Anyone Interested in Ships

[MarkC]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

Something that used to amuse me was people tapping cylinder head bolts with a hammer when tightening them. The things had just been stretched with a 900bar hydraulic expander, you could see the things stretch by several mm and people thought batting it with a hammer would make a difference. B&W made the bolts round with no flats and supplied small tommy bars to tighten them precisely because they were designed for precise tensioning with the hydraulic pre-tensioning gear.

Only a couple of years ago now - i took over a ship from, well, let's just say a company based in a nation having both Mediterranean & Adriatic coasts, and its Head Office is in a city that lives under permanent threat of a huge natural disaster...

 

Anyway, we needed to lift some Main Engine cylinder heads to replace leaking O-rings, the engine being a B&W 8S35MC, fitted with these hydraulically tightened round nuts. Well, we tried to free the nuts at 900Bar - nothing. Went to 990Bar - still nothing, and, more worryingly, we couldn't get a feeler gauge between the nut & the head, so the things had been overtightened. A phone call to the office, with confirmatory emails (I'm not THAT stupid as to leave myself open to denials of phone calls if it went wrong...) regarding what we were proposing to do and we went to 1150Bar before we got a 0.05mm feeler gauge in. Still we couldn't move the nuts - we had to hammer the things round, destroying the edges of the drillings as we went. Every. Last. Nut. What a job. We had spare cylinder head studs & nuts on board, so once the nuts were sufficiently wound back, we could remove the jacks & remove the studs. It turned out that the clowns who did the last overhaul put THREADLOCK on the threads...

 

The other heads, we left until drydock. The shore crowd brought in to do the job, well versed in dealing with cockups quickly & efficiently, simply gas-axed the studs - the last one on each unit went with one hell of a bang, as you can imagine...

[admiles]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The big blue company.

 

 

You were doing so well up until that point!  :-(

 

 

[jjb1970]

How about a red one....

 

 

[jjb1970]

Or an old Soviet box boat.

 

 

[MarkC]

Just passing Bornholm here - on the northern, "safe", side.  Looks as though we're in for a bit of a beasting once we round the Skaw & head into the North Sea though - have reminded my minions - sorry, ER staff - to double check that everything is properly secured. I will, of course, also have a good look round  before we reach the Skaw...

[drmditch]

2 hours ago, MarkC said:

Just passing Bornholm here - on the northern, "safe", side.  Looks as though we're in for a bit of a beasting once we round the Skaw & head into the North Sea though - have reminded my minions - sorry, ER staff - to double check that everything is properly secured. I will, of course, also have a good look round  before we reach the Skaw...

Do modern ships still encourage the 'one hand for...' rule?

[jjb1970]

Two yellow ro-ro ships.

 

 

[MarkC]

1 hour ago, drmditch said:

Do modern ships still encourage the 'one hand for...' rule?

Of course - it's good seamanship. As is making sure that everything is secured properly - but for the latter, it does no harm to remind everyone...

[admiles]

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

How about a red one....

 

 

 

Much better though I have to confess I'd completely forgotten about CMB.

 

So many "fallen flags"!

[jjb1970]

This one is another odd offshoot of P&O and Swires (I think it was Swires, it's a long time ago) which is now forgotten about. Asia Australia Express operated two ships, Asian Jade and Asian Pearl between Australia, HK and Taiwan. This is in Melbourne, they were built by IHI in Japan and considered good ships. They'll be long gone too as they were built in the late 70's.

 

[jjb1970]

This type of ship is all but dead. There are still loads of general cargo ships, but modern general cargo ships are basically bulk carriers which are not built to the common structural rules (it's a dirty secret of the segment which could blow up if there is a serious accident). 

 

[jjb1970]

I'm attending the Singapore international bunkering conference this week (SIBCON) which is being held at the Sentosa conference centre. Walking back across the boardwalk to the main island I saw this small(-ish) cruise ship at the old cruise terminal. The new cruise terminal is at Marina South Pier and can take the biggest cruise ships in the world, the old terminal probably maxes out around the size of this ship. You can see the skies darkening as rain clouds gather. The buildings in the background are some weird apartment blocks designed by Philippe Starck.

 

[J. S. Bach]

13 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

How about a red one....

