Comments by "SeanBZA" (@SeanBZA) on "What's Going on With Shipping?" channel.

  1. Even to support a single aircraft you have a large ground support crew, from messing, to needing security there, to needing a whole slew of ground support equipment that has to go there. Plus you need a runway first and foremost, which is not easy to airlift. 6 aircraft needed at least 4 transport aircraft for crews and tools, and another 10 vehicle convoy with heavy trucks, that took the stuff that does not fit, and then another 2 dozen general purpose trucks, and 100 warm bodies, rented from the Army, to provide the grunt work to assemble tents, put up the camouflage revetments for the aircraft, and provide security for the perimeter. Then also you needed water tankers, a few fuel tankers, and as well generators for power, to run mess and power the ground equipment, plus an important one being the honeysucker to keep the smell down, and some form of garbage disposal as well.
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  2.  @my2iu  Yes, and the USA will have to start a manufacturing base at 1800 level as well, with an added bonus that almost all the raw materials that made it are now no longer surface minable, and the coal they used is no longer allowed to be used as well.
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  3. Captain Stevie Wonder at the helm.......
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  4. most likely a way to carry the largest volume over the longest route cheaply, then lots of smaller ships to move it around the Americas, so the cost of small ships waiting is not going to affect transit times. Building a railway will be easy for China, though you can bet the entire crew will be imported labour and machinery, and almost nothing local to the area for that entire build, and operation and profits straight to China as well.
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  5. Would simply attach a long rope and a buoy to the chain before release. Then dump the chain, and rope length will be actual depth plus a little more, so that the chain pulls the rope down more or less taut. Then afterwards a lift barge can come salvage the anchor, saving a good chunk of money for the owners, and keeping from getting a fine from the port operator for dumping in a shipping channel.
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  6. Well, seeing as the charts are sold in US dollars, and the captain and crew are Russian, that money was diverted into buying much more important things, like a still to make some vodka, using some of the grain in the hold.
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  7. Durban port, a very contentious thing by me, and the politics are massive, with a whole load of players who you would not think of being involved, and a whole lot of dealings, that are not in the best interests of the port and city long term, but which are very lucrative to those involved with them. Plus another 2 ports close by also aiming to get a part of this very lucrative market.
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  8. Yes jet fuel is a big one, because aircraft do not take a small amount of fuel per flight, and each flight has many tons of fuel on board. Easily 30 tons per flight, and with 5 flights a day per aircraft, that is 150 tons of fuel a day, now multiply by the thousands of flights a day, and you see a 6 day disruption will make for many cancelled flights, and the remaining ones being full to capacity. Then also all rental companies will be out of vehicles as well, from people renting a car to drive, probably a single occupant per vehicle in most cases, making it worse when normal fuel deliveries start and there are no rental cars at airports, or they all are at far flung points and not at hubs.
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  9.  @wgowshipping  Yes and most new ICE cars are shipped with a part tank of fuel, simply to cover the driving needed to get from the plant to the ship, and off the ship afterwards, into the receiving warehouse at the ports. So each will have roughly a half tank of fuel in them. EV's will, if new, only have a part charge as well, basically the initial test charge at the plant, then the discharge where the battery pack was tested for initial QC and to allow the BMS to get a capacity map for each cell block. Then whatever was used to drive on the ship, and the losses from self discharge or the battery needing to maintain temperature. Yes likely they are going to require disconnecting the 12V battery pack once parked, so will make shipping take 15 minutes more per vehicle both ends, as they will have the additional step after loading and tie down, and the same before undoing the straps. But will also result in some strange faults as most modern vehicles really do not like the battery disconnected, and many luxury vehicles, especially those with electric handbrake, have a second auxiliary battery as well that you need to disconnect, which often needs dismantling parts of the interior to reach it.
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  10. So basically cheaper labour, lower cost materials and not as much oversight, so a grinder bondo and paint will cover a lot of sins. Plus of course well connected manufacturing hubs that can do the cookie cutter parts fast, and then send them down good transport links to be assembled, and you do not have to transport things all that far.
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  11. Should buy a few identical RORO ships, and paint them identically, and convert them identically as well, even down to painting openings in that are not present, so those with one look like the others. then you make it hard to track them at all.
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  12. Yes Chernobyl was first and foremost a nuclear weapons production line, just made power as a by product. 3 mile was nothing really, but blown all in out by media and vested interests in coal, which incidentally emits more radiation uncontrolled than nuclear ever has. Fukushima was also an old design even when new, but built because it was considered export safe, and also the operations and management was very much done by having a pass the request up style, and then meet and discuss this for weeks, and not lose face, style of operation. You can make the reactors safer with modern designs, and also smaller modular ones are more reliable, especially if it is self contained, and needs little maintenance other than at a specialised facility, where you have the skilled people who will open it. Treat it like a boiler, which needs special operations to run, and it works well like that.
