Disaster

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Big Pete
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Disaster

Post by Big Pete »

An historical tale of a near shipwreck from the early 80's. I was not on board, but I sailed on a Sister ship where I read a copy of the company's report on the incident and met someone who had sailed on the ship in Question.

A small feeder conrainership, designed in Japan, built in Singapore, Akasaki main engine running on IFO with shaft Alt., 2 x D/As. German owned, British Managed, Singapore flag, about 7 Nationalities in the crew.

On passage from the tropics enters the Irish Sea and a gale blows up. Heavy pitching causes the engine to start racing so one of the D/A's is put on line. The 2nd D/A is in the middle of a major overhaul and will take days to put back together.

The ships motion stirrs up years of accummulated sediment in the DO Service tank and the D/A fuel filters block up, shutting the engine down and blacking out the ship. The main engine is dependant on Electrically driven pumps so it also shuts down.

There is no emergency D/A so there is only emergency batterry lighting.

By the time that the fuel problem has been identified and a drum of clean fuelled rigged up to provide a temporary fuel supply to the engine there is no compressed air left in the main air recievers.

There is a hand start diesel engine driving an emergency air compressor in the ER workshop, alongside a hand start diesel fire pump of different manufacture. This has been given a short test run every week, but never been given a prolonged run under load. The emergency compressor is started but before there is sufficient starting air pressure it fails.
Investigation reveals that there is a gearbox on the end of the engine that had no oil in it and has catostrophically failed. The gearbox is fitted with an oil filling plug on top, oil drain on the bottom and a level plug on the side. Because no sight glass or dip stick were fitted everyone had assumed that oil supply was from the engine system.
The ship's Super was informed, as any Super out there has probably already guessed this was the middle of the night at the start of a long Holiday weekend.
The Super got out his little black book and started to make calls to "24 x 7" numbers, hoping to source either a portable D/A to power the main air compressors or a portable air compressor, plus neccessary transport.
"Thank you for your interest in our company, please leave a short message and we will get back to you after the holidays".
After a lot of work he tracked down the equipment, had it shipped to a small Welsh Port where he had arranged for the Pilot boat to take it out to the ship.
After the equipment was loaded and the crew mustered, they started to carry out pre-sailing checks. They found the radar was not working and refused to sail on safety grounds.
How did the ship's crew manage to get the ship's engines running before she ran into the cliffs of a lee shore?

They worked by flashlight and only had hand tools and oxy acetylene. The diesel engine for the fire pump was a different make, size, coupling etc.
I hope this gets the little grey cells working overtime, I am going away on holiday shortly so it will be a while before the solution used is posted. Meanwhile happy guessing!

BP
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offshoresnipe
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Re: Disaster

Post by offshoresnipe »

Used the compressed air from the Oxy. cyl. to start the M/E.

Makes me want to go and check our hand cranked air compressor when I go on watch tonight. We only run ours once a week and only for 5 min., never give it a good test. And the watch is taking the oilers word that it ran fine. My oiler could care less about anything but getting back to his Xbox, makes one think.
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Re: Disaster

Post by Big Pete »

WARNING SEVERE DANGER!!!


Under no circumstances can you ever use Oxygen to start an engine.
The engine is likely to explode and kill anyone in the vicinity.
Think again.



One of the points of this story is to reinforce the importance of testing emergency equipment realistically.
Take the lifeboats for an hour long cruise at full throttle, run the emergency fire pump for washing down alternatly with the main fire pump, run the emergency generator and emergency batterries on load for an hour on a regular basis, and of course use the emergency air compressor to fill an empty air receiver, timing how long this takes and recording it, is an excellent way of "condition monitoring" for the compressor.

