savageseadog
Well-known member
They managed to build the pyramids
Suez blocked.
- Thread starter burgundyben
- Start date
penfold
Well-known member
That was the ancient egyptians, these ones are much younger.
sgr143
Active member
There might be serious aftereffects - as First Dog on the Moon explains, in their own very special way...
Shipsplaining with everyone's favourite Large Sea Boat expert Captain Onthemoon | First Dog on the Moon
Shipsplaining with everyone's favourite Large Sea Boat expert Captain Onthemoon | First Dog on the Moon
Gary Fox
N/A
Kukri
Well-known member
As tunnelling shields are to the London Underground, so cutter suction dredgers with their attendant craft, such as hopper barges, are to the Suez Canal. They had the “10th of Ramadan” working on the stern, earlier, but that’s free now. yes
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Adios
...
Who isn't working on solutions in their head!! Frankly I'd love to be responsible for a challenge like getting that out, what man wouldn't. They are lossing billions a day so I imagine my equipment budget would be near limitless. My phone would be red hot from making calls to the world leading expert contractor team I'd assemble, who'd arrive at my command centre by blackhawk helicopter. To do it justice I imagine I'd have to be played by Gerard Butler when Hollywood bought the rights to my book. Sad reality this is probably the guy that couldn't pass the buck and his budget was maxed out by that little excavator. Oh well.
Kukri
Well-known member
Warning: can bore for Britain about this.
You can use what is known in the salvage business as “beach tackle” to use a lot of power to refloat a grounded or indeed a beached ship. It works really well, if you have time.
I’ve seen it done using very large wire rope blocks; the real specialists at that used to be Malayan Towage and Salvage, who are Filipino not Malaysian, and they used to use big flat topped barges with blocks carefully welded to the deck and huge anchors laid out to seaward. Each barge had a couple of fixed blocks and the moving blocks were (carefully) welded to the strongest bits of the ship, Backed up round other strong bits, as you don’t want bollards flying off in your direction, and the ship was sometimes well up in the mangroves where a typhoon had dropped her.
A tug then took the “hauling part” of the wire rope and steamed off with it, sheering vigorously, and the “immovable object” thought better of it as several hundred tons were applied! If necessary the barges could be repositioned and the process repeated. In Malayan’s cases, it was sometimes necessary to fight off guerrillas at the same time. They tended to get good salvage awards.
The legendary Captain Kato of Nippon Salvage got this British passenger cargo ship, seen here in her “post typhoon” state, afloat, and undamaged, with a combination of beach tackle and digging her own private canal. She had been on her side; he’d already got her upright by this point:
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Kukri
Well-known member
The anchor windlasses can’t do more than get the anchors and chains up. You need something much more powerful.
Wandering gently off the topic, I was in Bugsier’s office in Hamburg when Captain Meyer’s phone rang. It was, I think, Captain Friis and he was ringing from Cuxhaven to report on the bollard pull trials for this fine vessel, which had just been fitted with Kort nozzles to increase her bollard pull for the North Sea oil production platform tow outs that were a feature of that era:
Karl Gunter Meyer repeated the conversation to me:
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Better have the good news.”
“We got 200 tons. Straight pull. GL are happy”
“...and...?”
“The dock wall is at the bottom of the dock!”
PS - a platform tow out.
I’d say that looks like Atlantic, Arctic, Smit Rotterdam, Oceanic, Smit Houston and Caribic running stern tug. About nine hundred tons of pull in that picture costing sums of money that even oil companies had to think about.
Wandering gently off the topic, I was in Bugsier’s office in Hamburg when Captain Meyer’s phone rang. It was, I think, Captain Friis and he was ringing from Cuxhaven to report on the bollard pull trials for this fine vessel, which had just been fitted with Kort nozzles to increase her bollard pull for the North Sea oil production platform tow outs that were a feature of that era:
Karl Gunter Meyer repeated the conversation to me:
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Better have the good news.”
“We got 200 tons. Straight pull. GL are happy”
“...and...?”
“The dock wall is at the bottom of the dock!”
PS - a platform tow out.
I’d say that looks like Atlantic, Arctic, Smit Rotterdam, Oceanic, Smit Houston and Caribic running stern tug. About nine hundred tons of pull in that picture costing sums of money that even oil companies had to think about.
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Adios
...
It seems logical to use the earth to pull on as you can't get mechanical advantage just with tugs in the water. I'd be ordering up some pile driving equipment to shove some massive posts into the dirt. Cant be a more handy situation than having land on either side of it. They don't seem to be taking advantage of that from the photos i've seen.
Bajansailor
Well-known member
What type of anchors would they have typically used for a scenario like this?
Were they carefully arranged so that a number of them were laid, all sharing the load equally?
Or are there monster anchors that can hold 300 tonnes?
Kukri
Well-known member
A number of them. Quite a good number, and they were somewhat Danforth-like.
