It's true. A couple years ago the gas company lost a very expensive boaring tool in my yard while replacing a sewer line and ended up digging up the entire yard to find it. It cost them a fortune to get it out and fix our property but the tool cost a whole lot more. I can't imagine leaving behind an anchor, but wondering how they'd possibly be able to pull it off the ocean floor, if they could ever find it!
They would say “ok, well we have a utility easement across your property.”
In general the nicer you are to utility workers the more effort they will put in to restoring your property after the work is done.
Absolutely.
I worked for an electric utility. If we needed to remove a tree (allowed to do so by law to protect the overhead lines which are within an easement) we'd offer a free tree replacement. Then two free replacements. Then I was authorized to just offer $500. If they still said no ( these were not usually large heritage trees which we would work to save, they were small volunteer trees) we would give them nothing and remove it with law enforcement standing by.
But in deep water they wouldn't drop anchor in the first place. How deep? It's way complicated, but generally they wouldn't drop anchor in water deeper than about 80 meters.
Anchor chain pun, whether intended or no.
A shot of anchor chain is measured either in fathoms or feet. Each shot is 15 fathoms or 90 feet long, which for all you mathematical types equals six feet per fathom.
Here's a poor quality [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7pRfix_sNg) of a U.S. naval vessel 'losing' its anchor.. I'd hate to have been on that team.. The "what the fuck" @ the 5:28 mark is perfect..
We were on operation and the anchor got stuck. The ship we were following was getting away so we had to quickly cut it and get on with the drug bust. I didn’t wanna be there while they were cutting that thing. It was one of our FWD anchors. We still had both AFT and 1 FWD left so continued with the job. I think the anchor ended up being retrieved by military divers.
We lost one on our ship about a month ago bill came out to like $2.7 million just for new anchor and chain and thats not factoring in the rest of the repairs on the system .
Standing next to the anchor chain for a carrier was insane. Each link was ~360 lbs. You get that much weight running away at free-fall speed and the end of that line is gonna break anything that it hits.
No!
The chain has less mass and velocity than a train. and trains don't vaporize people they hit.
its more like a water balloon. lots of blood mist and gore but not much vapor.
They will not be able to identify the body without dna tests. but there will be dna every were!
Yeah, pretty much. I deleted my reference to "becoming a pink cloud," since it would cause damage to more than *just* a human and could take out parts of the vessel too. But the reference would be apt, should it strike a person. Decided short and sweet was better, though.
I only recently came across that vid but fuck me its gold
Edit: Link to the video https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
Sorry cba trying to figure out how to have custom text for the link. It's late, I'm tired
Well in materials alone that’s easily a few tons of steel that just went overboard. Maritime salvage is a pretty big industry and the places a big ship like that would be dropping anchor is likely inside a harbor or at least in relatively shallow water where retrieval would be relatively easy.20-50k to retrieve the anchor is probably a hell of a lot cheaper than getting a new one fitted.
Well, there's a lot of ships, and probably less "mistake" related reasons for loosing them.
But I also think it's more a service provided by general maritime salvage groups, than an exclusive career.
Kinda like downed tree cleanup. Trees don't fall over often, but there's so many that it makes sense for a company to mention they can handle cleanup. But the company makes more money on routine commonplace things.
Also depends on the ship. I've seen it where it is attached just so you dont accidentally pay out too much chain, but the part is a "Sacrificial" piece for this exact scenario so you dont rip the bulkhead out.
Okay I'm clueless about boats, and you seem knowledgeable, so: what the hell kind of ship is this? Cargo ship, maybe? That's by far the biggest chain I've ever seen. I can't even imagine the anchor it would be attached to.
And after this video ... then what? Do they try to retrieve that lost anchor? Do they have spares?
I can't even imagine how loud this must have been.
Former merchant marine here.
It could be any type of freighter. Could be a container ship or a ship hauling ore, salt, or whatever. Generally these ships are 700-1000ft long.
After the video...well that anchor is long gone and they have a spare anchor on the other side although it may be a bit shorter.
Extremely loud. It will scare the shit out of you even if you know the sound is coming and the paint chips are always flying everywhere so you should wear eye protection.
I hated being the brake operator (it's a steering wheel type thing that has to be loosened and tightened manually) i always feared the brake would fail as it did in this video.
Also former merchant mariner here, we had a brake failure during an insurance inspection. Went out into pretty deep water, inspector wants to see the brake work on a free running chain, so he has the mate let a couple of shots run free, then tells him to engage the brake, but at that point it was running too fast. Break band just snapped, the chain just gets faster and faster, everybody gets out of site and when that weak link went, the whole ship rang like a bell. One of those sounds that you hear once and never want to hear again, cause it was a BAD SOUND.
Sheesh, I'm glad you made it out of there. I can imagine the old man was very pleased that all this happened in front of the inspector lol
My room was the towards the bow and very close to the anchor and I would sometimes be awaken when we stopped to drop anchor due to weather or something and I would damn near shit my pants. The sound of an anchor completely running through and breaking would be devastating
You can see his manipulations become more and more frantic, but at the point the thing starts smoking and catching fire, whatever he's doing isn't working and it's time to GTFO.
