I won’t tell the time or place I took these fotos, and I will say that I deliberated long and attempted some removal of identifying details before posting them. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Seven minutes elapsed between foto 1 and 10. Both the tug and ship were moving at least five knots during this time. Although I’ve never attempted this task before, I have found myself in situations where a problem needed to be solved and I lacked the right tools to do the job safely, but got it done anyhow. I think that’s what’s going on here. I wonder what you think.
A ship needs assistance. The location/design of the recessed bitt made it problematic for the deckhand to get a line on. Deck stands behind bulwark.
He stands on bulwark and uses a long tool, but
its design seems not to provide a solution.
Next, he tried flipping the line in place,
stretching upward and flipping it several times,
but to no avail.
This makes Plan C, which
appears to involve getting someone out of his bunk.
From the top of the ladder,
then line is finally fast. The tug can now control the ship in the waterway.
All’s well that ends well, but . . . is this the only way? I’m not looking to assign blame. I am wondering what alternatives existed for meeting this challenge.
All fotos by will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
11 comments
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December 7, 2012 at 5:51 pm
sleepboot
and the tug captain allowed this.
he should be fired on the spot.
and
also the rest who carry responsibility.
John van der Doe
December 7, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Harold E. Tartell
I agree. Very bad safety situation here. Neither of the two deckhands are wearing a life jacket or safety vest. Also the step ladder situation is not very safe. If the tug ever took a roll, both would have ended up in the water.
December 7, 2012 at 7:26 pm
Andy
The recessed bit is called a panama chock and the pole is called a boat hook or boat pole. If they had had two boat hooks they could have maneuvered the line around. Also, the one on the ladder is wearing a buoyant “float coat”, but the other guy isn’t even wearing shoes!
December 7, 2012 at 9:30 pm
eastriver
Yep. Crazy. Idiotic. Officer of the watch should be fired — but so should the docking pilot, who is insisting that they “catch the Panama”. Line to the deck, period.
I’ve been there. Deckhand couldn’t reach the chock, and I told the pilot so… and told him to make other plans. Period.
January 11, 2013 at 10:09 pm
bowsprite
fire the ship designer!
or, the editing dept that cut it out to save costs.
December 8, 2012 at 9:34 am
HT
A small messenger line tied to the eye of the ship line, then put the bite of the messenger over the panama chock with the boat hook ( its a lot easier getting the smaller line in there) then you can either try to pull the ship line around by hand or run the messenger back to the tugs capstan and pull it around with power. When I was a deckhand, this was one of the reasons we always kept a long messenger line on the bow. I am sure that later on when the crew discussed this situation they figured that out. Or when the docking pilot came back on board he probably told them of this much easier solution.Its just a matter of experience!
December 8, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Meow Man
Tell the pilot it can’t be done we can do something else, if the pilot doesn’t like it he shouldn’t be a pilot
there are always other ways
December 10, 2012 at 12:45 pm
DChap578
Another thing that would help is a smaller diameter line. Todays technology allows for a kevlar or other hightech fiber to be used. A 4 inch circumference high tech line would have the same strength as that old school nylon/dacron dinosaur. They are much easier to “flip” however, they are expensive. I used to use them to attach to RO/RO carships in Delaware. I was a happy AB when we got that new Kevlar line !
January 24, 2013 at 10:59 pm
USS Mitscher (DDG-57) « Bowsprite: A New York Harbor Sketchbook
[…] of eye pads…unlike this unidentified ship, with a dearth of panama […]
January 26, 2013 at 4:39 am
Reid Sprague (@rbss4)
You can pull the line through using the tug, too – if you don’t have a capstan or a good lead to the capstan, or it’s not strong enough. Though I’ve never done that underway, just when the ship was stationary at the pier, preparatory to sailing. Might be a little hazardous with way on!
The 9″ & 10″ dacron lines are heavy (though not as heavy as the Manila lines the old-timers dealt with) but they take abrasion well. That chock looks a little rough-n-rusty to me. I always hated putting a nice new line into a chock like that – it often meant you’d be cutting and resplicing it later on, if you didn’t part it on the job. The new high tech lines are lighter and stronger, but more subject to abrasion damage.
It may have been that putting the line up top wasn’t possible in this case. You see ships that have apparently been designed with the idea that chocks are an expensive luxury, to be distributed very sparingly. Hull chocks like this can often be too high or too low, depending on the draft of the ship and the height of the tug, but sometimes they’re all ya got.
Times are changing, but stunts like this were not uncommon some years ago – as Tugster said, we’d get the job done somehow. But I’m heartened to see the comments above condemning this risky behavior – it shows that safety awareness has come a long way over the last 25 years. Good goin’, guys!
January 26, 2013 at 6:42 pm
tugster
reid– thanks much for your reflections here.