I can imagine the feeling of the Master while they drifted towards the shore. He had dropped the anchors and there were nothing else he could do, except pray that the anchors would get hold before the hit the outlaying rocks, or the rocky shore.
I had a similar situation with a rotten old tanker, but not in a storm;
The old Doxford engine broke down as we were passing the heavily trafficked Hormous Strait outbound and fully loaded and drifted towards the islands in the middle there.
I ordered the Chief Officer fwrd. and be stand by to drop anchor. But the depth was such that we would not be able to recover the anchors if actually dropped, so I held back as long as possible. I kept on calling the Engine room to enquire how long it would take to get the engine going until the Chief Eng. stated; ânever, if keep on calling me all the time.â
Standing on the bridge and watching us getting closer and closer to the rocky islets was an experience Iâll never forget. There was nothing I could do, other than wait and hope that they would get the engine going before I had to sacrifice one or both anchors to hopefully stop us before hitting the rocks.
We were less than a mile off, with both anchors lowered and ready, when I could hear the first attempt at starting the engine, which failed (not unusual on that old ship)
When the engine started on the third attempt I was the happiest Captain in the world, much like the Captain on the Viking Sky must have been when the anchors grabbed hold, stopping the ship just short of a major disaster.
I had a crew of only 50 some odd and was in calm and warm water. He had over 1300 people on board and in the middle of nowhere in a hauling winter storm.
This implementation of a common rail system looks pretty complex but also result of a decent development program if you believe the literature. My experience with this engine was an older version with traditional injection system, racks and governors. You could approach it and start it as long as start air and fuel was on.
This system appears totally reliant on the electronic control and power which the UPS shown should provide. Depends on how the power to each DG set controls was set up. Any common point at a transfer switch that could have created a spike and scrambled their DOS?
These look like they have the traditional HT LT cooling water circuits so did this ship have a central FW cooling system behind that with the SW behind that? Had to have redundant pumps in all loops off the engine but if cooling related could it be another automated valve issue?
Viking Sky is equipped with four MAN 32/44CR engines and manufacturer MAN Energy Solutions has already dispatched a team to Molde to assist in the various investigations.
According to reports, possible explanations for the cause of the incident include overheating of the engines caused by air being sucked into the cooling system, which in turn could have been caused by waves as high as 15 metres. The waves could have also led to precipitates in the fuel tanks meaning the engines were not getting enough fuel.
âPrior to any assessment onsite we donât want to indulge in any guesswork on what may have caused the incident,â a spokesman for MAN told Lloydâs List. âWe will do a thorough analysis and take the next steps together with our customer, Viking Cruises.â
According to a report today they have all options open and eliminating one by one, starting with the simplest.
Overheating due to blocked seawater intake is already eliminated. Donât know if the same applies to air lock in the system or whatever else can cause overheating.
This reason sounds far fetched to me, not being an engineer, but it was reported that all four engines stopped simultaneously.
With two engine rooms and presumably two different sea chests and separate cooling water systems and all four stops at the exact same time. What is the odds offered??
It doesnât seem likely that theyâve made a list of every possible scenario and arranged the list from simple to complex and are now working through the list in order. More likely that the approach being used is informed by what they learned looking at the system logs and crew interviews.
My guess is that they have a specific reason to be looking at cooling water.
I believe that propulsion systems are simply not designed to meet the ambitions of cruise operators. Whatâs more normal than sailing in the storm aboard a love boat !
The ship is registered under Norwegian flag (NIS) and managed by Wilhemsen Ship Management, (not sure which branch) but the Cruise operator who manage the passengers and issue the tickets are Swiss:
Will that stop US Lawyers from trying to sue in a US Court and a Judge to accept to hear the case?? Probably not.
That was what was stated, but I cannot find the article again right now. (Lots of different sources being followed)
Of course investigation of ALL possibilities will be ongoing by different people, based on their individual expertise, but to eliminate the simplest first sounds logical enough to me.
I have no idea how heavily automated these modern engine rooms are but seen the simultaneous stopping of all engines, which is weird, this could point in the direction of a software glitch somewhere in the system.
