Photo courtesy United States Coast Guard
The Cougar Ace, a Singapore-flagged car carrier that lay over sideways in the North Pacific Ocean on July 23, has been righted with its cargo of nearly 5,000 vehicles.
Posted on 08/26/2006 8:21:13 AM PDT by skeptoid
Amazingly, the Mazdas may be OK.
Crews have righted the huge car carrier Cougar Ace, the ship that went sideways 230 miles south of the Aleutians, and are preparing to tow it to Portland, Ore., according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
It could be ready to leave Sunday or a couple of days after that, said Cmdr. Joe LoSciuto, who is deputy over the Western Alaska Coast Guard sector.
The ship keeled over onto its port side July 23 as the crew was attempting to adjust the ballast water at sea. International rules require a change of ballast before a foreign ship comes into port so that the ballast doesn't contaminate local waters with unfamiliar species that could become a nuisance, LoSciuto said
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Photo courtesy United States Coast Guard
The Cougar Ace, a Singapore-flagged car carrier that lay over sideways in the North Pacific Ocean on July 23, has been righted with its cargo of nearly 5,000 vehicles.
Man, that ship sticks out of the water even with a full load of cars.
For Sale: New Mazda, inspected twice
Any of the cars survive?
I think that's what OK implies.
Could be an interesting year end model close out sale.
I see a lawsuit in my crystal ball.
A salvage crew member died on this operation as well. In the initial exploration of the ship he slipped and hit his head hard enough that he eventually died.
In this picture, it still looks like she is lifting her right leg a little...
It does indeed, but that is not the case.
As you stated, the vessel is a "she" ...
... and it is widely known that all female dogs (and Air Force pilots) ..
... 'squat to pee'.
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Trying to keep clean ballast and doing a minimal exchange of seawater was always a challenge when I sailed as chief mate on a 900 x 129 foot containership. We sailed from some of the dirtiest port waters in Asia.
We often left port with very little leeway as far as stability the way they loaded us. (Ship's crew has little or no say any more on what goes where)
After many hours loading in port and then inspecting container lashings, doing the paper work, departing the port, I had to get the ballast exchanged before we hit rough weather or had burned off too much fuel to still be stable for the operation.
Saw one picture where a Chinese tanker broke in half alongside the dock.
When the chief mate screws up it usually makes the news.
Best regards to a Capesize sailor.
We burned just over 100 tons of fuel per day if I remember (12 years ago)
When you change out ballast you are taking a full pressed up tank and emptying it to where you have "free surface".
The water in the tank can flow back & forth across the tank.
Free surface alone reduces you stability. As you remove more ballast water from the tank your stability is reduced more.
I had a carefully calculated process of emptying a minimal number of tanks at a time (max 2) and then refilling those tanks before I went to the next set.
I'm guessing they didn't calculate there ballast exchange & took too many tanks down at once. From the pictures it looks like they just tried to pump it all out at once.
I have found that a lot of the people ashore sitting at the computers that load the ships know little about stability.
Ocassionally you find an ships officer that doesn't understand it either.
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