Some creative work with a sledgehammer could take an inch off 
Or paint a white line 1" aft of the stem with a sign reading “Material forward of this point is not part of the hull.”
Cheers,
Earl
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Just getting back to the subject at hand does anyone know what speeds the Ever Forward listed for Dead Slow Ahead, Slow Ahead and Half Ahead?
Texastanker,
Your points are correct and might I say that within my Pilot group we had some very conservative and risk averse individuals. This invariably led to fairly dynamic discussions at our monthly navigation meetings.
Back to your original point……the old saying of “give an inch and take a mile” is probably appropriate in this instance.
Cheers
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No, but you might want to also want to know the position and details of the critical rev range. If it is positioned between DSA and SA with a relatively large range then there will be a significant increase in speed between the two settings.
Spowiednick has done a fair bit of research on this and may have the answer.
From my own experience the critical revs occurred between SA and HA but your own experience would be much more extensive than mine. Were you a Melbourne pilot?
They varied.
The smaller units had ranges between HA and FA, the higher percentage (as you quite rightly stated) between SA and HA and then there were the big Korean units between DSA and SA. It was necessary to derate the DSA revolutions for these vessels in order to provide a minimum and manageable manoeuvring speed. This was referred to as DDSA.
No to Melbourne although I have a few mates there.
Addendum to the suction suggestion:
Recently in Houston a large deep draft gas ship got stuck in the mud at a good angle to the channel. The ship backed full for 12 hours and the above suction from passing ships was tried several times without success. The pilot then decided to change tactics. He went ahead on the engine and cycled the rudder hard over to hard over. When they detected some movement they put her full astern and she slid off. It might be the wiggle alone broke the suction or it was a combination of that and the astern bell washing some of the mud out from under.
Some years ago i had a case where a ship lied about their draft. They were 2’ over the max allowed. It was a moonlit night and we did fine sliding along in the mud but eventually we got to a place that was harder than the rest and she slid to a stop so gently that I didn’t notice (before the personal nav kit days). I only snapped to it when I saw our wake passing us in the moonlight. I told the mate to drop from full to dead slow and we did the rudder cycle thing for a few minutes to wiggle free then went back to full ahead. I found out the actual draft from a passing harbor tug.
Now you have another trick to try before lightering.
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But that would eliminate the potential profits from declaring general average.
Once upon a time a pilot turned down a ship because it was a few inches over the limit. The next pilot in line called horseshit and took it up to the dock. The first pilot felt insulted and brought charges at the next group meeting. After much heated debate a proposal was made to go by rounding the dimension to the nearest foot. By the rules of the organization a supermajority was needed to allow a change to the rule. We did not get the supermajority.
It’s complicated sometimes.
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And who exactly benefits from that bit of absurdity? It makes the pilots look like fools and just embitters shipowners and shipping companies against the pilot organization and the port itself. Sounds like a bunch of entitled children.
Pilots are the subject matter experts for their port/district. While the ships are their “customers”, they also have a very real obligation to protect the port infrastructure and local waterways. Anyone who thinks they know better is welcome to try it themselves (yes, I know that’s not likely).
It’s not generally in pilots’ best interest to turn down business so if there is a limit of some sort, there’s likely a good reason and, perhaps, a hard lesson learned sometime in the past that led to that.
Without texastanker naming the port, it’s hard to know the logic behind it. It’s entirely possible that 820’ limit was crept up to from, for example, 750’ (maybe a turning basin is involved). The line eventually has to be drawn somewhere.
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Understand and agree - If it was easy there would be no need for this chat !!
By the way - there is no “right” answer here to this one - not a math problem - I think I understand the drives of all the players, and in the end believe all are just trying to do their job.
Agree - well except for there has to be a " hard line". I have seen places were the were hard lines - ships berthing head in with a Bow - Manifold diff that was a hard line, i know of at least one berth with a rock shelf astern were stern to manifold is a hard line.
But you can never - ever convince me that 1 inch of LOA on channel transit needs to be a hard line - again - no one even knows the actual length of that ship on that day to that level of precision. The hard line, in this case, is to take it out of judgement - make it consistent and avoid a continual push up - but an inch ??
I had to smile reading that, both those tricks work well on sailboats too and I have done them many a time. On boats with folding props frequently reverse thrust is poor and the forward-wiggle thing is the only way to break suction so you can back off.
At super-low tide I sometimes have to wiggle my way into my slip, I am about half a foot in the mud at that point.
I bet the ships change length several inches in the hot sun 
I think that the group could publish it something like this -
Max LOA = X, all vessels over X require prior approval on a case by case basis.
It’s not you that one needs to convince, it’s the lawyers.
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