Everyone has a little inner geek.. maybe it’s my astrological sign, or just being a big kid that makes me memorize all this useless info..but it gives context…. feast your eyes:
The Ocean
The area of the Pacific Ocean, excluding adjacent seas, is judged to be between 63.8-70 million square miles (165.2-181.3 million square kilometers), which is twice the area of the Atlantic Ocean and greater than the total land area of the planet.
The Pacific Ocean comprises about 46 percent of the Earth’s water surface, and about 32 percent of its total surface area.
Its mean depth is 14,040 ft (4,280 m). (from yahoo answers)
The Ship
made in Korea by Hyundai in 2009..in a town on the east coast of South Korea called Ulsan I heard, although I know CMA CGM also buys ships from a yard further south, Goeje, this island with two huge ship yards on it, because one of the officers sat there for 3 months in a hotel waiting to pick a ship up once, although he had a good time. From keel laying to floating was only like 4 months… then it was floated and finished.. I have not heard that the champagne didn’t break. Cost 300,000,000 $US. I remember that the woman who swung the Campaign was either the wife of the local mayor, or the ship yard manager.
360 m long.. the bulbous bow seems to sit just ahead of the prow by a foot or maybe more. I used to stare down at i thinking it was 20 feet below me. by the end of the trip, I realized it was closer to 50 ft down.
45 m wide
60m high the 3 masts in ‘the monkey park’ that make it higher can fold down. The bridge tends to sit like 160 ft above the water.. it’s really high!
29 m? from main deck to bottom of keel, so a huge amount of possible free-board.. the boat drafted 15m when leaving Oakland. Now with fuel, who knows, maybe 17 or 18m. Before we began fueling, we seemed to have about 2 m of red showing in still water. I read somewhere it can cost like 1 million to paint one of these, incidentally.
Huge! it’s the 4th largest class of Container vessel in the world, and he second largest for CMA CGM. Each in the class is named after a star or constellation, and there are I think 12 ships in total.
1 TEU = 20 by 2.5m by 2m.. basically a 20 ft shipping container is 1 TEU This is the measure of shipping capacity, kind of the key measure of a Container Ship’s size and value.
11400 TEU possible payload
8600 on board.. about $600 US per TEU income crossing the Pacific.
We only seemed to be carrying one shipping container of fuel, and about 24 ‘reefers’, refrigerated units that needed to be hooked up to our electricity to stay cool. These containers are extra cost for maitnenace, monitoring, and electricty.
approximate value of the cargo for our trip: 5.16 million, although there might have been empty containers going back to China.. one guesses that the eastbound journey is the real moneymaker.. if the ship was full, the income would be: 6.84 million usd assuming it’s the same price to go to the US per TEU.
Fleet Context
Their Larger Class is a whopping 16000 TEU, and all those ships are named after famous world explorers. I think the Marco Polo was the first in that class. They are remarkable for having the smoke stack and the accomidation about a third and two thirds down the ship… ours were combined, with a huge staircase like something out of a bond film circling the stack going up the back of the accommodation, about 3/4 or 4/5 down the ship.
CMA CGM is the 3rd largest shipping company in the world, after I think Japanese NYK and Evergreen in China, although the guys seemed to think Maersk was bigger too..
They have over 100 boats, divided into fleets, perhaps 10 total.. the fleets are distinguished by the nationalities of the crews. It’s the first fleet, maybe 10 spips, likely operating out of Marseilles, that has French officers and therefore French food… if only…
A few of the ships in the fleet had specific jobs, like running things from France to their Caribbean Islands. These large routes between major shipping hubs were the bread and butter of the company.
can go 24 knots, maybe 26, but the fuel costs start to skyrocket.
we tried to average 21 across the Pacific. No one here seems to call the Pacific ‘The Puddle’. It seems like nicknames like that are for US Navy guys to sublimate their homosexuality until the next equator crossing party.
The Crew
Crew is about 30 people, with berths for 40, including rooms set aside for as many as 7 passengers.
1 captain
1 chief engineer and 1 senior officer
3 watch officers (mates)
numerous engineering officers
2 electrical officers?
1 bosun
12? able bodied seamen or bosun’s mates (4 guys trained as firemen at least)
2 cooks
1 steward
3 cadets (2 deck, one engineering, one electrical I think, one was Filipino, the other three Romanian)
There were always at least two people on the bridge, and one in the engine room. Someone would lock all the exterior doors every night as well, never figured out who it was.
The Engine
engine is a 12 cylinder, 2 stroke, turbo charged, direct drive (no transmission, which surprised me) .. it is 3 stories high and the length of a double bus. It has the potential of 72 mw of power. the turbos alone were the size of a truck, and seemed to take up half of the engine space. In horsepower, it was some ungodly number 90,ooo hp, if I have the ordinal right.