Kukri
Well-known member
There is another part to this story:
Feng Shui
According to CNCo fleet folklore, as related to the writer by the late Barrie Gant, when the "Changsha" returned to Hong Kong, the crew refused to sign new Articles, saying that the ship was unlucky, and they would not sign on again until a feng shui expert had visited the ship and diagnosed her problem.
Attempts by CNCo Management to palm the crew off with a cheap feng shui expert were to no avail; the crew, through their appointed spokesmen (presumably the Bosun, the Number One Fireman and the Chief Steward) specified the most renowned (and consequently expensive) feng shui expert to be found in Hong Kong.
This gentleman was contacted; he agreed to come aboard and inspect the ship,which he did, accompanied by a "crocoodile" of crew representatives and CNCo management, the latter dreading what he might see fit to require (Hong Kongers will recall that the entrance to the Connaught Centre is not located where you might expect it to be, thanks to the demands of feng shui). There was a suggestion that the funnel might have to be moved.
After a careful tour of inspection, the feng shui expert assembled the management team and the crew representatives, and announced, "I have found the problem!" (Sharp intake of breath from management..)
"In the First Class Smoking Room, there is a Buddha." (So there was, a very nice antique, in a niche.)
"This is the cause of the trouble. He is a Land Buddha, so he is always wanting to make the ship go to land!"
"I will replace him with a Sea Buddha, and you will have no more trouble!"
The antique Buddha disappeared into the feng shui expert's capacious bag, out of which he produced a vile piece of tourist tat, looking vaguely Buddha shaped, which he proceeded to place, reverently, in the niche vacated by the antique.
And indeed there was no more trouble...
Feng Shui
According to CNCo fleet folklore, as related to the writer by the late Barrie Gant, when the "Changsha" returned to Hong Kong, the crew refused to sign new Articles, saying that the ship was unlucky, and they would not sign on again until a feng shui expert had visited the ship and diagnosed her problem.
Attempts by CNCo Management to palm the crew off with a cheap feng shui expert were to no avail; the crew, through their appointed spokesmen (presumably the Bosun, the Number One Fireman and the Chief Steward) specified the most renowned (and consequently expensive) feng shui expert to be found in Hong Kong.
This gentleman was contacted; he agreed to come aboard and inspect the ship,which he did, accompanied by a "crocoodile" of crew representatives and CNCo management, the latter dreading what he might see fit to require (Hong Kongers will recall that the entrance to the Connaught Centre is not located where you might expect it to be, thanks to the demands of feng shui). There was a suggestion that the funnel might have to be moved.
After a careful tour of inspection, the feng shui expert assembled the management team and the crew representatives, and announced, "I have found the problem!" (Sharp intake of breath from management..)
"In the First Class Smoking Room, there is a Buddha." (So there was, a very nice antique, in a niche.)
"This is the cause of the trouble. He is a Land Buddha, so he is always wanting to make the ship go to land!"
"I will replace him with a Sea Buddha, and you will have no more trouble!"
The antique Buddha disappeared into the feng shui expert's capacious bag, out of which he produced a vile piece of tourist tat, looking vaguely Buddha shaped, which he proceeded to place, reverently, in the niche vacated by the antique.
And indeed there was no more trouble...
Tanqueray
Well-known member
As per Kukri's post 327 - 'Beach Tackle' as the 85' yacht had been parked under unstable (blue slipper clay) cliffs on a spring tide in a F11. Cliffs could not sustain any weight to crane gear down, the local council would not permit machinery on the beach, tugs too expensive to moor off for two weeks so hand digging to hollow out under the hull, construct and weld a steel cradle under the aluminium hull (so that the mast could not tilt back to snag the cliffs), then drag the cradle down a temporary slipway to two moored winch barges offshore.
Apologies for the thread drift so a virtual pint to the first person to name the yacht!
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Gary Fox
N/A
Tzu Hang?
Kukri
Well-known member
Chapeau! A magnificent job.
Kukri
Well-known member
Two reasons:
I think that with such a big ship with such a lot of ground reaction the risk of damaging the structure by applying too much force is very great. Better to get her almost floating and pull gently.
Also it takes a lot of setting up, with ground anchors barges wire blocks and so on.
Beelzebub
Well-known member
Hot air balloons are the obvious solution. Tether loads of balloons to the bow and let them do their stuff. For a booster, ship all YBW posters out there to breathe into the balloons too. Job done 
Rappey
Well-known member
Someone mentioned helium earlier? Guy Martin did something on tv and it was something like £36,000 worth of helium just to lift a person.
Tanqueray
Well-known member
Not the name of the boat no - but I'll give you 1 point because it's almost exactly what the insurance company MD said would happen to me if I didn't get it off unscathed.
Adios
...
Is there some true in the idea we'll run out of helium and thats it gone forever for some reason? And we need it for some medical devices so party balloons are irresponsible? Might be a deal breaker