I need more info. I know almost nothing about anchors except that they make the boat not move. How and why did this happen?
It just popped up on my YouTube, I know no more than you.
The brake (rubber pads) for the motor overheated, failed, caught fire. So no way to slow the anchor.
If I remember correctly.
Youâre close. Thereâs no motor for letting it out, only for hauling it back in - it drops under itâs own weight. At 54s, they took the screw brake on the windlass off too far, which allowed it to build enough momentum(not hard with a chain where each link is a few hundred pounds) to overwhelm the braking force they had on, which led to the brakes getting either worn down or glazed real fast. You can see they started to get a handle on it at 1:27, but with the heat and wear/glazing on the brakes, they had no more left to give even at full power, it tore up the rest of the pads, and started essentially running free, blew the end-link, and adios anchor, then someone calls him a wanker.
And definitely not rubber pads for the brake, they tend to be asbestos in those kinds of brakes. Rubber canât take the stress and heat in that application.
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Ok, so what the fuck does the boat do now?
Jokes aside - fucked if I know. Likely they were not that far out from port, but honestly, I donât have enough information to come to any firm conclusion. If they werenât far out from port, they could return to dock, and get a replacement. They might be carrying a spare, in which case, theyâd load the spare on, and either continue, or return to the nearest port for replacement and repairs(if needed).
But I can tell you, theyâre on the hook for retrieving the lost anchor, and a new anchor and chain would be about 200k worth of cash. Itâs an expensive mistake to make.
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Is it even possible to retrieve the lost one if itâs at the bottom of the very deep ocean?
Steel is cheap. No value in retrieving them.
Thatâs a smart question. Well, depends on how deep, of course, but at many depths, yes. Thereâs even salvage and deep salvage outfits that specialize in it. Luckily, aside from the depth, anchors and chain are relatively easy to salvage - no tricky problems with making sure it doesnât break apart, or implode, or collapse, etc. If you have the equipment, you can just grab it, and pull it back up to the surface.
And that said, itâs unlikely theyâre in the deep ocean. Or at least, unsalvagable kind of deep - because if they were, they wouldnât be trying to anchor, they simply wouldnât reach anything for the anchor to grab, making it rather pointless.
Steel is cheap, but itâs not THAT cheap. Rule of thumb - Heavy = Expensive. Heavy and worked to a particular form = more expensive. Like, for example, Anchors and anchor chains - a single shot(90 foot length) of anchor chain of that type is about seven and a half metric tons of steel, and as you can see from the video, theyâve got fair few shots on that chain. Seriously, JUST replacing that chain and anchor would be easily more than 200K by itself, not including install, delivery, etc. And thatâs a very conservative figure - anchors for a ship using that size of chain tend to be in the 100K range by themselves. In many cases, it would be cheaper to salvage than replace.
Plus, they also have a legal obligation under maritime law to salvage their anchor, if itâs at a salvagable depth - which it almost certainly is, as I said a moment ago.
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Approximately, how much do retrievals cost?
Depends on the difficulty of the recovery. Assuming they did the smart thing and their procedures are intelligently designed, they took a GPS mark of their location, with the best accuracy they can manage, along with any other relevant details(like, âwe were also moving astern on this heading at this speedâ) and gave it to the salvage company - the largest cost of Anchor salvage is just finding the damned thing, hunting about with magnometers, sonar and the like. So if they know reasonably accurately where the anchor is, donât have to do much hunting about the seafloor, and itâs not at TOO crazy of a depth, you can almost certainly get one salvaged for well under 100k.
Itâs a simple operation in general, no need for crazy recovery rigs. They hunt down the chain, find the end, run cables through to drag it back up to the ship, load it on to a windlass, and haul it back up just like it was their own anchor. Once thatâs done, often theyâll have a crane on deck to lift the anchor up on to the deck, rather than letting it hang. Itâs common enough that you have companies like PSOMakara and Resolve Marine Services that specialize in it.
Edit - oh, and often, their insurance will cover some or all of the cost. Since youâre obligated to retrieve dropped anchors if possible, most companies that operate large vessels have those sorts of things included in their insurance policies.
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I thought anchors donât work by grabbing, but work due to just being long and heavy.
Thatâs partially true. The anchor and the chain wonât do the job on their own, they have to work in tandem. The chain helps the ship stay in position with weight and length, but the anchor keeps everything locked in place. Without the chain(correctly deployed) the anchor would just pull free of the seabed. Without the anchor, the chain is just a dangling weight, and doesnât really help much.
Okay, so, you know the old-school bar-and-hook anchors? Forget 'em. They suck. Raggedy-ass old-timey bullshit. Nowdays, your anchor is a two-part construction, a long shank - the bar everything connects to - and then the bottom section, which is the Crown(the kind of shackle shaped bit where it connects to the shank), the shoulder(the big flat bottom part) and the Flukes(the big wing-like flat sections that dig into the seabed.) When you drop it, the shoulder hits the seabed, and digs in. Now, when the ship moves against the anchor(with the current, wind, or under power, whatever you need to do to set the anchor), the movement flops the anchor over in that direction, the flukes dig in, and youâve got your holding power. You play out a long length of chain - from memory, five times the depth in good weather - to keep the forces acting on the anchor as horizontal as possible, and to add more weight to help it along - because anchors donât work so good vertically.
No long chain, doesnât work, youâre dragging anchor because itâs just pulling free vertically. No anchor to provide holding force, doesnât work, chains just hanging out, drifting along with you.
Now, there are anchors made to minimize drift in the deep ocean, Sea Anchors or Drogues, but they arenât used as often - when youâre that far out to sea, you can normally just let it drift. Because what are you gonna run into? Thereâs fuck-all out there. If you donât want to drift too far, you can drop a drouge, or you can use a Dynamic Positioning system, which is basically just automated station keeping, an autopilot that holds you in place instead of taking you places.
This is an unedited clip from the Singapore dub of YuGiOh:
" Number of incidents during anchoring or while at anchor suggest that we might not have yet mastered the art of anchoring a ship effectively."
This is a good story.
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