It maxes out at like 90 rpm… one cylinder fires every 30 degrees to make for 12 firings per screw turn…
the drive shaft is about 70mm solid steel
never saw the screw,but heard it was big, 5 m or something, maybe larger…
energy use is 100 to 150 tons of bunker fuel per day cruising… We can carry 9000+ I think…plus diesel..
that calculates to a horrifying 7,333,333 pounds of carbon released per day if my math is right… (convert to gallons, then multiply by 20 pounds per gallon?)
it also has 5 generators to provide backup and house functions. They provide 6600 volts of capacity, for everything from navigation and lighting to running refrigerated containers and turning the rudder. Usually only like 2 are running at any one time. A system is being installed on this and the last journey to make it possible to plug in at shore and shut off the generators. This will lead to carbon savings in most places, especially where the grid is not heavily fossil fuel dependent,but the first time such a system was experimented with, it supposedly shut down the power in the town it was plugged into, since the demands are the equivalent of a town of 6k people in the US to as many as 30k people in the third world.
Ship Carries Bunker, Low Sulfur Bunker for use in the US, and Low Sulfur Diesel for the Generators
It also has a complex ballast system managed by computer
It has two Huge Anchors, and each chain link is steel, over 2 feet long, and weighs 100 lbs individually. I think the whole chain is almost two miles long, and we have two of them.
The Voyage
distance from Oakland to Hong Kong 6,800 miles direct, but we didn’t go direct…
Oakland to Nakhodka: 12 days 5400 miles to Tsgaru Straits of Japan by ‘ram route’ 4950 NM.. circle route would have saved 300 miles, but brought us into two huge low pressure systems near the Aleutians that would have beat us up and perhaps slowed us down more than the circle route would have saved us. The weather report that this decision was based on remained posted in the navigation area of the bridge for the duration of the trip as a kind of proof of the decision.
Time in Nakhodka 42 hours? I remember watching them disconnect the hose, a 30 minute job, on a cold night, and thinking they would show up and get us out of there, but the customs people didn’t show up until morning…
Nahodka to Fuqin 2 days?
time in Fuqin 2 nights we left through this long bay of islands, somewhat satisfying despite the haze in the air
fuqin to Xiamen 1 1/2 days… also, coming in through the mouth of the harbor was beautiful but for the haze and the huuuuge coal plant at the mouth… mountains and islands
time in Xiamen, a long painful 24 hours getting jerked around by the customs guys, unable to go ashore
Xiamen to Chiwan Harbor 2 days?
24 hours in Chiwan
Chiwan to Hong Kong 2 hours, around Lantau Island, under the new bridge, and into Container Port 9.
Fuel Loaded 9000 tons
cost of fuel in Nakhodka 400 USD per ton
Cost of Fueling in Nahodka 3.6 Million USD
cost for same fuel in Hong Kong or US Closer to 600 USD per Ton
or 5.4 million USD…
Russian Bureaucrats who boarded to check our papers in Nakhodka: 3, although they did have a sense of humor. Upon leaving, three more, although one of them could have been a Victoria Secret Model, so no one minded as much, no matter how much we wanted to get out of there. One of the Cadet’s could barely keep still in her presence.. ah, to be 23 again….
Fuel ship seemed to have a crew of like 12, and I think they were stuck sitting there same as us, for the whole 30 hour process of fueling from when the showed up at like 5 pm yesterday to them casting off lines at about 930 pm today.
What’s on the boat?
The Bridge the whole length of the top deck, called the bridge, but it would be equivalent to H deck from the main deck. very spacious with a lounge in the corner with espresso and coffee machine, the aforementioned sugar cookies galore, windows everywhere but the stack, and doors leading out to the fly bridge.. the elevator does not go to the top, you gotto walk that last flight.. the fly bridges have controls in the corner for docking, so that the captain or pilot can see right down to the dock. There is a navigation station, with lots of gps and other instruments, then the main console with two leather chairs and all the GPS and traffic and engine instruments both on the console and up above the windows. It was, I gotta admit, kind of neat…
Above it is the Monkey Park, all the antennas, lights, satellite units and radars, and I learned qucikly that it kicks out so much radiation, and the stack empties there so there is a lot of air polution unless you are under way with the wind (you can pass out in a few seconds from the smog we were putting out), so you don’t want to go up there. About 3 days in, they had to do some maintenance.. I was hanging out on the fly bridge and caught on, knowing they shut down all the radars for a few minutes, and it was a glorious clear day so that you could see for miles… the Filipeanos went up to do their work, and I followed… the first officer seemed to know I wanted to get upt here, and I kind of approvingly beckoned me, but then didn’t stand there and watch, giving me freedom. They didn’t begrudge me climbing to the top of the tallest middle post, waving my hand over the ship’s light, making me the highest thing on the ship, and looking around.. it was great… it was high.. you are like 200 ft up perhaps… even that post was taller than I expected, at least three of my body lengths if not 4… black metal rungs to climb up… they were cool for letting me do this, didn’t make a peep.. it somehow satisfied my need to explore the extremes of the ship. A few days before the finish of the trip, I was again on the fly bridge, and the Romanian Electrical cadet went up there. I watched him with this huge smile on his face changing the light bulb… he came down and told me it was the first time he had been up there and it was awesome. I didn’t want to burst his bubble telling him I had scampered up there and looked around for a minute a couple weeks ago.. so last week…sigh…
about 20 rooms
two dining rooms
A kitchen streatching between them, with a staircase down to the deck below with food storage and a walk in refrigerator. They preferred buying stuff in the states to china..I’ll let you imagine why..
