Good riddance to bad wires

Anyone sailing on oil tankers has grappled with fire wires. Fire wires, also referred to as (ETOPS- emergency tow-off pennants system) must have seemed to be a swell thing to the guy who came up with the idea. The concept is that if there is a fire onboard an oil tanker or the terminal when a tanker is tied alongside, the oil tanker is to keep wires ready hanging overside on the sea side. Shore tugs will simply tie up to these wires and pull the ship off the jetty to safety. Thus in an emergency, there would be no confusion such as tying up the tugs and all that.

Well apparently it worked out well only in theory. Firewires (38mm in dia and about 120 m in length) are the crappiest piece of gear that is found on modern oil tankers. And we have our share of crappy gears. Everything about the fire wire from stowing, to deploying to adjusting it is a pain. All we ever got out of the fire wire was trips, bruises and a filthy mouth.

Apparently, word does get around. In 2007, OCIMF asked LR to carry out a risk assessment for fire wires in the industry and the results surprised even me. Apparently, fire wires have been deployed on tankers since 1967. And in that time they have not been used even once. Not once. On the other hand, fire wires have caused about seventeen hundred minor or major injuries in that period.

Thanks to this study by LR, OCIMF has finally stopped recommending the deployment of fire wires. Also they have amended the SIRE VIQ accordingly. This is great news. 1967 was a long time back so by the time the terminals and loading masters decide that its allright not to rig the wire, it might be a fair amount of time. But still, it is a beginning and hopefully soon we'll have one less thing to swear about at sea.

If you are interested, you can read the Risk assessment by Lloyds out here. Its an interesting read.

Party time

Its an occasion for celebration and joy. I have signed off from my ship and its back to home for me. Years back, when contracts were longer and booze available, it would have been a pretty good excuse for a party like the above. Typically the mate would raise the topic of a farewell get-together with the old man over breakfast and instructions would be given to the catering department to get things ready. The crew would then meet in orderly groups at the pre-assigned time and talk urbanely about wide ranging pertinent topics such as the changing cup sizes of Pamela Anderson. The "get-together", would then steadily go downhill till the old man left for his cabin, after which people would be often be spotted in poses like the above, gyrating to lyrics of some pubescent girl , claiming to be a "Barbie Girl". This would go on till enough people were escorted to their cabins drunk, or the scene looked too gay for even seamen like us!

I'm not sure if I'm actually sad that these parties don't happen any longer. Now that I'm the old man, I realize that the poor sod might have been going off to his cabin, probably to offer a long prayer and prop himself at the porthole to keep a lookout for the rest of the night.

What I feet sad about is that I no longer have a twinge of sadness leaving behind friends with whom I have shared my life with so intensely for such long months. Instead there is only a sense of relief that the contract went off safely and without incidents / detentions / observations / accidents. What I feel sad is that the chap seeing me off at the Gangway isn't really thinking of me as he says his byes, but is probably offering a prayer that his contract goes off the same way.

Two balls and a diamond in between

We mariners have a nasty reputation of being perverts. Now we of coures have worked hard at deserving it so its not be be thrown away lightly. Which is why we keep hanging our balls out for all to see. Hanging from the halyards we see something called very imaginatively as  "shapes".

These shapes are used as required by the collision regulations to indicate that the vessel is "Restricted in her ability to Manouver" or "RAM". As I have been spending most of my evenings in the US gulf doing lightering operations. As a master, it feels inherently bad to wear these shapes on my halyards, because it means that I can't take my ships anyway I want to. Adn when your 200 meters plus vessel is manouvering at distances of 20 meters from a 300 meters long ship, the last this you want to do is go any closer. I find the manouvering for this fascinating because the dynamics of working such large vessels is amazing to watch unfold. Maybe we'll have beer one day and I'll explain the hydrodynamics on paper napkins.

In the meanwhile, observe the balls.

 

Last of the bad guys - Marco

 

Tropical depression 13, has been thought worthy of a name and has been upgraded to Tropical storm  "Marco ".  Its been a tough year for the people of this part of the world, and even caused a few ulcers and sleepless nights to me and my pretty ship.

After being banged around by both Gustav and Ike, I am glad that the season is drawing to a close and hopefully Marco will be the last of the bad guys we see this year.

I should anyway be out of this area and back home, but I hope you all stay safe here.

The Dredger - Glenn Edwards

The type of support vessels that come next in line to the Tugs in my "List if favotrite vessels" are the Dredgers. Pictured above is the Dredger Glenn Edwards, pictured above at the mouth of the Pascagouls Ship Channel in the Mississippi state. The Glenn Edwards was waiting for us to pass so that they could continue with their dredging works.

Glenn Edwards is a relatively new ship, floated in 2006 near here in Mobile Alabama. You can see a very informative article about it here at the workboat.com website. In it we are told of the extremely high standards of specifications that the vessel is built to.

The method of operation of dredgers like the Glenn Edwards are simple in principle. The boom that you see on the sides lower to the sea bed and act like a gaint Vaccume Cleaner, sucking in all manners of mud, small rocks and debries. These are deposited in the middle of the ship in their hold, from where the water is simply drained out. The dredger then makes its way to the dumping ground, where the bottom of the hold simply opens out, letting the whole of the load simply drop down.

Because the US coast is blessed with deep rivers and waterways, it is hard to spot too many of these vessels around here, but at the mouth of the Mississippi and in the channels of the US Gulf coast, these chaps keep digging away to allow people like us transit without too much heartburn.

