bonfarr said:

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one safe place said:

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MAROON said:

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MV Dali Hitting Key Bridge in Baltimore - Track and Video Analysis (youtube.com)

pretty good video and analysis

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Informative video, thanks for posting.

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For the experts on the thread, when he said the smoke seen could be indicative of the ship beginning to back down, what does that phrase mean?

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Back down means operating the engines astern. Trying to slow down. They are wildly inefficient at this unless they were controllable pitch, which I doubt.

Looking at this video it's possible they tried to back down when an allision was imminent. The amount of smoke seems consistent with the main engine and not necessarily an emergency generator starting up or the main generators starting back up which would be way less smoke, imo.

This heavy black smoke is what you would expect with a low speed diesel like this operating in emergency conditions outside normal parameters. Basically you are dumping fuel faster than air can be forced into the engine. Large slow speed diesels are made for gradual changes in speed. So heavy black smoke suggests they were backing down full power at the last moment to minimize impact with the bridge.

You also got to wonder whether they lost power just long enough for the emergency generator to auto-start, then managed to restore main power at the same time the emergency generator tried to come online. Thats one thing they were dealing with here is that once that emergency system activates you got some amount of seconds before it gets up to speed and tries to supply power automatically.

F'ing Biden.

This will be packaged up as a bailout of that city.

God he's a f'ing POS. Government is going to bail out everyone and everything if the Democrats get their way.

Buying votes & influence with our tax money. It's what democrats do.

Fall92 said:

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PS- no one should be surprised when the vessel owner files a limitation (of liability) action later today in Maryland federal court.

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On what basis?

Sea Speed said:

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bonfarr said:

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one safe place said:

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MAROON said:

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MV Dali Hitting Key Bridge in Baltimore - Track and Video Analysis (youtube.com)

pretty good video and analysis

---

Informative video, thanks for posting.

---

For the experts on the thread, when he said the smoke seen could be indicative of the ship beginning to back down, what does that phrase mean?

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Back down means operating the engines astern. Trying to slow down. They are wildly inefficient at this unless they were controllable pitch, which I doubt.

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Is dropping anchor an option (I know next to nothing about ships)?

stetson said:

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Is dropping anchor an option (I know next to nothing about ships)?

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i am sure a whole bunch of anchors were dropped in the crews pants as they saw the bridge looming above.

In almost all cases in a ship of this size going from ahead to astern propulsion means the rotation of the shaft must come to a complete stop and reverse. This typically takes some amount of time. It's not instantaneous like on smaller vessels. There would be a significant lag in going from ahead to astern, then the time it takes for the shaft to begin turning and provide any significant power output. In the meantime the ship is moving forward under its own momentum.

So if they managed to get the engine stopped, resume power astern and drop anchor, then it seems like they did everything they could conceivably do here to minimize an imminent impact.

The bridge will have 4 or 5 microphones positioned throughout. Vessel traffic will record all radio traffic from the land side which we may hear at some point later this week. The vessels data recorder will record all throttle control and steering inputs so theoretically there here will be no real question as to what happened here.

one safe place said:

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bonfarr said:

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one safe place said:

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MAROON said:

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MV Dali Hitting Key Bridge in Baltimore - Track and Video Analysis (youtube.com)

pretty good video and analysis

---

Informative video, thanks for posting.

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For the experts on the thread, when he said the smoke seen could be indicative of the ship beginning to back down, what does that phrase mean?

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I am an expert on jon boats and kayaks only! I wondered the same thing you did when I heard it, twice I think. In my inexperienced mind, I thought maybe they had reversed the engines to try and slow the ship and the smoke was the running of the engines at full throttle. I realize they had no time, nor did they have the distance, with which to make the ship go in reverse, but I figured it was to try and slow the forward speed of the ship. They said on this video, or perhaps another, that they had dropped the port side anchor.

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Looks like they tried everything, including broadcasting a timely warning.

True but those Q drop days were something to behold on F16.



I hope Staff gives us a treat and brings it back before the election.

