To an outsider an ATB is a bean counters answer to crew levels and regulations and I thought the same when seeing a tug towing a barge with a crawler crane and about 350 teu containers onboard moving at 8 to 9 knots off Vancouver. Typically a small feeder ship carrying the same number of containers …

Well, OK… how about with most of it?

One of the most asked questions when I’m on foreign vessels is: “ Why are all these tug boats around? “ Meaning not simple assist tugs. The answer is manning loopholes. No other country has this manning loophole. Thus no other country needs to have a distinction between a ‘ship’ and a tug and b…

Well… to be honest it’s pretty difficult to navigate that area whether on the wire, in the notch, ATB or a ship when you’re snoring…

[image] Lemurian2: Folks in Bella Bella tend to disagree. Not sure which incident you are referring to, but i suspect which one it may be. From a guy who has sailed on both JAK and articouple, i will say that it can be REALLY easy to think you are properly pinned in and not be on an articoup…

What? They let the mates run the coupling system on those units? If they ran them on the one I was on, we would have been ejected every week. . . .

If you’re referring to the Jake Shearer incident, weren’t they running in open water outside the IP?

As far as tanker ATB’s all the deck officers I know (I know many) state off the record that they do not come close to maintaining opa 90 hours because of the manning. They just take it as part of the job.

[image] leadsled: I agree with you 100% on that part but where the ATB kills the wire boat is in places like the gulf where towing a large oil barge in and out of the Miss River, Bolivar Roads, Corpus Christi, Pascagoula etc just isn’t possible. You will spend days weather bound waiting on a win…

Those were the reasons I gave you. When your regular run is from a bay in California that can be towed in and out of and your destination is close to 3000nm getting in and out isn’t as much of a concern. Once at sea the vessel is very seaworthy and they are much cheaper to build. The nickels and dim…

At Moran we shared the cooking duties on the ATB I was on even though the AB only had the duty to cook once a day it worked well for us we had a good crew and everyone could cook at least a few good meals

ATB’s

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ATB’s

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