Send this article to Promobot

Safety at sea conversations continue

February 28th 12:11 pm | Dimitra Lavrakas Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

They're big

some seven times larger than a football field, and they're sailing in heavy seas and sometimes they just lose it. It could be loss of propulsion, steering or a poor navigational call that lands it on the rocks. Not a great scenario for the Coast Guard, which has to go out in high winds and heavy seas to try to haul them to safe port or for the environment that sometimes has to absorb huge oil spills.

It's a problem that has been begging for an answer.

"We've been meeting for a little over a year," said Unalaska Mayor Shirley Marquardt. "It's a good group with lots of knowledge from being on the water."

Marquardt said the Aleutian Islands Risk Assessment advisory group is trying to find reasonable options to mitigate risks without regulations or high costs.

In 2007, Unalaska developed an emergency towing system and has it on site, and it's come in handy many times since then. Every summer since then there are drills on the water.

"The Coast Guard loves to deploy helicopters to put through scenarios with which we might use the system," Marquardt said. "Should a vessel be far away, the Coast Guard would fly in and pick up the system and deliver it out to the deck of the vessel and hook it up.

"We have to do training every year. I'm adamant about that because ships change, crews change. Practice, practice, practice."

The Coast Guard station in Unalaska has a full-time marine safety detachment responsible for marine safety and vessel spills.

"There's a lot going on out in the Bering Sea, so the cutters use the port instead of having to go all the way back to Kodiak," Marquardt said.

But until recently, the Coast Guard didn't have a dock to operate out of until the late Sen. Ted Stevens pushed though funding for one on the Dutch Harbor side, she said.

"The dock has become part of the risk assessment because it has been successful," she said. "Every summer, we need volunteers and last year, Shell donated the use of the drilling vessel Nanuk to be the disabled victim, and Dunlop Towing, the time of the tugs the James Dunlop and the Gyrfalcon."

Viking's tow

In December, the tow system proved its worth when the 18,000-horsepower Tor Viking II towed the 738-foot Golden Seas to Dutch Harbor from the site it went aground about 45 miles north of Atka Island.

"Shell released the Tor Viking, and she's amazing," said Marquardt. "She towed a drilling rig all the way down from the Arctic. She's an extremely valuable vessel with a very experienced crew, mostly from Norway.

"They just put her full-steam ahead and got there quickly, and with a 4-inch diameter towing system with the steel eye on one end that was key to capturing the vessel."

Towing systems in the state, Marquardt said, are in Unalaska and Kodiak. The state Department of Environmental Conservation has one and the Air Force is in the process of getting one.

"We designed the system as mobile and flexible, easy to load and strong enough to just hold a vessel as well as tow it," she said. "I'd like to see one staged in Adak."

The Aleutians Risk Assessment group meets every week via videoconferencing to look at different scenarios and come up with solutions that will work on site.

"It's really a focused group," Marquardt said.

Leslie Pearson, a member of the facilitation team from the firm Nuka Research out of Homer, said the group will meet in March in Anchorage.

"Phase A was the risk assessment, the heavy lifting," Pearson said. "This spring, we'll stimulate conversation on complete risk readiness and options that should be implemented before going to Phase B where we apply for more research."

It was the tug James Dunlop that was on the scene of one of the worst marine disasters in December 2004, when the Malaysian cargo ship Selendang Ayu, carrying a cargo of soybeans, went aground off the coast of Unalaska Island after its main engine failed. It resulted in the deaths of six crew members and a huge oil spill. It highlighted the need for a tow system.

At the time, James Dunlop's captain Rob Campbell told a Seattle Post Intelligencer reporter that tow equipment needed to be staged in Dutch Harbor: "Nobody wants to pay for all this, but if you really want to make sure these things don't happen ... pay me now or pay me later," Campbell said. "For years, I've been suggesting every time we have one of these meetings that we have some emergency tow gear set up in place in Dutch Harbor. We are a work boat, not a salvage boat. Every time we do these kinds of things, we have to make do with what we can put together."

And the Bering Sea is an unforgiving body of water.

"If you turn your back on the Bering Sea, that's when she jumps up and slaps ya," Marquardt said.

 


Copyright 2012 The Dutch Harbor Fisherman is a publication of Alaska Media, LLC. This article is © 2012 and limited reproduction rights for personal use are granted for this printing only. This article, in any form, may not be further reproduced without written permission of the publisher and owner, including duplication for not-for-profit purposes. Portions of this article may belong to other agencies; those sections are reproduced here with permission and Alaska Media, LLC makes no provisions for further distribution.