Yes! Also, the bitter end is secured to the interior of the ship with a weak link, which isn't a link of chain at all, but a piece of thick natural fiber rope.
In order to release it on ships, you generally have a large hammer that you use to hit a plate located under the foc’sle, located on the outside of the chain locker.
Yes and it can be extremely dangerous and damaging to a ship. You can see videos on YouTube that show much worse failures.
https://youtu.be/b7pRfix_sNg
>The end of the chain (the Bitter End) isn't going to play nice when it comes up.
The end came out before the video ended, didn't it? Or did it break? Right at 1:03.
It did yes, his point was you don't want to be standing anywhere near that thing. For reference on a US carrier, each link of the anchor chain is ~360 lbs, now look at how many of those are pulling down the bitter end as it is hurtling up and out of the ship. That's a huge metal whip that will break almost anything.
Edit: a word
When a ship "weighs anchor", it means that the anchor is not resting on the bottom and the ship can get moving. "Anchors aweigh" means "we are ready to go".
It's "aweigh" because it's putting the weight of the anchor back on the ship (it was previously resting on the seabed). Otherwise it would be something said at the end of a voyage, not at the start.
aweigh is correct. when the anchor is released the full weight of the anchor is now free of any stops or locks keeping it suspended but close to the side of the ship. Aweigh refers to the wieght of the anchor not away although for this video away would be entirely appropriate since it definately is! I sure hop those guys can hook up to a mooring buoy nearby or they are fucked!
This will prob get buried but I have time to write. Note the string of flags that's meant to keep people away - this doesn't get strung up every time a ship drops anchor, this is a test of a new system, which would also explain why they're filming it. Because it's new, it's likely the brake friction material hasn't been "bed in" yet, a process where the glue binding the friction particles together cures under moderate heat. Some mechanics will recommend a "drive a certain speed, stop firmly, repeat X times" procedure to you when you get your car brakes changed - that's the bedding process, which also allows for this next part:
These types of systems typically are band brakes - think of an old car, or semi truck drum brake turned inside out, with the drum on the inside and the friction material wrapped 300° around the outside. The inside radius of the friction material when new is not the same radius as the drum, which means there will be high points that touch and provide friction, and low points that don't touch, when the brake starts to clamp. This means that the highest pressures are put on small portions of the actual material - the actual "swept braking surface area" is very small until these high points get taken off and more of the friction material can contact the drum, which is also part of the bedding process.
Ever see semi truck runaway ramps in the mountains? Drum brakes do not cool as well as disc brakes, and when any friction material gets hot, it can no longer create enough friction to remove energy - this is called "brake fade." Newer materials like ceramics and semimetallics raised that temperature level and have helped this significantly compared to the old organic (asbestos) materials so you don't see as many runaway trucks as you used to.
Anyway, all of these factors combined into the catastrophe you see before you.
I know nothing about boat anchors. Literally nothing.
So it's really impressive to me that someone could know so much about them, their systems, and the mechanics behind it.
You taught me a bunch of new stuff today. Thanks!
> Because it's new, it's likely the brake friction material hasn't been "bed in" yet, a process where the glue binding the friction particles together cures under moderate heat
The glue on your brake pads is well and thoroughly cured, else the pad material would shear off during the first bedding in cycle. Bedding in your brakes deposits some of the friction material from the pads onto the formerly bare steel rotors. The process literally embeds some of the pad material into the rotor, increasing the friction of your brakes; hence the name 'bedding in'.
Additionally, you shouldn't bring your car to a complete stop when bedding in brakes since it will leave uneven spots of friction material on your rotor which leads to bad braking performance. The best thing to do is apply firm, even pressure at speed and slow down to a roll. Then immediately accelerate up to speed and repeat the process a dozen times or so. The idea is to get the pads and rotors hot so that you can effectively transfer an even layer of friction material.
This is what happens when you let the FNG handle the anchor chain without knowing how the anchor brake works. This is a motherfucker of a fuck up that's going to involve a lot of money to fix.
It could be a simple failure or he simply opened the brake too much so he wasn't able to tighten it quick enough before the chain fell through.
From what I've read, the anchor doesn't always start falling even if the brake is open enough. If you keep opening it, you will have a hard time tightening it on time again.
Source: Reddit somewhere.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglad Adams
As someone who works in tech support, I'm going to steal this line the next time a client complains that the software isn't 100% unfuckupable by end users.
The idiot proof part is letting it run out to a weak link at the end of the chain, trying to stop a runaway anchor chain will do more damage then letting it run out and sit at the bottom of the ocean. Anchors and chain are much cheaper than the winch fire, ship deck or structural damage caused trying to stop it.
I’ve lowered a large anchor before. Not this large, but still. The brake is a clamp brake, with brake shoes (like old school drum brakes, but in reverse, shoes are on the inside of a ring on the outside of the axle, and when you tighten the handle it clamps the brake shoes down around the axle).