The Big Red One? OK. here it is:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Infantry_Division_(United_States)

 

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by J. S. Bach
To correct a spelling error.

[jjb1970]

I remember the movie, one of Mark Hamill's few big non-Star Wars roles!

[Bon Accord]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

This type of ship is all but dead. There are still loads of general cargo ships, but modern general cargo ships are basically bulk carriers which are not built to the common structural rules (it's a dirty secret of the segment which could blow up if there is a serious accident). 

 

 

That one is an ex Bank Line "Fish" class, not sure which though.

One of this class - Global Mariner ex Ruddbank - was the nearest thing the UK ever came to a national training ship in a similar vein to the US marine schools. She was lost in 2000 on the Orinoco after a collision.

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Bon Accord

[New Haven Neil]

My one and only general cargo trip was on this one - the Warwickshire, just before she went off to (Greek) pastures new.  A little basic in accommodation, she was Sunderland built to the same design as a series of Bank Line vessels.  A happy ship, and not too hard work despite her Doxford main engine.  I learned a lot on her, as she was by then (1979 IIRC) the only totally handamatic ship in the fleet.  I loved her.

 

[MarkC]

13 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

My one and only general cargo trip was on this one - the Warwickshire, just before she went off to (Greek) pastures new.  A little basic in accommodation, she was Sunderland built to the same design as a series of Bank Line vessels.  A happy ship, and not too hard work despite her Doxford main engine.  I learned a lot on her, as she was by then (1979 IIRC) the only totally handamatic ship in the fleet.  I loved her.

 

Best trip I ever had, job-wise, was on a 1965 built reefer, carrying frozen chickens from Paranagua to the Gulf, back in 1987. I went out as extra 3rd, but after 5 weeks became the Frosty. A 7 1/2 month trip, including a drydocking in Durban at the end. She was fully handomatic, the only alarms were low LO pressure alarms retrofitted to the 4 MAN gensets. My first defrosting - solo, natch - took me some 30 hours. Subsequent ones took less than 6. The brine room was daunting at first - 16 different reefer zones, with the possibility for 3 different brine circuits, plus the defrosting circuit. Lots and lots of valves to nip up the packing when needed there....

Edited October 6, 2022 by MarkC
Wrong number of gensets...

[St Enodoc]

12 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I'm attending the Singapore international bunkering conference this week (SIBCON) which is being held at the Sentosa conference centre. Walking back across the boardwalk to the main island I saw this small(-ish) cruise ship at the old cruise terminal. The new cruise terminal is at Marina South Pier and can take the biggest cruise ships in the world, the old terminal probably maxes out around the size of this ship. You can see the skies darkening as rain clouds gather. The buildings in the background are some weird apartment blocks designed by Philippe Starck.

 

I used to enjoy looking down at the ships from the cable car. More often than not one of Star Cruises' floating casinos.

[jjb1970]

7 hours ago, MarkC said:

Best trip I ever had, job-wise, was on a 1965 built reefer, carrying frozen chickens from Paranagua to the Gulf, back in 1987. I went out as extra 3rd, but after 5 weeks became the Frosty. A 7 1/2 month trip, including a drydocking in Durban at the end. She was fully handomatic, the only alarms were low LO pressure alarms retrofitted to the 3 MAN gensets. My first defrosting - solo, natch - took me some 30 hours. Subsequent ones took less than 6. The brine room was daunting at first - 16 different reefer zones, with the possibility for 3 different brine circuits, plus the defrosting circuit. Lots and lots of valves to nip up the packing when needed there....

 

The traditional reefer ship is now an unusual sight, even the newer generation ships. I don't think the type will die out as there is still a demand for smaller reefer ships to support deep sea shipping and take fish from the fishing areas to the points of demand but other cargo flows are now dominated by reefer containers. A couple of years ago I was trying to find out some data to help with an analysis of EEDI and operational efficiency and at the time one shipowner had several big reefers on order (which should be delivering around now) and was told by them they expected the ships to be the last reefers they'd build as all future plans were for container ships.

