7 Comments

Disabled ships are troublesome to say the least but not a weapon that can be aimed.

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What about the steering which has to be connected to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Apparently, there was little about the current or the wind which could have altered the vessel's course, yet it hit the (one of two) main support pillar.

Something's not adding up.

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We must also consider the fact the ship has a massive fee board that act like a gigantic sail, a sail that they cannot trim to get the thrust they want. It does not take a lot of wind acting upon a huge surface to move it.

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Steering does not work once a ship’s speed drops below the speed needed to maintain steerage. They can swing the rudder port to starboard and back again and again but it will little effect then none. As soon as steerage way is lost, courses alter due to wind, current or tide. Hell, even with power, it is not easy to steer a straight course against either of these. As soon as speed drops below a certain point, any vessel becomes uncontrollable.

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Considering it hit the support at 7-8 knots, is this below the minimum speed needed, and what was the effect of dropping the anchors. One person that commented on it said why did't they coast down the middle of the channel. Why didn't they?

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As far as the minimum steerage speed, that depends upon the individual vessel, the sea state and wind conditions it was operating under.

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Soon after power is lost, the effects of the wind upon that massive sail of a freeboard and the cargo stacked aboard the ship and opposing or cross currents overtake the forward momentum and turn the ship so that the hull will be perpendicular to the more powerful of these forces. Unless these forces are equal on each side of the ship, they will turn it unless there is a motive force aboard the ship to counteract them.

Dropping anchor to hopefully avoid a collision or to at least reduce the force of a collision is standard procedure and this vessel did drop anchor. There are a large number of videos on Instagram of collisions between ships. Most that I have seen is with anchors dropped far too late to have much effect, the ships hits something while the anchor chain is still dropping from the hawsepipe.

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