Sperry Marine Receives New Orders For VDRs

Northrop Grumman Corporation's Sperry Marine business unit announced that it has received recent orders for 10 VoyageMaster Voyage Data Recorders (VDR). Terms of the contract were not disclosed. The VoyageMaster system meets the International Maritime Organization (IMO) carriage requirements for VDRs and is fully type approved. The VDR carriage requirements apply to all new ships over 3,000 gross tons, and all existing roll-on, roll-off passenger ships. The compliance deadline is July 1, 2002. Grimaldi Group's cruise ferry operator, Grandi Navi Veloci (GNV), has ordered six VoyageMaster VDR systems for installation on six existing cruise RoRo ferries. These systems are in addition to Sperry Marine VDRs already on order for Grimaldi's two newbuildings (#1220 and #1221) at Nuovi Cantieri Apuania. The orders were secured by Sperry Marine's Italian sales and service representative, Compagnia Generale Telemar S.p.A. Additionally, BP Shipping has ordered four VoyageMaster VDRs for new tankers under construction at Tsuneishi Shipbuilding in Japan. The ships (British Laurel, British Hawthorn, British Willow and British Oak), which are also being fitted with Sperry Marine electronic chart systems, are scheduled for completion in 2002/2003. The VDR system is similar to an aircraft "black box," providing a permanent record of data from ship's sensors and voice recordings on the bridge for recovery and analysis following an incident at sea.