Page 22: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (September 2001)

News II§SS ships five and six in the San Antonio

Class LPD 17 Program.

As prime contractor for the LPD 17

Program, Northrop Grumman Avondale leads the Avondale Alliance — a team comprised of General Dynamics' Bath

Iron Works, Raytheon Electronic Sys- tems and Intergraph Corporation. e k

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Design work is complete and the first ship in the program is in production.

To date, contracts in excess of $2 bil- lion for four ships have been awarded in the 12-ship program with the eight addi- tional ships planned in the next four to five years. Eight of the ships will be built at Avondale in New Orleans, while four are currently planned for produc- tion at Bath Iron Works in Maine, including the fifth ship, which was part of last month's award. Start of fabrica- tion on LPD 18, New Orleans, will begin at Avondale in February 2002;

LPD 19, Mesa Verde will commence at

Bath Iron Works in July 2001.

New Chairman At WQIS

Thomas Guarnera, vice president of

Mutual Marine Office (MMO), has been elected to serve as chairman of WQIS,

The Water Quality Insurance Syndicate.

The previous chairman, Ray Marine, president of International Marine

Underwriters (IMU/CU), now known as

One Beacon, will be retiring after more than 40 years in the insurance industry.

Mike Jacobs, vice president, INAMAR — ACE USA, will assume the position as vice chairman of WQIS.

Viking's Evacuation Chute

Is Certified

This past May, Viking received tangi- ble evidence of the efforts having been made in terms of research and develop- ment through its grant from the U.S.

Coast Guard for its Viking Evacuation

Chute with associated 100-person auto- matically self-righting liferafts.

The chute passed the most demanding tests prescribed by the international approval requirements. During a heavy sea trial occurring in the North Atlantic close to the Faroe islands with winds of approximately 15-25 miles/sec. and average wave heights of about 10-26 ft. (3-8 m), the evacuation system was loaded with 15.6 tons in both lee and windward sides — ultimately with- standing this most grueling sea trial.

Tailored to newbuildings as well as the various existing RoRo passenger ves- sels, the evacuation chute complies with the latest international requirements on their life-saving equipment by July 1, 2001.

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Transas Upgrades Swedish

Board Of Navigation Simulator

Transas Scandinavia has upgraded the simulator at the Arko Education center of the Swedish Board of Navigation located just south of Stockholm.

Initially Transas supplied two PC- based Navi-Trainer 3000 simulators and one VTS simulator software package, in summer 1998. Although that original simulator contained no dedicated hard- ware and featured just one visualization channel per bridge, it was a good plat- form for future upgrades. In the course of the upgrade, this initial configuration was expanded to a modern-style full mission bridge based on the Navi-Train- er 4000 simulator software. The main bridge is fitted with a complete set of dedicated hardware and seven visualiza- tion channels, and two smaller bridges are equipped with reduced sets of kombi controls.

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Kawasaki

IN PURSUIT OF

MANOEUVERABILITY

Aspiring to provide excellent systems,

Kawasaki, with a century long experience, is continually researching and developing new propulsion systems. \WASAKI

JY INDUSTRIES, LTD. enter Bldg., 4-1 Hamamatsu-cho, 2-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-6116, Japan inery Sales Dept. Machinery Division:Phone:81-3-3435-2374 Fax:81-3-3435-2022 vy Industries (UK) Ltd. Phone:44-20-7588-5222 Fax:44-20-7588-5333 vy Industries (Europe) B.V. Phone:31-20-644-6869-70 Fax:31-20-642-5725 vy Industries (USA) Inc. Phone:1-212-759-4950 Fax:1-212-759-6421

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