Ship art on the Stena Poseidon

 

  

Its rare to see art or anything resembling it on the sides of Merchant ships.  So it was a treat to see what Stena Ice have done with their ships. I saw the Stena Poseidon in the Mississippi river where I assume she was loading cargo. From news reports on the net, the Poseidon, along with her sister ship, the Stena Palva, have been chartered for a period of 10 years to Neste oil, on a route from Finland to US carrying Low sulphur fuel oils. She is a new double hulled tanker (2007 Croatian built), that is actually registered in Finland currently.
 
  

 The Stena Poseidon seems to be of a fleet of ships of the Stenabulk that is certified for ice class. ABS has given the Poseidon the A1 class. You can check here on Wiki to get the basic outlay on Ice class ships. Also if you need to know some more about Ice Class ships and shipping in the cold, you really must have a look at this excellent paper written by Capt Duggal for the Nautical Institute .

  

 

 

 

This is how the the whole of the ship looks like, and you will admit that the whole effect looks rather pleasing. The picture of the polar bear looks neat and who knows - it might even have been designed as a deterrent to the Pirates! 

  

Links : Ship-Technology , bnet , 

NOAA Vessel Pisces at Pascagoula

  

Few mariners on the US coast will have anything disparaging to say about the NOAA. I have always been a fan of the organization, and am especially grateful to them for the invaluable assistance they give us during the current situations such as the Hurricanes. So I was especially pleased to spot on the horizon, a ship with the markings of the NOAA. A couple of posts back, I had put up a picture of an oil platform in the US gulf. The picture above is of the research vessel, "Pisces" as it is passing that same oil platform.

The Pisces was launched on 19th Dec 2007, and if the launch page is to be believed, she was going to begin operations in Late of 2008. So it is quite possible that I captured her on one of her first voyages out to sea. Do look at the video of the launch that I found on Youtube, which is amazing to watch.
 




 
The Pisces is one of the four ships to be launched in Pascagoula that is supposed to be a quite ship, which improves the research facilities. Another neat gadget on the NOAA website is the Ship tracker page, which lets us track all of the NOAA ships. Sadly they haven't uploaded the Pisces details on the website yet, so we can't see her on the map.

Source & Links : NOAA on Wiki , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA

Freeport and the Baptist church

Location : The US Gulf

when I heard for the first time that we were bound for Freeport, I had wild thoughts of waterskying in the Bahamas. Turns out that there is a Freeport in Texas as well. Its not somethig that really appeals at first glance. Searching for places of intrest only reveals one beach out there over which surf breaks only when hit by a grade three cyclone. which is coming by the way. But unless the high winds start blowing them away, the place is being ruled by huge gangs of Mosquitoes. I read in a Louis Lamour book that mosquitoes in Texas can actually kill a horse. The author might have been thinking of Freeport when he wrote that.

But then this post is not about freeport, but about Religion. With every post I try to learn something new and for this post I am going to read something about the Baptist Church. The reason I'm reading up on the Baptist structure is because of the Seaman's centre that really is one of the best things going for the town. The places is filled with dedicated volunteers and practically everyone on the vessel who had been here before were saying good things about them. Their reputation wasn't let down because Greg drove down in one of their vehiclease to give  us a ride to the neighbouring town which has the mall and the marts.

A bit of research shows that the vehicle was a hard won victory during the city of Freeport meeting of the Nov 2007.

One of the first thing I came to know about greg was that he was a priest in the Baptist church and that priests in the Baptist church are called Pastors. For the past few days I have been doing a bit of reading on the Baptist church and have atleast understood the basics. If you need a crash course in the Baptist church, you must read this page from their site called the " Ten facts you should know about American Baptists" . It seems that the most visible difference between Baptists and the other mainstream churchs are that the Baptist believe that the followers of Christ are commanded to be baptised by being immersed in water in a public display of faith.  No sprinkling of holy water on babies with the Baptists. Infact one cool thing about them in my opinion is that the baptist church doesn't accept you if you are considered too young to fully understand and follow the faith. This sounds neat in theory, as it means that you choose to enter this religion rather then being born into it.

I also came to know that Martin luther King was actually a Baptis Pastor as well. Which puts Greg in great company. I wish him the best and thank him for all the conversation he humored me with. I hope we meet again so that we can have a pint together. Though I forgot to ask him if Pastors are allowed to drink. I don't recall seeing pictures of Mr. King Jr drinking!


Source : Wiki. , American Baptist Church ,

Iron Manolis at Corpus Christi

Location : Freeport , Texas

I came across the Iron Manolis as she was loading her cargo of Grain at Corpus Christi. It is essentially a gearless bulk carrier. What that means is that it is a bulk carrier that doean't have any cranes or davits to handle any cargo. While this would mean that it would be a problem to handle this ship at small ports, if an owner is confident of his ships run, saving money on the cranes can pay out in the longer run.

The Iron Manolis is a new ship with its keel laid out in 2005 and was launched in 2007. One interesting thing I learnt during research for the Iron Manolis was that it belongs to the Kamsarmax class of bulk carriers. It seems that Kamsarmax bulkcarriers are bulkcarriers of about 82000 DWT, and are basically Panamax bulkcarriers with an extended length.

In the picture above, you can see the Iron Manolis at berth. All its seven hatches are closed and you can even see the head lines going from the bow of the vessel. A tug is tied up on the port shoulder, simply because the berth is crappy. This berth was built in the early part of the century and now it is simply too samll for holding big ships like this. So we have a tug tied up to the ship at all times to keep the vessel alongside and to move it along the jetty for the loading arm. In the background is the Grain silo and the loading arms.

It might intrest the kind reader to know that this vessel, owned by Quintana Maritime Limited, is chartered out under time charter for an average daily rate of $24,500 for 2008. I think I could use a couple of ships like that myself.


Source :  Shipping Times.


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