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[walktheplank]

Yes in the Sun today (sat Jan 24) Bungling Sailors lost a 60 ton barge on a 60 foot tow, and did not know till they were contacted by the coastguard.
The 247-tonne tug Ejenavi, towing the barge from Demark to Nigeria went 600 miles before they found out. A Fisherman from Poole found the barge and thought it was like the Mary Celeste, or he was going to find dead asylum seekers on it.
 I am not much of a sailor, done a bit of boat fishing. BUT How do you lose a barge on tow and not know?  It could have caused a few problems if ships or a tanker hit it.
I will make sure that my Tug and barges have thicker rope when i take them to the club pond. Sonic.

[walktheplank]

sorry forgot this. Sonic

[SteamboatPhil]

You think one of the crew would have looked over their shoulder at some point, or the engineer might have noticed the lack of load on the engine
Right I'm off to claim salvage on a barge

[polaris]

Dear Walktheplank,

Whilst I don't know much about tugs I at least know what one should roughly look like, and wonder if the Sun has simply chosen 'something' from their illustrious 'archives' that looks as near to what they think a tug should look like! Whilst I am sure I will be corrected very quickly if wrong, the vessel in the picture definitely doesn't look like 247 tonnes to me?

With all the contradictory noises about what is salvage and what isn't, I wonder if the fisherman who found the barge can claim salvage? - after all it was 'abandoned'.

I somehow get a little feeling that this barge was deliberately lost!

Regards, Bernard

[toesupwa]

Whilst I don't know much about tugs I at least know what one should roughly look like, and wonder if the Sun has simply chosen 'something' from their illustrious 'archives' that looks as near to what they think a tug should look like! Whilst I am sure I will be corrected very quickly if wrong, the vessel in the picture definitely doesn't look like 247 tonnes to me?

The pic in the Sun.. and the one issued by the Dorset Police when the 'barge' was first found is the drifting 'tow'... not the Tug..

The Ditte Calpam looks more like a fishing boat rather than a barge...

[polaris]

Dear Toesupwa,

That's what I thought - the whole matter looks and sounds a bit fishy to me!

Regards, Bernard

[Ghost in the shell]

how can you loose that and not know about it, were the crew asleep?

[tigertiger]

That's what I thought - the whole matter looks and sounds a bit fishy to me!

Where were they bound for?

I rest my case.

[meechingman]

And the good old Sun, melodramatic as ever, talks of the tug being 'giant'. 247 tons, big enough but not exactly giant. The Sun's obviously never seen the likes of Smit Rotterdam or some of the Russian fleet.

[catengineman]

Towing a vessel like the one shown would not give a large amount of tow drag, infact the largest drag would be from the tow line itself.

The tug tows the line / the line tows the "barge" depending on how much warp is out would be a good reason for  the crew not to notice. though a rear facing radar is an advantage for long tows where the crew would not see the vessel being towed.

How do I know this ? Err lost part of a twin tow ! well the shock line parted at the bridal and the barge was then adrift, we did notice as we had rear facing radar and the weather was rubbish. trying to recover an emergency tow while you still have one on the Stbd warp was not my idea of fun.
first you have to recover your parted warp (make good if needed) then shorten up on the other tow and then chase the loose barge to get to the stern in order to grab the buoy for the emergency line. Once you have that you bring its messenger aboard pulling the emergency tow line free from its "whammy" securings then make fast to ? the repaired warp or a tow hook then pay out as required regarding weather conditions. not forgetting the other barge which is now snatching at it's own bridal because the tow is on the short side.

Tandem tows     NO THANKS 16 hours of hell !

[tigertiger]

Tandem tows     NO THANKS 16 hours of hell !

How about a single tow to Nigeria?
From Denmark?

[catengineman]

Same hook up start off let the tow out to say 1200 meters watch the radar (forwards) so yo dont hit ships in the VTS have your mind set on getting home to the wife girl friend (or ? if that way  ) and dont worry 

blame the deck crew for not securing the pin on the shackle 

R,

[Roger in France]

What is the risk of another vessel trying to sail across the towline with such a length?

