Hello George,
1. Tested her roll against a quay in Marseille, nothing to be reported, no rolling. Please retry and give me more specific conditions of your test, sea state, harbor, quay? There are eventually some quays left without protection against bouncing.
2. Steering astern is rather hazardous above 3 to 4 kts, while letting the rate of turn be more than 30 or 40°/min, at the risk of an uncontrollable yawing astern. Isn't there a name for that?
The azimuth thrusters are at the very stern of the ship, meaning that the tunnels have almost no effect as her ship pivot point comes closer to the stern, the more the ship has a high block coefficient. The skeg is at her stern as well, where the stern thruster of Fairmount Sherpa was placed. Then, making way astern, the side thrust of the azimuth propellers will also be at the most unfavorable place.
Under 4 kts, the ship remains as controllable as a single screw ship making way astern, but it shouldn't be forgotten that she is anyway easily steered by her two powerful bow thrusters, that's also their main use.
As a side note, I think that such ships should need a second specific steering system, limited to 35 ou 37° both sides, enabling a "normal" steering en route, but I am not sure what the SOLAS rules could be for such an AHTS. Something like I did for the cruise ships in SSExtremes, where it was mandatory. I can eventually do it, but then I need a picture of interior of the bridge to see what I must do to add a new steering console/station.
About the repaint, alas no, I have no compiler or decompiler for the cgr files, but is is not really needed, one can easily see what parts of the models are concerned by the dds pictures, no need to change their names.
Regards,
Luc
