How exactly is a vessel cold stacked?

Just out of curiosity, how would a company go about parking a new state of the art supply ship/boat, in Louisiana without it rotting away and the electronics turning to shit?

What is your goal? To have the lowest costs for lay up or for when you break out? Are you especially short sighted or have the ability to look ahead and money to invest in the procedure? Will you operate it or just sell it at a future date?

Rotating machinery must be turned. Either run things on a weekly basis or turn them by hand. Things than can be pre-lubed and turned should be. If system will be kept active exercise valves and circulate fluids. If things are laid up dry (drained and vented consider a DH (dehumidification) equipment and plan. That is a complex topic and skill set. Either way you could be looking at replacing all gaskets when you break out the ship. Open tanks, clean and close or leave open depending on coating system and whether the vessel will be actively attended during the lay up. Underwater openings? Close up or not? Heat lamps on motors?

Use the time to make a break out plan what specifically will you do in what order to liven-up the vessel system by system.

Electronics? Humidity. Keep things dry with DH system or at least silica gel packets put in devices, etc.

Reg body requirements? Inspections and credits to be arranged before lay up and during break out.

Consider paying for advise from people who do this stuff regularly (ships husbandry) if you are not sure. At least look in the technical manuals where they give requirements for when “equipment is not in use for greater than X months”. Especially for engines.

Don’t forget to cover the stacks!

Big topic, is there one machine or system you are concerned about?

Good luck.

KP chief has the correct answer, but the actual answer is slightly shorter. Tie up, shut everything down, and someone else deals with the aftermath later.

[QUOTE=KPChief;168385]What is your goal? To have the lowest costs for lay up or for when you break out? Are you especially short sighted or have the ability to look ahead and money to invest in the procedure? Will you operate it or just sell it at a future date?

Rotating machinery must be turned. Either run things on a weekly basis or turn them by hand. Things than can be pre-lubed and turned should be. If system will be kept active exercise valves and circulate fluids. If things are laid up dry (drained and vented consider a DH (dehumidification) equipment and plan. That is a complex topic and skill set. Either way you could be looking at replacing all gaskets when you break out the ship. Open tanks, clean and close or leave open depending on coating system and whether the vessel will be actively attended during the lay up. Underwater openings? Close up or not? Heat lamps on motors?

Use the time to make a break out plan what specifically will you do in what order to liven-up the vessel system by system.

Electronics? Humidity. Keep things dry with DH system or at least silica gel packets put in devices, etc.

Reg body requirements? Inspections and credits to be arranged before lay up and during break out.

Consider paying for advise from people who do this stuff regularly (ships husbandry) if you are not sure. At least look in the technical manuals where they give requirements for when “equipment is not in use for greater than X months”. Especially for engines.

Don’t forget to cover the stacks!

Big topic, is there one machine or system you are concerned about?

Good luck.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, that’s a good response. I am simply curious about it, I was envisioning them pushing a 30mil boat up in the mud and shutting her down but there would have to be more to it obviously, if you wanted the thing to work right when it’s needed.

One could probably do some reading on how the National Defense Reserve Fleet is maintained, there’s bound to be open source materials available about what they did/do.

[QUOTE=renoun;168396]One could probably do some reading on how the National Defense Reserve Fleet is maintained, there’s bound to be open source materials available about what they did/do.[/QUOTE]

I worked the ready reserve fleet for quite a few years. Loved it! We had a maintenance schedule, everything got ran at some point. There’s also the small things to think about, back then I was still new so one of the very important things (for me anyway) was to exercise the fire dampers. The whole ship got activated every so often, but even when we were not activated we had a chief engineer, a bosun, 2 ab’s a few engineers and a mate. No captain, the chief engineer was in charge of the vessel while in ROS status ( can’t see that happening in certain parts of the industry lol) since the crew’s job was pretty much just maintenance. I don’t know what the mate did…paperwork or something.