[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;170111]In some cases lying ahull in heavy weather may be a viable option, even for a large vessel. It depends on the circumstances. It’s not a tactic that many mariners are familar with and it’s controversal but based on my experience in heavy weather it shouldn’t be ruled out, especially not based on only one experience.
Depending on the seas etc, when the ship regains power you may not be able to improve the situation significantly by maneuvering under power or only be able to improve things only marginally.[/QUOTE]
KC,
That is intriguing. I am NOT a master with heavy weather experience so educate me/us about this. To me lying ahull in heavy weather as a viable option seems to be viable only if the other option is becoming a submarine. The part about having propulsion not improving the situation but marginally is also interesting. Could you explain ? You have experience with this?
Thanks
tengineer
[QUOTE=tengineer1;170115]KC,
That is intriguing. I am NOT a master with heavy weather experience so educate me/us about this. To me lying ahull in heavy weather as a viable option seems to be viable only if the other option is becoming a submarine. The part about having propulsion not improving the situation but marginally is also interesting. Could you explain ? You have experience with this?
Thanks
tengineer[/QUOTE]
It boils down to your GM, the ship’s rolling period and the wave period. If having the seas beam-to (or near beam-to) does not cause synchronous rolling then the ship will settle (more or less) onto a heading where the forces are in equilibrium. I’ve heard on TV that the ship will be “battered helplessly” by the waves, I think they imagine a breakwater with seas breaking over it, but in fact the ship will be “sailing” rapidly downwind reducing the forces of the beam seas.
Yes, I do have experience with this, took some heavy rolls due to parametric rolling and M/E tripped out on low lube-oil pressure.
The sat phone has a polling feature. So the time when the sat phone stopped responding to polling is may be when the ship foundered. Inmarsat would have a record of that.
That also probably coincides with the time that the brief EPIRB signal was picked up. The EPIRB may have gotten hung up or smashed as the ship went down. That seems like as logical a guess as any as to why the EPIRB transmitted briefly, then stopped.
If the time of the EPIRB transmission matches the time that sat phone polling was lost, that is probably when the ship foundered.
There is a lot of stuff floating over a large area. That is going to make it more difficult to sight the lifeboats and life rafts amongst the clutter. Even more difficult to spot men in the water.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;170116]It boils down to your GM, the ship’s rolling period and the wave period. If having the seas beam-to (or near beam-to) does not cause synchronous rolling then the ship will settle (more or less) onto a heading where the forces are in equilibrium. I’ve heard on TV that the ship will be “battered helplessly” by the waves, I think they imagine a breakwater with seas breaking over it, but in fact the ship will be “sailing” rapidly downwind reducing the forces of the beam seas.[/QUOTE]
Same theory goes for the bigger downeast lobster boats. My neighbor fishes a 50’ northen bay (wesmac) and I’ve seen them ripping through gear in 10+ seas, sitting like a duck in a pond. Not a great deal steaming through that kind of weather, but once it settles onto the right heading and is drifting, no problem.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;170116]It boils down to your GM, the ship’s rolling period and the wave period. If having the seas beam-to (or near beam-to) does not cause synchronous rolling then the ship will settle (more or less) onto a heading where the forces are in equilibrium. I’ve heard on TV that the ship will be “battered heaplessly” by the waves, I think they imagine a breakwater with seas breaking over it, but in fact the ship will be “sailing” rapidly downnwind reducing the forces of the beam seas.[/QUOTE]
In retrospect that makes sense assuming you don’t have too much windage where the wind is trying to do one thing and seas another. Low in the water but still floating you kind of go with the flow.
I am smiling a bit now because as an engineer I have been in very heavy seas and lost propulsion. We fought thru horrendous conditions down below to restore power. You can imagine how we would have reacted if upon calling the bridge to announce our success we’d been told… "Thanks, but not needed actually. We will be fine"
Thanks for the information.
