Problem solving

[Big Pete]

Many Years ago ( about 1982) I was Second Engineer on a clapped out, Cypriot flag, ex Japanese Navy Tank Landing ship.
On passage one day I took the fuel soundings and found that we had lost most of the fuel out of the aftmost wing tank on one side. After sounding around I found the fuel in the adjacent Aft Peak Ballast tank (Previously empty). A few days later the fuel from the opposite side deep tank also went "walkabout" and turned up in the aft peak tank.
We no longer had enough fuel in our bunker tanks to reach the next Port. We were on passage from Belewan in Indonesia to Singapore.
We had no Oxygen or explosi meters on board so we could not safely enter the aft peak tank, and no portable pumps to transfer the fuel (M.G.O.).

Any ideas on how we got the fuel out of the Aft Preak tank so that we could use it?

B.P.

[JK]

Not only did you give me a good chuckle first thing in the morning, you gave me something to consider on a 7 hour flight.

[alanocean]

I would guess that there was piping for recirculating the stern tube (via L/O purifier) oil which on lots of ships are cooled by water in the aftpeak and also both found at the stern. You would have then took a line from the aft peak and ran it to the lube oil purifier. Some quick changes to the gravity disk and now you can purify from the aft peak to another tank. A bit of a pain but a little welding and fitting is much better than no fuel.

[Big Pete]

JK; youv'e got no sympathy!!

The ship was a very basic spec, nominally 2,000 DWT ( but actually about 2,200) 2 x 1,000 HP main engines, 2 x D/As, I electric motor for the steering gear (back up was a hand pump). First start arrangement was a a hand pumped air compressor.
Certainly no purifiers on the stern tube oil.
No way to cut holes in the aft peak tank bulkhead because of the possibility it was full of flammable / explosive fumes.

I joined in Korea, the previous crew were all Jugoslav, they had been replaced because of incompetence, ( They wiped the main bearings on the voyage from lay up in Port Arthur to Korea, and had to go in to Hawai to rebuild the engine. The service engineers reported that after they had torqued all the cylinder heads down according to the makers instructions the chief Engineer made his crew flog them up tighter. The old crewq had n't been paid for 6 months and paid off with a promise that someone would meet them when they changed planes in Zurich and pay them there wages)
The ship's technical management & manning was given to a London based company.
The first night we were on board the Chief Mate switched on the anchor lights at dusk and all the fuses blew, further investigation showed that only about 2 out of all the nav lights worked. They were beautiful old Brass lamps, fortunatly all fitted with a plug & soclket so thet were easily dismountable, the deck crew brought them all down to the workshop and I stripped, cleaned and rewired them all. They had been wired with rubber insulated cable aand after over 20 years in hot climates the insulation had completely perished, everything was shorting out & down to Earth. The lampholders were standard BC22 and the lamps standard domestic Pearl lamps!! (Long after squirrel cage filaments became mandatory).
B.P.

[alanocean]

This may come across as very strange but I am just shooting idea's as I am stuck on this..... Close all hatchs tight and fill with water ( Slowly) and push the fuel through the vent which has a hose connected and gravity feed to a tank. only transfering what is needed as the specifc gravity of the fuel is less and good mgo will be on top. If fitting was needed on the vent it could have been blanked at a flange before the deck for welding ect.. far fetched but it would put fuel to your tank only leaving the problem of the aft peak being 100% full which would be alright given stability accepted this and or/ sealing all vents tight for sea.

[D Winsor]

Was there a cross connection between the General Service or Ballast system and the Fuel System tied into the Aft Peak Line?
It was a common practice to pump water into empty fuel tanks, especially double bottoms, to help improve vessel stability and reduce the risk of explosion, through such a cross connection. This was a common practice on Naval Tankers and from your description the vessel was a former Japanese Naval Tanker
If this is the case it would have been possible to pump the Aft Peak back to the Bunkers with the Fuel Oil Transfer Pumps.
This cross connection could also have been the source of the contamination in the first place. If the Cross Over valve and or the pipe blank between the systems was leaking fuel would be able to migrate into the Aft Peak during a fuel oil transfer operation.

[Big Pete]

No connection between fuel system and ballast system. By the way the ship was a Tank Landing Ship (LST) designed to run up a beach, open bow doors and drive off army tanks. I believe she had been used to run supplies from Japan to Vietnam during the war, sold off for commercial use and been used for transporting oil industry equipment to remote beaches up the Persian Gulf & Alaska, before ending up in the cement trade between Texas & Mexico.

