Why isn’t the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Anancapa, or an appropriate substitute, sent to pummel this cruise ship 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to it’s watery grave, like what was done with that drifting Japanese trawler recently.
It would be good target practice.
Plus at the depth it would sink to pollution wouldn’t be much of a problem.
[QUOTE=powerabout;97708]ship owner…
After the Exxon Valdez everyone knows the last thing you ever want to be caught at is owing a ship ( rigs cant be far away…)
The Prestige tanker that broke in half off the coast of France had the court case last year…jail for the RINA surveyor and billion dollar fines everywhere BUT
after 10 years still cant find the owner…brilliant!!
I think I saw the owner picking up his mail at a PO Box next to mine in North Conway. “Live free or Die”
[QUOTE=tugsailor;97799]I think we can all agree that CENTAURUS is a nice looking tug.[/QUOTE]
CENTAURUS is not only a nice looking ocean tug. She is one of the best of her class in the world. She is equipped with the finest technology you can dream of. She was manned by young German officers which have the highest standard in the industry. She towed that 735 foot dead ship across the North Atlantic so successfully that nobody never heard a word about her. That’s the way it should be. Perfect job …
[QUOTE=Topsail;97830]CENTAURUS is not only a nice looking ocean tug. She is one of the best of her class in the world. She is equipped with the finest technology you can dream of. She was manned by young German officers which have the highest standard in the industry. She towed that 735 foot dead ship across the North Atlantic so successfully that nobody never heard a word about her. That’s the way it should be. Perfect job …[/QUOTE]
I noticed that ALP is based in Rotterdam and founded and run by highly qualified people that came from Smit. They have quite a few top notch tugs all built with the last 5 years in Germany. Several of these tugs are DP II. I also noticed that they do not have any job openings listed on their website.
[QUOTE=z-drive;97814]Allegedly an American crew was aboard despite the reflag. Probably missing ocean licenses etc you’d want to go international. 1200’ of 1-1/2" wire I’m told…info tricking in[/QUOTE]
1200 feet of 1-/12" wire? I thought that tow winch looked awfully small.
Canada is a special case – no ocean licenses are needed for an American tug to go to Canada. But a Bolivian tug probably should require ocean licenses. I don’t know what licenses are required for arrival in the DR, but the most sensible route from St. John’s to the DR would take them close to Bermuda (much more than 200 miles offshore). Maybe that was part of the reason they reflagged in Bolivia (its not a “white list” country) — and any licenses needed may have been available for a small fee with few questions asked.
I can image losing pilothouse windows in heavy weather on the way to Halifax, but I cannot imagine departing Halifax bound for for St. John’s in February with plywood patches over the missing windows. How could Transport Canada allow that? Departing St. John’s bound for the DR in February with missing windows is just unbelievable. It certainly makes one wonder about the condition of the rest of the boat, and the quality of the crew and company management.
[QUOTE=tugsailor;97837]I noticed that ALP is based in Rotterdam and founded and run by highly qualified people that came from Smit. They have quite a few top notch tugs all built with the last 5 years in Germany. Several of these tugs are DP II. I also noticed that they do not have any job openings listed on their website.[/QUOTE]
They showed me their program to calculate the catenary depth. I was very impress that the catenary depth would reach something like 150 meters or 500 foot below the ocean surface. :eek: I did not know anything about that catenary depth calculation?
z = -H/g (cosh (gx/H)-1)
where
z = vertical distance
H = Horizontal component of cable force
g = weight of cable / unit of length
x = horizontal distance
and
dz/dx = -sinh(gx/H)
V = - H sinh(gx/H)
where
V = vertical component of cable force
N = H - gz
where
N = tension force in the cable
Transport Canada cannot do anything against lawbreaker. If a defect is not reported by the vessel himself as mandatory or by anybody else, how could TC know about it. They are not Jesus Christ and be everywhere at the same time all the time for free !!!
"Reza Shoeybi said he and his uncle Saeed Shoaibi, both of Toronto, became co-owners of the Lyubov Orlova after Hussein Humayuni, a family friend and Iranian scrap merchant, bought the ship for $275,000 in a Federal Court process last year in Montreal."
