Dashes of orange rust formed a stripe, like a lane line on a freeway.įor the cruise ship industry, rust isn’t just a maintenance issue, particularly when those ships are white.Ī rust carbuncle the size of a quarter on the side of a gleaming white ocean liner can bleed, leaving a vertical rust stripe. The redness on the Decatur’s hull was still visible, but the bottom of the Stethem looked more like sand art, with ripples of faded red, green-gray and black. When the ships were lifted out of the water and settled into a dry dock, the weathering of the hulls was obvious. This fall, the guided-missile destroyers Stethem and Decatur sailed into a San Diego port to undergo regular maintenance. But like all things, over time, its luster fades. The color is easier for divers to see and indicates to maintenance crews where the underwater hull ends and the upper part begins. On the bottom of ship hulls, the Navy uses a special epoxy-based red paint to prevent rust and limit barnacle growth. “The saying down here is: Paint is what holds the fleet together,” said Bill Young, a San Diego-based business unit leader for International Marine and Industrial Applicators, which repairs and primes ship surfaces. When anchors bump against the hulls, that often creates an opportunity for rust. Corrosion typically forms where paint gets damaged. To tackle this never-ending cycle, the Navy uses paints designed to discourage rust on parts of the ship exposed to the water, including the hull and tanks. “If it’s not dealt with, the cost of going back and trying to correct things that should have been dealt with early can become exorbitant,” said Bradley Martin, senior policy researcher at Rand Corp. Ignoring corrosion can mean serious problems in just a few years. At the same time, ships that go without maintenance for longer periods are more likely to develop corrosion problems along the waterline - an especially vulnerable place since it’s where the seawater and air meet.
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