[MarkC]

4 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

The traditional reefer ship is now an unusual sight, even the newer generation ships. I don't think the type will die out as there is still a demand for smaller reefer ships to support deep sea shipping and take fish from the fishing areas to the points of demand but other cargo flows are now dominated by reefer containers. A couple of years ago I was trying to find out some data to help with an analysis of EEDI and operational efficiency and at the time one shipowner had several big reefers on order (which should be delivering around now) and was told by them they expected the ships to be the last reefers they'd build as all future plans were for container ships.

Indeed so. I left the reefer sector in 1988 when I moved to the liquefied gases trades, but even then the newer ships were being fitted with power points for containers being carried as deck cargo. Also at that time we were seeing more palletised cargo, which was a massive change in how things had been too.

 

In the noughties, I spent a lot of time on gas ships trading in the Caribbean, and by then the traditional banana boat (some of which I had served in on the Caribbean to Italy banana run) had pretty much disappeared, replaced by containerisation, albeit the ships concerned were designed for the trade, not the usual box boat type.

[jjb1970]

This time something different. After leaving P&OCL I worked for a Norwegian offshore vessel company called Farstad, they put me on an AHTSS called Far Turbot which spent the winter months chartered by the UK MCA (Coastguard) as an emergency towing vessel (ETV) in the Dover Strait (a salvage vessel, basically). Most of the time it was very boring, just going up and down the same stretches of the Channel, and the Channel can be awful in winter. However we did get one big job. A big OBO called the 'Bona Fulmar', fully loaded with petrol collided with a chemical tanker and was holed more or less amidships, spilling 7,000T of petrol into the channel. We went along side and hosted a salvage team who patched the hole then escorted her to Rotterdam. Two of the divers almost died and had to be medevac'd to a hospital in Belgium. A funny thing was that the cargo was originally thought to be benzene as being Dutch the master told the authorities it was benzin, when it was reported by the BBC as a benzene spill apparently the MCA were getting calls from people in Liverpool claiming to be suffering from benzene poisoning (no, I'm not making it up, that one really is in the 'you couldn't' category). How both ships didn't disappear in a calamitous explosion was a bit of a miracle really, environmentally they were lucky it was petrol as it just evaporated off very quickly even though it was cold. If it had been crude oil it'd have been an environmental disaster.

 

[jjb1970]

Returning to normal, Zim Livorno.

 

[MarkC]

4 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

This time something different. After leaving P&OCL I worked for a Norwegian offshore vessel company called Farstad, they put me on an AHTSS called Far Turbot which spent the winter months chartered by the UK MCA (Coastguard) as an emergency towing vessel (ETV) in the Dover Strait (a salvage vessel, basically). Most of the time it was very boring, just going up and down the same stretches of the Channel, and the Channel can be awful in winter. However we did get one big job. A big OBO called the 'Bona Fulmar', fully loaded with petrol collided with a chemical tanker and was holed more or less amidships, spilling 7,000T of petrol into the channel. We went along side and hosted a salvage team who patched the hole then escorted her to Rotterdam. Two of the divers almost died and had to be medevac'd to a hospital in Belgium. A funny thing was that the cargo was originally thought to be benzene as being Dutch the master told the authorities it was benzin, when it was reported by the BBC as a benzene spill apparently the MCA were getting calls from people in Liverpool claiming to be suffering from benzene poisoning (no, I'm not making it up, that one really is in the 'you couldn't' category). How both ships didn't disappear in a calamitous explosion was a bit of a miracle really, environmentally they were lucky it was petrol as it just evaporated off very quickly even though it was cold. If it had been crude oil it'd have been an environmental disaster.

 

Opportunist scallys, eh?

 

I would imagine that the Master & OOW of the chemical tanker would have some serious questions to answer - hitting that OBO bang (no pun intended - much) midships was some going, although the OBO wouldn't be totally blameless either...

 

As you say, how there wasn't a huge explosion is a good question - unless it was simply that the atmosphere in way of the hole as the ships came apart was simply too rich to permit any sparks to set off combustion.

 

Great, albeit scary, photographs.

Edited October 6, 2022 by MarkC
rectifying a trypping eror...

[Ron Ron Ron]

Train Ferry - Messina - Sept 2022

 

 

 

 

[brian daniels]

Had a nice trip on the Waverley on Monday from Tower Pier to Red Sands Forts near Whitstable off the Kent coast. 10 hours paddling up and down the Thames, very enjoyable.