Shoeybi said Humayuni struggled with the payments and that the other two men invested a total of more than $400,000 getting the vessel ready to be towed to the Dominican Republic for scrap, and they expected to make between $700,000 and $800,000 depending on metals "
Pretty slim profit margin…
I guess they also more or less bought the tug too.
Well that explains why the “company” and “managers” didn’t know any better.
It would be interesting to hear about the qualifications and experience of the crew.
[QUOTE=Topsail;97394]I am proud to be a Canadian seaman which has for prime role to promulgate and assure the safety of navigation. … ! 
[/QUOTE]
You shouldn’t use an image of Her Majesty so flippantly.
[QUOTE=z-drive;97814]Allegedly an American crew was aboard despite the reflag. Probably missing ocean licenses etc you’d want to go international. 1200’ of 1-1/2" wire I’m told…info tricking in[/QUOTE]
Not at all an unusual arrangement for some companies that operate on the fringe. Boy, do I have a story to tell about what goes on in South Florida with some old Caribbean iron. Yet here is not the place. . .
Hahaha. I was involved in one of those schemes a few years back.
[QUOTE=Topsail;97845]They showed me their program to calculate the catenary depth. I was very impress that the catenary depth would reach something like 150 meters or 500 foot below the ocean surface. :eek: I did not know anything about that catenary depth calculation?
z = -H/g (cosh (gx/H)-1)
where
z = vertical distance
H = Horizontal component of cable force
g = weight of cable / unit of length
x = horizontal distance
and
dz/dx = -sinh(gx/H)
V = - H sinh(gx/H)
where
V = vertical component of cable force
N = H - gz
where
N = tension force in the cable[/QUOTE]
500 feet is deeper then I would have thought. Do towboaters have any rules of thumb on how much wire you can have out at various water depths?
K.C.
[QUOTE=“Kennebec Captain;97877”]
500 feet is deeper then I would have thought. Do towboaters have any rules of thumb on how much wire you can have out at various water depths?
K.C.[/QUOTE]
Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck… We generally (although not all the time) put out LESS than the depth of water! But seriously now!
But IMHO, (and this is just ballpark, from ‘a few years experience’). each layer is equal to that many 10s of feet. Past the second layer. Two layers will pull clear of the water. three will be 30’ down. Four will be 40’. Five will be 50’. Etc Etc, Etc. But this is while hooked up. In rougher weather (when you typically have 5 or 6 out) the catenary increases dramatically because you must slow down to stay connected. I have NEVER ever heard of 500’ deep though. I have been on tugs with 2400’ of wire. So thinking logically, 500’ down would mean (at a minimum) you have (out of in this case) 1800’ of usable wire, so the tow would be 1200’ behind you. This does not seem plausible. Was that a typo? Did they mean 50’???
[QUOTE=“Topsail;97847”]Transport Canada cannot do anything against lawbreaker. If a defect is not reported by the vessel himself as mandatory or by anybody else, how could TC know about it. They are not Jesus Christ and be everywhere at the same time all the time for free !!![/QUOTE]
TC routinely boards incoming and transient towing vessels and CAN and HAS held them in port until crew and mechanical defiencies are repaired.
[QUOTE=cappy208;97880]But IMHO, (and this is just ballpark, from ‘a few years experience’). each layer is equal to that many 10s of feet. Past the second layer. Two layers will pull clear of the water. three will be 30’ down. Four will be 40’. Five will be 50’. Etc Etc, Etc. But this is while hooked up. In rougher weather (when you typically have 5 or 6 out) the catenary increases dramatically because you must slow down to stay connected. I have NEVER ever heard of 500’ deep though. I have been on tugs with 2400’ of wire. So thinking logically, 500’ down would mean (at a minimum) you have (out of in this case) 1800’ of usable wire, so the tow would be 1200’ behind you. This does not seem plausible. Was that a typo? Did they mean 50’???[/QUOTE]
I don’t know cappy, what I do know is that when worked for Capt Jerry the wire never came in nice and shiny. However sometimes it did when I worked for that one knucklehead capt from Missouri. I quit after too many close calls.
