THE WORLDS FINEST SHIP, ALSO KNOWN AS HOME

• Raffles
• Onboard
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• Donald Starkey Designs
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• A one of a kind ship
• Facts and dimensions
• LR service notations
• General description
• Apartments
• The electric ship
• Main propulsion
• Electrical systems
• Auxiliary machinery  services and systems
• Dependability,  redundancy and back up
• Safety, fire fighting and  lifesaving
• Navigation,  communications and  computerisation
• The marina and aft deck
• Boats, planes, and toys
• Lloyd’s Register
• Raffles operating costs
• Caution
• PDF version

Navigation / communications and computerisation

With final outfit not decided until shortly before delivery, the navigation and communications equipment on Raffles is state of the art but also purposely designed to allow safe operation with a small crew.

Onboard, a ship wide wi-fi, VHF (closed loop) and fibre optic telephone system combined with cell phones and pagers means that all crew are “online” at all times. With most officers also equipped with portable PC’s or PDA’s wasted movement around the ship is almost eliminated (also allowing most crew to work a normal 8 hour day).

All critical communications cabling is run in metal ducts within the core and for essential systems between the bridge and control room, two separate (alternative) routes are used.

For navigation Raffles has all the mandated / statutory systems but generally above minimum standard and in duplicate or triplicate to provide back up / redundancy.

It also has dedicated back up systems such as the aft mounted GPS, radar, 360^o low light tv and sat com that allow the control room to take over and manoeuvre / navigate the ship in an emergency.

Two additional non standard radars are fitted one designed to look forward and down for unusual / dangerous wave patterns, the other aft and down against small boat pirate attack from astern.

Communications are mostly satellite based with individual stand alone systems provided for encrypted communications to HSBC, and with a specially stabilised antenna for tele-medicine between the hospital and University College Hospital (HarleySt.on15) in London. The hospital system has its own fail-safe fuel cell based power supply. Other systems service only internet traffic while yet another is dedicated to telephone traffic that allows direct dialling from an apartment to anywhere in the world. All television and radio reception is of course satellite based.

For safe navigation into remote and or uncharted areas Raffles has three sonar systems one of which is naval standard, one retractable forward looking, which combined with Raffles ability to stop almost instantly is very useful when entering shallow waters or rivers and when anchoring.

VHF, HF and SSB radio systems to IMO – SOLAS and Isle of Man Government requirements are fitted but in addition Raffles has its own local VHF and cellphone system mounted on a carbon fibre retractable mast that when raised to about 70 meters allows Raffles to keep in touch with owners and crew when ashore, on islands or away in small boats.

For long range navigation / survey in uncharted areas and such as Antarctica, Raffles float plane and helicopter can be used well ahead of the vessel. Similarly the expedition boats are also fitted out for survey duty with echo sounders, GPS and satcoms.

All of Raffles operation is continuously monitored by various computer systems that allow engineers, accountants and the Captain to obtain up to date information on the ships operations / status at any time. It includes monitoring such as onboard sales in the supermarket to allow restoring, and an internal security system that restricts access to certain spaces as well as checks crew and owners on and off the ship.