| History | |
|---|---|
| Owner: |
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| General characteristics | |
| Installed power: | Detroit Diesel Offroad/MTU Series 60 diesel engines |
| Owner: |
|
| General characteristics | |
| Installed power: | Detroit Diesel Offroad/MTU Series 60 diesel engines |
Victoria Express, also known as Victoria Rapid Transit, [1] was the name of a private, seasonal ferry operation based in Port Angeles, Washington. The service operated two passenger-only ferries on routes between Port Angeles and Victoria, British Columbia and Friday Harbor, Washington during the summer, the 149-seat, 105-foot (32 m)Victoria Express and the 120-foot (37 m)Victoria Express II. Both ferries are gyroscopically stabilized.
A ferry is a merchant vessel used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi.
Port Angeles is a city in and the county seat of Clallam County, Washington, United States. With a population of 19,038 as of the 2010 census, it is the largest city in the county. The population was estimated at 19,448 in 2015 by the Office of Financial Management.
Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 85,792, while the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria has a population of 367,770, making it the 15th most populous Canadian metropolitan area. Victoria is the 7th most densely populated city in Canada with 4,405.8 people per square kilometre, which is a greater population density than Toronto.
In 2006, Victoria Express II, and in 2007 Victoria Express main engines were replaced. The new engines are Detroit Diesel Offroad/MTU Series 60 high efficiency engines. The Series 60 is a 4-stroke inline 6 cylinder diesel engine. The Victoria Express fleet operates on biodiesel.
Detroit Diesel Corporation(DDC) is an American diesel engine manufacturer headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States and a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks North America, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of the German Daimler AG. The company manufactures heavy-duty engines and chassis components for the on-highway and vocational commercial truck markets. Detroit Diesel has built more than 5 million engines since 1938, more than 1 million of which are still in operation worldwide. Detroit Diesel's product line includes engines, axles, transmissions, and Virtual Technician.
MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH is a manufacturer of commercial internal combustion engines founded by Wilhelm Maybach and his son Karl Maybach in 1909. Wilhelm Maybach was the technical director of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG), a predecessor company of the German multinational automotive corporation Daimler AG, until he left in 1907. On 23 March 1909, he founded the new company, Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH, with his son Karl Maybach as director. A few years later the company was renamed to Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH, which originally developed and manufactured diesel and petrol engines for Zeppelins, and then railcars. The Maybach Mb.IVa was used in aircraft and airships of World War I.
The Diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber, is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to the mechanical compression. Diesel engines work by compressing only the air. This increases the air temperature inside the cylinder to such a high degree that atomised Diesel fuel injected into the combustion chamber ignites spontaneously. With the fuel being injected into the air just before combustion, the dispersion of the fuel is uneven; this is called a heterogenous air-fuel mixture. The process of mixing air and fuel happens almost entirely during combustion, the oxygen diffuses into the flame, which means that the Diesel engine operates with a diffusion flame. The torque a Diesel engine produces is controlled by manipulating the air ratio; this means, that instead of throttling the intake air, the Diesel engine relies on altering the amount of fuel that is injected, and the air ratio is usually high.
With the amount of Victoria tourism in 2010, the service, which operated from May to September (May to October for the 2010 season), intended to expand its Port Angeles-Victoria service to operate year-round, [2] but on 4 March 2011 it was announced that the service has been discontinued and was purchased by Black Ball Transport which operates MV Coho on the same route. [1] The service has been renamed Expeditions Northwest and the vessels now operate on eco-tours through the San Juan Islands, Puget Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca and Victoria, but continue to remain based in Port Angeles. The first trip for the new service debuted on 16 April 2011. [1]
The M/V Coho is a passenger and vehicle ferry owned and operated by Black Ball Line. Black Ball's only ferry, Coho carries passengers and cars, motorcycles, trucks, semi-trailers, bicycles, etc. between Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and Port Angeles, Washington, United States.
Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial mass tourism. It means responsible travel to natural areas, conserving the environment, and improving the well-being of the local people. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human rights. Since the 1980s, ecotourism has been considered a critical endeavor by environmentalists, so that future generations may experience destinations relatively untouched by human intervention. Several university programs use this description as the working definition of ecotourism.
The San Juan Islands are an archipelago in the northwest corner of the contiguous United States between the U.S. mainland and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of the U.S. state of Washington.
