Jrc Radar News

Thousands of containers have been lost by ships in heavy weather conditions over recent months, impacting the ocean environment and adding a large extra cost expense for shipping companies.Among many factors leading to the problem is heavy rolling and pitching of the ship that causes containers to lose their stability and fall overboard. Marine electronics company JRC said its navigational radar JMR-7200/9200 includes a Wave Analysis function made available through a software upgrade.The JRC Radar Wave Analysis function is developed to measure wave height, direction and length.

To Tim Domke, the new M/V Dixie Legacy is much more than simply the largest, most advanced lift boat in the world. To Domke, the Dixie Legacy is personal, the culmination of a career built sailing onboard these unique vessels with the last four years spent shoreside, overseeing the construction activities at Semco Shipyard for Power Offshore Service of Belle Chasse, La. Semco recently completed a 250-ft. (76.2 m) leg lift boat for Power Offshore Service, the first in a series of lift boats under construction for the company. Dixie Legacy features a number of technical innovations and amenities that should secure its profitable and successful future for many years to come.

Lift boats are the unglamorous vessels of oil and gas well servicing industry. They travel to the job site with three large cylindrical legs rising 150-250 ft. above the waterline. Once onsite, lift boats lower their legs to the seabed and raise their hull up to 100 ft. above the waterline to be even with the structure they are servicing to provide a stable platform for workers to transit from the lift boat to the project in which they are working. These versatile vessels can serve through the entire life of a oil or gas well from driving casing to provide a "path" for a jackup rig to drill through construction of the platform, repair and renovation of the platform to plug and abandonment of the well.

In many areas of the world, boats with twin main engines are seen to have advantages over single-engined boats. For the pair trawlers of Hong Kong it is not a question of one or two engines - for many years the fleet has used three engines per boat. Shun Fung Engineering Ltd., Cummins' major Hong Kong marine dealer, has been the pioneer in the Hong Kong fishboat marine engine market. Otto C.Y. To, Deputy General Manager of Shun Fung Engineering, explains that the three engine configuration evolved when captains of the early powered fishing junks found that the large single net tended to pull the boats toward each other requiring constant rudder angle and thus reducing towing efficiency. To correct this, each boat added a second smaller engine on the side from which the net was towed.

Semco Shipyard recently completed the M/V Dixie Legacy, a 250-ft. leg liftboat for Power Offshore Service, the first in a series of liftboats under construction for Power Offshore Service of Belle Chasse, La. The vessel will be used as a support platform from which various oil and gas industry activities can be performed, including activities such as coiled tubing, hydraulic snubbing, nitrogen stimulation, drilling, plug and abandonment, construction, facility installation or removal and diving. Dixie Legacy, the largest liftboat in the world, features a number of technical innovations both evident and unseen, but its greatest assets are immediately evident upon first laying eyes on the boat: its cranes, its deck area and its legs.