In the airline industry in the late 1980s direct control was being taken away from pilots and put into the hands of software designed to communicate pilot commands to mechanical actuators. A black box controlled by software had isolated direct human control of these actuators. A computer could now crash a plane.
As an example, the last three versions of an airline software program, each 420,000 lines long, had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.
Boeing made all their software engineers fly on the first test flights. The idea was that by putting their lives on day one in the hands of their own software that this would give them additional motivation. There would be no room for hotfixes at 30,000 feet, it just had to work.
The question is how the software on board this ship was tested, probably not so intensely as is the custom in the airline industry. How many errors are there in the software which is never perfect. One such error could cause at a certain moment a computer crash. Are there maybe several software systems which are communicating with each other? A crash in one system could ripple through the other systems.
They came along the inshore route, the last bit of which, in this case, would have been the well sheltered and fairly easy to navigate "Trondheimsleia"and probably at their normal service speed of 16 kts.
The exposed part from there to where the blackout happened is only abt. 25 n.miles, so likely less than 1-1/2 hr. steaming (The actual âHustadvikaâ is only abt. 10 n.miles)
The heading is roughly SW, while the wind direction was Wâly at Force 9-10
Map of the area:
The shortest red line show approx. course from leaving sheltered area until blackout.
The log red line show approx. total dist. of exposed waters (Abt. 40 n.miles)
There is a semi-protected option, called âStolpeleiaâ, but only used by those with local knowledge and very small boats. It is not recommended used in conditions like above.
The pilots were due to disembark at Aalesund, so they were taking the open water route from there to the pilot station for Stavanger.
If they knew they were having problems with the cooling system and it was communicated to the bridge why wouldnât they slow down and/or go away from the coast. Unless they didnât communicate they were having issuesâŚ
If it was a case of E-stops/dampers then restarting the plant shouldâve been without so many issues. It sounds like they were only able to bring one engine back at first.
I assume this father / son DG arrangement was intended to provide power to the propulsion system with a margin. If one DG overheated due to lack of cooling water what happens next would depend on specific DG and power management logic. Overtemp not usually a shutdown but it could signal a start standby (if not all running) or phase back of load to keep it within a set range of what remains on line.
Letâs say port propulsion drive or transformer failed in such a major way as to create a fault current, the breaker on the main switchboard supplying that system should have cleared the fault with the DGâs remaining on line. If not and depending on the network one or more tie breakers could have opened to isolate that feed. And finally if all that failed or was not quick enough DGâs could trip on overcurrent, under voltage or frequency. This sort of major failure could be accompanied by physical damage to switchgear and apparatus. The reports donât seem to be leaning that way. I mean they eventually got the shafts turning.
Perhaps a major malfunction in load sharing could cause very screwy behavior enough to knock off perfectly good DGâs and leave remaining ones overloaded until they trip but I gotta believe power management would recognize the results and phase back propulsion load to save plant.
Simultaneous shutdowns and problems re-starting could also stem from switchboard and DG control power problems. Normal source might be from the switchboard itself via transformer and a ATS from an emergency source. If this involved a UPS it should let the DGâs be restarted even if they did blackout initially. Unless they were hunting for fuses in control power. I wonder what the boot up time is for that DG common rail controller.
From where do you have it that actually WAS a problem with the cooling system??
As far as I know, nothing to h=that effect has been mentioned, except in on-line and media speculations, which is premature and unnecessary.
We will know the answer to what happen when it has been determined by the army of people no investigating the caseâŚ
If they knew they were having problems with the cooling system
Iâm referencing speculation that it was the cooling system. Iâm saying I doubt it was the problem. Maybe fucking read before you post. Jesus fucking Christ you have done the most speculating in this thread.
Another wild card here is the crew response. Say a transformer or some other critical part failed or partly failed is some weird way, which caused an engine tripped off with some misleading alarms.
If the crew was confused as to what caused the trip it seems possible they may have taken the wrong action.
Complex systems fail in unexpected ways but the real puzzle here to me at least is the crew not being able to restart.
One possibility with the inability to restart in a blackout to run out of starting air. That may explain why initially there were only able to start one engine.
