We discuss a serious incident at sea and you promote anti-roll tanks. Pls, focus on topic.
That would be SWH (Significant Wave Height) so it’s combined sea and swell.
Of course with 4 meter SWH it’s statistically possible to get an 8 meter wave but in that case what would be the limit for these ships? Three meters SWH? Be almost impossible to route in winter.
The APL China hove to in 12 and 15 m seas. Calculations were made that with the seas on the beam she’d roll max 16 degrees.
You can stack 10 containers on each other and the bottom one will not collapse statically or dynamically. The containers are kept together by twist locks in the corners. To transfer dynamic loads due to rolling on top containers to the ship, the stacks are secured to the deck by rods or wires of all types.
In this case something went wrong and 1900 containers displaced sideways in rough weather and some went overboard. I think it was due to going too fast and ignoring good seamanship. Let the underwriters’ surveyors interview crew and check damaged containers, twist locks and lashing rods.
In the after most bay all 4 starboard, top FEUs of 20 stacks across (total 80) disappeared overboard (twist locks failed ??) and the rest (stacks/FEUs) just displaced/fell starboard on deck still held together by twist locks. Some boxes may have dropped of aft. What a mess. I think the speed of the ship was too high. Maybe they were all drunk?
Heiwa, Not drunk as far as I know, But agree speed may have been a factor. An old timer respected captain I sailed mate for once gave me some very good advice. “Go slow, you do thousands, go fast, you do hundreds of thousands” That was over 40 years ago. Docking, sailing, or avoiding weather. May he RIP. Good friggin guy.
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A lot of mentions here of increasing loading and moment forces from ever increasing container stack heights and weights. Above the structural supports that is a significant reliance on twist locks and lashings/bracings. I never worked container ships, but another industry where items like hundreds of pieces of lifting gear and rigging were serialized, tracked, traced, inspected, and NDTd.
Who maintains control of the twist locks and rigging on these mega box boats? Is it the vessel, the ports, the longshoremen, other/any/all? Are they a controlled item with respect to continuous integrity checks and periodic scheduled NDT? Are fatigue cycles a manageable metric? Or is there just a pile of rigging to grab and go during those quick turn around port stops?
We can speculate certainly that an amount of rolling initiated a failure, but ultimately the actual physical failure would have to be rigging at some point. Perhaps it is the case that the stack heights have exceeded the safety margin, but I’m also curious about the rigging itself.
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No. When they break or found defective they are replaced or repaired (if the part is a replaceable component.)
Pretty much, Yes.
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Thanks. And wow, that seems like a wildly irresponsible thing for an underwriter to be ok with. I get that it would likely be a gargantuan and perhaps impossible task to fully control those, but shit. We’re really counting on untraceable rigging of unknown integrity to hold hundreds of eight or nine stacks of containers and we’re surprised when they fail and propagate further failures and losses?
Welcome to the real world of cargo carriage. Here is Macgregor and Taiyo’s Container Securing Systems catalog. It helps explain things…
https://www.macgregor.com/globalassets/picturepark/imported-assets/65120.pdf
https://www.taiyo-lashing.com/images/catalogue.pdf
We took a couple of the bins and put covers with a hole on top painted bright red, stenciled with “place damaged twistlocks here”. It was a bright idea from a company safety guy. The only thing I ever got in those boxes were longshoremen’s lunch wrappers and piss bottles.
They are counted, inspected, and lubricated quarterly by the crew. Of course that is only the gear that is not currently being used to lash cargo so maybe half the vessel’s compliment. The rest of the “inspection” is by default the responsibility of the longshoremen who put their hands on the gear and wow could they care less whether it works or not. Only that it is in place and they can then knock off.
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The ship was loaded and lashed by another port than an ILA serviced port or their counterparts/competition. Are they better or worse? Or was the weather routing/speed better or worse? Too many conflicting reports here. But all the experts here have an opinion, Glad to see everything is normal and predictable with whatever you fellows say happened. You weren’t there.
Ship was less then two years old. Worse case scenario how much bad lashing gear could be aboard?
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A post was split to a new topic: Off-topic from One Apus Thread
Latest from Splash 24/7 today, incl. video:
There will be no Japanese investigation into the incident. Nobody was killed. Only deck cargo was damaged. Only different ship/cargo underwriters will look into the losses. Hopefully cargo interests will sue the shipowner for the damages. And what will the shipowner reply? The ship was 100% seaworthy and a big wave hit the ship, bla, bla, bla.
There are (at least) two different things being discussed here, one is the behavior of a ship in waves which can quickly get involved in complex math. The other is ship routing which, on the ship side of things at least, doesn’t really involve math at all. Or maybe just little simple math.
From the article:
if we take it as read that this accident happened because of giant waves slamming the ship in a storm,’
I still haven’t seen a definitive answer as to what the weather was at the time.
There’s this:
The update said weather at the time was reported as wind force 4 on the Beaufort Wind Scale, corresponding to 13-18 mph winds, with north-westerly seas of 5 to 6 meters and a “long high swell”.
Not a very precise report.
But also that doesn’t match the surface analyses which shows a combined sea and swell of 4 meters. In my experience surface analyses tend to be accurate. It’s not a forecast.
That’d be the first question, what was the weather at the time?
According to a statement the ONE Apus encountered a violent storm cell producing gale-force winds and large swells, roughly 1,600 nm northwest of Hawaii at 23-15 hrs local time on 30 November. As result of heavy rolling of the vessel it is estimated that more than 1,900 containers could have been lost overboard of the vessel on 1 December.
Need to find this statement.
https://www.one-apus-container-incident.com/
A violent storm cell sound like something local.
I will add that to the conversation when I catch up with Mr Pink
Wonder if the seas at the time could be related to a frontal passage? I’ve seen swells appear quickly behind a squall line.
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The VDR’s data collecting unit continuously records 12 hours of onboard activity including date and time; ship position; speed; heading; bridge audio; ship VHF communications relating to operations; bridge conversation; radar information showing actual radar picture at the time of recording; depth under keel; rudder angle; engine order and response; hull opening status; watertight and fire doors status; hull stress monitoring and wind speed and direction.
I hope that this crucial information will be published soon although I have my doubts about that. There is big money at stake and insurance companies might object. However, it will surface in the end when the final accident report is released.