Bourbon Dolphin capsizes

I was waiting to hear the testimony of Highland Valour's captain, but now I read that this hearing is for the purpose of hearing from the survivors only, intended to get their testimony while the events are fresh in their minds. The government will appoint a board for the "official" investigation, to be announced soon. That board will be the body I presume, that will hear all related parties, including Highland Valour crew, rig crew, designers, shipyard officials, deck equipment suppliers, etc., etc. If Norwegian government practice is anything like US, that body will be empowered to compel testimony, hire consultants, conduct tests, and so on. The board wil have to deal with competing pressures to be as thorough as possible in searching out and weighing all contributing causes and to reach its conclusions as soon as possible.

 

One strange detail in my local newspaper this morning,
one witness said that the "towing chief" on deck removed one or two pins or bolts holding the rode or chafe in place on the stern, as an experiment, the heading in the paper was something like "hazardous experiment".

 

you know raggi, when I was Ecofisk 72 our tug never used pins,
There was a big burnmark on the galley countertop, I asked what happened, they said that the wire had raced across the deck , smashed a man, he went over, they pulled him out with half his head missing , and the coffee pot burnt dry and made the mark while everyone was on deck,
i hated that boat, the American bridge had no respect at all for the deck crew all of whom were Spanish None of em could navigate at all, they used a Finnish mate to take the ship on long hauls, he was the only one that kept a log, we had only Decca, was before the days GPS but it suprises me not, that some people would not know the diff between NE AND SW or whatever someone said here
good evening to you all in the sunny North

 

Charlie
the my post under is not an attempt to knock US crews, things were different then I guess, far more cavalier.
The ship I was with was Chippy T, THERIOT BOAT, the bridge were all Creole speaking) I could understand nothing, crazy bunch I was lucky to leave her alive, given my outspoken ideology which was very rampant at my tender age

 

lazeyjack, no offense taken. American offshore rig and boat crews were always a tough bunch, sometimes wild, not much into diplomacy.

So the crew was Cajuns (Americans in Louisiana, descended from French-Canadians kicked out of Canada long time ago by the Brits), Mexicans, a Finn, and a crazy, loud-mouthed Aussie ... hmmmm, let me guess.... things never got boring, right?

 

actually I was born in UK, lived most life NZ, and live here, i feel at home in Siberia,
I have not a clue where I belong, but it aint here, affinity with Northern climes

 

I hawe read troug and got a bether understanding now.
The ship's thrusters did not overheat, but it was the tow off the main engines that stoped. I gues this is because overheating or that the seawater inlet got into the air so the engines stoped on low water preshure.

From this I asume the boat had 4 engines and that eatch pair off enines went into one gear with one proppeler eatch and a shaft generator. From my experience off runnung generator systems is that under operation one bow/compas thruster and one stern thruster is runn from one shaft generator wile the other bow/compas thruester and stern thruster is runn from the other shaft generator. So it would losse two thrusters if both engines on one gear stoped.(speculations)

They decided to release the chain and save the ship, but this failed and only releaced 12m minute witch was too slow.

EDIT: After some looking around I have some off the things I asumed confirmed. http://www.ulsteingroup.com/kunder/...pen&disp_key=BFFE5E3CB3174CAFC12572830045F806

Two thrusters in eatch end off the ship and 4 main engines going into 2 gears with shaft generator with floatin voltage.

 

Very interesting, guys - please keep posting.
Right now it looks like a deadly combination of human error and technical failure.

Greetings
Johannpeter


Just found on the web:

"Captain Frank Reiersen was on home leave when the accident happened, said the Bourbon Dolphin was never meant to handle such a heavy task. When the job had been planned, the idea was that the vessel was to be assisting, not to carry the main load.
He did not know why it had later been decided to change plans."
www.norwaypost.no/cgi-bin/norwaypost/imaker?id=73007

 

Hate to say it people but it looks like the old routine - rising weather conditions, boats being pushed beyond their limits to finish the job; inexperienced, maybe that's the wrong word! - crew who knew the job well but did not have the experience when to say "that's it stuff the job my boat and crew come first" to be fair unless the master has a really strong constitution and is well know; there's not many who will survive that sort of argument; I can only think of half a dozen and they were from the early years - they'll be old men now and retired!

