CHARTROOM
SHIPS MAIL
WORKING ON OIL TANKERS IN THE FAR EAST
LETTER OF THE MONTH
I was interested to read the news item about the decaying FSO Safer (SM, Oct). I was one of Safer’s early mooring masters and pilots, flying out to Hodeidah in North Yemen in December 1988 about eight months after the first Marib crude flowed through the system. We were employed by Ocean Inchcape Limited (OIL) of Woking and so lived in Hodeidah and not on board Safer. I had been piloting ships in Africa and the Middle East since 1978 and had over 4,000 ships ‘under my belt’. Before joining Safer I did a Manned Model Course at the Warsash facility.
To clarify a couple of things in the article: Safer was converted in Korea but not into an oil barge, as she remained an operational oil tanker. The boilers were needed to supply steam to the four cargo pumps, each rated at 5,000 tonnes/ hour, and also for all the deck machinery, such as the winches.
When Safer was very light and the top of the propeller blades were visible, one could see the prop constantly turning, albeit very slowly, a usual practice for steam-turbine-powered ships. The maximum we could transfer to an export tanker was about 2,000,000 barrels, or about 260,000 tonnes, at a rate of 13,000 tonnes per hour.
The ‘bow-fitted mooring device’ was the turret, which increased Afer’s length from about 362m to about 400m. I include photos of the turret, showing the mooring chains and two loading hoses, and then across Safer’s forecastle to the bow of the oil products tanker Hamlet (273,410dwt).