Just go to F84. It's the same thing.

Thats SOP in this scenario. Theres 101% chance of this happening immediately.

Ag_07 said:

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This kind of incident reminds me of the Swiss cheese model.

There are tons of fail safe protocols and checks and balances that are in place to prevent catastrophic events like this but when each of those protocols aren't followed it all lines up and results in worse case scenarios like this.

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Swiss cheese?

Are we talking about the accident or Biden's brain?

Clip of the moment of impact. No sound.

BRIDGE

Im Gipper said:

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Lara Logan is really pushing cyber attack theory.

Is she credible?

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She's beautiful, was once a great reporter, and was raped by a crowd of Muslim men.

Credibility has about disappeared from her repertoire

On the basis it's a remedy allowed to a vessel owner under the Limitation of Liability Act. It would limit the owner's liability to the value of the vessel post-incident plus the pending freight, at least until it's "busted" later. The corresponding concursus would direct all claims against it to be in the same proceeding as well.

stetson said:

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Sea Speed said:

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bonfarr said:

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one safe place said:

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MAROON said:

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MV Dali Hitting Key Bridge in Baltimore - Track and Video Analysis (youtube.com)

pretty good video and analysis

---

Informative video, thanks for posting.

---

For the experts on the thread, when he said the smoke seen could be indicative of the ship beginning to back down, what does that phrase mean?

---

Back down means operating the engines astern. Trying to slow down. They are wildly inefficient at this unless they were controllable pitch, which I doubt.

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Is dropping anchor an option (I know next to nothing about ships)?

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If you have time and space, sure. But it's nearly worthless in a situation like this.

The engines also do not like to go from stop to full ahead/astern either. Even when in a maneuvering situation the captain will slowly increase engine orders to allow the engine to catch up to the engine order. Obviously in extremis your going to give her everything, but the engines always not respond favorably.

For anchoring you have to imagine how long it will take to set that anchor not only do the guys have to let go the anchor by releasing the brake and it takes time for the anchor to get to the seabed then they have to put on the chain stopper/ engage the brake otherwise it's gonna keep paying out and paying out. then the anchor has to fetch up before it actually does anything. it's not going to be a quick evolution and it isn't going to give you a ton of stopping power, but it absolutely is in the arsenal.

That's a massive rotating assembly to stop and reverse.

From what I know about ship drive gear, they either completely reverse the engine rotation (2-stroke diesel) or have to shift the gearing to reverse the output shaft (no constant mesh, no synchronization)

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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As somebody already mentioned above, US environmental regulations have required that ships burn ULSD or ultra low sulfur diesel while inport.

Typically ships run HFO / Bunker fuel all the time. But when they go into a US port they are required to switch fuel supply to ULSD.

When you are operating ships systems, switching anything related to fuel supply can cause problems due to mechanical failure or human error.

This was is a known risk when environmental regulators decided it was a good idea to require ships to switch fuel while underway.

Doing so is the opposite of good seamanship which dictates if it's working, don't mess with it unless you have to. This is especially true when you talking about jockeying with fuel or fuel systems while underway. It doesn't make sense to mess with fuel systems onboard a ship unnecessarily.

Is this what happened here? We don't know but it's within the realm of possibility.

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So a couple fuel switch over questions..

Where or how far outside of Port are you require to switch from HFO (fuel oil) to diesel (ULSD) ? I thought that was quite a ways from the actual port or ship channel? So if problems happened it would happen out at sea somewhat?

When you do switch from HFO to diesel, are there typically still pre-heaters being used for the diesel? I know you wouldn't necessarily need them for running ULSD but you could have "chunks or globs" of fuel oil peel off the pipe walls and cause issues in your using fuel strainers.

I say this because we have seen fuel problems in utility power plants that would switch from running old thick junky fuel oil and then run diesel behind it just to clean out all the lines. When they would do this they would pull any strainers because they pretty much knew chunks or globs of fuel oil would be peeling off the walls of the piping …. The diesel was used to clean the pipes basically when the line pressure would buildup from running thick fuel oil for too long.