I am glad the post has made you think, practicing solving imaginary problems and discussing your ideas is the best way to learn how to cope with problem solving which is a critical part of our job.
It is excellent that you are going to investigate your emergency air compressor now, rather than waiting until it fails in an emergency situation.
BP
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JK
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Re: Disaster

Post by JK »

This is a very interesting problem BP. It makes you think.
A very similar situation happened 20 years ago on a ship a friend of mine was mate on.
In their case, they were on the Banks with a tow in extremely bad weather (I was in the N.Atlantic on another ship, so I can certainly agree on the weather). They took a wave that hit the intake of the emergency diesel room and flooded the space. The ship eventually blacked out, somewhat the same situation as yours. No compressed air or lights.
The towline would drag the ship down on the tow, who had just enough astern power to manuever his ship out of their way.
The 2nd had been on there for years, and he managed to get things up and running which involved hoses and wiring running down alleyways to the engineroom.
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offshoresnipe
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Re: Disaster

Post by offshoresnipe »

I posted my reply and then went on watch.
Thought about this and yes the oxy/oil mix hit me. I am a certified welder, should have caught that one right away. maybe I needed more coffee prior to my reply. Kept me thinking for the watch last night.
Not sure about how my Chief will take to testing the compressor, he how shall I say is a good old boy from down in the deep south and has that additude of " I have been doing it that way for the past 20 years and WE will keep doing it my way".
Keep the posts coming, thanks, keeps my brain going........
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The Dieselduck
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Re: Disaster

Post by The Dieselduck »

Solutions on a ship are pretty diverse. Especially when you have some source of fire, oxy acetelyne. I am interested in finding out what you did. But I imagine that it involved swapping around some prime movers or fabricating some pulley system.

Mmmmmm, Im all ears.
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JK
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Re: Disaster

Post by JK »

I agree with Martin, swapping of compressors\prime movers and some pulley arrangement.
It will be interesting to see what the rest of the story is though.

Several years ago we discussed running the emergency genrators on a load bank once a year to make sure they would load up but never got further than that.
Big Pete
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Re: Disaster

Post by Big Pete »

What the guys on board did was very brutal, but you have to give them 10/10 and a Gold Star because they saved the ship.

They used the gas axe to cut through the compressor engine shaft flush with the flywheeel then junked the engine.

They used the gas axe to cut through the fire pump shaft flush with its flywheel.

They moved the fire pump prime mover where the compressor engine had been.
Lifted it up on wooden blocks and wedges to align it and lashed it down with chain blocks.

Then they made giant clamps with stud bar and angle iron to hold the two flywheels together.

The compressor worked, they got enough air to start the D/A and then the main engine, problem solved.

With regard to JK's comment about load banks, on some ship's I have been on there has been a monthly routine to start the emergency D/A automatically by tripping the feed breaker from the main switchboard and then letting it supply power for an hour, running up the emergency air compressor and fire pump if they are fed from the D/A.
Obviously this can only be done in Port, or the middle of the Ocean and any sensitive Nav Aids should be properly shut down before hand, the deck side don't usually like it.

As we all know one the worst things you can do to a diesel engine is to start it, run it on no load, then stop it before it even gets warmed through. Unfortunatly, that is what usually happens to emergency equipment.
BP
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JK
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Re: Disaster

Post by JK »

And they did all of that by a flashlight, flat out speed and a lot of choice words for the ship owner.

The thought with the load bank was to ensure that the emergency would carry the rated load. On a lot of ships it is difficult to load the generator up during the weekly/monthly tests. The costs can be objected to, by engineers or beancounters who only see the $$$ and not the reasoning, by the time you rent the load bank, cables and hook up everything you could be aound $7-to,$10,000.
Big Pete
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Re: Disaster

Post by Big Pete »

The Load bank is a good idea, maybe Class or Port State should be asking for Test Records that it has been done?
B.P.
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JK
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Re: Disaster

Post by JK »

Especially if the engine has been newly rebuilt.
Years ago we had Cat SS engines rebuilt. After everything was said and done, they wouldn't parallel.
Turned out they had bootleg injectors.

Just as easily could have been the emergency diesel.
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