Transfer to a ship at sea.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

I fear you are forgetting who is the rescuer and who is the rescuee.....

For some reason this comes to mind ... 'Don't tell me how to do my job. I don't come to your workplace and tell you how to sweep up'

The head rescuee will be too busy dealing with hysterical women folk and crying children ... not to mention that the monkey will be going ape...

Not to mention that the average rescuee has not a clue about how things work on big ships.......

I had a feeling this would come up which is the reason I started this Thread.

It is not intended for those who accept the status quo and will blissfully cruise in ignorance, unwilling to listen, learn or offer constructive criticism.

It is intended for those who wish lo learn how big ships operate.

To already have forethought on the safest way to transfer old or injured crew in those specific conditions

To not relinquish responsibilities and common sense to an unknown rescuer.

Not sure about the professional Masters you know, but I cannot imagine one so impatient to NOT listen to a yacht captain explain their limitations and how he would recommend they safeguard his family during transfer.

It is not an Ego thing!

Many examples of disastrous rescues by well meaning freighter's whos crew are used to rough handling...

Also many successful ones whose Masters listened to a plan already in place by an experienced skipper.

What I am suggesting is not theoretical and this is only one scenario. I have done quite a few

It is borne from many years as captain of both commercial ships, super yachts, offshore salvage tugs and sailboats.

Politely managing the good Samaritan's help is part of the yacht captain's responsibility and if some prefer to join the ranks of your monkey, they can unsubscribe.

[quandary]

Very relevant post...perhaps two main scenarios to think through for us amateurs;
1. Transferring someone who needs medical help to a ship
2. Abandoning your yacht and transferring entire crew to a ship.

Yachts carry ballasted life rafts for last resort survival and rescue. Presumably transfer for medical reasons is for a life threatening situation.
So in both cases the use of a liferaft. which is designed for rough water seems to make sense. If the person needing medical care is able to assist they could be loaded into the liferaft and pulled across to the ship as described elsewhere after which the liferaft could be abandoned. This could also be done to rescue the entire crew in an abandonment scenario.
The worst case would seem to be a couple on a yacht with one needing medical care and the other incapable of singlehanding the yacht after the other is transferred. That would sadly force abandonment.

If one needed to be assisted to the ship and the other could singlehand afterwards , and accompanied them in the liferaft, then the trick would be how to get back to the yacht. Perhaps trailing a (very long!) line behind the liferaft, with end tied to the yacht , would enable the "healthy" person to pull themselves back to the yacht after being pulled across to the ship and offloading the other. It would be wise to trail a long line tied to the ship so that the liferaft could be pulled back to ship if the person in it was not able to pull themselves to the yacht.
This all sounds great if the relative rate of drift of yacht and ship are similar...if not, the long lines would soon become too short! (and the dude in the raft would have to cut one of them)
Taking all this into account, it would seem very important that the yacht (if it is not abandoned) should be anchored by its bow to the ship with a long line to keep them near each other until the person who needs to get back to it has done so.
So summary in last scenario:
1. get long line from bow of yacht to ship somehow.
2. Get second line from ship to liferaft at yacht to pull it across to ship.
3. Trail long line tied to yacht from liferaft.
4. Pull liferaft to ship and offload person requiring transfer from liferaft in best way possible.
5. Person in liferaft pulls himself back to yacht and let's go lines to ship.
??
If the master was very helpful and the ship was not too fast and a very long tow rope was available, the yacht might even be towed to keep the couple almost together!

[Pelagic]

Great points Quandary and only underlines that every event can be different and the scenario is also fluid during the process.

That means establishing good communication with rescuer and slowing down the process until YOU decide it is safe to abandon ship.

The only constant in this discussion for now is the wind and sea state

On the Medical side, Air Splits and collars should be part of the yachts inventory as well as boards to immobilise, if not ask if rescuer can provide?

To clarify, commercial ships deploy their Liferafts at deck level from a dedicated manual crane, then "Bowse" in tightly so their crew can safely step inside, despite the roll.
https://youtu.be/4zCCZRrhEEU

In a situation where one of the couple is injured, it would not be an unreasonable request to ask that two or three volunteers come over with their life raft with first aid equipment and added helping hands.