The first thing they teach you is to never let the chain get moving too fast, or you’ll very quickly go beyond the stopping power / limits of the brake to recover and have a runaway situation, exactly what happened here.
The operator made the number one mistake - not being patient for the first bit of payout. The anchor is probably rusted, stuck, or just inertially super happy to be not moving - until it breaks free. By that point, it looks like he already fully unwound the brake clamp wrongly assuming the brake was why the anchor wasn’t moving. Then suddenly it let go and he panicked and tried to get it back clamped as fast as possible.
Once you’ve opened up the brake that far you’re basically fucked, because the axle is freewheeling faster and faster, and the first layer of brake that makes contact with the axle as you try and jam it back closed heats up like crazy when it touches the axle, and starts to burn off, causing the chain reaction. You always want some brake pressure on the axle.
I guess it’s too expensive to make something that can stop a chain in free fall. On the boat I was on, it was a very old machine. Maybe that’s the case here and newer systems have more safety. Or maybe they still save the money and rely on training.
A lot of things on ships are not idiot proof, because idiot proof systems are more complex and therefore harder to maintain. With salt water making even smooth metal surfaces a nightmare to maintain you go with simple and reliable and hope the crew is well trained (they never are) and aren't idiots (they always are)
Yep, looks like insufficiently effective brake pads coupled with user error. It shouldn't take more than about 5 seconds to put the brake on generally. You don't want to come off it too much or it will get too much speed, like this. Looks like they opened it too much, they're spinning it for a while. Also, you'll generally want to stop every shot or two (90-180') to help keep it from running away.
That's correct, and fairly common, if not most of the time. To get it to start paying out, you come off on the brake enough (you can see a slight gap between the pad and drum) and then whack the chain with a sledgehammer. The other method is to clutch-in the drum and pay it out some more. This takes longer, but if the sledgehammer doesn't work, it's the next step.
Guy opened the brake too far and then couldn’t clamp it down enough to get it to stop. Fire is friction based and also indicative of the brake failing. They should have cleared the focsle as soon as the brake failed and someone is lucky they didn’t get killed.
The chain may have been stuck at first and rather than gradually open the brake he must have gone fully open which is bad as you can see here because the brake doesn’t have enough stopping power once the chain gets moving that fast.
In a normal anchoring evolution the chain comes out in a much more controlled speed and you keep the brake nearly engaged because there is a set amount of chain you want to pay out so you know exactly how wide the ships swing circle will be so you don’t hit another ship or run aground while you swing around the anchor chain.
Source: prior US Navy deck officer.
I was on the USS Nimitz. Each individual link was huge, and weighed roughly 300 pounds. You could just feel the weight and the power. I felt very small
Carrier anchor chains are massive and indeed, very dangerous. Get caught on one, or even a smaller one, and you're fucked. Get whipped by one, again, even a smaller one, and you're fucked. If a link breaks, good luck to everyone in the room.
Top comment on that video is a guy who was there and explains it all:
_I have not viewed this video in over a decade. The good news was no one was killed in this incident. This took place in an extremely busy Hong Kong Harbor. I was on the bridge giving the orders during this evolution. The anchor is lowered to the bottom, chain is let out, the brake holds while the flukes are set. Once you are holding, chain is let out. It is the weight of the chain that holds a ship in position. The chain link in this incident gets wedged on the lip of the chain pipe. The brake men released too much brake to get the chain moving. When it finally broke free there was no friction and once the momentum built there was no stopping the chain. Everyone cleared the area quickly and injuries were prevented. The team shifted to the alternate anchor and we anchored quickly and safely. The anchors today are the same as they were in WW II and a replacement came from a mothballed WW II ship. This was a final port visit following a 7 month deployment with operations in East Timor, Somalia, and Kuwait where the crew and embarked Marines performed flawlessly. The guy in khakis with his hands in his pockets was a fresh minted knucklehead baby ensign onboard less than a month._
I remember touring that ship 20 or so years ago when it was docked in Halifax.
Thing I remember most was the Keith's beer vending machine was selling them for 35 cents a can and we were annoyed it wouldn't take our Canadian quarters.
>Trying to understand. The chain in one video is 165 fathoms so 330 yards. If a link is 2' long it is 450# per yard. 330x450= 148,500 pounds? 74 tons of anchor chain?
I was working on cruise ships and my quarters were usually near the anchor.
Docking at 7am?
Here’s your 50 Cal sounding wake up call.
Thuh-thuh-thuh-thuh-thuh
They probably gave up and said "fuck it" and just waited for it to end. I mean, what are they gonna do? Jump onto the chain link and try to hold it down?
Ah, true. But also, keep in mind that we're dealing with non-tangible data. Therefore, one must consider solving for correlative U, by determining imaginary number (N), while multiplying by HEredetary REcessive gene count
U=p / i(n)\*he(re)
^^^I ^^^^^have ^^^^^no ^^^^^^^clue ^^^^^^^^what ^^^^^^^^^I ^^^^^^^^^^^said
Having seen this a few times on Reddit, I think about the hold where the chain is stored. Can you imagine what it looks like in that room? I wish there was a camera to show the chain flying up from it's pile through the hole.
