NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: A credible AIS track for the Costa Concordia
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Jan 25, 09:24 -0800
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Jan 25, 09:24 -0800
The seemingly increasing top-heaviness of cruise ships worries me. I wonder what their stability or righting-moment curves look like. Such a curve is very familiar to sailors -- tells how far a sailboat can roll before it wants to point down instead of up. For the typical monohull sailboat, the tip of the mast can be brought down to the water and the boat will handily right itself. Usually takes a heel of 120~140 degrees before it will not right itself.
I realize one can achieve great stability in ships by taking on ballast water, but I nonetheless have to wonder how any
amount of water ballast 20 or 30 feet below the water can right stem-to-stern steel superstructures 100 feet above the waterline from all but the most trivial heel.
Lu Abel
From: Greg Rudzinski <gregrudzinski@yahoo.com>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 6:13 AM
Subject: [NavList] Re: A credible AIS track for the Costa Concordia
Lots of excellent analysis from the list.The ship should also be analyzed as to why it couldn't sustain a rip in the hull and stay afloat. An excessively high center of gravity by design may have compromised the ships stability. Accidents still happen even with fail safe devises and well trained crew in place so naval architecture needs to keep up to reduce the consequences of groundings, collisions, and acts of war .Greg Rudzinski
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