[Pelagic]

Key point Quandary on when to secure the two vessels together.

That is an important decision and in these conditions, I would assess as follows.

Most drifting vessels naturally present their stern to the wind, so hopefully yacht has deployed a bow drogue to keep bow into wind, or some other means.

Ship master tests his natural aspect to existing wind and sea and holds upwind with ocassional touches of propulsion.

If he has problems holding, then tethering the two boats together at beginning is not a good idea as he may prefer to make a running pass with his towed life raft as first contact.

In these conditions, let's assume he can hold comfortably with stern quarter to the wind making a small Lee..

Then ship floating a tether line down to yacht is a good option.

If you have on board a long beach line or heavy storm line, that can be married to ships line, other end shackled to your anchor and deploy your anchor fully, that catenary helps to ease motion.

Then ship can play you like a fish as you set up transfer vehicles and e eventually retrieve his own line when letting go of sinking yacht.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Great points Quandary and only underlines that every event can be different and the scenario is also fluid during the process.

That means establishing good communication with rescuer and slowing down the process until YOU decide it is safe to abandon ship.

The only constant in this discussion for now is the wind and sea state

On the Medical side, Air Splits and collars should be part of the yachts inventory as well as boards to immobilise, if not ask if rescuer can provide?

To clarify, commercial ships deploy their Liferafts at deck level from a dedicated manual crane, then "Bowse" in tightly so their crew can safely step inside, despite the roll.
https://youtu.be/4zCCZRrhEEU

In a situation where one of the couple is injured, it would not be an unreasonable request to ask that two or three volunteers come over with their life raft with first aid equipment and added helping hands.

I shall ignore your post #16,
However - to clarify - a very large percentage of merchant ships do not have crane deployed liferafts as shown in that vid.... they have simply cradle mounted rafts as shown in these three pics....

The first ship has two fully enclosed boats ( that would be nigh on impossible to recover if sent away in a seaway), no accident boat, freefall rafts, a gunport door a metre above her loadline and a real nutcracker of a sponson. Good luck figuring out what to do with her..... stopped and drifting she would weathercock and lie head to wind......

The second ship? I'm amazed any clasification society let them put the rafts that close to the prop but there you go...


I did a RAS with a 100,000 ton tanker in the Indian Ocean once. We had a chat , I told him I could manage 6 knots, he said he would make a lee and slow steam, we never got closer than about 5 metres, took in 300 litres of dieso in 15 minutes ( endless whip sent over with basic heaving line) , swell at the time about 2 metres.

[Pelagic]

What has transferring fuel at 6 knots got to do with this discussion of a stricken yacht trying to affect a safe transfer in Trade conditions?

If the Ship does not have a davit deployed life raft, then other options are discussed which is the purpose of this thread

[jackdale]

Augusr 2012 - transferring a crew member in medical distress to a container ship.

From our perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G74giW1k8Po&list

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEAUuZlaqf4&list

From the container ship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBn7drXizb0&list

You can see how close the spreader got the hull of the container ship.

A presentation I have done on the topic - it shows some other transfers.

Rescue me

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

What has transferring fuel at 6 knots got to do with this discussion of a stricken yacht trying to affect a safe transfer in Trade conditions?

If the Ship does not have a davit deployed life raft, then other options are discussed which is the purpose of this thread

Um... it was in trade conditions..... and it would have been a simple matter to change out the fuel for people...... injured or otherwise.... as you know but others may not... all solas ships carry some form of heath neil-robertson stretcher designed for getting incapacitated people out of enginerooms and tanks, lowering them down to pilot boats .... and picking them up from yachts

Crappo link but about the best I can find.. China Folding Lifesaving Basket Stretcher for Helicopter - China Stretcher, Neil Robertson Stretcher

Meanwhile... 'To clarify, commercial ships deploy their Liferafts at deck level from a dedicated manual crane, ' implied that *all* commercial ships do this.... they don't. Maybe 'some commercial ships' would have been a better choice of words...

