This article is about the liner San Lorenzo Ruiz of Negros Navigation and not the short-distance ferry-RORO of Viva Shipping Lines of Batangas. It was just a wonder from me how come MARINA allowed the use of the same name for two different ROROs when that is not normally allowed. And so because of that some people became confused especially if they have not seen the two liners. Actually one won’t see them at the same time because they have different ports of calls and routes. The nearest the two will be near each other was if they were at the same time in Verde Island Passage between Batangas and Mindoro when they are crossing each other’s path as the Viva Shipping Lines vessel is a Batangas to Mindoro ferry and the Negros Navigation ferry uses the strait on the way to the Visayas and Mindanao.
The San Lorenzo Ruiz by Marlon Griego and Nowell Alcancia
The San Lorenzo Ruiz is one liner I like for its economical design because it is much like the SuperFerry 2, SuperFerry 5, Mabuhay 2, Princess of the Pacific, Princess of the South, Our Lady of Banneux and Cagayan Bay 1. The class they are in have the length of between 128 to 143 meters (or roughly the 130-meter class) with engines between 15,000 to 16,000 horsepower and with a design speed of about 20 knots and a local speed here of about 18 knots after the addition of metal in the superstructure and the passing of nearly two decades of service. This class has the capacity of some 100 TEUs of container vans which is about enough for the local routes. The class’ speed, capacity and amenities are adequate too for a liner and passenger accommodations don’t have to be so maximized unlike the 110-meter liners. This class has definitely more speed too than that class although they don’t have the 20 knots here of the 150-meter liners with 20,000 horsepower engines but their fuel consumption is definitely less. This class is actually what is perfect for the routes that are not serving Cebu, the country’s premier city and port south of Manila.
The speed differential between an 18-knot liner and a 20-knot liner is really not that great. Going to Cebu and rounding the eastern side of Mactan island, the latter will have a transit time of 21 hours and the former will have a transit time of about 22 hours. At 17.5 knots, the SuperFerry 2 and SuperFerry 5 also can do it in 22 hours because they need not use the eastern seaboard of Mactan for the reason that they can pass under the two Mactan bridges because they have folding stern masts. To me it was even a puzzle why so many of our liners were in the 150-meter class with 20,000 or so horsepower and 20 knots. In terms of container capacity the difference is not great since their breadth is just about the same of the 130-140 meter lines. But 15,000 to 16,000 horsepower is much less than 20,000 to 22,000 horsepower in terms of fuel consumption. Well, actually at the height of fuel prices a few years ago the 2GO itself downgraded the engine speeds and consequently the ferries’ speed to save on fuel. Few really run at 20 knots nowadays and that just proves that 20 knots was really never necessary.
The ROPAX ship San Lorenzo Ruiz of Negros Navigation was built by Nipponkai Heavy Industries Co. in Toyama, Japan in 1973 as the Al Nasl of the Taiheiyo Enkai Ferry KK of Nagoya, Japan with the IMO Number 7302093. The ship was 132.1 meters in length over-all with a length between perpendiculars of 124.0 meters. Her breadth was 22.7 meters with an original gross register tonnage (GRT) of 6,844 tons and an original deadweight tonnage (DWT) of 2,480 tons. The ferry was powered by two IHI (Ishikawa Heavy Industries)-built Pielstick engines developing 8,000 horsepower each for a total of 16,000 horsepower and that gave the ship a design speed of 19.5 knots. Her specifications wer actually very near that of the sister ships SuperFerry 2 and SuperFerry 5 which measured 138.6 meters by 22.1 meters and was powered by two MAN diesels built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries with a total of 15,200 horsepower and a design speed of 19 knots.
Ebino of Nippon Car Ferry by ‘hunterdosaemon’
Although twin-engined, the ferry was equipped by a single, center funnel with the stern mast atop it and she had a distinctive bridge that is slanted forward from the top to have a better lower view. She had one full passenger deck plus two passenger-half decks at the front. Al Nasl has a sister ship, the Argo and they sailed the Nagoya-Nachikitsuura-Oita route of Taiheiyo Enkai Ferry, a route from the main island of Honshu to the Kyushu island in the south. In 1976, however, the ship was sold to Nippon Car Ferry and she held the route to Ebino city in Kyushu island and thus she was named as the Ebino. As the ferry to Ebino this ship had a passenger capacity of 695 and about 500 lane-meters in rolling cargo space.
In 1996, the Ebino came to the Philippines to be the San Lorenzo Ruiz with the Mary Queen of Peace, another former Nippon Car Ferry ship. Maybe the connection started with the San Paolo which arrived for Negros Navigation three year earlier and which was another ship from Nippon Car Ferry. In the Philippines, a partial scantling up to the funnel was added in the navigation deck to hold the Economy class. The passenger capacity of the ship in the Philippines was 1,426 persons only as Negros Navigation chose to not massively change the superstructure of the ship anymore. Because many of the Japan features were retained she had the reputation of having good interiors. Of course with 3,911 in net tons she had plenty of space for passengers. However, although scantlings were added the gross tonnage of the ship went down to 6,051 but her deadweight tonnage rose to 2,995 tons. For cargo handling, the ship only had a stern ramp. Many however, said the lines of the ship was beautiful and I agree with that.
