May be time for a patent search 

Edited February 19, 2019 by Ragnar Danneskjold