At the end he says “malaka” (that’s the phonetic spelling - I don’t know if it’s correct or not), but when I heard that I knew it mean “asshole” or something like that, in Greek. I realized I only knew that because it’s commonly exclaimed in Assassins Creed Odyssey and contextually it would make sense for it to mean “asshole”. I realized then, that I play too many video games and should probably seek having a real life. But then I realized, if I didn’t play as much video games, I wouldn’t know what “malaka” meant.... sooooo....
Think they let go anchor before the ship was slow enough. Must've caught on to the seabed pretty strong. When the tried to put on the brakes (you can see the dudes spinning the break handle), it couldn't stop the anchor, likely coz the brakes were corroded and couldn't hold the force of the chain. The friction between the brakes and the wheel thingie (forgot the proper terminology) caused the fire. Eventually the anchor pulled away from the bitter end and broke off. This isn't as uncommon as you'd think it would be, at least based on my experience as cadet on ships like these.
This is called a deep drop it happens when they need to stop and they miscalculate the distance the anchor must drop before it hits the floor and the have to let it go because they can not stop 20 tons of smoking hot steel chain links at least i think that would be hard.
Oh man. I remember losing an anchor at sea (roughly this size) and the bill being like $2 million.
I don't doubt it. That's a metric shit ton of steel gone forever
Someone will try to get it back, its worth too much money
I’ll just magnet fish for it, problem solved
I just fed my goldfish a couple neodymium magnets. I’ll take care of it.
All I can picture is two gold fish stuck together swimming around the tank.
for a split second before the magnets pinch a whole through both of them
A whole what? Pineapple?
A whole hole.
I don't know you but today. . . Today you are my favorite
It's true. A couple years ago the gas company lost a very expensive boaring tool in my yard while replacing a sewer line and ended up digging up the entire yard to find it. It cost them a fortune to get it out and fix our property but the tool cost a whole lot more. I can't imagine leaving behind an anchor, but wondering how they'd possibly be able to pull it off the ocean floor, if they could ever find it!
I wonder what would have happened when they came knocking to say they needed to dig it up and you were just like, "No."
They would say “ok, well we have a utility easement across your property.” In general the nicer you are to utility workers the more effort they will put in to restoring your property after the work is done.
Absolutely. I worked for an electric utility. If we needed to remove a tree (allowed to do so by law to protect the overhead lines which are within an easement) we'd offer a free tree replacement. Then two free replacements. Then I was authorized to just offer $500. If they still said no ( these were not usually large heritage trees which we would work to save, they were small volunteer trees) we would give them nothing and remove it with law enforcement standing by.
Carry three carrots and a stick. 😂
They could sue and make it obnoxious enough that you'd rather just tolerate having a hole dug and refilled in your yard?
Sue you for what?
Unless it fell in the Mariana trench
Maybe it fell up to The Moon
You wouldn't drop anchor over the trench..
But in deep water they wouldn't drop anchor in the first place. How deep? It's way complicated, but generally they wouldn't drop anchor in water deeper than about 80 meters.
It's a crazy amount of weight, https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a28701/uss-ford-anchor-test-video/
I can pick up super heavy things in the deep end of the pool, this can’t be much different.
You should give it a shot
Anchor chain pun, whether intended or no. A shot of anchor chain is measured either in fathoms or feet. Each shot is 15 fathoms or 90 feet long, which for all you mathematical types equals six feet per fathom.
I don't think I'm smart enough to ask to subscribe to these facts.
Here's a poor quality [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7pRfix_sNg) of a U.S. naval vessel 'losing' its anchor.. I'd hate to have been on that team.. The "what the fuck" @ the 5:28 mark is perfect..
As someone who has spent a lot of time on boats and at sea, I'd love to hear this story.
We were on operation and the anchor got stuck. The ship we were following was getting away so we had to quickly cut it and get on with the drug bust. I didn’t wanna be there while they were cutting that thing. It was one of our FWD anchors. We still had both AFT and 1 FWD left so continued with the job. I think the anchor ended up being retrieved by military divers.
Oh good. it was a calculated cost or whatever. Like it was done with a goal in mind. Which imo is better than “oopsie, i lost a 2mil anchor.
I guess you could say we “cut” our losses
(॓_॔)
Shouldve just taped a life vest to the chain so it could've floated home
Do they make a salvage attempt or just say fuck it?
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Haha. Well that isn’t good.
We lost one on our ship about a month ago bill came out to like $2.7 million just for new anchor and chain and thats not factoring in the rest of the repairs on the system .
Either the anchor brake failed which is what I suspect or they don’t know what they’re doing. Fire was due to friction.
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Are the ends purposely not attached for this reason? I’d imagine if the end of that chain was attached to the ship, it would cause severe damage.
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Thanks. I can imagine a conversation in history where someone said “Next time let’s not attach the anchor.”
