Bunkering : Refueling Ships at Sea | Seaman Vlog S03E10 Chief MAKOi

[Music] after nine days of loading cargo our ship was ready to start the voyage to our next port but at the moment we were running low on fuel which is why we transferred to a nearby anchorage area to carry out bunkering operations [Music] after calculating the distance to our next port we will need an additional 400 tons of heavy fuel oil in order for our ship to reach our [Music] destination [Music] so while we were at the anchorage area we have been waiting for the bunker parts to come but apparently bunkering was not allowed at our position so last night we have to move again and we arrived just now here at a different location farther away and now the barge is approaching our ship bunkering is a maritime term for fuel replenishment the term bunker fuel dates back to steam-powered ships which used coal as fuel and stored them inside of coal bunkers onboard the ship today in place of coal bunkers ships now have fuel oil tanks but the name got stuck which is why ship's fuel is still referred to as bunkers as the bunker barge was approaching on our starboard side the engine crew was preparing the manifold for host connection the flange was opened and oil spill prevention materials were made ready a standard procedure in case an oil leak happens a few days before bunkering operation it is standard practice to brief the crew on the details which tanks will be filled and how much what their stations and duties are what to do and what not to do and so on by the way i'm always using the term bunker barge even though it's obvious that what's approaching us is actually a small tanker ship bunker barge is just another term that we've gotten used to because it got carried over from the old days anyway as the barge was making its final approach for sts or ship-to-ship operation the boson and the rest of the deck team were on standby to receive the mooring lines and make fast [Music] [Music] oh with both of the ship's crew working in unison the whole process was done in a matter of minutes now the barge is alongside and now we're connecting the hose the next step is to connect the hose to our bunker manifold the hose has to be carefully laid out and secured as it has a tendency to move around especially in the case of ship-to-ship operations looking at their host flange it is quite smaller than the flange on our manifold so we will be needing an adapter bunker fuel is a black viscous liquid substance which floats on the water and causes massive pollution if spilled at sea this is why during host connection it is very important to make things as secure as possible and there can be no room for errors or leakages of any kind we will also need to attach a fuel sampling flange which is designed to take a continuous oil drip from the flowing oil and store it in a container specifically designed to be attached to the sampler all right um after making sure that the flanges were tight the hose itself was secured by ropes and supported by the hose crane okay so now the hose is connected and we're just sending third engineer off to the barge to carry out sounding it's also standard practice to send one of the engineers to the barge and carry out initial sounding of their tanks this is done that if in case there will be a huge discrepancy in the final quantities delivered we will be able to compare their figures to ours so after all the preliminary documents have been signed and both ships have already agreed it's now time to start pumping at the start of the operations the bravo flag has been raised which signifies that our ship is taking in discharging or carrying dangerous cargo as the pumping commenced the initial transfer rate was slow and with our instructions it will be gradually increased as soon as oil started to drip from our sampler we connected the container to collect it the sample will be transferred to smaller bottles and one of those will be sent to a laboratory for analysis and determine if the fuel is safe to be used for our engine another one will be given to the barge and the others will be kept on board the ship initial sounding of our tanks were also carried out to confirm that fuel is going into the correct tanks once we verified that the level was rising we gave the signal to increase the pumping rate so once pumping has already started the only thing to do is to continuously monitor the tank levels by sounding every few minutes or so then continuously recording so we can calculate how much fuel has been loaded already into the nominated tanks this is very important so as to avoid any overflow happening and prevent oil spills as the bunkering operation was ongoing everyone was at their stations performing the roles that were assigned to them as we were only taking in 400 tons of bunker fuel the pumping just took over an hour to complete soon enough it was time to purge the line by carrying out a few blows of compressed air hey so the next step is to calculate how much was loaded into our tanks a few minutes after the air blow the final soundings were taken using that information i did the calculations and came up with the final quantity loaded into our tanks okay so all figures were good i've already signed the delivery receipt and you've already taken the samples the only thing that's left to do is to cast off the bunkering operation was completed with no incidents and since there wasn't any quantity disputes i gave the order to disconnect the host and secure the manifold the barge was also preparing to go so our deck team went to their stations and started casting off the lions [Music] [Music] [Music] as soon as the barge secured their ropes they started their engine and slowly went underway it was a smooth and successful operation for both our ships for their side having safely delivered their cargo for us having safely received our fuel which we now have more than enough of to safely reach our next port you

Channel: Chief MAKOi

Views: 1,035,660

Keywords: chief makoi, seaman, seafarer, sailor, merchant marine, merchant navy, maritime, marine engineer, chief engineer, navigator, captain, master mariner, ship, mega ship, bunker, bunkering, refueling ships at sea, ship to ship operation, ships fuel oil, life at sea, humans at sea, seamans life

Id: sczuoEFG2Yk

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020