Viking Sun Control Room
Today is Monday, February 12th. On Saturday and Sunday we were in Sydney (about more later) and are currently at sea on our way to Brisbane where we are scheduled to arrive very early tomorrow morning.
I have every intention of finding some time to post about Sydney, but can't resist doing this interim blog about my visit this morning to the ship's control room (not the bridge) which is on Deck A, the next to the lowest deck on the boat. Mario from Croatia, who is the number 2 guy in the 30-something person Engineering Department, had a small group of us in to show us the various controls and monitors used to keep the ship in tip-top shape and insure its smooth operation. There were two other people in the control room at the time, one who flew in from Italy to come aboard in Sydney, and the other a permanent member of the crew. The fellow from Rome is employed by the company that manufactured the ship's stabilizers which, we're told, are state of the art. This ship was launched only 4 months ago and is under warranty. The Rome-based guy is onboard to re-calibrate the software that runs the stabilizers now that the ship has some mileage under its beam. We were assured that the stabilizers actually performed very well during the rough crossing of the Tasman Sea, but it is apparently now time to do some tweaking. The other guy was watching a monitor that records all alarms that come in regarding all the electronics and monitoring devices on the ship. He explained that all the alarms then showing were "minor" and the result of the fact one of the four engines had been shut down for a few hours for some maintenance. He said all of the posted alarms would clear once that engine was restarted.
The monitoring of all areas onboard is so extensive that they even know when someone is in a given stateroom (or anywhere else) because every such space has a motion detector in it (not a camera, we were assured) that, in addition to thermostats, allows the a/c system to determine what heating/cooling is needed in that space.
Someone in our group asked how many miles per gallon the ship gets. Mario laughed. He said the question should be how many gallons of fuel is consumed per nautical mile, and he said the answer is approximately 33. The ship holds 500 tons of diesel fuel and 900 tons of heavy fuel. The heavy fuel they take on must be of a viscocity that is right for the temperature and humidity of the area where the fuel will be burned. Because the ship may be burning a given load of heavy fuel through different temperature conditions, it is sometimes necessary to heat that fuel before it can be used. Heavy fuel is the fuel of choice because it is cheaper. But when the ship is in an eco area, such as Sydney, it can only burn diesel fuel. The ship is equipped with scrubbers that do clean the heavy fuel to a considerable degree. When we joined the cruise in Los Angeles, the ship took on fuel while there, again in Tahiti, then in Auckland, somewhere else in New Zealand, and in Melbourne. It will next take on fuel tomorrow in Brisbane.
The ship also desalinates and stores much of its own potable water. And it has incinerators in which most of its non-food waste is burned. Food waste itself is apparently released to the sea in measured quantities at certain mileage intervals. The incinerators can also incinerate human waste. A decision whether to do that or to pay to have it offloaded at a port stop is made based on cost. So, for example, Mario explained that the quoted cost of offloading such waste in Los Angeles was something like $700 per ton (as compared to a cost of around $40 per ton in certain places in Mexico) so the decision was made to incinerate rather than offload in LA.
Just looking up and down the wide non-public corridor between the public stair level and the entrance to the control room, I was impressed by how immaculate the space is and how pallets of stored items against the walls were so neatly and well secured.
So here are a few photos of the control room.
I have every intention of finding some time to post about Sydney, but can't resist doing this interim blog about my visit this morning to the ship's control room (not the bridge) which is on Deck A, the next to the lowest deck on the boat. Mario from Croatia, who is the number 2 guy in the 30-something person Engineering Department, had a small group of us in to show us the various controls and monitors used to keep the ship in tip-top shape and insure its smooth operation. There were two other people in the control room at the time, one who flew in from Italy to come aboard in Sydney, and the other a permanent member of the crew. The fellow from Rome is employed by the company that manufactured the ship's stabilizers which, we're told, are state of the art. This ship was launched only 4 months ago and is under warranty. The Rome-based guy is onboard to re-calibrate the software that runs the stabilizers now that the ship has some mileage under its beam. We were assured that the stabilizers actually performed very well during the rough crossing of the Tasman Sea, but it is apparently now time to do some tweaking. The other guy was watching a monitor that records all alarms that come in regarding all the electronics and monitoring devices on the ship. He explained that all the alarms then showing were "minor" and the result of the fact one of the four engines had been shut down for a few hours for some maintenance. He said all of the posted alarms would clear once that engine was restarted.
The monitoring of all areas onboard is so extensive that they even know when someone is in a given stateroom (or anywhere else) because every such space has a motion detector in it (not a camera, we were assured) that, in addition to thermostats, allows the a/c system to determine what heating/cooling is needed in that space.
Someone in our group asked how many miles per gallon the ship gets. Mario laughed. He said the question should be how many gallons of fuel is consumed per nautical mile, and he said the answer is approximately 33. The ship holds 500 tons of diesel fuel and 900 tons of heavy fuel. The heavy fuel they take on must be of a viscocity that is right for the temperature and humidity of the area where the fuel will be burned. Because the ship may be burning a given load of heavy fuel through different temperature conditions, it is sometimes necessary to heat that fuel before it can be used. Heavy fuel is the fuel of choice because it is cheaper. But when the ship is in an eco area, such as Sydney, it can only burn diesel fuel. The ship is equipped with scrubbers that do clean the heavy fuel to a considerable degree. When we joined the cruise in Los Angeles, the ship took on fuel while there, again in Tahiti, then in Auckland, somewhere else in New Zealand, and in Melbourne. It will next take on fuel tomorrow in Brisbane.
The ship also desalinates and stores much of its own potable water. And it has incinerators in which most of its non-food waste is burned. Food waste itself is apparently released to the sea in measured quantities at certain mileage intervals. The incinerators can also incinerate human waste. A decision whether to do that or to pay to have it offloaded at a port stop is made based on cost. So, for example, Mario explained that the quoted cost of offloading such waste in Los Angeles was something like $700 per ton (as compared to a cost of around $40 per ton in certain places in Mexico) so the decision was made to incinerate rather than offload in LA.
Just looking up and down the wide non-public corridor between the public stair level and the entrance to the control room, I was impressed by how immaculate the space is and how pallets of stored items against the walls were so neatly and well secured.
So here are a few photos of the control room.
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