CASTINE – The U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, has expanded its study of the diesel engine on the State of Maine, the training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy, to include the ship’s entire propulsion system.

MARAD, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., began the study earlier this year after engine problems on the training ship delayed the start of the academy’s annual training cruise and then forced MMA officials to cut short the cruise.

Although the committee reviewing the ship’s engines still is gathering information about problems with the engine, it will broaden its investigation to include the entire propulsion system, including the electric “take-home” engine, according to Erhard Koehler, MARAD’s manager of direct programs.

“From my standpoint, that has always been the goal,” Koehler said Thursday.

Koehler previously has said that the State of Maine has been a very unreliable ship ever since it was converted to a training ship. Not all of the problems, he said, have been with the engine.

“There seems to be a collection of coincidental failures that appear to have nothing to do with one another,” he said. “There just happens to be a lot of them, which is unusual in our experience.”

The “take-home” engine is a small electric engine that was added to the ship’s propulsion system during the conversion of the U.S. Navy’s survey ship Tanner to a maritime training vessel. The engine serves as a backup system to provide maneuverability and propulsion in the event of a casualty to the engine, Koehler said.

There also have been problems with the electric engine, primarily with the controls, he said.

The $12 million conversion also included the installation of the rebuilt diesel engine, purchased from a German company called MaK. One of the issues the review committee is studying is whether MARAD received a completely rebuilt engine from the factory. MMA took possession of the vessel in 1997 and has had problems with the engine since then.

The MARAD review committee has met once by conference call and has begun reviewing operational and maintenance records dating back to the ship’s conversion. The committee plans to meet next month in New York to review the information it has gathered, Koehler said.

Meanwhile, the engine on the State of Maine, which is docked at its home port in Castine, has been repaired and should be ready to go, Koehler said.

“We plan to take her out for sea trials sometime before the annual training cruise,” he said.

That shakedown trip likely will take place next spring, depending on funding, Koehler said.

The State of Maine usually leaves on the two-month training cruise early in May. The cruise provides students with the required sea time needed to obtain federal merchant marine licenses as engineers or deck officers.