Yes. And low pressure steam is the very best tool, but so few steam ships nowadays I didn’t think it useful to mention steam. I remember sailing on the Exxon Philadelphia in the 1980s, iced-over, running to Valdez, watching the pumpman and an engineer melting out valve rods with low pressure steam, and watching the huge clouds of steam rise over the deck.
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Until the mortar goes off in a deckhands hand and you end up paying out over a million in court, as happened on that very vessel.
Giving the havoc that I’ve seen ice hammers wreak on vessel equipment I would be very hesitant to hand a deckhand a chainsaw, but I am curious about where/how that is used if you’d like to enlighten us.
There is certainly something wrong with you if you use a mortar for de-icing. The same is true for the captain who allows this is.
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Oh, but it’s all good for TV and the “Reality” junkies that swarm to this stuff. Half of the dolts I see on that show, I’d have a hard time granting an interview to. Their goofing off, dangerous stunts and poor operational habits would get them 86’d off my boat pretty quickly. And, I’m not some stuffy maritime academy grad, or stick in the mud Captain Bligh. There’s just areas of operation and situations where the inattention, slacking and screwing around stops.
The AB in the photo is using the electric demo hammer. To use a chainsaw, make cuts across ice masses like the vertical mass in the left of the photo, parallel or diagonal to the deck. Then use the demo hammer or spuds to clear out the solid between the cuts. Like using a saw and chisel to clear out mortises in wood. Using both tools is the key.
The demo hammers don’t like spongy ice. The bit just busts a hole through and gets bogged in… They work fine on hard ice though.
Electric chainsaws are best. They lay round for years without use, and old fuel is bad fuel. Every year in January we have to run an inspection for deicing tools, in anticipation of icing season, and I’m surprised how many tools go missing/are rusted up.
We’ve had the same experience. It’s a destructive process, and each captain has to decide how far he wants to go with it re: damage to the boat. Things that can’t take punishment, like the hydraulic valves in the cargo-gear driving stations on our boats, have custom tarps that go over the pipe cages protecting the station. The tarp gets destroyed in the deicing process, but the stuff inside has little ice covering, if you’re lucky.
In icing weather our crews haul in the exterior fire hoses and life-rings. They’re useless if buried in ice. The exterior hydrants are drained. And the OOW has to keep an eye on the EPIRB, in case that starts getting buried. Nothing you can really do about the liferafts, except hope the leeward one is OK.
The other big danger I neglected to mention in icing on our boats is falling ice. As soon as the weather begins to warm and the ice thaws, ice starts falling from the masts and rigging, in big pieces…
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They get paid to do that stupid stuff. Those Reality shows often get hyped up for the sake of the viewer. Otherwise it would be mundane and boring.
how about the best way to deal with icing…keep your vessel away from where icing conditions exist. This especially goes for today’s crab fishermen who all have an IFQ. That is the whole rationale for issuing them in the first place…to enhance safety in an industry with a terrible loss rate.
As far as how I feel about IFQs being owned by the vessel owners and not leased by them is something I have to say that such valuable public resources being given away by the Congress was the crowning achievement of that master of corruption, the late Ted Stevens. Hundreds and hundreds of Alaskan fishermen were given ownership to many hundreds of millions worth of resource previously owned by everyone in the nation and they now own that resource in perpetuity and can even sell it for cashola.
Inflatable boots have been used on airplanes since 1930 or so. Airplanes are easier, the ice only builds up on the leading edges of the airfoils for the most part unless you’re parked in freezing rain.
This whole thread makes me glad I only catch Maryland crabs when the biggest danger is sunburn.
Yes, shipping lent the idea from the aviation world. The airplane has the advantage that the broken ice is blown away by the plane’s airflow.
I disagree I crab fished for years and Our wheelhouse crew and myself a Engineer held 1600 ton licenses and all appropriate stcw
Back in the days of steam we left the deck machinery ticking over before we got in ice.
