Posted on 11/28/2020 6:51:08 PM PST by texas booster
Time is running out for delivery of 5,000 tons of containers and modules for the Vostok station to Antarctica. Sevmporput had an estimated arrival at Prydz Bay on the eastern shores of the continent on November 20. However, since mid-October the giant nuclear-powered container carrier has sailed zigzag outside the Angolan coast in the South-Atlantic with a broken propeller.
Rosatomflot, the operator of Russia’s state-owned fleet of civilian nuclear-powered vessels, chose to keep silent about the trouble and has not answered any questions on the issue from The Barents Observer. Social media sites, however, had a lively debate about the reasons for the breakdown. As previously reported, it became clear that a propeller blade had fallen off. Divers flew to Angola to assist in cutting off a second blade in hope of restoring the balance.
Since the ship is nuclear-powered it couldn’t make port call, but had to stay outside the 12-nautical miles off the coast.
Now, newspaper Kommersant can inform that the divers’ repair attempts were unsuccessful and as the time-window for reaching the Antarctica summer season is about to close, it is decided to call Sevmorput home.
The giant ship will sail to St. Petersburg to unload the modules and containers, before entering dry-dock for repairs.
Icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn, which left Murmansk on September 27th and teamed up with Sevmorput in the Atlantic the second week of October, has set sail for home. The icebreaker waited a few days when Sevmorput got troubled outside Angola but soon continued lonely on the voyage south to King Håkon VII Sea, off the coast of Queen Maud Land in Antarctica two weeks ago. Onboard are 98 specialists and construction workers for the Vostok station. On Thursday, however, the ship is outside Cape Town with a northbound course and the destination is no longer Antarctica, but St. Petersburg according to MarineTraffic.com.
Port call to St. Petersburg is set to be December 31, much longer than such a voyage from South Africa normally would take. It is likely because the icebreaker will assist Sevmorput, which has reduced speed and maneuverability.
Opposite for the Germans.
I hate it when that happens.
Correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding of this article is that one of the propeller blades was lost. That would seriously unbalance the whole situation.
#5 I had a propeller fall off while fishing on Big Portage lake in Minnesota some 40+ years ago. It fell in shallow water, I used the fishing net to recover and used the left over bit of cotter pin and motored back for a better repair.
On another article I read that divers cut off a propeller blade, to balance the propulsion forces.
Another new icebreaker lost a complete azimuth motor, but the translations reported it in such a way that many misinterpreted it.
Roshydromet has not given out a lot of information. I suspect that the world's navies are glad to get such a loud ship out of the ocean so they can go back to tracking the quiet ones.
“Thank you for your request.
Concerning the situation on the nuclear-powered container ship Sevmorput, we point out that the life and health of the crew members of the nuclear-powered container ship Sevmorput have not been and are not threatened. The ship has full navigational capabilities. The nuclear reactor on the container ship Sevmorput is operating in normal mode.
Sevmorput is currently located in the Atlantic Ocean off Angola. The ship is undergoing repairs to the rudder-propeller. Due to damage to one of the propeller shafts of the nuclear container ship Sevmorput, it has been decided to dismantle it. To this end, a group of divers arrived on board the ship.
The information about the container ship being stationed at one of the foreign docks was false.”
I understand that since this is a nuclear powered ship, it did not enter the 12 mile limit off Angola.
Probably had French engineers since the French nuclear-powered Charles De Gaulle aircraft carrier did the same thing during sea trials a number of years ago.
Old high school cheer for a bad ref call in a ballgame.
“Elevator, elevator, we got the shaft”.
Now some Angolan fish has a nice souvenir to show to its spawn about how it fought the upperworld metal giant and won.
The Russians can still point to the ISS space station as a crowning achievement!
Oh, wait...
Ours are massive bronze castings from what I’ve seen.
CC
Beat me to it.
Dam dropped it, heck no one will ever know.
They dropped the spare one while trying to install it.
Anybody else notice the “carrier” turned out to be a Cargo ship ? I guess I should have noticed the lowercase “c” denoting that it wasn’t an Aircraft Carrier.
Come to think about it the Ruskies don’t have any functioning A/C’s after the Crane at Drydock Faux Paw.
5,000 lbs of cargo ? Why send a ship when it could have gone via plane ?
NEVERMIND, Tons not pounds. Guess I should get some sleep.
Didn't a French aircraft carrier also lose a prop?
The royalty check is in the mail, cuz I’m sure to use that quote this week.
The ship left Toulon for her fourteenth and final sea trial on 24 October 2000. During the night of 9–10 November, in the Western Atlantic while en route toward Norfolk, Virginia, the port propeller broke, and the ship had to return to Toulon to have a replacement fitted. The investigations that followed showed similar structural faults in the other propeller and in the spare propellers: bubbles in the one-piece copper-aluminium alloy propellers near the centre.
We lived in Metz France when De Gaulle decided to kick the American military out.
Corrosion? Poor welding? Ice damage? Improper balancing?
HA! Yeh where are all the chicken littles that think Russia is a threat to the US. 🙄
the time-window for reaching the Antarctica summer season is about to close,
i thought they were just going into summer?
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