a crew lounge (bar, fridge TV,karaoke machine, Xbox, DVD player, tables and couches, and the official ships library, a stack of old magazines and a few old novels and boxes of movies, all piled up on a table, although I did come to appreciate it after a first disappointed reaction), an officers lounge (the inner sanctum… from what I saw through the window one night, or heard down the spiral staircase into the officers mess, was a TV, Bar, Xbox which had some pretty intense FIFA soccer played on it, and a dvd that seemed to play a lot of Romanian female sung pop music.. I always assumed she was a looker..), and a passengers lounge (not much to it.. a TV and no DVD..a small fridge, not much to watch from 300 miles out to sea! they kept safely manuals in there they wanted us to read… one day I was bored, and learned a lot about fire fighting.. no one hung out there so it wasn’t much use when I had a computer to watch things on in my room).
a little work out room with a ping-pong table and punching bag.. new weight equipment arrived for our journey, purchased in Oakland, and I got to help set it up.
A pool room, a bit of a joke on board maybe 9 feet deep and 9 feet on a side.. it is filled from sea water, so you need to wait to fill it until you get to warmer climes… no one bothers until you get to like the Indian Ocean
A bunch of laundry rooms, one for the captain only with a big sign telling you they will throw your clothes off the side if you use it.. with these close to useless high efficiency European style laundry machines.. it was two weeks before someone finally taught me which ones actually worked… things drove me nuts… turns out there were some Chinese machines not up to snuff, even in that category of already useless European designs (god bless america.. you hit the button, and it just goes to work!)
The captain, Engineering officer, and the First Officer have suites, a bedroom and an office… the rest of the crew have either single or joint rooms.
There were 4 possible guest rooms on their own floor, the 7th deck, with a guest lounge. they tended to also be double size, with an office area, sometimes two beds, big square port holes… my booking agent told me to get one of the ones on the side. I started in a middle room facing front, then moved to the port front corner. Cadets lived down the hall, two of the technicians, and later, a former captain and crew chief arrived to do some safety training on coming into ports, and stayed on our floor, as well as the new captain arrived in Hong Kong, although I think he moved straight into his room, and the last captain jumped a flight that night after a 4 month shift…
The first floors had a little hospital, like 2 beds, a ships office, a little meeting room, a fire room with fire equipment they could suit up into quickly, and a locker room for the guys to gear up. We had two lifeboats hanging on the sides.. one time we all piled into it for a drill, maybe 30 guys were in before they stopped forcing more in… I kept wondering if it would snap, and we would be stuck towing all the way to china because we couldn’t get back up. I was relieved to know it had fishing equipment on it to pass the time in addition to the normal essentials.
Amount of Times I wanted to get off the Ship but couldn’t: once, In Xiamin
Amount of Times I wished I was someplace else: 0
Books I read: maybe 5
Movies I watched: over 20
bought some video games but couldn’t get em to work because of security and registration crap!
Puzzles I made from a Puzzle shop I hit in Berkley: 3 the crew helped me with this historical 3D skyline of Hong Kong.. I figured they would scoff at it, but instead, they tore though it in like 2 days as we approached Hong Kong.. I would go to bed late, wake up, and find out that a few of them had done a layer in a night over beers.. it kept on like this for like 3 nights.. I didn’t realize they were that bored…I didn’t mind, I sure as heck didn’t want to do it myself, and they did all the annoying parts!
origami things I made before I got annoyed with the hard to read directions: 1
Times I saw other people on the outer deck’s of the accommodation while in passage: 1, one of the German guys. I had read in another guys blog that he spent all his time hanging out on the balconies of the ship, but would never see the crew, they were just inside all the time… about two weeks in, I bumped into one of the Germans, and almost embarrassed him making jokes about it… for some reason, they never went out unless they had a reason. Most of them were cold all the time even though it got up into the 60’s on part of the voyage, and had me sun bathing outside. It was, to echo that other blogger, my private domain, like a 9 story jungle gym until I got to the main deck and the second deck with the work shop where there would start to be people outside. When we came into port, people with nothing to do would sometime watch, but there were very few with nothing to do… the bridge would be alive with pilots and the whole compliment, and others would be ready to do the lines, shut down the engines, or what have you…
Times I crawled onto the top of the containers on the back of the ship: 1 in the middle of the night.. it was awesome.. there were Chinese fishing boats around, and I just watched them bounce around on the waves…