And to add more info, the first ship out of a series of seven, built by Hyundai, was named A Whale, (for the other six the owner in a great mood of creativity choose the next letter of the alfabet, and so ended with G Whale)
A Whale made some history lines as she was also labelled as an oil pollution recovery vessel, which could deal with oil slicks. If my memory serves me correctly she was once employed in this quality, but if she is still on station somewhere I do not know.

Hello Pieter

Thanks for your explanation. I will add this for to my knowledge about this kind of vessels. I never sailed on a OBO but as I heard from other guys it was not their favourite kind of ships

best regards
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

OBOs are out of fashion, but this is not an obo as she is not capable of carrying a full volume load of say grain. Her design is that of a modern VLCC with 5 centre and 10 wing tanks. VLCC's are currently the only tankers that are buiolt with two longitudinal bulkheads, all other ships (apart from highly sophisticated chemical tankers) have one centre bulkhead, resulting in two sets of wings tanks, mostly 12 for crude carriers. A central bulkhead design is rather unpractical for discharing drycargo.
An OBO is actually a bulk carrier with central cargo holds only and no cargo wing tanks, whereby the cargo hatches have been made gastight and of course all sorrts of pumping and piping arrangements have been added.

Hello Pieter

Thanks for your explanation. I thought the OBO are out of "Fashion" but looks like they are still build from time to time.
About the cranes - you are right they are quit odd, very seldom you see this real big vessel with cranes. Actually I can not remember that I have seen a near size VLCC with cranes other as Oil hose connection cranes.
best regards
Andreas

best regards
Andresa

Andreas, this is actually an ore/oil carrier, so capable of carrying a full load of crude oil in all holds, and taking a full load of high density ore in the centre holds. The cranes are a bit of an oddity on these kind of ships, but they can of course be used for transshipment purposes.