Sanmar Shipping took delivery of Sanmar Sonnet—earlier River Spring—the latest ship to join the Sanmar fleet on 24 November 2009 at Yeosu, South Korea, from K-Lines Japan. Built in Japan in 1997, it is a double-hulled oil tanker designed to be fully compliant with international regulations for prevention of oil pollution. Under the guidance and on-site supervision of Vice President Operations C P K Kashyap, the ship’s commander Capt Gopalakrishnan Arun and his team of officers and engineers took over the delivery of the vessel smoothly and efficiently.
The ship is 240 metres long, 42 metres wide, 21 metres from keel to deck and 48 metres from keel to the highest mast. Her decks are 3 times the length and 3 times the area of a FIFA football field and about the same width. The wheelhouse, which is the sea-equivalent of an airplane cockpit, is at least 36 metres above sea level. That is the equivalent of driving a floating mass of 116,000 tons of oil and steel through the Oceans of the world from 12 storeys above the waterline.
Sanmar Sonnet is propelled by an engine that burns 45 tons of fuel each day at sea and capable of 17000+ BHP of power. That is just the equivalent to the max power of 170 Honda City cars.
Sanmar Sonnet has entered a commercial oil pool called LR2 jointly operated by Maersk and Torm, two highly reputed shipping brands of Europe. It will carry clean petroleum products such as Gasoline, Naphtha and Jet expected to trade out of the Middle East, India and the Far East. She is also likely to work cargoes out of North West Europe markets with the LR2 pool.