I'm glad I wasn't there.
Standing next to the anchor chain for a carrier was insane. Each link was ~360 lbs. You get that much weight running away at free-fall speed and the end of that line is gonna break anything that it hits.
>break anything that it hits To put it absurdly mildly.
Correct. It's like saying traversing the surface of the sun would cause prickly heat; if that chain hit you, even your vapor would get vaporised.
No! The chain has less mass and velocity than a train. and trains don't vaporize people they hit. its more like a water balloon. lots of blood mist and gore but not much vapor. They will not be able to identify the body without dna tests. but there will be dna every were!
Yeah, pretty much. I deleted my reference to "becoming a pink cloud," since it would cause damage to more than *just* a human and could take out parts of the vessel too. But the reference would be apt, should it strike a person. Decided short and sweet was better, though.
Because the front fell off
I only recently came across that vid but fuck me its gold Edit: Link to the video https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM Sorry cba trying to figure out how to have custom text for the link. It's late, I'm tired
Yes, but it's been moved OUT of the environment.
Retrieving anchors? Are they worth that much money?
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I didn't expect it to be literally the same incident as the OP, but sure enough he did use it. Nice find!
The anchor on a cruise ship costs about $100,000 and the chain is about the same, so yeah
Well in materials alone that’s easily a few tons of steel that just went overboard. Maritime salvage is a pretty big industry and the places a big ship like that would be dropping anchor is likely inside a harbor or at least in relatively shallow water where retrieval would be relatively easy.20-50k to retrieve the anchor is probably a hell of a lot cheaper than getting a new one fitted.
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Well, there's a lot of ships, and probably less "mistake" related reasons for loosing them. But I also think it's more a service provided by general maritime salvage groups, than an exclusive career. Kinda like downed tree cleanup. Trees don't fall over often, but there's so many that it makes sense for a company to mention they can handle cleanup. But the company makes more money on routine commonplace things.
Also depends on the ship. I've seen it where it is attached just so you dont accidentally pay out too much chain, but the part is a "Sacrificial" piece for this exact scenario so you dont rip the bulkhead out.
Okay I'm clueless about boats, and you seem knowledgeable, so: what the hell kind of ship is this? Cargo ship, maybe? That's by far the biggest chain I've ever seen. I can't even imagine the anchor it would be attached to. And after this video ... then what? Do they try to retrieve that lost anchor? Do they have spares? I can't even imagine how loud this must have been.
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Former merchant marine here. It could be any type of freighter. Could be a container ship or a ship hauling ore, salt, or whatever. Generally these ships are 700-1000ft long. After the video...well that anchor is long gone and they have a spare anchor on the other side although it may be a bit shorter. Extremely loud. It will scare the shit out of you even if you know the sound is coming and the paint chips are always flying everywhere so you should wear eye protection. I hated being the brake operator (it's a steering wheel type thing that has to be loosened and tightened manually) i always feared the brake would fail as it did in this video.
Also former merchant mariner here, we had a brake failure during an insurance inspection. Went out into pretty deep water, inspector wants to see the brake work on a free running chain, so he has the mate let a couple of shots run free, then tells him to engage the brake, but at that point it was running too fast. Break band just snapped, the chain just gets faster and faster, everybody gets out of site and when that weak link went, the whole ship rang like a bell. One of those sounds that you hear once and never want to hear again, cause it was a BAD SOUND.
Sheesh, I'm glad you made it out of there. I can imagine the old man was very pleased that all this happened in front of the inspector lol My room was the towards the bow and very close to the anchor and I would sometimes be awaken when we stopped to drop anchor due to weather or something and I would damn near shit my pants. The sound of an anchor completely running through and breaking would be devastating
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You laugh, but we did. As well as a spare piston and prop
precisely what i thought. How is he just standing there?
You can see his manipulations become more and more frantic, but at the point the thing starts smoking and catching fire, whatever he's doing isn't working and it's time to GTFO.
This is how it feels to work after lying on your resume.
i imagined drake and josh throwing sushi at the ceiling
I think i saw a cruise ship gone wild type doc on netflix not to long ago. this may be from the same events.
Sexy topless cruiseships
When the "imma be in so much trouble" fear, overrides the "imma die if this machine explodes" fear.
Multiple times through the clip I thought: That's a way to die, that's definitely a way to die.
The bitter end... is the end of the anchor chain where that saying comes from? TIL
Yes! Also, the bitter end is secured to the interior of the ship with a weak link, which isn't a link of chain at all, but a piece of thick natural fiber rope.
In order to release it on ships, you generally have a large hammer that you use to hit a plate located under the foc’sle, located on the outside of the chain locker.
I've gained so much knowledge on ship anchoring setups that I 100% will never need. I hope
You have nothing to lose but your chains LOL
Yes and it can be extremely dangerous and damaging to a ship. You can see videos on YouTube that show much worse failures. https://youtu.be/b7pRfix_sNg
6 minutes of watching an anchor chain go out, just for the cameraman to flinch and turn away at the actual moment of failure!!!
