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Audit of Circulation, Inc. 48 Directory: Marine Propulsion 58 Ship’s Store 59 Buyer’s Directory 62 Classifieds 64 Ad Index

Øyvind Gjerde Kamsvåg, senior hydro- dynamics designer at Ulstein Design, keeps a watchful eye on model tests of the new Ulstein AX104 design at Marintek in

Trondheim earlier this year. The innovative vessel and its development is profiled on page 36.

Editor’s Note www.marinelink.com [email protected]

On the Cover

Circle 200 on Reader Service Card

Coming in Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

June 2005 The Annual World Yearbook

The World’s Largest & Most Informative Marine Industy Annual, with topical technical and market reports including: Shipbuilding Containerships Tankers LNG Offshore Cruise Ship Workboat Market Report, and more.

Also in this edition: RIB Report; Training & Education Country Focus: UK

July 2005 The SATCOM Edition

Satellite Communications increasingly impact the bottom line. Read about the lead- ing companies. Maritime Security: Cameras, Night Vision & CCTV • U.S. Navy

Report CAD/CAM 2004 Diesel Engine Buyer’s Guide www.marinelink.com 6 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

P erception versus Reality. A good deal of our daily lives is spent deciphering perception versus reality, for both business and personal reasons. For example, with historically record high oil prices, an oil hungry country at war and rapidly improving technology to discover and recover petrole- um products from deep offshore waters, one would assume that a booming Gulf of Mexico is the reality.

But talk to the legions of companies that serve and survive in this market, and it is not the perception that you get. But travel to this year’s Offshore

Technology Conference in Houston, and witness the thousands of exhibitors hosting the tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe, and the percep- tion you get is of the former, not the latter.

Confusing? I thought so.

Take another example: a general perception that I have heard time and again from the day I stepped into this position is that the maritime industry is “con- servative.” This perception is driven by the reality that many ship and boat own- ers maintain their business margins by relying on proven technology rather than investing immediately in the technological flavor-of-the-month. What I have not seen, however, is a lack of innovation from product and system suppliers across the spectrum, as Research and Development across the marine industry around the world is driven by increasingly stringent regulations that mandate ships operate in a safe and “environmentally friendly” manner.

The reality of this perpetual innovation is proven once again this month, start- ing with our cover story on Ulstein Design’s development of its new AX104 anchor handling vessel featuring the X-Bow. The unique bow shape has no bulb, is slender in characteristic and slopes backwards instead of forwards (stop trying to envision and turn to pages 36-37 now). Put to the test at Marintek, one of the world’s premier tank test facilities located in Trondheim, Norway, the

AX104 – also one of the world’s first anchor handling vessels with diesel electric propulsion – proved efficient in many different sea states. Nothing validates new technology like money, and the new design found an investor in Bourbon

Offshore Norway, a subsidiary of Groupe Bourbon, which has ordered a 274-ft. vessel for delivery in 2006.

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