Quote:
Originally Posted by Shipping up to Boston
Question
As most major and I guess smaller port cities are doing this morning.....assessing the way they enter/exit bridges. Can only speak to reporting in Boston where they say tugboats are the rule not the exception. As a lay person, do the tugs significantly reduce the possibility of these kinds of strikes?
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better question is "can the tugs. . .?"
Answer is yes, but also may be overkill / waste of money / a fearful answer to a very, very low , minute probability event.
Example, I was a captain on a small coastwise tanker, empty after delivering a load of gasoline and heating oil up the Chelsea Creek to one of the terminals you drive past on your left going north on 1 or 1A after leaving Logan airport.
We sat at the dock overnight due a northeaster, and left the next morning, heading south to our home port of Newark, for another load. Halfway down Cape Cod bay, we heard a bang, the auto pilot started steering funny, and so we slowed down. The engineers did an engine room inspection, nothing abnormal. We all looked over the side and we were pretty sure we were missing a rudder. Twin engine, twin screw vessel, twin rudders. Ruh Roh. . .
Called the home office, we agreed to go directly to Providence for a Coast Guard inspection. The USCG commander there was one of my roommates' brother in law, and we knew each other. I talked with him, and his only comment was, get the hell out of RI ASAP. I asked him later, he reasoned if you got in just fine, you can get out just fine.
Great, head to NY harbor down Long Island Sound. However, the USCG required me to take a tug whenever we were within NY Harbor as a precaution. In this case, even though we were able to maneuver in the open water just fine, narrow channels lots of traffic, not as normal. Did they help, well, hardly ever asked them to do anything other than to adjust speed so that the drag did not create a lot of remaining rudder steering issues. It was a safety issue and the counterfactual is impossible to prove. . everything works until it doesn't. . with a partially disabled ship and a gasoline bomb type tanker, lets be safe.
With the bridges in Boston Harbor, all the large ocean going tankers I was on took tugs inbound and outbound from around Logan Airport on further up the change near Fort Point, by the No Name restaurant most definately. Tugs were dropped off between there and Logan Airport. Going up the Chelsea creek, the bow tug boats had to let go, go through the bridge ahead of us and then tie up again. . .
Its a rare accident, so will there be an over reaction for awhile? most likely, but will wait and see on the NTSB / USCG final reports. The question to ponder is: how wide of a navigable span is safe enough to assume there are not any tugs needed? The wider, the less needed. The bridge abuttments are in 10 ft of water by which time any ship would be hard aground prior to hitting it? needed? Ships going through the Cape Cod Canal, how big before needing?
One other point, this accident may be human error or human error from lack of maintenance, which when forgone, everything works until it doesn't, usually at the worst time.
Time and again, good maintenance programs show no adverse results, which causes humans to believe that its wasted money. recent examples are
Ship accidents (maybe)
Rail road accidents (Ohio)
Golf course playability demise.. (hmmmm)
Maintenance pays in dividends, but not as an expense. . .