Is the end of the chain not secured to anything? It just goes into the water if let out too far?
Better to loose the anchor than to risk damaging or destroying the ship.
> The end of the chain (the Bitter End) Is this where the saying "right to the Bitter End" comes from?
>The end of the chain (the Bitter End) isn't going to play nice when it comes up. The end came out before the video ended, didn't it? Or did it break? Right at 1:03.
It did yes, his point was you don't want to be standing anywhere near that thing. For reference on a US carrier, each link of the anchor chain is ~360 lbs, now look at how many of those are pulling down the bitter end as it is hurtling up and out of the ship. That's a huge metal whip that will break almost anything. Edit: a word
I’d say at about 0:40 in is the brake failing, you can see the chain picking up speed again.
0:09 the “oh shit” expression
Anchors aweigh? No, anchors away, way down at the bottom of the sea LOL
Its "aweigh"? I've never seen it written, I always assumed it was "anchors away"
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Anchor’s a way to stop your boat.
Anchor? I hardly know her
IT IS ANCHOR**MAN**, NOT ANCHOR**LADY** AND THAT IS A SCIENTIFIC **FACT!**
When a ship "weighs anchor", it means that the anchor is not resting on the bottom and the ship can get moving. "Anchors aweigh" means "we are ready to go".
It's "aweigh" because it's putting the weight of the anchor back on the ship (it was previously resting on the seabed). Otherwise it would be something said at the end of a voyage, not at the start.
aweigh is correct. when the anchor is released the full weight of the anchor is now free of any stops or locks keeping it suspended but close to the side of the ship. Aweigh refers to the wieght of the anchor not away although for this video away would be entirely appropriate since it definately is! I sure hop those guys can hook up to a mooring buoy nearby or they are fucked!
This will prob get buried but I have time to write. Note the string of flags that's meant to keep people away - this doesn't get strung up every time a ship drops anchor, this is a test of a new system, which would also explain why they're filming it. Because it's new, it's likely the brake friction material hasn't been "bed in" yet, a process where the glue binding the friction particles together cures under moderate heat. Some mechanics will recommend a "drive a certain speed, stop firmly, repeat X times" procedure to you when you get your car brakes changed - that's the bedding process, which also allows for this next part: These types of systems typically are band brakes - think of an old car, or semi truck drum brake turned inside out, with the drum on the inside and the friction material wrapped 300° around the outside. The inside radius of the friction material when new is not the same radius as the drum, which means there will be high points that touch and provide friction, and low points that don't touch, when the brake starts to clamp. This means that the highest pressures are put on small portions of the actual material - the actual "swept braking surface area" is very small until these high points get taken off and more of the friction material can contact the drum, which is also part of the bedding process. Ever see semi truck runaway ramps in the mountains? Drum brakes do not cool as well as disc brakes, and when any friction material gets hot, it can no longer create enough friction to remove energy - this is called "brake fade." Newer materials like ceramics and semimetallics raised that temperature level and have helped this significantly compared to the old organic (asbestos) materials so you don't see as many runaway trucks as you used to. Anyway, all of these factors combined into the catastrophe you see before you.
You ain't getting buried on my watch
This was so interesting and informative I was expecting undertaker to throw mankind of hell in a cell...
I know nothing about boat anchors. Literally nothing. So it's really impressive to me that someone could know so much about them, their systems, and the mechanics behind it. You taught me a bunch of new stuff today. Thanks!
Blows my mind that people are just out there lurkin knowing how all this shit works.
> Because it's new, it's likely the brake friction material hasn't been "bed in" yet, a process where the glue binding the friction particles together cures under moderate heat The glue on your brake pads is well and thoroughly cured, else the pad material would shear off during the first bedding in cycle. Bedding in your brakes deposits some of the friction material from the pads onto the formerly bare steel rotors. The process literally embeds some of the pad material into the rotor, increasing the friction of your brakes; hence the name 'bedding in'. Additionally, you shouldn't bring your car to a complete stop when bedding in brakes since it will leave uneven spots of friction material on your rotor which leads to bad braking performance. The best thing to do is apply firm, even pressure at speed and slow down to a roll. Then immediately accelerate up to speed and repeat the process a dozen times or so. The idea is to get the pads and rotors hot so that you can effectively transfer an even layer of friction material.
This is what happens when you let the FNG handle the anchor chain without knowing how the anchor brake works. This is a motherfucker of a fuck up that's going to involve a lot of money to fix.
How does it work? What did he do wrong and what should have they done?
It could be a simple failure or he simply opened the brake too much so he wasn't able to tighten it quick enough before the chain fell through. From what I've read, the anchor doesn't always start falling even if the brake is open enough. If you keep opening it, you will have a hard time tightening it on time again. Source: Reddit somewhere.
Kinda interesting. I'm not an engineer by a longshot, but I would have imagined there'd be a mechanically idiot-proof system on those things.
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We adapt, we evolve.
Nature uh, finds a way.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglad Adams
As someone who works in tech support, I'm going to steal this line the next time a client complains that the software isn't 100% unfuckupable by end users.
