Thank you for placing it on another complete comment. This is a maritime forum “community” & I didn’t want Sal to read your edited comment, see my “like” of your first shorter comment & think I have a bone to pick with him or something.
And I wasn’t pissed or too offended by it. Just mentioning polite etiquettes on forums to keep things civil, something that we both appreciate. As for flagging, notice I do not have “1st Flag Badge” on my profile. I’ve never flagged any comments on gCaptain nor on any other forum except 1 many years ago. Thanks again.
There is a useful "search " button and the skilful use of it may demonstrate your carefull scrutiny of polite ettiquettes on this forum in particullar, is lacking consistency and/or is very selective.
Same use of said button will surely reveal Dr.Sal does not care ( and rightly so) about the followers . See pls " followers mean crap …" famous quote .
Hence Your concern abt His reaction is exagerated and i think unfounded and your "virtue signalling " is noted .
I used “the virue thing” as euphemism to keep the so desired Forum ettiguette in perfect harmony with community desires .
What is unpolite and even offending, is your vague innuendos and implicit suggestions i was resorting to some " likes catching devious techniques " what is a complete nonsense.
We could avoid this whole sharade of teaching each other manners by commenting, you were withdrawing your like due to added content .
Surely you may be afraid of Dr.Sal with his acquisition of famous CIA spy catcher and debunker, analyst Mr.Ryan whom I follow too . I do not love him though.
Indeed his methods and tools may cause some to buy an extra supply of man-size diapers and those who dare to disagree with some of Dr. Sal opinions may feel now uneasy.
I missed Mr.Ryan visit to my country as surely i would be greatly honored to have a beer or even a botle of vodka with him and talk freely about ministry of propaganda .
But surely neither U or other memebers here would like to venture into this territory.
Its a conventional tug, right? If so, maybe a ship assist capt could chime in here and say what the charles d could have done (if anything) with how fast things were going south.
Pulling out of a slip with a current headed towards a low bridge right next to the slip more or less would seem to me to be a time to have the tug drag you upcurrent for a bit.
Absent that, wait for the current to change and have a low stress departure.
do enough ICW deliveries and you get bridge+current anxiety.
Not a great deal in this instance, from an operational viewpoint. She commenced working on the starboard quarter and then moved to the starboard shoulder in order to shift the bow to port working with the pivot point which was well aft at that stage with stern way. The vessel was at that time under the influence of both wind and strong current with a CPP jammed with astern pitch.
It can be claimed that the tug should have advised the bridge team that the CPP was still giving astern thrust……it may well have done so but the short time frame precluded rectification.
From my perspective, it seems odd that the vessel departed on a flood tide in addition to being supplied with an attending tug which did not have a line up.
EDIT: Even discounting the jammed CPP……had there been a main engine failure the vessel would have allided with the bridge albeit with a slightly longer time frame. I fail to understand the mindset of untethered escort tugs not being used to correctly to stabilise a vessel prior to returning to base.
My understanding is that the departure was 2 hours 20 mins after low water. It is apparent from the videos and screen captures that the tidal flow was running fairly hard. You had a conventional twin screw tug with 1800hp pushing on the starboard shoulder which was struggling to displace the bow to port and track the aft pivot point away from the shoreline.
I am showing more like one knot. The engine was the proximate cause, but the current removed a lot of options. Coming out with the current going downstream would have been vastly easier.
I ran that area once against the full tide and was passed by people walking onshore!
It must be easier to stem the flood running downstream as opposed to running with a strong ebb and no doubt there would be two tugs on the larger vessels for departure with lines up.
That neither excuses or explains the machinations of this particular departure with one tug.
In viewing the aspect angle of the pushing tug on the starboard shoulder, which is ahead of the beam…….the sternway towards the bridge is being compounded not addressed.
Smaller sailing vessels routinely come and go from South Street Seaport all the time without tug(s) or a pilot.
This is a large sailing vessel. It’s probably fairly routine for them to come and go from South Street Seaport without incident. How they usually do it (no tug, or 1 tug or 2 tugs, and a pilot), I do not know. However, I envision that this large sailing vessel was handled in the same well proven manner as usual at South Street Seaport. Apparently 1 tug.
This incident was apparently caused by the vessel becoming stuck in astern propulsion. Not by the way in which the tug was used, or not used.
Maybe with the benefit of hindsight (woulda, coulda, shoulda) the tug was not put to optimal use to handle the unexpected circumstances that arose.
As a wild guess, maybe this is how the tug was used:
the tug was not need to pull the starboard quarter off the dock because the current was setting the stern off the dock.
The tug was used to hold in on the starboard quarter up against the current (so they could get the lines off the dock), and so that the stern would not fall off too fast as she backed into the full force of the current. They did not want to swing the bowsprit over the dock and foul the bobstays on the dock. The tug did not need a line up to push the starboard quarter in, and
The tug needed to shift quickly to the starboard bow to push the bow uptide in the direction of intended forward travel to sea (no line up needed for that either).
Photos of the sailing vessel posted online appear to show a wheel and an engine order telegraph on the poop deck. They do not show a throttle, gear, or pitch control. Maybe she has modern “pilothouse” controls at the steering station that are hidden, or maybe the only CCP controls are in the engine room.
We do not know the extent to which the cadets were handling the ship, handling communications, and handling the engine, on a training cruise, and if that reduced the number of professional sailors at critical stations, caused confusion or delayed reaction times in the emergency.
At this point there are too many unknowns, and we are putting the cart in front of the horse.
ministry of propaganda . 
