worst place to moor a ship

[Colin Pook]

We've had places and ships and crew, now how about the worst places to moor. Mine has to be Banias in Syria, and Tripoli in Lebanon. Both are off shore pipe-line loading for tankers. Attempting to moor in Banias one time, first we parted the wire messenger, then a short time later we actually parted one of the stern line wires that had just been turned up on the bitts, and what a size those mooring wires were too, and absolutely full of dangerous 'barbs'. A local berthing master!! master?!! in charge and hadn't a clue what he wanted us to do. Letting go. Secure a heavy chain stopper to the wire, take a couple of turns off the bitts and then the 'EXPERT' slipped the stopper and miles of wire ran out of the lead at the speed of light. Not for the faint hearted!


Esso Canterbury a 26000 tonner. Severe boiler problem, loaded ship, and mooring without a tug to a buoy in Marsakkslok in Malta. De-cap both anchors and shackle the cables to the buoy, allthe mooring wires that could be found and just about every mooring rope. It took us three days to moor to that buoy, laid there for 4 weeks, having repairs, then 2 days to let go. That was a 'one off' thank him upstairs.

What's yours then?
Cheers
Colin.

[Tony Morcom]

Early 70s in Samsun on the southern coast of the Black Sea. This was prior to the port being developed to what it is today. On an LPG tanker we had to tie up stern first of a rickety jetty. No tugs and no pilot ( well there was one but nobody could understand him!) the Captain had 4 goes struggling with the currents and then on the 5th go we managed to knock the jetty sideways and put it completely out of commission. I paid off in Istanbul 4 days later so I never did hear what the final outcome was but it cost someone a lot of money!

[john sutton]

oxford st in london is not a good place to moor a ship.you get plastered with tickets and the shoplifters will strip averything loose
john sutton

[Captain Kong]

The Brent Spar was also a bad place to be Mooring, It is about 125 miles north of Shetlands, wide open to all the North Atlantic and Arctic storms.
On the ESSO ABERDEEN 125,000 tons, we had to approach from the lee side to where the rope was floating from the Spar and with a grappling hook catch it and then heave away and then haul in a wire.
The loading pipe was then lowered from the top of the Spar and connected for over the bow loading.
The winds would increase regular and we would have to disconnect and let go and steam around some times for days until it was safe to moor again and connect. This would happen many times during a load. The highest wind speed recorded was 210 knots.
Evil place. Now gone.
Brian.

[Calvin Kent]

I didn't like a few places where we had to pull up insurance wires to buoys. Tripoli for example always seemed to have offshore winds and could be a pig. Watching a Scandinavian tanker one lunchtime it had one wire on the winch and couldn't make any headway and looked to be unable to ease off. When that cable parted it destroyed their. poop and took a couple of seamen with it.

Most annoying was Rouen as we needed to get back from the bar, change into workgear to stand by for the bore, before getting back into glad rags and back down the road. Seemed a waste of time as depending on the time of the tide we were invariably running free sheets. Can't recall anywhere else where the bore caused us to stand by.

Regards
Calvin

[happy daze john in oz]

The worst place to moor was the ones where the nearest bar was more than a five minute walk away. Or worse still a place with no bar.

[Tony Geeves]

Port Alma, Queensland, on the Hobart Star, 1964. Three of us hand cranked a rail runner 17 miles to Rockhampton for a few scoops of the amber. Left it there and thumbed it back to the ship the next morning. Cheers, T,G.

[Tony Frost]

Tsam Kong(China) at anchor.Two guards put on board,washed their hands ever 5 minutes (with very little water on board) Rubish was put on flat barge. They sorted all the tins out and kicked the rest into the river.

[Capt Bill Davies]

Some will be familiar with running moors on small ships (see Dantons Seamanship).

This same process used to be used for ships as large as ULCCs, at oil ports where Conventional Buoy Moorings (CBMs) were implemented. Superceded by SPMs (Single Point Moorings) ....better known as SBMs.
Two ports in particular come to mind Jebel Dhanna (UAE) and Umm Said (Qatar) and several lesser known North African ports.

Not unusual for a 2/3 hours berthing to stretch to 6/7 hours due largely to a misplaced port anchor.

Not uncommon for crew to be injured in this mooring process. Many fatally.

Brgds

Bill

[Colin Pook]

Good morning John. I'll probably be sorry that I've asked this question, but just how does one get a ship into OXFORD STREET?
The mind boggles, but I'm sure you'll tell me!!
Regards,
Colin.