Thread: Cook Strait Ferry

Originally Posted by kotuku

hmmm who rembers the govt purchase of a new ship for the navy some years ago lots of hoopla as it was named in honour of one of our heroes Capt Charles Hazlett Upham VC and bar .

Unlike charlie upham this thing turned out to be bloody hopeless and IIRC was last being used as an orange crop carrier in the mediterrainian.

whilst i try to consider both points of view ithink this new govt was right the NZ Rail board may be suffering from a variation of delusions of granduer ,or as arfur daley would say"tryin it on."
seems Nicola willis has her fist firmly on the purse strings! and itll take a sound case to loosen her grip.

Different design requirement unfortunately, military cargo is bulky but not dense (kind of like the grunts) but that boat was designed for high density commercial cargos. What happened was the roll center or righting moment was too much and they couldn't ballast the thing enough to get it down to where it should be. The ship would roll over slowly then flick back upright - quite nasty.