NOAA the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration is the US
government's oldest scientific agency
NOAA's work reaches from the bottom of
the sea to the surface of the South in
the 1960s in the midst of the Cold War
and the space race no undertook to build
its most ambitious research vessel ever
this was a research vessel like no other
one
it had an endurance of a hundred and
fifty days it could go twenty knots with
diesel-electric engines and held over
300,000 gallons of fuel which gave it a
range of some 18,000 miles during your
years of service oceanographers sailed
over two million Donegal miles in every
major ocean on our inaugural voyage she
transited from the US east coast to the
west coast by the North Atlantic
Mediterranean Sea Red Sea Indian Ocean
and Pacific there's also a very unique
observation bulbous bow this is a
pressurized walk-in bulbous bow with
observation ports below the waterline at
92 meters 303 feet this vessel is
roughly as long as a football field
behind me you'll see a blimp hangar I'm
on a helipad deck here
you could fit probably two or three twin
turbine sikorsky's here no problem
there's probably nothing quite like
beyond the bridge deck of a 90 meter the
view is quite spectacular the air height
of this vessel is actually a hundred and
thirty-five feet so you've got to be
careful about opening bridges keep in
mind that this vessel was recently
prepared for transoceanic voyage it's
got a suite of new electronics we see
child it we fired up the engines there
diesel electric that Westinghouse so
we've got Furillo radar we've got in
marcet
and we have a lot of the trusty
navigational and propulsion systems of
the original vessel Stafford family
bought this vessel from the US
government some years ago and it's been
taking care of it since then CEO Dan
stabber probably knows more about this
vessel than anybody else so let's hear
what he has to say about it
the lines are straight the lines are
clean real nice shape I mean this the
shape on this ship if it's beautiful and
it is very very expensive to reproduce
because it's not just visual it's built
into the structure of the ship the flare
of the bow and the and the rake of the
bow and the rake of the stern and it's a
molded hull
you know most vessels nowadays are a
hard chine hull and this is a molded
hull
you know a lot of the ships that were
built in the you know in the last 30 or
40 years they've chosen the least
expensive build method which means
straight lines
no rake no shear but with this ship you
needed to have real ship fitters and
there was a real art going into this the
shape of the bottom and the bow and the
way the vessel has a rake and camber
even the decks are cambered so there's a
lot of a lot of shape and a lot of style
to this which you do not it's just not
it's just not built into ships because
it's just so expensive it probably
doubles the cost of the vessel and it
was designed structurally so that it
could be you could have quite a few
different interior configurations
without having to worry about structure
so you have a lot of flexibility there
the ship was always maintained inside in
fresh water and once Noah just sold the
vessel
she's been moored and maintained
continuously in fresh water her steel
hull is in practically new condition I
mean just very little wastage of any at
all she's heavily built she is ice
classed so that means she's got special
framing for the first third of the ship
special hull plating along the waterline
in critical areas very heavily
built vessel that is in structurally is
in as new condition I've had the vessel
to 18 and that was without pushing
anything on she's a very efficient halt
these are a slow turning very smooth
when she is running when we were running
at 18 knots
you couldn't even feel her there was no
vibration and it's so quiet so the
simplest would be to put new ships
auxilary generators in which would be
late-model
auto starts you know all fully automated
then you could leave the existing
propulsion generators and propulsion
drive motors and the propulsion drive
motors are good for the life of the ship
then the next upgrade if you really
wanted to go to the full monty would be
to change the ship's propulsion drive
generators to AC generators dual fuel
they could be the diesel end or LNG I
would suspect it probably burns in the
2000 at 2400 gallon at a range at 11
between 10 and 12 knots so be very very
fuel efficient for a vessel this size
this vessel has a barber shop as a
medical surgery it also has a blimp
hangar it is a huge helipad it has a
u.s. mailbox there's an elevator here
that serves four decks I'm in the engine
room now and one deck below me here are
four fairbanks-morse engines three of
them
our mere knew they were put in by the US
government just before they disposed of
their [ __ ] this is the propulsion
machinery control room for the diesel
electric system has tank sounding
systems for all of the tanks main engine
monitoring of temperatures and pressures
and of course all the propulsion motor
controls it was set up for a unattended
engine room or remotely monitor engine
room space for a ship of this size to
have do you have enough monitor points
have enough data checkpoints where you
could really run the ship engineering
wise from this control space you'll see
that these walls have been taken back to
the insulation overhead I'm going to
show you some details of the wiring they
actually stripped out the plumbing in
here but they left the base of the
showers and the sink piping well in why
do any plumbing you know when you got
the sewage lines and all of that here at
least and all these cables are have
markings on them you know they've got
tags on in these tanks right here
numbers these equate all those equate
circuits yeah so it's relatively easy to
use a circuit or to reuse the circuit
the thing that you'll notice in these
open spaces on Sahara is that there are
a lot of structural walls these vessels
were built of to the highest government
standards with the best steel and the
thickest steel this is a nice class
vessel but because of that you can
actually gut the interior and you can
create huge open spaces that have great
structural integrity and there are lots
of portholes and they can be made even
bigger no problem
very stable not this there is no state
stability issue that's for sure
look at it the way this flows up it just
beautiful I mean a completed vessel I
bet you would take about four years from
the time the plans were developed and I
would suspect a cost substantially over
200 million dollars it wouldn't take
much to have a boat like this kicking
ass and doing well
operational out cruising depends about
you know how fancy went on the interiors
its come on sixteen state runners plus
crew quarters and then new galley and
all of that when you get into vessels
over let's say 60 meters 200 feet and
you start to get up to the size of this
vessel which is 92 meters 300 feet
I think it you're really not talking
about a yacht anymore you're talking
about a ship finish to yacht quality so
I just want to make that distinction and
point out that
here in Seattle they are very adept at
dealing with ocean-going ships and this
is a not a bad try I suspect you know
you could do this in the shorter time
frame as a year 12 months and if you're
going to go more extensively a more
extensive refit with full fairing and
changing up main propulsion engines and
so forth you would need probably another
year taking about 18 to 20 months all I
can say is you better come see it
because you cannot believe it unless you
come see it so call me up and I'll show
it to you
you