| Nobiskrug | 142.1M | S/Y "A" | 2015/17 |

The more I get to know about this boat, the more I get excited about her technical aspects. Not bad for a boat, I actually do not like . I am really looking forward to see her sailing (or sail assited motoring ).

But honestly for that number under her final bill, one could buy Azzam straight out of her shed near Al Taweelah, Abu Dhabi and buy an additional Damen 8000 Dwt product tanker to carry the fuel for her thursty engines.

I would like to know what they are using, if anything is fitted.

DPFs will eliminate the initial smoking at startup, they trap the soot then burn it off when they get hot. The smoke in the photos I saw looked like that typically discharged by a medium speed generator at startup or when taking a load, especially if burning IFO - which is hard to believe this boat would use.

I wonder if the blankets are just to protect the paintwork from heat and soot staining? The builder must be terribly embarrassed at all the publicity this is getting, particularly when it might be nothing more than a giant cosmetic oops.

Marmot, I do not know how you define medium speed engines? As far as I know and used to define, low speed is anything up to app. 500 RPM (mostly 2-strokes), medium speed anything between 500 and app. 1000 RPM. Anything above that, lets say 1150, 1500 or 1800 RPM are high speed engines. Correct me if I am wrong. By this definition SY "A" has only high speed engines and as you say, they are normally not certified for the use of IFO or worse. Up to now, I woud give them the waver for testing, tuning and fixing. The industry calls this "banana maturation", it gets better and ready after installation but hopefully until final delivery. Some products even maturate after sale, like Microsoft Windows .

I am always wondering how a designer / owner can talk a yard into a design, were the engine exhaust causes heavy soot and discolouring of masts and other appendages on beautifull yachts. Examples like Eclipse, Topas and even on Golden Odissey make me really wonder. There must be a better location for an exhaust outlet on such a big yacht than in the direct vicinity of masts or sat domes.

This is the only ship, I am associated with, where I accept heavy smoke .



The historic steam Icebreaker Stettin.

Oh, Stettin on the Flensburg Fjord? Dampf Rundum?

Jepp, specially for you. Were you and your boat in this formation too?

Yep, this year I went out for taking some fotos. And as usual ALEXANDRA was much slower than STETTIN.

Same here. Industry wide definition I believe. I have read they are 3600kW MTUs, the medium speed reference was just for smoke comparison.

You would think so but ...

That is a beautiful old beast. It looks like the fans aren't keeping up with the fuel control or an engineer needs a word of encouragement. Remember the golden rule of oil fired steam; fuel follows air on the way up, air follows fuel on the way down.

Or maybe it is just for show, a stack salute.

Sorry Marmot, the steam icebreaker Stettin is a coal fired steamship consuming about 1,2t of antracite coal per hour.
And since these fotos were most probably taken during the steamer race at the Flensburg Steamship Festival "Dampf Rundum" the were certainly even a little more generous with coal.

The black smoke was on purpose, part of the show. Our stokers really had a hard time to keep up the 210 psi in the boiler. I am very happy, I only have to work in the wheelhouse. Btw. one of our voluntary (and unpaid) stokers is a nice young lady. No automatic stoking system, all manual. A coal shovel and man (woman) power



A coal fired steamer gives a lot of black smoke if the fire is covered with to much fresh coal. On normal cruise and fed correctly with high quality low-fat coal, there is far less smoke. But at full throttle, Stettin is really plowing through the waves and pushing a lot of water. It is an old 1933 Icebreaker and not a sleek 4 funnel destroyer.

Helping to keep up those nice historic ships is one of my hobbies. The little fleet of our non profit association is in pretty good shape and all of them are still under steam or sail. They are located in the museum harbour of Hamburg Ovelgönne.

Wow, that is impressive. Now I see why the smoke, they must have been shoveling like madmen.

How did it last so long without being converted to oil?

The coal fired steam icebreaker Stettin was government owned and because of its expensive coal fired boilers retired already in 1981. In 1982 Stettin was decleared a national cultural monument. Since then she is maintained by our association and kept in her original state as an active museum ship. The biggest problem we had with her was the complete refit of her hull plating. Stettin has a fully rivited hull. No yard was able to work with the old technology of hot riveting anymore. The work was done by voluntary amateurs under supervision of old retired yard workers from Blohm & Voss.

But I rather work up here,



than down here



I would assume, the engine room of SY "A" will be a little bit cleaner, even after some years of use. Modern engine rooms especially with a DE setup and sound shielded gensets are pretty boring. No action, no smell, almost no noise, clean like a surgery room and far to much computers. I believe Marmot, being one of the old school engineers himself, will understand what I mean.

During one of my earlier commands as a captain on one of our multi purpose dry cargo vessels, I was sitting in the messroom with my old Chief. Everthing working normal, fine weather, no action required at all. All of the sudden, the Chief stood up and left the room with the words: "Anni does not feel well". Anni was the name, he gave his 5 cylinder 2-stroke engine. He could virtually feel upcomming problems in his realm. I doub todays young engineers are still capable of this.

Guys you got a bit off-topic.. time to get back on track.

Thank you very much for the nice pics of STETTIN. Especially the boiler room and the "Black Gang" is a nice contrast to the high gloss world we see here most of the time. Probably that´s why I´m a fan of the traditionals.

Milow, a few pics from the old days and especially from the ship with the biggest still active steam engine worldwide are worth to get carried away from the topic for a moment.

I appreciate it but a dedicated thread might be a better place to discuss it though.

Enthusiasts get carried away easily when it comes to their favorite topics...

I hereby declare the topic back on track .





Both are non copywrited pictures

And the dementies of the yard are understandable but they have a definate broblem with residual heat of the exhaust stack on the leading edge of the rear mast. IMHO, the location of that funnel is a stupid design. Even some heavy insulated titanium plates will not solve the upcomming fatigue problem on this mast. 350+ degrees centigrade is to much for CFRP. The fiber is not the problem, it is the composite resin in it that can not stand that constant heat.

I also believe that exhaust is going to create problems for the life of the boat unless some serious modifications are made. If nothing else, motorsailing is going to turn the mizzen into a blackened mess very quickly. The "station wagon" effect is going to cover those areas shown in your stern shot photo into a soot stained and foul smelling industrial park. What where they thinking?

For trivia fans, a quick calculation based on the certification limits applicable when the engines were installed on that boat indicates that each of the 3600kW engines can discharge about 8640 grams (19 lbs) of particulates per day.

We have already seen where just a few grams have found a home.

Marmot what do you believe, how much back pressure in terms of exhaust outlet depth below waterline, an engine like one of those high speed MTU 20V 4000 could accept, if they would change the design towards below water line exhausts? 12 degrees of max. allowable heel is not very much, so a switch over valve might not be necessary.

I know, very expensive change but IMHO this setup has no future.

MTU specs are max 50mb (20 inches of water) with a max power figure of 30mb (12 inches water) which is not much. A few new aux generators allow more than twice that.

The best alternative that I have seen is the system used on the larger Perini Navi sailboats. The mains use wet exhaust with large water separators and the generators use wet exhaust with water separators and cross pipes with shutoff valves so that the low side can be sealed at high angles of heel. I haven't been on one under sail but I don't think that heel when motorsailing is as extreme as when close hauled in a half gale.

Another issue though with A is that unless there is a large aux gen, they are going to have to run a main to produce hotel power so heel might be an issue. unless engines are changed over with each change in tack. This is pure speculation though until someone tells the details about the machinery and is worth about as much as it cost to post.

a video dated few weeks ago: