A P&O Cruises ship sailing near the Canary Islands issued a mayday Saturday after it suffered engine failure.
According to the International Business Times, the P&O Ventura had just departed from Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands as part of a 12-day voyage when the cruise ship encountered engine issues that resulted in a loss of propulsion.
The captain of the vessel issued a mayday and called for two tug boats to help the ship stop drifting toward the northeast of Tenerife island. A P&O Cruises spokesperson said the guests onboard the Ventura were never in any danger and updated throughout the ordeal.
Condensation inside of equipment causing mechanical & electrical failures is a real thing. I worked on a vessel that showed water contamination in the grease sample of a drive end bearing on a high voltage generator. The grease gun used was designated solely for those bearings & that grease. We thought it was a sampling or lab error because all the other bearings were okay. We re-sampled & it showed the same water content. The only thing that was different on that bearing & generator was the standby heating system was not working because we were waiting on parts. We had to uncouple the generator, clean the bearing & after the heater started working again the water contamination never returned. While doing inspections on vessels that work in tropical regions it is easy to find machinery & electrical equipment that needs or doesn’t have working standby heaters.
Or it could have been as Kennebec_Captain mentioned & someone was spraying water where they weren’t supposed to or a pipe or hose burst? The annual relative humidity in Santa Cruz Tenerife is only 63%.
Condensation killing off marine engines is nothing new, but one pulling long, steady duty cycles? And in an electrical component? That’s a bit weird, as it suggests an engine electrical system open to the atmosphere, which would be highly unusual. I can still see it happening somehow, like a large potentiometer with a seal missing, but my money’s with KC on this one. It wouldn’t be the first time that “condensation” is used as an euphemism for power washing
I had this happen to me. The raw water line to the engine had a pinhole leak that would spray a very fine mist that would short out or corrode various stuff. I found it by turning off all the lights and shining a flashlight around.
Thread drift alert.
I have extremely good experience, intentionally setting of Hi Fog system. Without Hi Fog, it would have been a major engine room fire.
Hi Fire from a high pressure oil mist in purifier room out in seconds.
CE slightly damp hair. Back underway in 5 minutes.
Routinely used in drills. Without negative effects. I would find it hard to believe HI Fog or water mist would disable a vessel.
8 months before I retired, on my reliefs watch, he had R/W line failure on the A/C condenser. This was on the mezzanine over the P/ME C280 Cat. The engine was doused for several minutes before it shut down. They were at a lay berth for 5 days while Cat techs went through the systems. Over the next few months, I had PURE HELL with false alarms. Cat has 2 independent systems. The ECM and MMS. The MMS is accessible with a code. The ECM is accessible only with a Cat Laptop. Luckily, we were issued laptops. The S/W found it’s way into wireways and boxes. Corroded DIN rail connections, mag pickups and sensors sure put me to the test…retirement is not over-rated!
When it comes to water intrusion, corrosion or multiple intermittent breaks in Caterpillar C Series engines wiring I found it better to change the whole harness if the company will pay for it. I bet your old relief is still fighting that problem if they haven’t. When you have that problem with a Cat you can sneeze next to the engine & it will shut down.
Technicians were flown in to the ship’s help.
This night, Ventura left the port for five hours; two tugs followed her on standby.
If the nightly test was successful, the program is:
Non-stop to Southampton, to begin a scheduled cruise on next Tuesday.
The passengers are still on board, a 4-day extension of the cruise and a 50% refund.
A 4-day cruise after the planned arrival on next Friday is canceled.
A P&O Cruises spokesperson said the guests onboard the Ventura were never in any danger and updated throughout the ordeal.
This contradicts the essence of a Mayday call that is only to be used in the case of “grave and imminent danger to a vessel or persons, such as fire, sinking, man overboard etc.” It means that in contradiction to this statement the passengers were in immediate danger or is this a matter of downplaying the incident. Cruising is all about marketing…
I would agree.
The article quoted 3000 plus passengers, Crew I wouldn’t know,1 or 2 thousand.
The ship disabled, drifting, island to leeward. Make a call early before it becomes a near disaster. Mayday or not it all worked out well in the end.
Good call f the marketing dept.
Reported a blackout to VTS, back underway in 10 minutes. Never said any of the magic words, just reported a blackout.
Both US and CDN CG had tasked units to respond, stood down again pretty quick.
Over reaction? I thoughts so, on the other hand. Nice to know, if there had been a problem they were on it. They certainly weren’t waiting for us to make up our mind to upgrade.