Just curious how this works on a ship and if the fuel strainers are not cleaned or maintained properly it could cause possible issues ?

Sea Speed said:

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The engines also do not like to go from stop to full ahead/astern either. Even when in a maneuvering situation the captain will slowly increase engine orders to allow the engine to catch up to the engine order. Obviously in extremis your going to give her everything, but the engines always not respond favorably.

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That's another factor the engineers were probably dealing with here. Extreme changes in engine orders in a maneuvering or emergency situation, will almost always cause a bunch of random alarms to go off the control room, and typically all at the same time because multiple systems are now operating out of parameter.

So I'd imagine they were dealing with a loss of power and scrambling to try and figure that out then you got a bunch of main engine alarms popping off on top of all that. It's information overload and can cause confusion in people responding to phantom alarms and not whatever the actual problem is.

Now that I have seen a bird's eye view of it, that is a long ass bridge. That is going to be a traffic nightmare.

Lawd.

YouBet said:

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Now that I have seen a bird's eye view of it, that is a long ass bridge. That is going to be a traffic nightmare.

Lawd.

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they did an interview with a guy who lives on one side, who has a brother that lives on the other. for what used to be a 10 minute drive to visit his brother, it will now be a 2+ hour drive.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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In almost all cases in a ship of this size going from ahead to astern propulsion means the rotation of the shaft must come to a complete stop and reverse. This typically takes some amount of time. It's not instantaneous like on smaller vessels. There would be a significant lag in going from ahead to astern, then the time it takes for the shaft to begin turning and provide any significant power output. In the meantime the ship is moving forward under its own momentum.

So if they managed to get the engine stopped, resume power astern and drop anchor, then it seems like they did everything they could conceivably do here to minimize an imminent impact.

The bridge will have 4 or 5 microphones positioned throughout. Vessel traffic will record all radio traffic from the land side which we may hear at some point later this week. The vessels data recorder will record all throttle control and steering inputs so theoretically there here will be no real question as to what happened here.

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If this ship was equipped with transverse thrusters like a lot of the modern cruise ships would they have been able to kick those on in an emergency to provide enough course change to avoid collision or is that container ship just so damn big that nothing would hav really helped?

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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Looking at this video it's possible they tried to back down when an allision was imminent. The amount of smoke seems consistent with the main engine and not necessarily an emergency generator starting up or the main generators starting back up which would be way less smoke, imo.

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Learn something new everyday on TexAgs!

not sure if you are being serious or snarky... but did you look the word up?

It is correct usage.

fullback44 said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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As somebody already mentioned above, US environmental regulations have required that ships burn ULSD or ultra low sulfur diesel while inport.

Typically ships run HFO / Bunker fuel all the time. But when they go into a US port they are required to switch fuel supply to ULSD.

When you are operating ships systems, switching anything related to fuel supply can cause problems due to mechanical failure or human error.

This was is a known risk when environmental regulators decided it was a good idea to require ships to switch fuel while underway.

Doing so is the opposite of good seamanship which dictates if it's working, don't mess with it unless you have to. This is especially true when you talking about jockeying with fuel or fuel systems while underway. It doesn't make sense to mess with fuel systems onboard a ship unnecessarily.

Is this what happened here? We don't know but it's within the realm of possibility.

---

So a couple fuel switch over questions..

Where or how far outside of Port are you require to switch from HFO (fuel oil) to diesel (ULSD) ? I thought that was quite a ways from the actual port or ship channel? So if problems happened it would happen out at sea somewhat?

When you do switch from HFO to diesel, are there typically still pre-heaters being used for the diesel? I know you wouldn't necessarily need them for running ULSD but you could have "chunks or globs" of fuel oil peel off the pipe walls and cause issues in your using fuel strainers.

I say this because we have seen fuel problems in utility power plants that would switch from running old thick junky fuel oil and then run diesel behind it just to clean out all the lines. When they would do this they would pull any strainers because they pretty much knew chunks or globs of fuel oil would be peeling off the walls of the piping …. The diesel was used to clean the pipes basically when the line pressure would buildup from running thick fuel oil for too long.