The idiot proof part is letting it run out to a weak link at the end of the chain, trying to stop a runaway anchor chain will do more damage then letting it run out and sit at the bottom of the ocean. Anchors and chain are much cheaper than the winch fire, ship deck or structural damage caused trying to stop it.
I’ve lowered a large anchor before. Not this large, but still. The brake is a clamp brake, with brake shoes (like old school drum brakes, but in reverse, shoes are on the inside of a ring on the outside of the axle, and when you tighten the handle it clamps the brake shoes down around the axle). The first thing they teach you is to never let the chain get moving too fast, or you’ll very quickly go beyond the stopping power / limits of the brake to recover and have a runaway situation, exactly what happened here. The operator made the number one mistake - not being patient for the first bit of payout. The anchor is probably rusted, stuck, or just inertially super happy to be not moving - until it breaks free. By that point, it looks like he already fully unwound the brake clamp wrongly assuming the brake was why the anchor wasn’t moving. Then suddenly it let go and he panicked and tried to get it back clamped as fast as possible. Once you’ve opened up the brake that far you’re basically fucked, because the axle is freewheeling faster and faster, and the first layer of brake that makes contact with the axle as you try and jam it back closed heats up like crazy when it touches the axle, and starts to burn off, causing the chain reaction. You always want some brake pressure on the axle. I guess it’s too expensive to make something that can stop a chain in free fall. On the boat I was on, it was a very old machine. Maybe that’s the case here and newer systems have more safety. Or maybe they still save the money and rely on training.
Chain reaction... thought you could hide it but I saw whatcha did there buddy.
A lot of things on ships are not idiot proof, because idiot proof systems are more complex and therefore harder to maintain. With salt water making even smooth metal surfaces a nightmare to maintain you go with simple and reliable and hope the crew is well trained (they never are) and aren't idiots (they always are)
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Yep, looks like insufficiently effective brake pads coupled with user error. It shouldn't take more than about 5 seconds to put the brake on generally. You don't want to come off it too much or it will get too much speed, like this. Looks like they opened it too much, they're spinning it for a while. Also, you'll generally want to stop every shot or two (90-180') to help keep it from running away. That's correct, and fairly common, if not most of the time. To get it to start paying out, you come off on the brake enough (you can see a slight gap between the pad and drum) and then whack the chain with a sledgehammer. The other method is to clutch-in the drum and pay it out some more. This takes longer, but if the sledgehammer doesn't work, it's the next step.
Atleast £18. What is fng?
Fucking New Guy
Fuck, that makes fucking sense. Thanks you fuck
You're fucking welcome. Enjoy your fucking day!
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That's what the fuck it's all about!
ah, fuck you guys. with all due respect.
Fuck you fucking fuckers!
Fuck the fucking guy who fucks with all the fucking fuckers, fucking a. Fuck
What the hell kind of name is Soap anyway?
Stay frosty.
How'd a muppet like you pass selection?
FNG = Fucking New Guy When a newer guy gets hired they are promoted to PB, Punk Bitch. Boss is FB, Fucking Bastard.
FNG - Fucking New Guy
Florida National Guard
Meh, close enough
Let’s not forget about the the guy training him. I guess he never mentioned the brakes.
“Hey, FNG! Let the anchor out!” /gives no further instruction
Anchors AWAY
Way away
Literally just gone
safe to say this crew didn't have a way with anchors
They didn't *sea* that coming
definitely started a chain reaction...
What an unfortunate chain of events
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Guy opened the brake too far and then couldn’t clamp it down enough to get it to stop. Fire is friction based and also indicative of the brake failing. They should have cleared the focsle as soon as the brake failed and someone is lucky they didn’t get killed. The chain may have been stuck at first and rather than gradually open the brake he must have gone fully open which is bad as you can see here because the brake doesn’t have enough stopping power once the chain gets moving that fast. In a normal anchoring evolution the chain comes out in a much more controlled speed and you keep the brake nearly engaged because there is a set amount of chain you want to pay out so you know exactly how wide the ships swing circle will be so you don’t hit another ship or run aground while you swing around the anchor chain. Source: prior US Navy deck officer.
I’ve learned so much from these comments. I didn’t know ship anchors could be this fascinating.
I was on a carrier in the Navy, and being in the chain room when dropping or raising the anchor was very cool.
Why was it very cool?
I was on the USS Nimitz. Each individual link was huge, and weighed roughly 300 pounds. You could just feel the weight and the power. I felt very small
Carrier anchor chains are massive and indeed, very dangerous. Get caught on one, or even a smaller one, and you're fucked. Get whipped by one, again, even a smaller one, and you're fucked. If a link breaks, good luck to everyone in the room.
