American fast ferry gets Alstom system

Alstom Regulateurs Europa has supplied a range of equipment for a new 41m fast ferry to be built by Derecktor Shipyards for Nantucket/Woods Hole Steamship Authority. The maximum speed of the vessel will be 36 knots with a full load of 300 passengers. The company has designed a system for the vessel incorporating the Litton ISIS2500 high level multi-tasking Windows NT 32-bit platform.

A 430mm (17in) bridge colour monitor displays graphics for ship-wide alarm monitoring, condition assessment and control. There is also an interface for secondary monitoring of the Kamewa waterjets.

There are 160 monitoring channels, a bridge plate, three local scanning units, two local instrumentation panels, and two Viking propulsion control panels (PCP). The monitoring channels also cover ship auxiliaries such as bilge alarms and water tank levels.

The Viking PCP interfaces with the Kamewa waterjets and Reintjes clutch/gearbox, enabling functions such as back-flushing of the waterjets. Mounted on the twin 2,500kW (3,350 bhp) Paxman 12VP185 engines are hydraulic actuators with ballhead backup, enabling control to be maintained in the event of power failure, says Alstom.

Contact: Simon Shand Brown

Fax: +44 01206 797869.