The size of your license means nothing if you don’t have the skills to back it up.
If you ain’t first, you’re last!
You can always come ahead, but you can’t always go back.
there are old pilots and there are bold pilots
But there are no old bold pilots
Back and fill, back and fill!
One old Captain I worked for always said, “If you’re gonna hit something, hit it easy”.
Very well said. ‘The man makes the license, the paper doesn’t make the man.’
Safety first and all that but the Gulfmark / Rigdon boats in Fourchon are g-d- ridiculous with their chronic 2 knot speed. Learn how to drive a frigging boat, please.
BTW the idea that a piece of paper makes you anything special – LOL.
[QUOTE=richard8000milesaway;85717]My ship handling mantra is “speed kills”.[/QUOTE]
Speed is like salt on a potato - REALLY easy to put on and DIFFICULT to take off
[QUOTE=ZDriver;85957]Safety first and all that but the Gulfmark / Rigdon boats in Fourchon are g-d- ridiculous with their chronic 2 knot speed. Learn how to drive a frigging boat, please.
BTW the idea that a piece of paper makes you anything special – LOL.[/QUOTE]
I run one of those Gulfmark boats and i dont know which one runs around at 2 knots we usually do about 5kt inless we are stopping the design of the boat makes it quite difficult to move them quickly. Them being completely diesel electric doesnt make stopping exactly easy with the idea of having to slam on the breaks will most likely means either a power chop best case or black out worst case then you lose all propulsion and are dead in the water. They where designed to be DP standby boats I swear they didnt design them to be handling friendly. I am really curious who runs around at 2kt cause they are even more of a handful to steer at that speed.
[QUOTE=orangejulius;85967]I run one of those Gulfmark boats and i dont know which one runs around at 2 knots we usually do about 5kt inless we are stopping the design of the boat makes it quite difficult to move them quickly. Them being completely diesel electric doesnt make stopping exactly easy with the idea of having to slam on the breaks will most likely means either a power chop best case or black out worst case then you lose all propulsion and are dead in the water. They where designed to be DP standby boats I swear they didnt design them to be handling friendly. I am really curious who runs around at 2kt cause they are even more of a handful to steer at that speed.[/QUOTE]
Just a question from somebody that is not a boat driver, but how can those gulfmark boats that aren’t really much bigger than a row boat, with 2 Z-drives in the stern and 2 bow thrusters and a DP cert be handfull to steer?
Because you are not a “boat driver” you can’t understand the way some of the larger vessels do not track well. They tend to slide where they want. Handling them at times feels like riding a unicycle on top of a bowling ball.
That is a nice analogy and paints a good picture for the uninitiated. Is this a hull design flaw or because of the Z-drives? Why would going full power astern cause a blackout? This doesn’t sound like a well designed PMS.
Z-drive boats are infamous for not going where they are pointed, and considerations have to be made for the way in which they turn, by powering the stern into the desired heading. This can, in many cases give them a pronounced slide when maneuvering while moving ahead. They certainly have advantages, and are excellent in many cases. I find the one I’m on difficult to steer smoothly at very slow speeds, because while a standard screwed vessel’s rudder will still have water passing it while out of gear, a z-drive vessel has no steering without an engine clutched in. So, if I’m following a vessel thats going slower than the speed I’d make with one clutched in, I’m constantly correcting course in bursts of thrust. Not impossible, and not really difficult, but occasionally it looks ugly while cruising at low speeds behind traffic. I’ve captained both types of vessel’s and prefer z-drives. So in weighing the good and the bad, I’ll stay with what I’ve got.
Not sure about OSV z-drives but the 120’ tugs I drive will steer with the drive clutched out better than a conventional boat. But we also have a nozzle around the prop I’m assuming an OSV does not.
We do have nozzles. My only guess is that the length, weight, and momentum those create, combined with the hull design that has the nozzles effectively tucked away make the difference. I get no useful change in heading by turning the nozzle without the engine clutched in. I definitely should have been more specific, and disclose that all my experience with z-drives has been aboard OSVs.
If you have shaft generators , you can overload the mains in high thrust maneuvers causing the mains to derate and shaft gens to trip offline. Then you have pucker factor ten! Slow is smooth, Smooth is fast!
The above is for electric thrusters.
Still doesn’t sound like a good design. I can see maybe one or two units dropping but all four units at once sounds bad. It would seem there would be some type of protection there. How can you make it through FMEA if you load up the system to a point where you lose everything. I wouldn’t want a vessel of that poor a design inside my 500m zone. I know it could happen to any vessel but it sounds like your PMS stinks.
Shaft gens would require constant RPM. Do you have CP Z-Drives ?
[QUOTE=captsteve1319;86017]If you have shaft generators , you can overload the mains in high thrust maneuvers causing the mains to derate and shaft gens to trip offline. Then you have pucker factor ten! Slow is smooth, Smooth is fast!
The above is for electric thrusters.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=orangejulius;85967]I run one of those Gulfmark boats and i dont know which one runs around at 2 knots we usually do about 5kt inless we are stopping the design of the boat makes it quite difficult to move them quickly. Them being completely diesel electric doesnt make stopping exactly easy with the idea of having to slam on the breaks will most likely means either a power chop best case or black out worst case then you lose all propulsion and are dead in the water. They where designed to be DP standby boats I swear they didnt design them to be handling friendly. I am really curious who runs around at 2kt cause they are even more of a handful to steer at that speed.[/QUOTE]
It’s not every Gulfmark boat that is a problem by any stretch, but I did meet one coming out of Flotation one time that was doing 1.9 (AIS) and lost almost half that speed in the turn, I think he was at 1.1 when we finally met. Suffice it to say that I was holding me-p for what seemed like half an hour until he got out of there.
For the record as long as you can hold 3 knots I’ll follow you forever and not bat an eyelash. I usually run just over 4 if there’s no traffic. And thanks for the explanation of the diesel electric problems, that does explain a lot of it of what I have seen around Fourchon. Quick question one Z drive guy to another what is the turning speed on your units?