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by jackdale

You can see how close the spreader got the hull of the container ship.

A presentation I have done on the topic - it shows some other transfers.

Rescue me

Great work and presentation Jackdale
(Not exactly 'boring' but definitely in control as you had trained for)[emoji106]

What sea and wind conditions were those in?
They seemed pretty good so I'm assuming you were in the Pacific High?

If in 25knots and 4m swells, how would you have coordinated total evacuation if...

It was with the same ship and Greek captain to the rescue?

Your boat was unable to motor or sail,

Yacht had worsening structural cracks that pumps were barely keeping up with

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

.......

Your boat was unable to motor or sail,

Yacht had worsening structural cracks that pumps were barely keeping up with

If unable to motor we should proceed as my #13..... and I would suggest that to the master and ask for a stretcher to be sent across ( I would not try to micro-manage the master's ship handling from a remote location).... If I was the master I would suggest to the yacht that we proceed in this manner with the rescue and ask if he needs anything else... ie stretcher, personnel sent to yacht etc.
This procedure will work with almost any ship type in almost any conditions.

If I had motive power I would proceed as per my #20... once again will work with almost all ship types and weather conditions... was how a sister ship of mine was succesfully abandoned in heavy weather off Tristan da Cunha a few years back.... no lines... pilot ladder... medium sized bulk carrier... 2 people...
A disabled person evac may not be possible in those conditions in which case revert back to #13

[boatman61]

Well this is 'Praia'.. the ship I RAS'd with SW of the Azores.. winds were maybe 7-10knots and the swell 2-2.5metres, sea's calm to light wavelets..
We stopped on request while the Captain turned round to come back to our position but he could not stop her quite where he wanted and overshot us by a 1/4mile.. he then asked if we could sail alongside (we'd lost all electric's when batteries dumped and were just getting enough charge from solar to maintain AP during the day and enough reserve for nav lights at night no way to start an engine)
I switched all the fenders to the port side and sailed her alongside where we gathered the thrown heaving lines and secured bow and stern lines.. we were head on to the NW swell so rode fairly evenly and my crew collected the water while I tended the boathook keeping the boat from bashing the bow.. the whole thing took maybe half an hour.. the ship made no way during this time.
In the case of 'body' transfer it would have been a piece of cake lowering and then raising a stretcher..
When all was done the Captain waited till we were clear before turning the prop in reverse to start so the wash aided us into the light wind so we could get a better momentum.
Full Marks to the Captain for the whole operation.. very smoothly done.
PS; We were lying maybe 10metres forward of the white bridge structure.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Great work and presentation Jackdale
(Not exactly 'boring' but definitely in control as you had trained for)[emoji106]

What sea and wind conditions were those in?
They seemed pretty good so I'm assuming you were in the Pacific High?

If in 25knots and 4m swells, how would you have coordinated total evacuation if...

It was with the same ship and Greek captain to the rescue?

Your boat was unable to motor or sail,

Yacht had worsening structural cracks that pumps were barely keeping up with

It was calm conditions. The captain of the Navarino had the ship broad side to the wind and waves. We had a 20 hour beat to get to the rendezvous point; we sailed in about 15-18 knots winds. The high that year really did not develop much. In 2000 we were becalmed with any means of propulsion in the high (a whole other story)

If the wind and waves had been higher the captain would have used a rescue boat. He indicated in an email to me that he was reluctant to do so because the only training his crew had was in calm waters in a harbour.

He maintained 3 knots for steerageway.

Funny you should mention pumps. Also a whole other story 30 knots winds 20 foot seas, taking on water. We still have no idea why!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NJsE-ztaTM&list

[Pelagic]

[QUOTE=jackdale;2325166]


If the wind and waves had been higher the captain would have used a rescue boat. He indicated in an email to me that he was reluctant to do so because the only training his crew had was in calm waters in a harbour.
/QUOTE]

That is a very good reminder of the limitations in ship crew training