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25th September 2018, 08:19 PM
#31
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26th September 2018, 05:55 AM
#32
Re: Wires
AS regards anchors, before AH were invented, we used to take off the port anchor every trip to Christmas Island and use the anchor chain to secure to mooring buoy. This entailed an ab going over the side on a bosun's chair and securing a strop through the anchor shackle and then shackling the runner from No 1 derrick and hoisting on board, chain broken and then sent back overside with a long strop secured for retrieving and replacing the anchor.
Also during a typhoon in Hong Kong harbour, managed to hold onto a buoy even though the brake band broke, but another of our ships which was at anchor went cruising around the harbour. Luckily, did not hit anything but when we went to retrieve her, found she had lost both anchors and was riding happily to 6+ shacles on each anchor. All good fun and part of the days work.
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26th September 2018, 06:44 AM
#33
Re: Wires
Like many I was catering so have very limited knowledge of deck or engine, though a good understanding of engineers having been an officers steward.
I can box a compass to 32 points and still think I could set a sea anchor, but that is about all I remember from my time at the Vindi.
On a previous answer I found out that a Shackle is 15 fathoms or 90 feet. Thanks for that, you can learn a lot of new info on this site thanks to the plethora of knowledge there is available.
I have seen chain lockers in ships and some do not look that big.
Is there a table that determines how many shackles a ship requires on the chain?
Is it related to the ships displacement, does a 100,000 ton need twice as much as a 50,000 ton ship?
Does the waters a ship may sail in have any bearing on this, or is the decision just part of the design process?
Happy daze John in Oz.
Life is too short to blend in.
John Strange R737787
World Traveller
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26th September 2018, 07:17 AM
#34
Re: Wires
Boxing a compass to 32 points most seafarers could do at one time John. Going to quarter points is a bit harder and is how one steered before gyro compasses, e.g. the course might be given to steer.. NE by N a quarter N.
Or steer ESE a quarter E. The three figure notation as per. Gyro courses I think we would all be lost today without. A gyro compass a lot of people also think it points to true north, it is supposed to, but a gyro also usually has a 1 or 2 degree error, so still require compass errors to be taken. Also when you refer to a cable as a measurement it can be an anchor cable as you say 15 fathoms, or a measurement of distance a tenth of a nautical mile which is not pin point accuracy but is assumed to be 600 feet. There will I suppose be a table put out probably by one of the classification society’s and tonnage ship as regards minimum requirements, as said was about 8/15 on each bower anchor on a 10,000 ton ship. Chain lockers were only built to accomodate the anchor cable and were usually classified as self stowing which I rarely saw done, so obviously their cubic could have been bigger in a lot of cases. To get more accurate information about rules and regulations would have to consult various tomes such as the factory acts regulations and various nautical publications put out by the relevant authority’s. Each of your questions could be a subject and topic on its own. In general as regards length of chain anything above the minimum was left to the owner regarding the necessity to carry more if need be. JWS
Last edited by j.sabourn; 26th September 2018 at 08:23 AM.
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26th September 2018, 09:09 AM
#35
Re: Wires
The length of anchor cable on a ship does not depend on the size of ship but more on the depth of water you expect to be anchoring in. If anchoring in anything over 30 metres of water, on a normal sized ship you would first pay out under control, one shackle before letting go. The reason for this being that in such depths, letting go the anchor from the waterline, it would gain such speed that either the windlass brake could not stop the cable running out of the anchor would land on the sea bed with such force as to damage it. Somewhere in the back of my mind is that the number of shackles on each anchor is dependent upon the ships length but could be wrong.
On the 100 metre long chemical tankers I was on sense 8 shackles each side with a 5 tonne high holding power Andorra attached. On the VLCC I was on the anchors weighed 22 tons and there were 12 shackles on each side. As master, taking over on a new ship one of the most important questions you need to ask the master being relieved is the lengths of the anchor cables and the type of anchors. This is on par with the need to know which way the bow goes when coming astern.
Rgds
J.A.
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