Roger in France

[catengineman]

Its a big risk and has happened several times  though mostly there is no trouble as the warp will be very low in the water so the crossing vessel would not hit the line, my skipper had to ease off on the power once to make our tow line drop deep as a ship crossed our stern but took no notice of the day shapes we displayed and radio calls to the ship
The vessel was reported and was later detained in port for other non conformity's.
"It passed our stern close so as not to hinder the next vessel ? our tow " that was the official responce we were given. Portland coastguard verified that we had done every thing within our power to alert and avoid an incident.

I still like towing but now its a lot different to when I was out there.

One of the biggest problems I came across was novice sailors and "steam gives way to sail" and no matter what you did to tell them that the big lump following was connected they still shook fists at us and then ran straight over our tow line (one was that close to our stern he hit the warp and it flipped him over) we are not in a position to stop until the tow is made safe and by then he was righted and screaming at the coastguard down his radio.
Ho well such memorise

[Jimmy James]

 )You want to try towing 3000 M of seismic streamer +2 x 24 120 cubic inch air gun arrays through the Irish sea when there's a yacht t race on ..Now that,s really fun..
 
But even better is towing a mile long streamer in Pool Bay 400M off the beach with 2 air gun arrays (At Night) the real problem;s started when a very upset Old Lady complaned To the Oil Company running the survey that her toilet exploded while she was sitting on it  and split the pan (True Story) numerous other complaints were also received " exploding toilets mainly but also drains,, sinks & baths blowing up... It seamed that no one knew that the all old sewer's from all the old houses & hotels along the sea front ran out into the Bay or the fact that they hadn't been capped and properly disconnected.
Freebooter

[tigertiger]

... of seismic streamer +2 x 24 120 cubic inch air gun arrays

What are these Freebooter, and what do they do?

[catengineman]

The survey companies use sound waves to determin the type of ground bed in the sea 
A tug (survey vessel) with lots of very expensive equipment tow a units with very high pressure compressed air, these are normally far enough away from the towing vessel to avoid prop wash from the tug and the vibration from the guns.
The survey team "fire" the gun a very quick discharge of air (in a sort of big pop) this sends a sound wave to the sea bed which will vibrate
Different soils vibrate differently and recorders record the "echo" its intensity and in a nut shell thats how the people like "RAYCAL, CABLE & WIRELESS" ETC.

towing transducers and other weird gizmo's via umbilical tow lines most I did were kerosene filled.

That is a simple explanation of the basic idea (from memory) been along time since I towed any survey equipment

[Jimmy James]

TT
A seismic streamer is a long cable (500m to 6Km long. The length is determined by the resultion required ) with hydrophones at fixed intervals along it's length .. the cable is skinned with a transparent plastic hose and usually in sections of 50 to 100M long and filled with with Kerosene to keep sea water out and make it neutrally buoyant..sections are joined togeather to make up the length required... A streamer is usually towed at 6 to 12M deep and depth is controlled by the speed of the survey V/l and winged "Birds" hydroplanes  fixed at intervials along the cable ( Normally 4 to 6 knots) ..the end of the cable is marked with a tail buoy that is fitted with flashing lights ...Passave and  often active radar reflectors ( Some tail buoys can be 25 to 30 feet long and weight 3 or 4 tones ) some deep siz V/l's tow multiple cables ( For 3D work up to 9 side by side each 4Km long) they usually try to keep shipping at least 5 N/M away from and employ Guard and Chase v/l's to keep the way clear... Seismic cable costs around £1000 to £3000 a metre ... the gun array is the sound source for streamer and is usually air powered guns ( if you fire a 40 cu inch gun in the air at full power it sounds like a 6 inch naval gun and if fired in port can break windows ) The Guns range in size from 20 to about 250 cubic inches...The sea bed penetration can be up to 3 or 4Km and is used to find out the construction of the seabed for building - surveying pipeline and cable routs or find oil and gas etc;
hope this clearer's it up a bit.
Freebooter

[tigertiger]

Thanks Chaps

Very informative. I now have a clear idea of yet another job that is accomplished from ships.
A job I was unaware of.

I am sure there are other jobs that most land lubbers know nothing about.
Perhaps a new thread.