The SL7’s were real beauties. I attended the sea trials of the three built in Holland, the Sea-Land McLean, Resource and Exchange. The first one delivered by the RDM Shipyard in Rotterdam in 1973 was the Sea-Land Exchange. With 120.000 hp in their belly they did 33 knots. During the trials they even pushed it up to 36 knots as could be seen on the Ametek Straza doppler SOG log. I remember that during those trials on one ship, when it made a sharp turn, the entire buffet fell on the floor. Landlubber caterers…
The quality of the pilots we had was usually very good. An exemption was what happened, we thought, with the Argentinian pilot on the River Plate on our way to Buenos Aires. The Río de la Plata’s bottom is covered with huge amounts of fine-grained silty clay sediments, soft mud. To keep the fairway navigable the river had to be dredged heavily the year round. However, in the fairway was a mud bar which could be passed, depending on the tidal conditions, only for a period of a couple of hours.
After the pilot had boarded there was a dispute between him and the captain about the time of passing the bar. The pilot wanted to proceed soonest but the captain thought that, according to the information we had, we were already on the late side. The pilot convinced him by saying that the bar changes all the time and he knew best. We then sailed up the river and after about 45 minutes we were almost thrown off our feet as the ship sure enough ran into the mud bar, still advancing quite a bit in the soft mud and then stopped.
The captain was furious and demanded an explanation of the pilot, he only said: ‘No problem Captain, we go through the bar’. He ordered hard to port and full ahead and the ship started turning. About 30° later he ordered hard to starboard and after a little while the ship started to move slowly forward. That was repeated a couple of times and then we were suddenly free of the bar, we had literally ploughed through the top of the mud bar!
Although the captain threatened the pilot to report him to the authorities, in the end he realized that we would have to wait outside for the next tide and time is money.
Zona Comun Pilot Boat on Río de la Plata(Photo by K.C.)
Closest I’ve ever come to having a collision with another ship was at Zona Comun pilot station. We were downbound from Zarte which is another 45 miles upriver from Buenos Aires and were changing pilots.
Late at night, we had a pilot boat alongside and another ship got underway from the anchorage next to the channel port side, but didn’t call anyone, switch their anchor lights over or shut off the deck lights. We were a bit too close to the anchorage to begin with because the wind had just started to gust up to 45 kts on the stbd beam and were setting down too close to the anchorage. The pilot seemed fatigued, he didn’t respond to the leeway till I mentioned we were getting set and again that he needed come over some more to correct. At 4000+ square meters of sail area we set like crazy at low speeds.
To avoid we had the wheel hard over to stbd and I rang up sea speed and hit the load up program bypass to try to get a couple extra turns for better ROT. The pilots were talking on the radio in Spanish when the new pilots came to the bridge and immediately went to the chart table and started their paperwork, asking me for last port, next port ect, jfc, bad time right now.
There was a sail boat involved as well, he tacked twice to avoid but I wasn’t really able to tell much because visually from the wheelhouse everything is rapidly spinning counterclockwise. The whole time I’m thinking, " I wonder how much water there is here?"
Meanwhile the third mate had been at the pilot ladder the whole time, when he got to the wheel house I told him I only had a only gotten a ship length on the other ship, 3/m just says, “less than that captain”.
As I understand there are something like five pilot associations on that river and they all compete, every day low prices, but they all hate each other and refuse to cooperate.
An interesting time lapse video of a ship coming down the Parana River ( a branch of Rio de la Plata). The ship is above Zarte coming downriver, Zarte terminal is at the end on the right.
Besides sailing on one (the MCLEAN), I also towed one a couple of years later, from Philly to New Orleans for conversion. Talk about having its own mind. . . both wheels were locked so we had to fight that. When coming across Hatteras, we made a negative 2 miles for a 24 hour period until the wind died down. . . . lots of fun. . . . . . .behaving nicely here: Scan10003 by Carey Akin, on Flickr
That’s the first time I’ve seen a video on the effects of wind on handling a car carrier but all that materiel is available (in printed form) aboard ship.
So you put the ship at risk (approaching the Pilot station and entry point) because you shared with the pilot something the Captain obviously did not want you to share. As a Pilot, I would be pissed if I found out (later) you had an elevator but elected not to use it. So be it.
But still not sure your strategy was a winning one…for anyone.
Sounds like you and the Captain got along splendidly.
Well, Mr. Pilot, define “risk”. How long does it take the pilot to hoof up 10 or eleven decks to the bridge, compared to the elevator? And how does that time compare to the time it took for the pilot to communicate with the pilot boat, and for the captain to acquiesce?