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  13. My sister knows a chaplain off a deep sea salvage tug, who would spend up to 9 months per year out at sea, never leaving the ship at all when they were working.
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  14. Large lights coming on after a while is because they are high pressure sodium lights, and those typically, unless you use expensive fast relight ballasts, or use expensive dual arc tube lamps, will take 3 to 5 minutes to cool down before the most common ballast ignitors will be able to relight them. Mast light likely a 1000W lamp, and the side ones are 400W lamps, which do take faster to relight than the big one. Shipping uses them because they are above all cheap, have a lot of light output, and are very rugged, with them being quite happy running on 50Hz and 60Hz mains with no problem, and also surviving all sorts of mains voltage surges and spikes with no problem, unlike LED lights, which will fail rapidly. Plus will still operate even when exposed, and wet, unlike the delicate electronics. 15000 hour life, which can easily be exceeded with good quality lamps, and they are easy to change out, unscrew the E40 lamp from the socket, screw in the new one, and close the cover. A big advantage on a ship, where you have to do this after climbing a ladder to get to the lamp, only needing to carry a lamp, and a pair of pliers to release the clips, or a screwdriver to undo screws, as opposed to a LED where you need to winch the entire fixture up there to replace a faulty one. Plus they just cycle when old, on for 5 minutes, then off, till eventually they are just a dull blue red from age, or the arc tube shatters inside the glass envelope.
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  15. Could also be a false flag thing, to make it seem the ships were targeted, while the actual perpetrators are the Russian secret service, doing this to sow disinformation. Will bet there is a claim going into the non Russian insurers as well, and that pretty much all the ships were not insured by a Russian based insurer as well, in an attempt to gain foreign currency for the claim, while having the ship sail to a Russian port for repairs. But a lot of the incidents could easily also be due to a complete lack of maintenance, with the hole being from hitting a rock, and the dead fish being from the release of polluted ballast water as well.
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  16. Small correction the oil pumps and cooling water systems will all be run off the 440VAC bus, as they are low power loads, under 20kVA per motor, so easily run off a 440VAC power link, which is a lot cheaper motor wise, as you use standard insulation on the motor, and standard insulation on the wires, which is a lot cheaper than 6600VAC insulation and control gear. Same for hydraulic oil pumps, all running off the low voltage bus. Bow thruster high voltage because they need the power delivery, and the long cables for them also make high voltage advantageous, despite the need for much more robust and thicker insulation, and much more expensive control gear. The high voltage on a motor means a much larger motor frame, as now you have so much more volume in the windings being occupied by insulation, instead of copper or aluminium wire. As well with high voltage insulation cooling is harder, you need to either have air channels down the windings for cooling, and run the windings at a much lower current so they generate less heat, or have much lower power density in the motor, making it much bigger for the power. Expensive below roughly 50kVA, and the 6600VAC control gear is a lot more expensive over your common low cost 440VAC control gear, that is cheap, and common world wide in industry.
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  17. Close to the water, and above the spring tide mark, plus a little more for spray off the waves.. They build the wind towers to the minimum height, as after all extra steel costs money.
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  18. There is an emergency shut off, and they can always turn off the fuel supply. Problem with the fuel injection system though, which is likely controlled by a electronic controller, simply because this allows the fuel source to be changed and fuel ratio to be very precise, is another issue. Single point of failure there, and will not be easy to restart either, unless the engines are also shut down as well. Unlike the electrical system no redundancy there.
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  19. At least we did not have a Glory hole........
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  20.  @hypothebai4634  Supposed to have a redundant set of diesel power plant to provide power, but likely there was a few of those sets that were out of order, and awaiting being under way to be repaired, or at least beaten back to life. Could be that there was only a single power plant operating, and then a backup unit not running, in place of 2 sharing the load, and a steering command drew too much power off that single plant, so it tripped out, leading to the blackout. Main engine will carry on for a while, as it runs all mechanically, until the fuel feed pumps stop filling the header tank with the inshore diesel fuel. Black smoke yes captain put all astern to slow down, and dropped anchors, once power came back on from standby genset, as likely the emergency generator was started by the engine watch, taking a minute or two to come on line, and then they started the reversing, likely with a corresponding massive steering input, which would be useless without any headway to give the rudder authority. Going to be a massive collection of blame there, starting from the port authority, the captain, and exactly who is going to pay what, with insurers doing their best to not be the one on the hook.
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  21. Will add that salt water pools are common. No more corrosion in the pump than for a normal fresh water pool at all, and the pumps last just as long, with salt corrosion almost never being the cause of failure, as the typical failure is motor seals and bearings failing, and capacitors in the motor going low value, plus windings going open circuit, because they are all almost invariably made from CCA wire, which vibrates itself to pieces.
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