There was a lot Mr. Boeck could suffer without saying a word ( cited from Wilhelm Busch ) - but this was too much even for a cadet…
Every old fashioned chief engineer would not wait to refill his L.O.tanks under the described conditions and believe me or not – I would have been down there in the ECR and the first L.O. sump tank low level alarm under the prevailing conditions would have given me every right to refill my sump tanks to a safer level.
When was that?
This is what the report you quoted says:
The tanks were provided with level alarms, however these had not been triggered at this time.
The Viking Sky was sailing along the inshore route, which mostly is protected waters, except certain stretches, like Hustadvika. Heavy seas were experienced only for an hour or so before this incident and should not be a problem for a ship of this size and type.
If they got consistent Low Low alarms during that short period it should obviously have got somebody’s attention, not just silencing the alarm.
Could earlier “false” alarms on the system have made them immune to alarms in general?
It MAY be an explanation, as it appears not to be all that rare reaction to “alarm overload”(??)
@camjournal - you didn’t come across to me as blaming someone as much as yearning for answers.
From this later report.
24 hours before the blackout.
At approximately 1340 on 22 March, the staff captain, on the master’s instruction, informed the crew about the forecast weather and instructed them to start preparing the vessel for the deteriorating weather conditions.
Presumably he shared the forecast with the chief.
0500 to 0904 the morning of the blackout, 18 level alarms on the operating DG sets. Does not mention the distribution of the alarms. Does not indicate any corrective actions taken at that time or correlate it to a particularly rough section of the route. Did it just magically stop at 0904 or did the sea conditions improve? Any sump levels manually sounded? Any oil added? As others have suggested, written off as “this always happens in rough seas”. Presumably investigators have transcripts of their interviews with engine department crew which might inform our speculation on what took place from 0904 until 1337 when the got a load shed or load down on DG 4 due to low LO pressure. This is as serious as it gets in my book. There better be engineers all over this now. They’re sailing with no standby DG, No 3 turbo failed back on March 16, 7 days ago.
But DG 1 now registers a low oil level alarm at 1339 and 2 min later and DG 4 shuts down at 1345 and DG 2 shuts down 8 seconds later. Game, set and match. That high pitched whistle is the sound of air being sucked out the Chiefs asshole.
Depending on level of IO points in the plant monitoring and alarm system there may be Start and stop “process” messages on the screen or in historian to tell if / when the LO transfer pumps or purifiers were started but should be log entries that would flesh out the timeline.
Adding 10.8 cubic meters (over 2800 gallons) of LO without a blown line, hose or pump casing is just hard to believe. How much if any was added since the 4 hours of level alarms? Or was the blackout the signal that the level alarms were not false?
How did such a low sump level become “normal”?
There are still just too many unanswered questions.
At some point will this AIBN be posting the transcripts of interviews and log entries? Or prepare a more detailed timeline? The incident investigation training Transocean sent me to went to great lengths to separate the investigation / fact gathering process from the analysis process even to the extent of employing separate teams for these sequential tasks. I hope they will be releasing discovered facts, sequence of events, statement of facts etc. There will always be the official conclusion and recommendations but it would be nice to apply some grass roots analysis too. Otherwise we are left with the conclusions like “keep sump level at proper level”. When what we are looking for is HOW did that happen and could it happen to me?
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Yes exactly what I seek - how did this happen so we know how to avoid it happening again (especially to me). Not just with L/O sump levels but against all the unknowns lurking in our operations ready to pounce on us. Maybe this is why I have no hair now…
This was so close to a catastrophe on a very new state-of-the-art large pax vessel but I wonder if we’re going to get the level of discovery we’re looking for. After all, it was a success, no one got hurt and the ship was saved intact. Maybe it’s the translation from Norwegian to English but I get more questions than answers from these two interim reports. As more comes out ombugge might be able to help us find details and timelines as s/he is closer to the source of events.
What does seem clear is that the L/O sump levels were being carried somewhat above the low level alarm set point but not high enough to prevent the L/O pumps gulping air in a seaway. Ships I’ve worked on with similar engines carried the L/O levels a good 45 cm above the pump intake bell-end and I think we would have increased that if we were exposed to serious weather.
Another technical question - how do I reply to a post here so the original post shows up in my reply? Copy-paste?
Highlight the text you want to quote and click reply at the bottom of the post.
Maybe there were multiple tanks/levels alarming on the roll. Nuisance alarms that cluttered up the console. The sump alarms get overlooked by the person(s) pushing the ACK.
Each alarm, having been accepted, cleared within a few seconds.
Someone just sitting there mashing the acknowledge button?
Areas of further investigation include:
Engine room alarm management
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One day I was sitting in the ECR while on standby and an alarm sounded. The EOOW got up, walked over, acknowledged the alarm, and returned to their spot at the computer. I peered over from where I was sitting on the far end of the console and could see the alarm was “#x M/E L/O Hi Temp In”. So I left this for a few seconds and then casually asked him what the alarm was (it had not cleared) and of course he had to get up and go look at it to answer the question. I left him hanging, waiting for his action but received none. After some fumbling around I calmly suggested maybe someone could go out and look at the temperature gauge. Jeez-us.
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Ok I think I’ve got it, thx…
Can someone explain what a low volume alarm means? Are we talking low low sump alarm, bypass flow, or what? Is there bypass flow monitoring on these engines? According to the project guide from MAN, that’s a no.
Also, what is this sump level in percent business? I’m used to relate to linear units (inces or cm). Could this be percent of effective range above minimum? Never mind, I didn’t get that it’s a dry sump engine. That’d be percent of total service tank capacity, then.
Is this a report or is it a correction to specific elements in the earlier preliminary report?
Taking it at face value, interim report with more to come. Some new details since the last report. However, some of those new details troublesome (to me) from a resource management perspective. The gnawing thoughts are no longer about what alarms came or didn’t come, appropriate sump levels etc but what sort of organizational culture (?) had evolved in that department. A failure of onboard leadership? A failure in staffing as provided by ship management ashore? A failure in ship management technical support or policy? A failure of cognition at some basic watchstanding level? Have I ever been that close to it falling apart and not seen it coming?
But patience is a virtue I guess. Look forward to the next installment.
Rereading the first report is looks like it was just a “is it safe to sail” investigation.
So a friend of mine recently bought a 27 foot double ender with a BMC 1500 in it that is absolutely NFG. I berated him for buying something without asking advice, and told him to get a Yanmar 3YM or a VP D2 or somesuch. A few days ago he called me and said that a friend of his who works a s Chief Engineer on big ships had offered to have a look, nothing personal, he trusts me but figured another opinion couldn’t hurt, yada yada.
Today the two of them turned up, and I hit it off great with the guy. We swapped war stories, had a look at the BMC (which was still NFG), good times. I eventually asked him if he had any knowledge of the Viking Sky incident, and he replied that he knew it quite well. The way he spoke made it clear that he was deep in the know, but he didn’t offer much of substance. I started waxing poetic about the stunning incompetence on display, what deep seated institutional rot there must be, etc; You know how I get sometimes.
Then, after I contradicted him a couple of times about the sequence of events as I understand from the preliminary report, he told me that he was the chief on board. Holy shit, I’ve never been quite that mortified 
#AlmostDied
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