Offshore Tug Bourbon Rhode in Distress After Getting Caught in Hurricane Lorenzo

Bourbon Dolphin was under Norwegian flag and managed by Bourbon Norway in Fosnavaag. Most of the problems around that accident was handled by their Managing Director, Capt.Trond Myklebust. (Now CEO of Viking Supply) with little input from the mother company in France.

Pretty sure that LRIT applies at 300GT for tugs, same as yachts etc, etc.
SOLAS V/19.1 makes no distinction for tugs.
(can you guess who just had a SOLAS Safety Radio Cert Annual survey?)

This is exactly right.

As the weather worsens the vessel’s options get fewer and fewer, latent problems become more likely to manifest themselves and the crew’s ability to cope with problems is greatly reduced.

It’s not a simple matter of keeping the vessel in seas less than that which is sure to cause the vessel to capsize or flounder.

As to the idea that any particular vessel “should” be able to survive, the question is; how much are you willing to bet?

Did you read the NOU? I wish there was an English version I could post on here, because that’s a fucked up story on so many levels, while the public blame was concentrated on one bad decision. </OT>

So true. It’s one of those dynamic situations with a high dependence on initial conditions. In other words, we don’t really know what’s going to happen.

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That right, once you’re in it it’s mostly just a matter of how things unfold. This idea that a highly skilled mariner is going to be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat in the middle of a typhoon is mostly bullshit.

Recall the Captain of the El Faro with his Alaska experience. I worked in Alaska many years, we used to make sure everything was dogged down, heavy weather expected or not. No real skills required to close and dog a scuttle, someone just has to do it.

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A post was split to a new topic: The loss of the “Bourbon Dolphin”

How close is the estimated positon where the Rhode was lost from the expected trackline?

As far as I can see they made a beeline from the two known positions to the spot where the ship sank. In the first position nearest the coast the course was 244° and the speed 9.7’. In the second position, almost a day later, the course was 247° and the speed about 2 miles less, 7.9’. It could be that the wind was already increasing.

The distance from the first position to the position where she sank is 1410 nm and the average speed 8.3’. The course is then 248°. By the looks of it they ran without any hesitation smack into Lorenzo. No signs of steering a safer course.

My guess is they just sailed into the system unawares.

Because they did not expect a TC in that area they were not monitoring the SAT-C. Unlike the El Faro they would not have access to the Weather Channel or the sat FM radio for weather information. However like the El Faro they did not understand the meaning of local weather signs.

That would have seemed implausible before the El Faro sailed into the eye wall of Joaquin but not now.

That is the only possible explanation. It was of course a freak hurricane in the sense that it started already with that force in such an easterly and northerly position but you should always be on the alert and closely follow the weather at all times.

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“of course a freak” - I disagree!

TD/TS/Hurr Lorenzo was in NHC advisories since 22/23 Sep. FNMOC, GFS, ECMWF all predicted in plenty of time, and in (rare) agreement, what it would become & where it would go.

Hence my exasperation expressed in post # 4 above.

Okay, have it your way. Moreover I just repeated what the meteorologists are saying about this hurricane that was developing in such an easterly and northerly position as was not seen ever before.

Please be advised that the captain probably was not following the NHC advisories. He didnot know about Lorenzo, otherwise he would have steered the ship in a different direction.

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It’s possible the captain didn’t expect a hurricane to be a threat on that voyage because it’s an unusual event:

The bottom line is that Category 5 storms are already rare, and Hurricane Lorenzo is unprecedented in the record-keeping era,” said Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia atmospheric sciences professor,

We just don’t see hurricanes at this intensity so far east and north because water temperatures are typically too cold and wind shear conditions can also be restrictive.”

. Crews tend to stop paying attention to the forecasts in the tropics if tropical cyclones are not expected, the forecasts tend not to change much day to day.

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Nothing to do with global warming, nothing to see here folks, move along…

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So Mr. T. is, as always, right after all… He deserves a Nobel prize for all his good works don’t you think?

I’m not bringing up this question as germane to the Bourbon Dolphin in particular, but rather as a question I always ask myself when a comparatively small ship goes down in heavy weather:

How many captains know that water flooding down fuel tank vents in heavy weather is a cause of vessel disablement? Water contaminated fuel on the tug Aiviq was the case of the grounding of the drill rig Kulluk in 2012. Yes, vents have check-valves (stainless steel balls) to prevent the intake of water. But they need to be tested regularly. Rookie stuff? Apparently not for the officers of the Aiviq.

If you lose your engines you’ve reduced your chances of surviving a storm by 50%.

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Fair comment! It does make sense as our 2, 447 GT tugs, have LRIT but then they are also GMDSS A3…

Actually not sure I agree with this as nowadays the non-return elements are plastic and therefore don’t rust, what tends to get blocked on fuel tank air pipes is the gauze which variously rusts or gets painted over by an over zealous deck hand. The MV BRAER went down a few miles south of where I live because loose steel pipes sheared the air vents at deck level during a force 10 off Shetland in 1993. Also they had a single common vent for both the settling and service tanks which led to engine failure due to them not being able to clear water from either tank.

The Bourbon Dolphin also went down tragically west of here in heavy weather but due to different circumstances; we will have to wait and see whether similar ‘custom and practices’, both afloat and ashore contributed to this tragedy.

I remember with fondness a Gulf Stream crossing at night from Miami to Bimini in a strong October Noreaster with a load of puking divers. The rocking and rolling stirred up sediment from the bottom of the fuel tank and clogged the Racors, stopping us dead in the water. After restarting, losing power a few times and finally running out of spare filters, I started feeding the small 6 cylinder Ford Lehman directly out of 5 gallon buckets with extra diesel that had been stored on deck. It was a long night but it would have been a lot worse without the extra fuel stored in clean containers.
There’s nothing to make you question your career choice quite like hanging head down into a tiny engine compartment breathing in a combination of putrid bilge water and diesel fumes while the boat is bucking like a wild bronco.

We had problems trying to get the Deck Department to stop “storing” mops and whatever else they could fit in the Containment’s for our Aft FO Tanks. One time I found that someone put a small handy line down inside of it. I found this while making rounds after some bad weather. I had checked it before sailing and wasn’t happy when I found it and the Containment Tank full to the top!

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