With the downturn in the OSV sector there are boats all over the world getting put into cold layup with no maintenance being done. If these boats stay in cold layup for several years without having their engines started I imagine it would be a big task to re-active them, is anyone familiar with what are the main problems that would be faced? After a few years some of them would probably only be good for converting to razor blades.
I would suspect that there would be part pilfering going on too, to help the boats that are still running.
Some of the engineers will know 1,000x more, but it will have a lot to do with how well they were laid up, not just how long. But unless valves, pumps etc are exercised you can expect problems; even on operational vessels it’s important to exercise stuff rarely used.
Ship should probably go through dry dock period prior to re-activation after long term cold lay-up. Just imagine all the barnacles not to mention mechanical/eng issues.
If possible the lay up should be in freshwater — rivers and lakes. It makes quite a difference.
Cold weather is also a big advantage over hot humid weather.
Or your company could take the step of having a skeleton maintenance crew that takes care of your fleet. A crew that lives onboard one of the vessels in question and keeps the maintenance up to date and starts the engines on a regular basis. Going to drydock prior to being put back in service is the norm.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;175502]Or your company could take the step of having a skeleton maintenance crew that takes care of your fleet. A crew that lives onboard one of the vessels in question and keeps the maintenance up to date and starts the engines on a regular basis. Going to drydock prior to being put back in service is the norm.[/QUOTE]
Yeah some companies do that but others are just locking the doors leaving them with unmanned. They’ll be big lumps of rust in a few years, would defiantly take drydocks etc to get them up and running again, not an engineer but I imagine that pistons might become seized or something.
When I worked ROS, generators were run once a month, rescue and lifeboat engines once a week,
M/E’s were cranked over at least.
If they really want to be cheap about it like that, I don’t see why a shoreside engineer can’t do it.