K.C.
If I am reading the CENTAURUS’s specs correctly, she has 1200 meters (let’s call it 3900 feet) of 70mm (2-3/4 inch) tow wire. This type of gear and towing is far beyond my experience, but I would expect at least 3 shots of chain surge gear for towing a dead ship across the Atlantic. 500 feet seems like a lot of catenary, but it seems like a reasonable safety factor.
As rule of thumb I use 40 fathoms as safe depth of water for average conditions. That’s with chain bridles, one shot of chain surge gear and 2000 feet of 2" tow wire on a 3000 hp tug. With chain bridles, even a smaller tug with a shorter tow wire will have a catenary draft of around 20 fathoms.
The catenary formula requires information from a tension meter in order to be useful. Tension meters are not common on US tugs; at least I’ve never seen one. A static calculation could be made based on bollard pull, but tension underway is dynamic. Reduced speed or increased speed due to positive slip equals less tension and increases the catenary draft. The greatest tension and shock loading occurs when the tug is surfing in a big sea, or when the tug is being pulled backwards by the tow in a big sea The least tension underway is when jogging off the wind.
Some companies have a policy that maximum tow wire shall be used when towing outside. (They don’t want to risk chaffing damage at the stern roller in the middle of the wire. Chaffing gear can come off or get mangled up. Or in bad weather, the chaffing gear might not get put on, and the crew could get lax about frequently slipping the wire a few feet and greasing it. If the wire chaffs near the drum end, then a few feet can be cut off to get the chaffed spot back on the drum. If it chaffs in the middle, the entire tow wire has to be replaced).
The rougher the weather, the more wire you want out. But as the weather gets rougher and your speed drops off, the catenary increases. Sometimes this forces shortening up and slowing down in rough weather to cross shoal water (for instance the banks SE of the Trinity Islands). Or if running before the wind and sea, and crossing shoal water, you either have to pull harder than you should to keep the speed up, or slow down and shorten up.
Allegedly a pretty ragged bunch without proper papers for the trip. Maybe experienced, but a rough crowd.
[QUOTE=tugsailor;97894]
The catenary formula requires information from a tension meter in order to be useful. Tension meters are not common on US tugs; at least I’ve never seen one. .[/QUOTE]
Once you get away from towing barges to working in the oil field tension meters are for the most part mandatory, and not only on the winch but on the brake as well. All the anchored drilling rigs will have a tension meter on the winch to let them know how many tons of pressure are on the anchor’s. Most modern tugs that do rig moves will have some type of tension meter on the winch along with the brake. this lets them know how much pressure is on the winch which is converted to either tons or pounds. Most also use a similar tension pin on the brake to determine the brake pressure, however this is most of the time expressed as a percent of braking force rather a weight desigination. Most tugs that do rig moves get paid by the bollard pull, and so they want to know exactly how much they are pulling on the rig. There are some situations where you may not want full braking force with the brake, some situations you may want the brake to slip just a little instead of breaking the tow gear.
I have a 200 metric ton A&R (abondment and recovery) winch on my ship. It is not used for towing but setting things and picking them up off the sea floor. We have 11,000 feet of 76 mm wire. we have to have a tension meter to know the weight of what we are picking up. We also have a tension meter on the brake. That was a requirment by the oil major we work for. Since we don’t tow only lift things, I don’t want my brake to slip. There fore anything less than 90% braking force on the brake and I have a lot of explaing to do. Matter of fact there is an alarm on the brake tension pin, if the braking force gets below 80% it sets off an alarm.
Most of the real salvage tugs I have seen will have a similar system. We worked with a big Dutch salvage tug about 2 years ago off the northen coast of Brazil. I can’t remember the name of it. That salvage tug hangs out in the anchorage off Reciefe Brazil on the ready to go any where. I talked to the chief over there, ironicly we had the same brand of winch. just a different model.
I looked back through some of my files and the name of that Dutch tug is the “Fairmount Expedition” it is rated at 16,320 H.P. and 205 tons bollard pull. that is a beast of a tug.