Coupled with that is the Highland Valour trying to do a notoriously awkward job, hooking the rig chain with the 'J' hook is at best sheer bloody guesswork! and could take many goes before you catch the thing, then it's quite easy to drop off if you get it wrong - steaming out on a reciprical bearing is easy enough if your getting flustered and are tired - OK it shouldn't but if you've been up for 18 hours and the weather is getting worse!

Releasing that pin is just plain stupid and listening to the Barge Engineer in a case like that is asking for trouble, but see above about tiredness! "Too many chiefs and not enough indians" springs to mind. I note the survivors statement concerning jumping into the water along with two trainees - so out of the 15 there was a least 3 trainees! or one fifth or 20% of the crew - seems a lot of trainees! OK we all got to learn somewhere but all together - so maybe I'm a bit harsh but the Sea is very unforgiving - especially the high latitudes!!

 

Rough stability analysis

Our associates in New Orleans modified one of their GHS model to match B.D. particulars and ran some loading conditions. The model is simplified but relevant and gives us a 'feel' for the static forces involved. This rough stability analysis (attached below) shows that: The second the chain leaves the tow pins and moves to the side, the vessel is in trouble. They told us that their model could only survive with 150 LT hanging by the stbd staghorn.

 

Walrus, I think you've made some good points. An aquaintance of mine in Norway said Bourbon Dolphin's other captain testified that Bourbon Dolphin was originally planned to be the assisting tug on this operation. Although one of the newest, she was not one of the most powerful AHTS's (sort of 2nd tier in power). So add last minute change of operating plan to the list of poor decisions. The testy radio exchange does sound like frustration arising from the many unsuccessful attempts to catch and hold the anchor chain. Another potential problem, not yet verified, is a report that Highland Valour's owners have been recruiting outside the UK-Scandinavian region to fill the expanding crew requirements. So possibly add language skills shortcomings and lack of specific North Sea experience for some crew on Highland Valour.

If some of these other reports are verified, it begins to seem that a major diaster was bound to happen sooner or later. Maybe one result of the formal board will be empowerment of captains to make safety related operating decisions like releasing a cable before the boat is in serious danger.

 

Nice analysis smartbight, thanks a lot (by the way, may we know your name?). So 300 tons hanging from the side seem to be in fact almost enough to turn the boat turtle in static conditions. (Another way would have been working out the weight hanging's squared cosinus curve over the standard righting arms one, wouldn't it? Down here our maritime authority surveying services prefer us doing calculations this way)

The ship seems to have had more than enough intact stability, with compliance of all IMO criteria well over passed, as these vesels use to. A pity tugging and/or heavy lifting criteria compliance are not also mandatory for them. I've learnt yesterday, talking to one of spanish best experts on stability matters, that Spain is the only country in Europe where the study of the compliance with the Tug Tripping and Self Tripping criteria is mandatory for these vessels. As a matter of fact a recent collaborator in my firm, who is a young naval and oceanic engineer who has done an 80 m AHTS end of studies project, told me he had to increase the breadth of his ship (as much as 1 m), as with the initial one he had considered the ship did not comply with such criteria, in spite of fully complying with IMO ones.

Anyhow it seems it begins to be quite clear that human decissions and dificulty of task, in conjunction with equipment failure, are the causes really relevant in this case.

Cheers.

 

There is no criteria for over the side loading stability checks in either USCG or Solas regs. USCG does have a crane heel criteria that has to be checked if there is a heavy lift crane on board. This vessel did not have one.

