Yes, because that’s the incorrect way to operate z drive boats. AFAIK, the clutches on ASD vessels aren’t designed to withstand that much clutching in and out.
Well now. I dare say that IPS is the only yachting grade joystick system that consistently does what it says on the tin. I also hold VP responsible for all the half assed offerings on the marked, since they made joystick maneuvering a de facto requirement to stay competitive in the yacht propulsion market.
I’m down for a detailed and derisive discussion of joystick maneuvering for yachts, but maybe not in a thread about DP used for mooring ships. Just sayin’.
I believe you are discounting diesel electric vessels with electric motor drives. Not many conventional shaft driven z-drives left out here.
Well soon enough if the boat doesn’t dock itself it will be broken.
Yes, I left the oilfield before having any experience with those. My only serious ASD operating experience is on newer tugs though my first hitch in Fourchon was on an old Z-drive mud boat from the late 90’s.
I’m assuming your talking exclusively about supply boats?
as long as you have a bow thruster anything can go sideways with the joystick
those without cant really do it if the wind or tide is running
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I saw a guy Dock on D.P. 2 auto once in Pascagoula on a mini-supply boat we crew changed on. He didn’t need to though. He just wanted to show me it could be done. I asked the old man on our 230’ why we never did it, he said hell no, the deeper draft and unnecessary power, we’d be pulling lines, tires and whatever else is down there into the drives. Simulator course at Lauderdale trains you to do it though.
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Never once used DP to dock the boat!
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I was Master on an Island boat and never contemplated using DP to dock. Anyone that has should go do something else. The closest thing is using Joystick. I’ve done that on a 6th Generation Drillship as that is the only feasible way to do it.
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At the yacht end of the DP spectrum, I think the whole point is not having to learn all that complicated throttle and rudder stuff.
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The early joysticks were hopeless. I tried an early one on an AHTS in open waters and if I had been near anything I would have been in the crap. Went back to all we had, two sticks and a bow thruster.
I would have liked to try a modern DP system on a PSV in the 3 to 4 metre swells and constant 20 to 25 knots during the monsoon season off Vietnam, but that was in a future that I had moved on from. There was one particular jack up rig that had been sited on a heading with no regard to the prevailing conditions where DP2 could have been particularly useful.
You a perfectly correct, joystick control is the only way to control multiple thrusters.
I “listened” to SITOR (ShIps Telex Over Radio) for a while around '90. I remember one message from a self-positioning drill rig off South America somewhere.
They said the system had crashed and the rig was doing circles around the string, HELP! They tried the backup system, it crashed. They tried reloading from eight inch floppy drive and it ate the floppy. HELP!
Oh, and by the way, the crew are complaining that the washing machines keep breaking the welds holding them to the deck.
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I’m an engineer so I’m not really up on this stuff, at what point does joystick control vs individual throttles become the norm? I know the z-drive mates when I was at HOS were docking by hand with the 2 z drives and 2 tunnels, but then we worked on a job where there was a flotel with multiple (5?) voith-schneider style props and some tunnels and they presumably joysticked at the dock.
Those HOS boats were nice, I miss diesel electric.