Bourbon Dolphin capsizes

It will need to be a "well organised investgation" as it was a well organised cock up that cost several lives..
seems to be;
crew not trained on vessel..cockup
wrong spec boat for the job..cockup
vessel maybe not as stable as designers thought
vessel may not be able to even do the job it was sold for
etc etc
These are organised cockups not a one off act of god
Poor old skipper left with the inadequate tools at the end of the large organisation above him with people paid to ensure rules are followed and rules do actually exist etc etc

 

Like all tragedies, there were lots of negative factors, or "cockups", coming together leading to the loss of control and stability in this case.
There are two things that I have read and observed in the report that may be of interest to members of this forum who have been commenting on the release of previous pieces of information.

1. On page 190 it states that Chief Officer Grimstad had remarked, on a visit to the shipyard to discuss cargo capacity, that no one on board understood the ballasting system. This could have been important as he was the person transferring ballast at the time of the accident. I remember Capt. Chuck wondering if they had moved ballast in the wrong direction. I think there should have been more ROV work done on this point.

2. On page 136 there is a DGPS trackpoint chart of the vessels position every 10 sec prior to the accident. By enlarging this chart and joining the points you can see the vessels track and speed. Unfortunately it does not record a heading. It shows that the vessel backed up slowly for 150 mtrs. and maneovered to the West slightly before moving North at 1.5 m/s, almost 3 knots, then 2 knots before coming to a halt at 17.05.18. She was then pulled back at 2 knots for a distance of 75 mtrs. She then moved forward in an arc first heading North by West and then North by East reaching a speed of 2.7 knot at one stage. Her position moved to the East when she pulled up and I think that this is when they were trying to free the pin. She started getting pulled back again and at 17.08.08 her track makes a sudden change to the East. I wonder if this is when she rolled the first time. She was being pulled back at 3 knots again following this movement.
It seems that the pin was lowered while the chain was at almost maximum tension. I wonder if they had gone back the 150 mtrs again before lowering the pin, would they have got away with it.

 

That's a good point Murdo!

I have to wonder why power wasn't reduced when they were having problems holding position.

I am on a fairly underpowered vessel by todays new AHTS designs (12,280 HP with twin electric bow tunnel thrusters of 600 HP).

There are many times when I have been unable to hold position while working in deep water with either strong winds, current, or bow thrusters coming out of the water - when you are at maximum power ahead the thrusters get overwhelmed quite easily.

In that case we have to reduce power and reposition to the up-current side of the line before pulling hard again.

There have even been times when I have had to come all the way off the power and back over the line (bow down-current) until I could flip back around and pull ahead again.

I hope that this doesn't sound like I know what happened (have you ever noticed that any idiot can drive any boat perfectly when they are sitting at the local bar).

It is one of the areas that I haven't found addressed in the report (I still am working my way through it). --Chuck

 

Chuck
What type and brand clutches are you using and how many hours are you getting Sorry to digress

 

no clutches - CP wheels on the stern and 600 HP DC motors on the thrusters (and winch). --Chuck

 

The only reason that I can come up with is that they were "trying to avoid one-sided stress", see 9.1 on page 120 and 9.6 on page 125.

 

I meant on main, oh I see you have dc behind main too?

Why dont you use bridle 2 ship tow on these heavy cables

 

I am still sort of confused to the operation that they were trying to accomplish. I assume that they were going to install and anchor after paying out all of the chain. IF that is the case, it would have been necessary to J-lock the chain to reduce the weight on the system so the anchor could be launched (a Bruce anchor would be crushed or damaged by the weight of the system if they tried to do this without J-locking or 'grappling' the chain).

In the report they state that the reason the system was being grappled was soley to help the BD back to position. This doesn't make much sense to me.

 

The Captain of the Highland Valour said he had never previously attempted what they were asked to do and he was the most experienced man there, in terms of years of experience at least.
The Commission has noted that the operation was a deviation from the job procedures and that no risk assessment, etc. had been carried out for assisting another vessel by grappling.
There seemed to be some obsession with keeping a high tension on the chain. I wonder if this was to do with cutting time in bedding the anchors in and getting the drilling started, as they had lost a lot of time with winch problems in the previous week and the drilling crew were already on board.

 

I, personally, think that the high chain tension is really the root of their problems. I wonder if they ever reduced power after the near miss with the Highland Valor? It is all speculation - but I have made a definite effort to train my second captains and mates on the usefulness of reducing power to get the heading around.

I have been thinking about the BD a lot these past couple days - we are currently grappling a system off the sea floor and have stalled out our winch a number of times trying to get it on deck. There was talk about having another vessel J-lock the system. Always have to wonder what can happen if things go wrong. I was happy to get up for watch and see the grapple on deck.

 

Found this today, but I think it's from the end of March

http://www.norwaypost.no/cgi-bin/norwaypost/imaker?id=139972

 

I think we have here bureaucrats, naval architects and vessel owners taking responsibilities off from their backs.

In my opinion the main responsibilities for the capsizing of BD were a lack of adequate stability criteria for anchor handling (most worrying!), poor design and stability analysis and surveying (just tightening strictly to the criteria but not studying the real operational conditions), and inadequate commisioning of this vessel for that job. Probably I'm wrong, but that's my thinking.

Human errors on site made the rest.

Cheers.

 

a cover up as all parties were from the same country, builder, class, owner etc?
so the Norwegians investigated themselves and said 'all ship shape'

 

Not all parts involved were norwegian. Bourbon is a french corporation, i.e., as far as I know.

Let's read again some of the key conclusions of the report:

"The “Bourbon Dolphin” was a relatively small and compact vessel, in which all these requirements (a lot) were to be united.
..............
Under given load conditions the vessel did not have sufficient stability to handle lateral forces. The winch’s pulling-power was over-dimensioned in
relation to what the vessel could in reality withstand as regards stability.
...............
The anchor-handling conditions prepared by the shipyard were not realistic.
...............
The Norwegian classification society Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and the Norwegian Maritime Directorate were unable to detect the failures in the company’s systems through their audits.
...............
The (owning) company did not pick up on the fact that the vessel had experienced an unexpected stability-critical incident about two months after delivery.
...............
In specifying the vessel, the operator did not take account of the fact that the real bollard pull would be materially reduced through use of thrusters. In practice the “Bourbon Dolphin” was unsuited to dealing with the great forces to which she was exposed.
................
Planning of the RMP was incomplete. The procedure lacked fundamental and concrete risk assessments. Weather criteria were not defined and the forces were calculated for better weather conditions than they chose to operate in. Defined safety barriers were lacking. It was left to the discretion of the rig and the vessels whether operations should start or be suspended."


So: Shipyard (NAs), regulatory bodies (Class society and authorities) and owning company are the very first ones in the list of responsible parts (should we say guilty?). Handling crew are just a second line here. But these are the ones who died.

Cheers.

Italics are mine

 

your'e right, I found this on a web site

Bourbon Offshore Norway AS is part of the international "Groupe Bourbon", whose headquarters are in France.

what happened to the issue of the load line being raised after the launch and the question of whether the stability was re claculated?
A question asked in the inquiry that was mentioned in the newspaper, and the answer from the yard was, I assume so??