The APL China incident was in Nov of 1998. It was the largest financial loss by any container ship at that time. Now that incident is thought of with regards to parametric rolling but 1998 was before awareness of that phenomena had seeped into the maritime community. At the time as I recall the st…

[image] Steamer: I think boxboat capacity may already be at or beyond the practical limits. Possibly, but on the other hand number don’t lie, it should just be a matter of doing the calculations. The ONE Apus has a beam of 50.6 meters (166 feet) , presumably the max assumed roll is less tha…

Maybe the only way to massage the numbers is to increase the beam to lower stack height. But then we are back in the old bigger ship, deeper draft, fewer ports spiral but now have to add crane issues. Maybe some day there will be one or two container ports on each coast with special berths that all…

Thing is, this stuff is all dialed in. Today the weather forecasts are very good. The weather routing software I used showed areas where synchronous or parametric rolling would be expected, limits exceeded etc. I set motion limits and the software and shore-side routers comes up with a route. More…

[image] Kennebec_Captain: Thing is, this stuff is all dialed in. Yet incidents like ONE Apus keep happening and have for years. I remember seeing an exact copy at the dockside in Yokohama way back in the 90s so it isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Maybe that is why the “Well shit happens, bet…

In the case of the APL China it wan’t just a matter of exceeding weather limits. The ship didn’t behave as expected. Far heaver rolls then expected for that sea state. I’m wondering if something similar isn’t happening with these ULCS? The ONE Apus was being managed by NYK. They are a very conserva…

I was wondering the same thing regarding weighing them as they are loaded. I know they have limit switches on the cranes that have to be manually reset if the container exceeds SWL, but they don’t weigh them as far as I know.

I think you are right, box boats have exceeded practical limits. Especially, concerning port facilities. Soon there may be too many 20,000 TEU container ships that require too many port calls to unload 2000 containers here and 2,000 there. Or dockyards and streets may become clogged for days everyt…

Sweet spot for oil transport with atb 120k to 180k. Bigger than that the economics go down the tubes.

Seems likely the number of ULCS is going to be limited for economic reasons, each trade can only take so many. At one time big tankers kept growing bigger but I thought that they eventually hit a limit for practical, not just economical reasons.

[image] Steamer: This could occur while the container is still inches above the trailer and rejected for loading onboard. I’m sure that seems like a terrible idea to the powers that be, and it isn’t really necessary. A hefty surcharge on the misdeclared portion should suffice to bring the pr…

The ONE Apus could be another watershed incident like the APL China

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The ONE Apus could be another watershed incident like the APL China

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