The first day on board I realised that one of the main ballast pumps was running, cross connected to the General Service pump which was also running and between them supplying flushing water to the toilets, & cooling for the A.C & domestic fridges. I tried shutting down the ballast pump and we lost all pressure. I then shut down the GS P/P with the ballast pump running, initially there was pressure, but a bit low. There was then an almighty bang as the non return valve on the GS pump closed, the pressure shot up and the pipe blew out!
When we opened up the GS pump there was an inch clearance between the wear ring and the impeller!
I had an excellent Filipino fitter who built up the impeller and wear ring with bronze welding and machined them back to the original sizes.
The lathe motor was burnt out so we had to put a hand crank on it and turn the lathe by hand which was slow, but over the voyage we overhauled every pump on the ship that way.
BP

[alanocean]

I take it that you didn't use the vent idea i posted. Haha.. Can't wait to here how it was done!!

[JK]

This may come across as very strange but I am just shooting idea's as I am stuck on this..... Close all hatchs tight and fill with water ( Slowly) and push the fuel through the vent which has a hose connected and gravity feed to a tank. only transfering what is needed as the specifc gravity of the fuel is less and good mgo will be on top. If fitting was needed on the vent it could have been blanked at a flange before the deck for welding ect.. far fetched but it would put fuel to your tank only leaving the problem of the aft peak being 100% full which would be alright given stability accepted this and or/ sealing all vents tight for sea.

Exactly what I was considering...IF the ship had a decent FOP.
Back in the 80' they wouldn't have been so fussy about getting rid of the water used to displace the fuel.

[alanocean]

Another option would to raise the fuel with large bucket/medium sized barrels via chain falls and pour into another larger pail with a valve on the bottom and run the fuel to the tanks . The engines are small enough that with lots of hard work you could keep ahead of it.

[JK]

The old DFO ship Parizeau had a water displacement fuel system and I am pretty sure the Navy civilan ship Quest has it as well. Works pretty well like you describe alanocean. SW is pumped into the bottom of the tank and the fuel removed from the top. I don't know much about it, only that fueling cost a bucket full of money because the SW removed had to be trucked away for cleaning, it couldn't be pumped overboard.

[Big Pete]

I think the ways suggested would work, but I found a slightly simpler method using the same priciples.
There are no right answers, only different solutions.

Another bit of fum we had on board was the first fire drill. When we pressurised the Deck fire main we had no pressure at all, leaks everywhere!!! We had no steel plate or pipe on board so we cannibalised the engine room deck plating to get the fire main tight, it took a week of hard work by the fitter and 2 Motormen, everytime they pressurised the main to test it, new holes blew out, but we got there in the end.

When we had the first boat drill we found both boats were siezed in the davits. After another week of work by the Deck and Engine crew we had freed up all the shackles, slips, bottle screws etc and tried to launch.
The boats were on traditional gravity davits and as the boat started to move there was a huge cloud of dust and lumps of rust coming off the drum ends, which were enclosed, and as the wire came off the drums and became visible we saw that it was about half the original diameter!!
We gently put the brake on, and stopped the boat. We then recovered it using the engine room chain blocks and stowed it.
It looked as if the last time the falls were changed, they were put on "dry" and afterwards only the parts that were visible were coated in grease / wire rope preservative, so the wire on the drums had rotted out unnoticed.

BP

[alanocean]

I think I have it now...... Box up the tank and pressurize it... The fuel will go back through where it came in.

[JK]

OMG, on the lifeboats

I am an innocent, or very lucky where I have worked. I am very happy not to have your experience BP!

[Big Pete]

Prety much what I did. I took accurate soundings of the fuel left in the wing tanks before transfering it to other bunker tanks.
I then calculated the exact amount of fuel lost.
Cracked open the ballast line to the aft peak and slowly let it gravitate up with sea water, while I continually sounded the wing tanks.
The oil floated on top of the water and floated back through the holes in the bulkhead. When I had recovered all but a few tons of the oil lost I shut down the ballast system, let the oil settle for 24 hours and drained off a small amount of water from the drain cocks on the wing tanks and transferred the oil to other bunker tanks.

The whole Aft peak tank was rotten. The first time we loaded cargo in Korea, I pumped out the Aft Peak in the afternoon, carried out a watchkeeping round that evening and found the steering flat awash! Water was coming through the deck from the AP tank. I pumped the tank out and a few hours later it was full again. Eventually I found that the emergency fire pump, in the steering flat, had a sea suction that went through the aft peak tank to a sea chest in the engine room and the pipe had rusted through, once the sea suction was closed I managed to pump out the AP.

Later, after we had discharged most of the cargo we ballasted the AP again, inthe middle of the night the engineer on watch came banging on my cabin door to say we were sinking. When I went below I found water leaking out of the engine room side of the AP bulkhead in many places.
It was an interesting 7 months.
BP