The San Lorenzo Ruiz was used by Negros Navigation in opening their Manila-Iloilo-General Santos City-Davao route. In this route she was in competition with the SuperFerry 1/SuperFerry 8/SuperFerry 10 team-up of WG&A which was a mean line-up of former flagships and gives up nothing to her in amenities and facilities but were a little superior to her in speed. They actually share the same route exactly but where the WG&A line-up can do 20 knots the San Lorenzo Ruiz can only do 19 knots at most. But I wonder why in a Negros Navigation advertisement she was declared sailing at 19.5 knots, her design speed. It might have been possible but that means running at 100% engine speed and that is a killer for a 23-year old ship (later she developed a reputation for being “slow”). She had only a declared passenger capacity of 920 passengers in the advertisement (versus the declared 1,426 in MARINA files and a later 1,850 from another source) but her declared cargo capacity was 140 TEU, higher than the normal 130 to 140-meter ROPAX. That means she retained the partial cargo deck at the “B” level supporting the observation that her conversion here was really not much. Probably, the passenger capacity was only right as they were new in the General Santos City and Davao route. On the other, being new the container capacity might have been high. Just the same, her size might have been just perfect in a newly-developed route.
San Lorenzo Ruiz by Britz Salih
On the Sulpicio Lines side, she was competing with the Princess of the Pacific in the General Santos City route, a ship with almost the same size as her and almost the same horsepower and powered by twin Pielstick engines also. In the Davao route she was up versus the super-big and fast Filipina Princess whose amenities might not as impressive as her being an older ship in terms of fielding here. Like other Negros Navigation ships her higher accommodations have many variations from Suite to Single Suite to Admiral Suite, Deluxe Cabin, Business Class to Tourist Class, Travelers Class and Tatami Class. I like the Tatami Class because I like to sleep on the floor (with mattress) and I can lie with my shoes on and use my knapsack as mattress and not worry about them getting stolen. I hate sleeping in upper bunks and good that the Tatami Class don’t have them.
After two years Negros Navigation withdrew from the Davao route and just used one ship and modified the route of the San Ezekiel Moreno to Manila-Iloilo-Zamboanga-General Santos City-Davao (that ship had a Manila-Iloilo-Zamboanga-General Santos City route before). The San Lorenzo Ruiz then did the Manila-Iloilo-Ozamis-Iligan-Manila route and Manila-Dumaguete-Tagbilaran-Manila route within the same week. I thought this were very good routes for the San Lorenzo Ruiz as it combines near ports without backtracking and two complete voyages are completed in week which means a high efficiency in the use of the ship. But of course, the giant WG&A have heavy presence in those ports of call and Sulpicio Lines is also serving those ports also but the exact routes of the ships of Sulpicio Lines and WG&A varies with that of the San Lorenzo Ruiz. In Iligan and Ozamis, the San Lorenzo Ruiz was up against the SuperFerry 2/SuperFerry 5/SuperFerry 9 team-up of WG&A and all three of those were about the same dimensional size and engine size of her and so it was probably an even match even in amenities. She was also against that team-up in Dumaguete. In the Tagbilaran and Dumaguete combined route she was up against the SuperFerry 3 and she has a big advantage over this ship in speed, in paper as that ship only has 9,300 horsepower in total. In Tagbilaran she was also up against the Our Lady of Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Medjugorje pairing of WG&A and again she had great advantage in speed and even in amenities aside from the space. She was also superior in everything over the Princess of the Caribbean of Sulpicio Lines in Dumaguete and Ozamis (or the Iloilo Princess which subbed in 1998) and much more superior over the old cruiser Dipolog Princess in the Tagbilaran and Iligan route of Sulpicio Lines.
Since the San Lorenzo Ruiz was not competing here versus liners with 20,000 horsepower she then just tried to match the speed of the competition which was about 17.5 knots for the Dumaguete route and 17 knots for the Tagbilaran route and that was probably a wise decision. Versus the smaller ROPAXes of 2GO which has small engines, the SuperFerry 3, Our Lady of Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Medjugorje there was no chance that she can be outsped. I thought then she had a chance in the old Dumaguete-Ozamis-Iligan-Tagbilaran quadrant, a favorite of many ships in the past from the time of ex-”FS” ships and even before. In those routes she was also the local connection of the near islands there.
But then she lost over time. In shipping, it is not just the edge or the parity of the ship that matters. Even more important is the cargo which is the bread and butter of shipping. Now, the old ones also have advantage even in the passengers because of the familiarity including in the schedule. When the new millennium arrived it was already the whole company that was in trouble. They simply had too many ships from loans and there were not enough revenues and the dancing porters and free porterage plus bus links were not enough to do the trick. Soon, Negros Navigation was dropping routes and ports of calls as they found it unprofitable. The time they entered those new routes and ports was the time the country had too many liners, the product of over-expansion during the time of President Fidel V. Ramos who gave incentives for the acquisition of new ship including loans from the then government-owned Philippine National Bank. It was also the time that the true intermodal system, the combination of the long-distance trucks and buses plus the short-distance ferry-ROROs were making great advances and taking away passengers and cargo from the liners. And then there was also the budget airlines which was sucking passengers from the liners as they were already offering fares in parity with the liners.
The San Lorenzo Ruiz by Rodney Orca
Soon, the liners of Negros Navigation was being garnished by creditors including the Tsuneishi shipyard in Cebu. Manny V. Pangilinan of Metro Pacific and Smart Telecommunications entered as a white knight and infused money and talked to the creditors and a court-mandated rehabilitation program was put in place. One result of the reorganization that ensued was that Negros Navigation was forced to hold on only to routes that were making money for them and these were basically their old routes before their big expansion from the mid-1990’s. With such a decision, liners have to be sold and many were then subsequently offered for sale by ads. However, here were no local takers and when this happened only shipbreakers from other countries are interested and in the end many of the liners of Negros Navigation ended up with the breakers including those ships transferred to Jensen Shipping. San Lorenzo Ruiz was acquired by Bangladesh breakers and in 2008 she was broken up in Chittagong.
And that was the sad end of one liner I admire.
Philippine Ship Spotters Society 