[QUOTE=tengineer1;170119]In retrospect that makes sense assuming you don’t have too much windage where the wind is trying to do one thing and seas another. Low in the water but still floating you kind of go with the flow.
I am smiling a bit now because as an engineer I have been in very heavy seas and lost propulsion. We fought thru horrendous conditions down below to restore power. You can imagine how we would have reacted if upon calling the bridge to announce our success we’d been told… "Thanks, but not needed actually. We will be fine"
Thanks for the information.[/QUOTE]
This was with 5000+ square meters of sail (windage, no actually sails) area. Winds were 70 kts, we were “sailing” sideways down wind at 6 kts.
EDIT: I not claiming my situation was comparable, just saying that losing power is not necessarily as bad as it’s been depicted and lying a-hull is in fact actually a proven heavy weather tactic.
Yeh, agreed. TBSIG is an old, old salt with countless years at sea as Chief, and a US military combat veteran aviator to boot. He may speak freely here. I for one value his opinion greatly.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;170116]It boils down to your GM, the ship’s rolling period and the wave period. If having the seas beam-to (or near beam-to) does not cause synchronous rolling then the ship will settle (more or less) onto a heading where the forces are in equilibrium. I’ve heard on TV that the ship will be “battered helplessly” by the waves, I think they imagine a breakwater with seas breaking over it, but in fact the ship will be “sailing” rapidly downwind reducing the forces of the beam seas.
Yes, I do have experience with this, took some heavy rolls due to parametric rolling and M/E tripped out on low lube-oil pressure.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Peter01;170099]This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve read on this forum, ever. I am here to read the accounts of other maritime professionals regarding this crisis, not read random screeds.[/QUOTE]
If that is embarrassing you should read more. You will surely commit suicide from embarrassment after an hour or two of perusing some of the things that have been on these forums. I happen to agree with “Too Bad Steam Is Gone”. We for the most part are very experienced professionals here. Probably one or two thousand years of combined experience. We for the most part think the USCG has lost its way, too busy pissing away money watching for “terror” to be able to do the job of protecting and saving lives at sea which they happen to be very good at when given the tools. I also think the the USCG in its inspection of vessels and licensing of mariners is an example of regulatory capture. If you want unbiased sanitized opinion why in the world are you reading what a bunch of sailors have to say?
[QUOTE=patrioticgirl1776;170091]As a visitor to this forum, I am extremely appreciative of the information that has been shared but am somewhat shocked at the negativity expressed by some. Seadog’s post expresses my sentiment exactly. My heart aches for the whole Mariner community, but especially for the family and friends of the captain and crew. Out of respect for those impacted, I ask that everyone please refrain from making statements that may diminish the HOPE that MOST are holding on to.[/QUOTE]
fine, I will refrain from making additional statements concerning my beliefs the EL FARO is lost and should the ship or survivors are found, I will very gladly stand before all here to receive your collective pummeling of me saying how I got it so wrong. Again, time alone now will tell us how this sad story ends. I expect that today should bring some closure of this terrible saga to us all.
[QUOTE=tengineer1;170115]That is intriguing. I am NOT a master with heavy weather experience so educate me/us about this. To me lying ahull in heavy weather as a viable option seems to be viable only if the other option is becoming a submarine. The part about having propulsion not improving the situation but marginally is also interesting. Could you explain ? You have experience with this?[/QUOTE]
I do not believe any mariner would choose to lie “a hull” in any storm but given the right circumstances a ship can survive however that requires a fair margin of excess righting arm, a deck, hatches and vents which are truly watertight and most importantly not having cargo which will come adrift or shift when subject to the intense rolls. I do not think the EL FARO would pass even one of the three criteria
"A helicopter found a survival suit Sunday night with unidentifiable remains inside the suit, families told First Coast News. Crews also found a heavily damaged life boat and a life raft with no survivors on board."
