Beached

Re: Pretty tugs

Thank you Tugboat for the very interesting and enlightening observations above re the Abeille!

I have been following this thread with rapt fascination, and have also read an earlier thread about this vessel with further very worthy contributions from Mirelle and Co.

Tugs, towing, salvage....... all very emotive (and often contentious!) topics of conversation! I have only ever been involved with operating 'small' Damen harbour tugs (pushycats, multicats and stantugs), and survey of the two Damen escort tugs here (they have approx 60 and 75 tonnes bollard pull I think), so all info, stories and observations about the larger anchor handling and salvage tugs is most gratefully received here.
 
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Could someone explain what the spraying thing is about please?

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All ocean going tugs are required to carry these so that they can "warn off" any Dragon sailors that get to close whilst racing.

Dragon sailors/helms are known to cut up any commercial vessel whilst racing - passing 6' ahead of a 500.000 GRT is considered to be 5' to much and why didn't the commercial skipper realise that they were racing and give way.

The amount of water that these tugs can discharge is enough to down flood yer average Dragon in 2 seconds - so is money well spent /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Oh - it's also is useful when trying to put out fires!

Peter.
 
They've beached the bloody thing slap bang in the middle of my favourite diving area, guess there will be no more scallops on our plates for a week or two!

Let's just hope they manage to get those containers off before they all break loose.
 
Could someone explain what the spraying thing is about please?


As above post says, they are for fire-fighting. You may have seen footage on TV when the Piper Alpha disaster happened, the tugs and support vessels were using their fire monitors (as they are called) though the blaze was too huge for them to have much effect. They also helped shield from the flames boats that went in to pick up survivors. One class of vessel I was on had 4 monitors up top with a total output of 7,200 tonnes per hour (same as Abeille Bourbon according to her spec.) In calm water if I put the prop pitch to zero and pointed the monitors aft, the recoil drove the boat ahead at approx 2 knots! A sort of extreme 'getyouhome' device if the props fell off? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif Incidentally, vessels that are equipped for firefighting are usually also fitted with a drenching system which smothers the whole boat in water from top to bottom allowing you to get closer to the burning vessel/rig than would otherwise be possible. Very hard to see out the windows though, even with the wipers going!
 
Yes, the stripes are very common on coastguard vessels. We have yellow stripes here i Sweden:

KBV20201.jpg


And Germany:
800px-Cuxhaven_kuestenwache_seefalke.jpg


And Finland (if you can see the vessel under the snow and ice...)

merikarhuWeb.jpg
 
It seems the stripes on coastguard vessels are pretty much standard. Though the colours chance from nation to nation. So maybe the colours are representative of the nations flag. An awful lot of countries have red, white and blue flags though.
 
Yes, except for the Finnish one. Either green or orange is in their flag.

Here is another one, Canada.

CCGS_John_P._Tully_3.jpg


Ah, but here is one country that does not use stripes: Norway.

800px-Kystvakt_sogn.jpg
 
Here is an excerpt from a Reuters article in the weekly 'Bow Wave' newsletter from www.wavyline.com re the MSC Napoli :

"We understand there is a small amount of potentially
dangerous cargo on board -- such as insecticides, pesticides
or perfume -- and the beaching to stop it breaking up is
environmentally the best option," she (a spokeswoman for the Coastguard) told Reuters.

The Napoli is carrying nearly 2,400 containers and was
outward bound from Belgium to Portugal, the ship's owners
Zodiac Maritime said on their Web site.

A spokeswoman for South African stainless steel maker Columbus Stainless told Reuters on Saturday the ship was carrying 160 tonnes of nickel, correcting information from the company on Friday that it was carrying 1,000 tonnes.

That would have been equivalent to nearly 20 percent of
the total amount of nickel held in London Metal Exchange
warehouses.

About two-thirds of world nickel output is used to make
stainless steel and demand has bolstered nickel prices.

On Friday, nickel for delivery in three months closed at
an all-time high of $36,300 a tonne, moving up from
around $13,500 at the start of 2006. On Thursday, nickel
was last indicated at $35,400/35,500.

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I am sure that the salvors will be keeping a very watchful eye out for these containers of nickel...........as well as the rest of the cargo and the ship of course!
 
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