Ballast

[John Arton]

On bulk carriers it's important to keep ballast tanks as clear of mud and sediment as possible as many cargoes are loaded on draft surveys to determine quantity loaded and build up of mud etc can affect the ships constant. On one cape sized bulkers I was mate on mud and sediment in ballast tanks had built up to such an extent that the original constant of 350 tons was up to 1200 tons, meaning around 900 tons of cargo was lost each voyage.
Rgds
J.A

[j.sabourn]

The same thing happened when I was on leave and the relieving mate assumed the ballast tanks were empty as the sounding tape was showing dry. However this was in Russia and in the cool period or should say cooler and he had pumped out tanks or dropped them to the sea and tanks were slack,and more liable to freeze .which some did , plus the Russians insisted that the ore we loaded had the allowed water content and had running water going in with the cargo , I didn’t follow the result of the loss but if had been me I would have blamed the Russians with insisting on loading their estimated cargo water content I always insisted log book entries that this was being done and informed the Russians I had done so . She was a 26000 ton deadweight ship don’t know what came out but think it was about the 20,000 mark.. Sea water not mud but the same principle with any ship down to its marks. JS.

[Des Jenkins]

Hi John
I was feeding them on seed but it was to expensive so changed to porridge oats which they can't get enough of never leave a scrap, no local farms around the Cooma so they wont be going for the wheat.
Des