The answer is, Mr. Pilot, to the best of my recollection, longer than acquiescing. You weren’t there to pass judgment on risk!
Apparently the strategy was a winning one: The pilot got on the elevator, and arrived to the wheelhouse without having a heart attack or shortness of breath, ready to work his pilot magic. And when my tour was up, I was given a positive evaluation. My only regret is that the captain loss his life at sea on 01Oct2015.
There are two types of people on ships with elevators. Those who have been stuck in the elevator when it broke and those that will eventually be stuck in the elevator when it breaks.
Those who are privy to the experience of being stuck in a small metal box which is effectively a chimney for the engine room use the stairs. That includes a large number of pilots I’ve met over the years.
Mr. Pilot. . . As a maritime professional with your 22+ years as a harbor pilot, maneuvering in tight quarters with many foreign ships, I know you know what they say about ASSUME.
Really, what few details pray tell?? And you know, if the European pilot was inclined to take the stairs, he most likely would have said, “Let’s go”. But, since European pilots can cut through BS easily, he was disinclined to climb 12 decks. He knew how common elevators were on ships in his “world”, and which ones were “operationally sound” or not.
In your experience, with different types of ships, you may have gained the experience to not trust elevators. On the Ro-ro in the story, the TBF on the elevator was low, if not zero. I have no recollection of the elevator failing on that cruise. Perhaps the pilot queried me about the elevator status; I don’t recall.
Although I’m now retired, after 23 years in the US merchant marine, all of it deep-sea, and having sailed as master for many years before taking the 2M job on that ship, I was adequately qualified to have assessed the risk to the ship, to the environment, and to the crew.
I would say on the contrary, that these types of handy size tankers are among the easiest vessels to maneuver. They turn on a dime. On top of being equipped with a bow thruster, some with CPP others with unlimited number of starts, use of tug or tugs is compulsory. Large Cb and small L/B ratio means to me; good maneuvering characteristics. Like it was said here, they turn very easily on the wheel but are more difficult to steady up; little dynamical or directional stability. Equipped with CPP, they run for ever at Stop.
How do you keep the LCG ahead of the LCF? Equilibrium will result in a vessel trim by the head. Worst case scenario that will turn out to erratic steering, swinging exceedingly … steadying insufficiently.
Have you ever climb a pilot ladder, a gangway followed by 120 steps at 03h00 in the morning, dressed in floating winter gears, with a backpack filled with heavy electronics at 60 years old !!! You don’t give a dam how looks the elevator, you just use it !
Well… you have to weigh the odds of rudder failure with cardiac arrest on a 12 story climb. For an elderly pilot the offs probably favor using the elevator.
The Resolution Bay class of container vessels had twin screws and a single rudder. They manoeuvred like a half tide rock at slow speed but were just fine at 27 knots.
The pilot boarded through a gun port door after a short climb of about 3 metres and there was a lift entrance on that deck to one deck below the bridge.
We did some trials with winching the pilot from a helicopter off Wellington, New Zealand, which was well liked by everyone except the bean counters. The pilots were lowered down to the bridge wing.
Oh yes…the saga of twin screw and single rudder ships.
Most pilots (myself included) have great stories about these abominations.
Next in class are the twin screw ships with rudders mounted on the side of the hub, not in line with the prop shaft. Almost as bad as single screw, twin rudders. But they are a slight improvement.
One has to ask…as we are discussing in another thread…what were these designers thinking???
The first generation of container ships had twin screws and single rudders. I have no experience with this configuration but they must have sailed as a drunken mop, as we say, over the seven seas. What these designers were thinking is a good question as even a layman can understand that as the rudder is not in the direct slipstream of the propeller there is very little pressure on the rudder, hence bad steering. With slow speed maneuvring the pressure is about zero, nice. They should have let the designers drive a car where the steering wheel has a large slack in the middle and see how they would have liked that…
One would expect that a twin screw ship with twin rudders would offer a considerable improvement but you say it is only a slight improvement. Vessels fitted with inward-turning twin-screws have a very much narrower and stronger screw stream and hence better steering qualities than found with outward-turning propellers.
If twin rudders are used, they are usually placed slightly outboard of the propshaft centerlines. This is done to facilitate propshaft removal for bearing servicing etc.
Ships are usually characterized by different hull forms and more complex stern configuration because of the presence of appendages such as skegs and shaft lines, which can strongly affect maneuverability behavior so it is not an easy task to predict how a ship will steer as it depends on quite a few parameters.
