There’s no requirement to have an engineer on watch 24 hours per day like there is a requirement for bridge officer and lookout.
Don’t disagree. But would have been nice for my guys. Don’t recall them complaining. They made the shit go. I picked up the tab more than a few times. In staying with the subject ,they more often than not ran the winch during jetty entrances with heavy swell on a short towline.
When I worked for Crowley, all of our voyages were over 600 miles. Always three watch rotation in the wheelhouse. Only one engineer, though. I stood the 8-12, and then answered alarms as needed while off watch, or dealt with other issues as needed.
We discussed this topic in the past. I provided the statute and the USCG interpretation that the statute overruled to the CFR to allow tugs under 199 GRT to be operated with just a master and one mate regardless of the length of the voyage.
I don’t have the bandwidth or the inclination to try to look this up again on a phone
True, but is the “600 miles” really more of time than a distance thing?
Most OSV’s can do 600 miles in three days but will stay offshore for up to 4 weeks or longer acting as a warehouse since it is cheaper to have an OSV holding your equipment than building a big enough platform or MODU with enough deck space.
It’s from the U.S. Code. I don’t know how it was determined, or how the start and finish of a “voyage” is reckoned. Perhaps from sea buoy to sea buoy, but in my experience on tankers, we identified “voyages” based on the cargo, so partial discharges in multiple ports could be part of a single voyage.
I know where it is referenced but I don’t think the distance was really the “spirit” of the law.
I believe it was more on the amount of time it took to do 600 miles and as usual, a loophole was found and exploited by greedy, rapacious, money grubbers.
How did we get here from “Calculating the catenary and sag of a towline”?
Towing gear doesn’t have a SWL as it’s not lifting gear.
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Good point sir. As long as the wire didn’t show itself in the last 3rd of the catenary, I knew I was ok. If not, I either slowed down or put out more wire, or both. If I had to do that, we were in for some bad shit.
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I don’t understand what you are saying about the “last third of the catenary.”
With chain bridles, put more wire out or slow down if you see the fishplate, feel jerking, or the wire is vibrating around where it goes over the stern roller. Other than a few feet of wire behind the stern roller, you should never see the tow wire at all.
With wire bridles, or soft bridles, you will usually (if not always) see the fishplate (if any) and some tow wire, but it shouldn’t be much, unless towing up short for departure or arrival, or in very shallow water.