Just curious how this works on a ship and if the fuel strainers are not cleaned or maintained properly it could cause possible issues ?

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The switch from bunker to ULSD typically happens offshore and not when in restricted waters. If I recall California initially started all this and it was an issue for ships coming into Long Beach switching to ULSD ad some amount of miles offshore.

But you've described the problem with using two different types of fuel. Clean diesel and dirty bunker fuel. The cleaner diesel does what you said. Dislodges contaminants and clogs filters and other components of the fuel system.

Heaters are used with bunker fuel because its more viscous.

So being forced to run two different types of fuel isn't ideal for the reasons stated.

Typically ships will have fuel oil purifiers which take fuel from the storage tanks and purify it before it's allowed into the day tank or service tank to be burned. But like you said dirty and clean fuel typically goes through the same system. But by the time that fuel gets to the fuel pump on the engine its supposed to be clean in theory.

But there can also be a big difference between the quality of marine fuel. Theres been cases where suppliers either screwed up or tried to save a buck during the blending process resulting in a batch of bad fuel that causes carbon deposits, incomplete combustion and gunk in the lines, strainers and filters. Theres even been cases of refiners mixing random waste chemicals with fuel that reacts differently in different engines and environments. Fouling injectors and causing weird deposits on blades of turbos decreasing efficiency.

Certainly within the realm of possibility this was a fuel quality issue or overall fuel system issue because its happened before.

bonfarr said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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In almost all cases in a ship of this size going from ahead to astern propulsion means the rotation of the shaft must come to a complete stop and reverse. This typically takes some amount of time. It's not instantaneous like on smaller vessels. There would be a significant lag in going from ahead to astern, then the time it takes for the shaft to begin turning and provide any significant power output. In the meantime the ship is moving forward under its own momentum.

So if they managed to get the engine stopped, resume power astern and drop anchor, then it seems like they did everything they could conceivably do here to minimize an imminent impact.

The bridge will have 4 or 5 microphones positioned throughout. Vessel traffic will record all radio traffic from the land side which we may hear at some point later this week. The vessels data recorder will record all throttle control and steering inputs so theoretically there here will be no real question as to what happened here.

---

If this ship was equipped with transverse thrusters like a lot of the modern cruise ships would they have been able to kick those on in an emergency to provide enough course change to avoid collision or is that container ship just so damn big that nothing would hav really helped?

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Cruise ships can basically dock themselves; however, that is not industry standard for other vessels.

How do you know it is an elections year?
President says federal government should pay to replace bridge that was originally paid for entirely by Maryland Transportation Authority toll bonds.

"Funded entirely by Maryland Transportation Authority toll bonds, the bridge cost $60.3 million."

bonfarr said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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In almost all cases in a ship of this size going from ahead to astern propulsion means the rotation of the shaft must come to a complete stop and reverse. This typically takes some amount of time. It's not instantaneous like on smaller vessels. There would be a significant lag in going from ahead to astern, then the time it takes for the shaft to begin turning and provide any significant power output. In the meantime the ship is moving forward under its own momentum.

So if they managed to get the engine stopped, resume power astern and drop anchor, then it seems like they did everything they could conceivably do here to minimize an imminent impact.

The bridge will have 4 or 5 microphones positioned throughout. Vessel traffic will record all radio traffic from the land side which we may hear at some point later this week. The vessels data recorder will record all throttle control and steering inputs so theoretically there here will be no real question as to what happened here.

---

If this ship was equipped with transverse thrusters like a lot of the modern cruise ships would they have been able to kick those on in an emergency to provide enough course change to avoid collision or is that container ship just so damn big that nothing would hav really helped?

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Thats another issue. Bow thrusters draw a huge amount of electrical power. So you could conceive of a situation where they tried to use bow thrusters in an emergency and tripped the main power offline.

Not saying they did that here but it's something that could conceivably happen in an emergency.