NEW MOORING ROPE
New Mooring Rope
I recently piloted a 100,000 DWT tanker where the traditional mooring wires had been replaced by what seemed a totally inadequate mooring rope of similar dimensions to the old wire! The Master informed me that this was a new type of very high strength mooring rope.
This is an excellent development because the (delighted) boatmen were able to run the moorings in around half the time normally required. The only problem was during paying out the slack because, in a similar manner to wires, the small diameter means that when the rope is recovered the turns occasionally jam between each other and thus when paying out the slack these cause the line to momentarily heave in before the jam releases itself and the line pays out again. This is more of a problem than with wires because with wires the sheer weight of the wire over the side coupled with the large catenary is usually sufficient to clear the jam before it becomes a problem for the, usually slow moving, boat and crew. With these lightweight ropes which also float, the boat tends to speed off towards the dolphin and with no catenary any jam will cause the boat to pull up sharply with obvious risks to the crew. I always feel that it beggars belief that in 2008, mooring winches are not fitted with self spooling arrangements.
The captains of ships fitted with this rope have informed me that they are very effective but have a major flaw in that they chafe rapidly at the fairleads and therefore crew have to fit leather chafing pieces at the fairleads. Whilst this isn’t generally a problem whilst alongside a jetty, the chafing is a major problem during ship to ship transfers where the constant movement and varying loadings makes it impossible to keep the chafing pieces in place.
I have learned that these ropes are manufactured by a company called DSM and called Dyneema® rope.
RSS Feed