van Hemmen, Rik
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23 Apr 2020
Insights: Contracts are Overrated in Maritime
My company has been around since 1875, and today we actually still do things that were being done in 1875. We still get calls from underwriters to attend on disasters all over the place, and we are still asked to provide values on ships on a moment’s notice.Moreover, some of the companies that ask us to attend to those issues, in some form or another, also have been around since 1875.That results in a very smooth operational routine…
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13 Nov 2019
Taming Ferry Wakes and Reducing CO2
Will Moon was one of my very early engineering interns (and also helped me finish out the second story of my house decades ago). He has since moved to the West Coast and has worked for the naval architecture firm Glosten for quite a while now. On Marinelink.com I saw a quick flash of a foiling passenger ferry and the name Glosten and I contacted him for a closer look.Will provided me with more information and this is one of those cases where I really like what I see.
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24 Oct 2019
Ship Design & The Inevitability of Change
At one time the most powerful lighthouse in the United States was Twin Lights in Highlands New Jersey. Today it is a wonderful little museum and right now it has a very interesting show of paintings by Maarten Platje on the War of 1812. One painting is called the Great Chase and it tells this amazing story of the US Frigate Constitution being becalmed off the New Jersey coast and becoming engaged in a rowing race to keep out of range of a powerful British Squadron.
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02 Oct 2019
AIS Provide Skidmarks on the Ocean
Many years ago, I received a call from an attorney who wanted me to get on the plane to Houston right away to take a look at damage on two ships that had collided in the approaches to Houston.He told me that both vessels had become confused, had started to turn and managed to occupy the same bit of ocean at the same time. His preliminary analysis indicated that, if he could prove the other vessel turned first…
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21 Aug 2019
STEM is so 'Yesterday’s News'
Recently I was attending the United Nations Science Technology and Innovation conference (STI Forum). While I attended to present on Wave Energy Conversion, the main subject at the conference was STEM education and STEM gender inequality. Almost every country in the world reports a lack of available STEM educated workers, and also reports that they have had problems engaging the non-male population in STEM professions.The discussions were extremely far and wide ranging…
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11 Jul 2019
Will High-Speed Container Transport Ever Work?
Every few years I am handed a high-speed container transport proposal. Generally it consists of some type of high speed vessel design that would be able to move containers at high speed and thereby attract a new market by taking a chunk out of the air cargo market and the premium ocean market. Occasionally we are asked to look at the economics for potential investors, and it always falls short of being economically viable.