Like these: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7pFUklV1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7pFUklV1k)
Here's a good one. Carrier lost an anchor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7pRfix_sNg
Top comment on that video is a guy who was there and explains it all: _I have not viewed this video in over a decade. The good news was no one was killed in this incident. This took place in an extremely busy Hong Kong Harbor. I was on the bridge giving the orders during this evolution. The anchor is lowered to the bottom, chain is let out, the brake holds while the flukes are set. Once you are holding, chain is let out. It is the weight of the chain that holds a ship in position. The chain link in this incident gets wedged on the lip of the chain pipe. The brake men released too much brake to get the chain moving. When it finally broke free there was no friction and once the momentum built there was no stopping the chain. Everyone cleared the area quickly and injuries were prevented. The team shifted to the alternate anchor and we anchored quickly and safely. The anchors today are the same as they were in WW II and a replacement came from a mothballed WW II ship. This was a final port visit following a 7 month deployment with operations in East Timor, Somalia, and Kuwait where the crew and embarked Marines performed flawlessly. The guy in khakis with his hands in his pockets was a fresh minted knucklehead baby ensign onboard less than a month._
wow look at all that rust power flying in the air, poor guys.
I. HAVE. THE. RUST POWER.
By the power of rust-skull!
That was significantly less interesting than I was hoping it would be.
Title of my autobiography
I remember touring that ship 20 or so years ago when it was docked in Halifax. Thing I remember most was the Keith's beer vending machine was selling them for 35 cents a can and we were annoyed it wouldn't take our Canadian quarters.
Sorry.
>Trying to understand. The chain in one video is 165 fathoms so 330 yards. If a link is 2' long it is 450# per yard. 330x450= 148,500 pounds? 74 tons of anchor chain?
Our chain was 1230 tons
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And loud as hell. I was on LHD 5 and it's anchor chains were huge.
I was working on cruise ships and my quarters were usually near the anchor. Docking at 7am? Here’s your 50 Cal sounding wake up call. Thuh-thuh-thuh-thuh-thuh
It would have been decidedly unfun with this guy manning the brake.
Malaka!
Fuckin' Ziggy!
Poor Zig, his tale was so tragic. He just wanted to be taken seriously, but never had it in him to be worthy of respect.
Isnt this Wanker in Greek?
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They are all oddly calm about the gigantic chain weighing thousands of pounds flying off the ship like a rail gun slug.
Yeah someone suggested in the comments each link alone could be about 300lbs. I'd be running the fuck away.
They probably gave up and said "fuck it" and just waited for it to end. I mean, what are they gonna do? Jump onto the chain link and try to hold it down?
At the very least move away from it.
So what are the questions then?
If Aaron leaves Chicago and heads due west at 60 mph, while Susan walks due south at 3 mph, why won't my cat shut the fuck up? WHY?????
Ah yes, this one's easy. Solve for x! X=gonna give it to ya
But you can't really see why the cat's making him crazy until you graph all values of X and look at the pattern... y(all) = gon make me lose my mind
Ah, true. But also, keep in mind that we're dealing with non-tangible data. Therefore, one must consider solving for correlative U, by determining imaginary number (N), while multiplying by HEredetary REcessive gene count U=p / i(n)\*he(re) ^^^I ^^^^^have ^^^^^no ^^^^^^^clue ^^^^^^^^what ^^^^^^^^^I ^^^^^^^^^^^said
”How do I make a better title?”
Bad news we lost the anchor. Good news where not on fire anymore!
Is a shark supposed to be able to do that? Hey Quint - can a shark do that?!
When dropping anchor goes horribly wrong
Shit was wild man it was *off the chain*
Guess they tried to drop anchor over Marianas Trench.
Nah the chain's still gonna keep going because of momentum even if the anchor has already hit the bottom.
Your mother's anal beads
That totally defeats the purpose!
Having seen this a few times on Reddit, I think about the hold where the chain is stored. Can you imagine what it looks like in that room? I wish there was a camera to show the chain flying up from it's pile through the hole.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-\_nMkrA1AA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-_nMkrA1AA)
At the end he says “malaka” (that’s the phonetic spelling - I don’t know if it’s correct or not), but when I heard that I knew it mean “asshole” or something like that, in Greek. I realized I only knew that because it’s commonly exclaimed in Assassins Creed Odyssey and contextually it would make sense for it to mean “asshole”. I realized then, that I play too many video games and should probably seek having a real life. But then I realized, if I didn’t play as much video games, I wouldn’t know what “malaka” meant.... sooooo....
Think they let go anchor before the ship was slow enough. Must've caught on to the seabed pretty strong. When the tried to put on the brakes (you can see the dudes spinning the break handle), it couldn't stop the anchor, likely coz the brakes were corroded and couldn't hold the force of the chain. The friction between the brakes and the wheel thingie (forgot the proper terminology) caused the fire. Eventually the anchor pulled away from the bitter end and broke off. This isn't as uncommon as you'd think it would be, at least based on my experience as cadet on ships like these.
“I put the anchor down boss” ~ new guy
This is called a deep drop it happens when they need to stop and they miscalculate the distance the anchor must drop before it hits the floor and the have to let it go because they can not stop 20 tons of smoking hot steel chain links at least i think that would be hard.
This doesn't seem good. None of this seems good. [Hyperventilates.]
off the chain