This is inspiring. Obviously the ship designers are all planning their ships with this possibility in mind.
My thought experiment regarding floating oceanic cities can also stand an upgrade as well. The original structure can be built with a stern and bow section each holding the necessary urban amenities and service equipment that nicely supports both the initial compliment of condominium towers. along with the transportation corridor.
That corridor needs to hold six lanes of road traffic as swell as a pair of freight tracks under a pair of light train tracks to move people. All this can be below the upper deck allowing open promenading.
Such a construct would still be large but not unreasonably so and remain well within current engineering knowledge.. It would still be a large bathtub that would be say two to four blocks long and three blocks wide. This is a huge build, but not out of sight either.
Then, once floated to its permanent location, the two halves can be easily cut and separated to allow a new one block long section to be inserted easily. It could even be engineered to allow just the front to be separated.
As I have already posted, this would be an excellent way to properly bridge the Salish Sea where wind action is well controlled by geography. The same technology may well be already large enough to also shrug of deep sea conditions and hurricanes as well.
.
Why Cruise Lines Keep Cutting Their Ships in Half
The economics of cruising are as fascinating as they are counterintuitive.
A few weeks ago, John Delaney, president of Seattle-based Windstar Cruises, stood on a scaffold at a historic shipyard in Palermo, Italy, and took a blowtorch to the Star Breeze, a 30-year-old, 212-passenger motor yacht.
With sparks flying, and shipyard workers and invited guests cheering him on, Delany made the final vertical cut to chop Star Breeze in half. But he was hardly destroying the small ship—he was doing just the opposite.
In a process called “stretching,” the Star Breeze
is getting pulled apart to make room for a new, 84-foot, 1,250-ton
prefab midsection addition. Think of it like unsnapping (or unwelding)
two Legos and putting another block in between. But with a boat.
After four months of surgery, the all-suite Star Breeze
will be bigger, more luxurious, and more profitable. When she debuts
again in February, she’ll have 50 new suites to house 100 additional
guests, a 50% increase in passenger capacity, and command higher rates
for her shiny new cabins. Delaney says it should add at least 20 years
to the ship’s life span
Stretching, it turns out, is so good for Windstar’s bottom
line that the company will similarly expand two more ships by the end of
2020, spending a total $250 million to increase its overall capacity by 24%.
Sliced and waiting, Silversea’s Silver Spirit during its 2018 stretching.
Source: Silversea
The Big Idea
Stretching cruise ships is hardly a new idea. Teijo Niemela, editor of CruiseBusiness.com,
says the concept was borrowed from Scandinavian ferries that were
sliced to add cargo space. He sailed on his first stretched ferry in
Finland in 1972.
It was only six years later that Royal Caribbean added an 85-foot block to first expand a ship, the Song of Norway,
starting a slow but steady industry trend. The defunct Royal Viking
Line stretched ships in the 1980s; Norwegian Cruise Line added sections
to three ships in the 1990s. More recently, MSC Cruises lengthened four
ships and has announced plans to slice a fifth. The $143 million project, scheduled for 2021, will add 75,000 square feet to the MSC Magnifica,
comprising 215 new staterooms (most of them in the popular balcony
category), two restaurants, and a water park, as well as technology
that’s more environmentally friendly.
Star Breeze gets pulled apart in Palermo, Italy.
Source: Windstar Cruises
Last year in Palermo, ultraluxury line Silversea added a 49-foot midsection to its Silver Spirit at a cost of $70 million, increasing
the ship’s capacity from 540 to 608 passengers by adding 34 suites. It
took 500 workers and about 450,000 man hours to complete the stretch.
“For cruise lines, it’s a quicker way to expand capacity
compared to building a new cruise ship,” Niemela says. “A new cruise
ship takes about 22 months or more [to build]. Add a new midsection, and
it’s only a few months that the ship is out of service.”
Doing the Math
With estimates of about $175 million
to build a 300-plus passenger vessel, stretching the older ones made
more sense, Delaney says, especially when each project costs an average $80 million.
By lengthening its ships, Windstar will add 150 suites that will go for an average $450 to $550 per person per night. With those 300 additional passengers, the six-ship line, owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz’ Anschutz Corp., could add more than $49.2 million in annual revenue.
Silversea added a 49-foot midsection to its Silver Spirit at cost of $70 million.
Source: Silversea
There
are also benefits downstream. While the guts of the ships are open,
Windstar is replacing seven outdated engines with four new Wartsila
engines that will meet the International Maritime Organization’s tougher emissions standards.
“Not
only do we get to leverage the fuel against more people, we’re putting
in much more fuel-efficient, energy saving, state-of-the-art engine
technology,” Delaney says. “We get the benefit of that and reduced
repairs and maintenance with the new engines.”
Fixed costs don’t
change much when a ship is stretched. Build a new one, and you have to
fully staff it; expand an old one, and it’s a matter of a few extra
hires to maintain the same crew-to-guest ratio. (That, and a slightly
longer shopping list to stock the kitchens.)
“The flow through on
the extra hundred guests, that revenue, almost 90% goes to the bottom
line,” Delaney says. “It’s significant. The return on the investment was
much, much higher on the stretch.”
Like a Lego block, a prefabricated middle section is added before being welded in place.
Source: Windstar Cruises
The Cutting Edge
The
entire stretching process happens on a dry dock where workers have
access to all sides of a ship—including the bottom—and can manually
torch through structural walls with ease. There’s no room for error when
your 13,000-ton yacht needs to (literally) stay afloat.
Six such stretchings, including those by Windstar, Silversea, and MSC Cruises, plus
another two for ferries, have taken place over the last five years at
the Palermo yard of Italian master shipbuilder Fincantieri SpA.
Once all the guts of a ship are removed, including pipes and
cabling, engineers pull the front half of the ship forward on giant
blocks, then use self-propelled platforms on wheels to maneuver a
prefabricated middle section into place before welding it all back
together. Unlike Frankenstein, Star Breeze will bear no visible scars when it leaves the shipyard early next year.
As with Silversea’s expansion of the Silver Spirit, which added, among other things, a seafood and steak restaurant, pizza parlor, outdoor aerobics studio, and additional sunny places for lounging, Star Breeze will also get upgrades along the way.
“When
those ships were built [in the 1980s], things like a big pool, a really
nice spa, a great gym weren’t as important,” Delaney says. Today, he
notes, they’re expected. Star Breeze’s new pool is five times
larger, and the fitness center now has a yoga studio. Other upgrades
include a 1,374-square-foot, three-bedroom Grand Owner’s Suite and a
handful of restaurants.
Plus, the ship’s profile gets longer, sleeker, and prettier. “It’s no longer short and stubby like a hatchback,” he laughs.
No comments:
Post a Comment