(09-16-2009 01:02 PM)WMD Owl Wrote: (09-16-2009 12:56 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote: Really cool - I used to live in this part of the world and have sailed in those exact waters.
Their suggestion of a "secretive" fleet is hogwash - this is simply the best location on earth to put these ships into a holding pattern.
Lots of those older ships may be setting there fore a while, or sent to the breakers in India.
The "smart ship automation terchnology" where you can run the same displacement ship with only 1/3 of the former crew size is the wave of the future.
Yup, but perhaps this current glut of ships, both in the waters off Malyasia and in other waters worldwide, and the ships ordered in the early 2000's and now just being delivered, are going to push back expensive investments in smart ships?
But you certainly can't argue that this smart ship tech is on the horizon and really cool. That what used to take 20 trained sailors now only takes 7 is remarkable.
I just moved an employee from Noumea, New Caledonia to Switzerland. The movers on the island were saying that cargo ships unload their cargo, then leave the containers on the island because it is cheaper to leave them in port than it is to reload them empty.
This in itself is not new news, it happened even in the best of times, but the interesting thing is now this load and leave happens in bigger ports like Singapore, Thamesport and Long Beach, not just little backwaters....
I love all the ideas floating (hah!) around about what to do with these containers - shops, housing, local storage, weather shelters etc. And if you are really interested, you can buy a rather used 20' container for about $150 here in the States, especially close to a port - you just have to move it yourself. A buddy of mine with land up in northern Wisconsin used to kid around that he would buy one, sink it into the ground, water proof it and build a cabin around the container, making it thief proof and having a good tornado shelter / food storage / zombie defense bunker.