On the matter that was mentioned about the tripping criteria at .7 BP, I would certainly guess that this vessel would meet that criteria. Conservatively the BP would not have exceeded 250 mtns, so .7 x 250 = 175 mtns, and I know this vessel could handle that over the side in normal conditions.

There was no flooding. Flooding could not happen as fast as this vessel flipped. As well, if there was flooding the vessel would have gone to the seafloor immediately, not remained afloat inverted for as long as it did.

This vessel was an A102, which is an Ulstein new generation design. The BD was likely the 1st of class, and if not, very close to the 1st of class. Ulstein designers are very good and they don't make stupid mistakes that leads to things like this happening without extreme unanticipated circumstances. I have been designing vessels such as this for a very long time, and you cannot plan for every thing that can happen.

As far as a mistake in stability manual, I would doubt it. These vessels would have been fitted with a stablity monitor, likely Autoload. These programs go through extensive proving by both the designers and the authorities.

The winch would have been Brattvaag. State of the art winch. As far as quick release is concerned, there is only 1 quick release that works and that is a cutter and those are not fitted as far as I know. Others either don't spool out quick enough or if they do the cable remaining on the drum many times 'bird-nests' and ties itself up and does not deploy.

Something that has not been reported is which way the vessel rolled. Everyone is assuming that the load pulled it over, but I have not seen that directly reported. It was reported that the vessel was shifting ballast to correct for the list caused by the over the side pull. If they tranferred a large amount of ballast to the off-load side, then they released the winch and it did work, guess what, they could have rolled due to the ballast all transferred to the off side. There are so many possiblities, we will likely never know the real cause.

As far as the Jhook incident, that's why we use ROVs in the Gulf of Mexico for jobs like this. I am surprized that an ROV was not employed on this job.

Lazeyjack, as a young naval architect I was involved in the building of the Theriot tugs. Chippy T was state of the art then. We have came a long way baby. By the way, if not for the Cajuns coming the North Sea the norwegians would still be fishing for a living. LOL

 

Firstly lets not get into a slanging match over this because acerch72 that comment about Cajuns coming into the North Sea otherwise the Norwegians (note capital N) would still be fishing for a living! Be very careful otherwise I might start telling you a few hometruths about the standards of the early crews - a lot of who were 'bloody rednecks coonarses'! they were not nice people in anyway primarily through sheer pig ignorance especially the Theriot boats (noisy devils if ever I heard any (typical septic engines good but noisy), and not very good when it came down to it! As for the toolpushers..........But like I said lets not go there it accomplishes nothing and is not very nice! OK it happened - we have I hope, moved on from there, at least in treatment of our fellow man no matter where he comes from! Especially if he's doing the same job!!

Now for Charlies comments - a few outfits up there employ Portugese Deck crews (with a smattering of Spanish) and the majority of them are damn fine Seamen -some of the best I've worked with - unlike a lot of Brits they don't argue, they get on with the job! Having said that there is a time to argue, and a time to listen - and THE MASTER OF ANY VESSEL MAY AT ANY TIME ABORT AN OPERATION IF HE THINKS IT WOULD BE DANGEROUS FOE HIS CREW! however there is a clause in most charters that the client can remove ANY person from the vessel at any time for no reason whatsoever! Masters know this and also know that if they get removed the client will tell others and so he won't get another job! so he invariably does the sensible thing (maybe not the wise thing at times but for his families sake the sensible thing) maybe if we went back to the old days that ac72 hankers after it would be different (at least a lot of Seamen would still be alive 'cos they are fishing)

The trouble with employing foreign crews is that at some stage the language barrier is going to come up and with a shortage of good crews there is every chance - even the Norwegian/ English problem can be sufficient to cause problems - tho' luckily the Norwegians can generally speak better English than the English! And given the size of Gulf Offshore (NS) Ltd. fleet it would not suprise me if they employed a few foreign crew! I know from experience (Yep! I worked for them once!!) that not all their men are top line - but there again that goes for any outfit, no matter the trade!!

 

Safewalrus

I said LOL

Chill out guy............