[QUOTE=Reginald Strainworth III;170082]With a reported list of 15 degrees, how does that affect the ability to deploy the two lifeboats? And how exactly would the gravity davits work to lower the lifeboats into the churning seas? Is it automatic or must it be manually operated?[/QUOTE]
based on their antiquated design, means of being launched and height from the water I simply cannot see how either of the boats on EL FARO could have been used in the conditions the crew was experiencing. Simply the very last factor would cause the low side boat to be many meters away from the hull as it was being lowered, With a hull rolling deeply, that boat would be a pendulum striking the vessel repeatedly. They were designed to be boarded from that very high deck on the superstructure so as it was going down it would be filled with personnel. At least one man would have to remain onboard the EL FARO to raise the brake on the winch to lower the boat.
Had the vessel taken an even greater heel than 15degrees it becomes extremely unlikely that a boat could even be boarded before it was lowered requiring the crew to jump and try to board it.
Regarding rafts, they can certainly be deployed from the deck but they must be boarded from the water. How that could ever be successfully done in hurricane conditions seems beyond the possible?
[QUOTE=cmakin;170104]Yup, they are wet boats but sealed up they can run just about through anything. I remember towing and SL-7 through 30+ seas off of Hatteras. . . . . not pleasant at all . . .
Updated - - -
You sure about that? Hmmm. . . .[/QUOTE]
Yes sir. I work on that vessel Mondays and Tuesday . I’m a longshoreman and load the containers inside the vessel. I spoke to one of the Polish guys and he told me he was taking pipes inside the engine room and my roro truck was parked in their way.
By Abby Phillip and Michael E. Miller October 5 at 10:08 AM
El Faro, the cargo ship that went missing at sea in the path of Hurricane Joaquin, has likely sunk, the Coast Guard said at a news conference Monday.
“We are assuming that the vessel has sunk,” said U.S. Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor.
The 790-foot American container ship and the 33 people on board have been missing for four days, and the Coast Guard has scoured more than 70,000 square nautical miles for the vessel.
Search crews spotted life rings, debris and an oil slick near El Faro’s last known location — but for days, there were no signs of the ship or survivors.
But the Coast Guard official said Monday that human remains were recovered in at least one survival suit.
Chief Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios told the AP that the Coast Guard and El Faro’s owner have concluded that the ship was lost.
“We’ve been going with no sleep for four days,” Laurie Bobillot, whose daughter Danielle Randolph was aboard the ship, told The Washington Post on Sunday night from Jacksonville, Fla., where she and other family members of the crew have gathered.
The search continues for the missing crew on board, according to Rios.
“Not sure if you’ve been following the weather at all,” Randolph wrote in an email Bobillot on Thursday, “but there is a hurricane out here and we are heading straight into it.”
Just hours after Randolph sent her e-mail, El Faro began to take on water and tilt to one side, according to the ship’s owner, TOTE Maritime. Then the ship’s communications suddenly went quiet.
[QUOTE=lm1883;170120]Too Bad Steam Is Gone is a well respected member of this community and you sir, seem rather new here.[/QUOTE]
I registered on this site in 2010 and have been a regular reader ever since. The only reason I wade into the forums here at this point is due to the tragic issue at hand, and that to express my dismay that someone would try to push an unrelated issue while a search for a lost ship is ongoing. That’s all I am saying about this. Back to the issue at hand.
[QUOTE=CJ_RORO;170132]Yes sir. I work on that vessel Mondays and Tuesday . I’m a longshoreman and load the containers inside the vessel. I spoke to one of the Polish guys and he told me he was taking pipes inside the engine room and my roro truck was parked in their way.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=New3M;170131]It was just on CNN. Found a lifeboat beat up and some life rafts and a “handful” of gumby suits. One body in a suit but it was unidentifiable.[/QUOTE]
In follow up questions I believe they said they found roughly half of the approx 46 exposure suits believed to be on board, and as stated above, remains in one.
The USCG Captain said something moving…
“We’re not going to discount someone’s will to survive, so that’s why we’re still searching today.”