Maritime so9ftware designer, NAPA has won a contract with Windstar Cruises and has extended its relationship with Carnival Corp.
NAPA’s loading computer has been installed across Windstar’s entire fleet of three small, boutique cruise vessels ‘Star Breeze’, ‘Star Legend’, and ‘Star Pride’, and sailing cruise ships, such as the 4-masted ‘Wind Spirit’ and ‘Wind Star’, plus the 5-masted flagship ‘Wind Surf’.
The loading computer is a software solution for passenger vessel stability calculations. It undertakes a wide range of calculations related to hydrostatics, intact stability, and ship longitudinal strength to optimise vessel load while minimising stress and safety risk.
The system is installed on board more than 2,000 ships both in commercial and passenger fleets.
Christopher Prelog, Vice President of Fleet Operations at Windstar Cruises, commented, “For Windstar, there’s nothing more important than the safety and well being of our passengers and crew. NAPA’s track record and stability expertise is second to none, and it’s why we’ve chosen to work with them to optimise our stability management.”
“During our due diligence we were particularly impressed with the accuracy of NAPA’s 3D calculation engine, decision support capabilities, and comprehensive support, training and life-cycle services,” he added.
Both ‘Wind Star’ and ‘Wind Spirit’ were retrofitted with a computer and the installations on ‘Star Pride’, ‘Star Breeze’, ‘Star Legend’ and ‘Wind Surf’ were all upgraded recently.
Windstar and NAPA have also signed a service agreement that will cover technical support and future life-cycle services to ensure trouble free operation. NAPA has also provided on board training services, and its Stability eLearning course to Windstar.
The deal signed with Carnival Corp is a comprehensive service and product agreement extension.
This covers comprehensive services for the Onboard NAPA Loading Computers, training certification for Carnival’s CSMART training facility, and a framework agreement for future deployments of NAPA solutions.
NAPA has already installed electronic logbooks, voyage reporting, and flooding decision support systems. These technologies, as well as numerous others, have been developed in close co-operation with Carnival over a working partnership that has spanned more than 15 years.
Today, every ship in Carnival Corp’s fleet has NAPA technology solutions on board to help monitor risks in real time and improve decision making in an emergency.
One of the most important advances in NAPA and Carnival’s co-operation has been the development of the NAPA Emergency Computer to meet the need to have a precise, simple, and robust on board decision support system for flooding incidents that exceeds the requirements of the regulations.
This system has been installed on all Carnival newbuildimgs since 2016 and installations to selected existing ships started last year with Princess Cruises’ ‘Royal Princess’ and ‘Regal Princess’.
An agreement has also been signed to refit ‘Carnival Splendor’ and ‘Carnival Breeze’ with a NAPA Emergency Computer.
