In this undergraduate thesis I wrote about anchoring of RO-RO and passenger ships, the components of the anchoring system and ways how to anchor the ship.
The anchorage is meant to hold the ship in one position, outside of a port, without using the ships engine or ruder. By anchoring of the RO-RO and passenger ships we need to be careful that the anchor holds, because these ships have large freeboard which performs as a sail and wind and weather have a large effect on it.
For anchorage of the ship is used an anchorage system, for which the main part is an anchor. Auxiliary elements of anchorage system are: anchor chain, anchor winch, chain locker, hawse pipe and stopper.
Technics of anchorage are with one or two anchors. While anchoring the ship turns into the wind, drops one or two anchors and rolls down the wind. When there is enough anchor chain dropped, we tide up the stopper and stop the ship. If the anchor does not hold, we need to do the entire manoeuvre once again. RO-RO vessels normally do not anchor, because they are liner ships and always have a place in the port. RO-RO ships can use their anchor in the port as a supplement to the mooring with the stern to the pier. This is called the Mediterranean mooring. Passenger ships also do not anchor a lot because they are on time and have a free pier space in the port. They are anchoring only if they are too big to be docked in the port or if they are cruising in areas where there are no docking facilities for such ships and they need to anchor outside of the port, so they can drop off passengers via tender boats.
When we are on anchor the bridge watch is still going. We need to check our position all the time, we need to look out and look for neighbour vessels and listen to the radio stations.
The ship on anchor needs to be correctly marked so other vessels can see that we are on anchor. The daily marker is a black sphere on the bow mast and the night marker is a white light, that can be seen from all sides, on the same place.
I find the fact that I’ve heard from RO-RO ship captain Rok Šušter very interesting. He said, that »RO-RO ship does not anchor. They have the anchor just for decoration.”.
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