The Dangers of Tripping in at Tugboat

Wow, "Crazy Ivan" brought back some Navy memories! Your sea-wisdom never fails to impress. Thanks Capt Tim

With ship assist work, one of the common tasks when the ship is turning is to have a line on the ship's bow closest to the inside of the turn. The tug will back and be used as a break against the ship's engines, allow the ship to have more turns on its propeller, and, therefore, more water over its rudder and turn faster. I can recall many times when I was running the tug doing that work, and the boat doing a squirrelly and not fun dance. Never tripped, but sometimes it felt like we might. I was on a tug that parted out of its push gear and began to trip near lower Ambrose Channel, pretty close to the Gedney Buoy. The weather was a little rough, and a couple of us got up out of our bunks after hearing the brake on the towing winch chirp. Once you heard the chirp, the gear was probably going to part. Well, one side did, when I had one leg in my pants, and the tug was leaning over being dragged in an instant. The other leg of my pants got balled up, and I was headed for the door. After three steps, we heard a big boom, the rest of the gear parted, the boat sat right up. Then, we made a pot coffee and got ready to chase down the barge. From the first chirp to starting the coffee, it lasted two minutes. Things can happen fast.

If you ever decide to retire from the water, You would make an excellent teacher! Be safe ! And Thanks for sharing!

In the UK, it would be called “girting” but it happens for exactly the same reasons that you described. You have a like and a new subscriber. I could listen to your stories all day. I retired from the UK rail industry in December 2018 after 41 years. Working in the railway was something I always wanted to do, but I think if I hadn’t gone on the railway, I would have liked to have gone to sea and end up working on tugs. So instead, I photograph them and build large scale radio-controlled models of them! Greetings from the UK.

Never be ashamed of age or getting older - wisdom is it’s greatest benefit- you are a great teacher!

I have also learned from my experiences that screws don't work in the air and sails don't work underwater... Always try to mitigate the risk of tripping! :) Thank you for your videos! I'm glad I found them!

I work on the Columbia and Snake Rivers on a towboat. Very scary to get sideways on a barge with current behind you. Love the videos.

Thanks for explaining " tripping " . From now on, when I watch tug boats, it kinda opened up another world to me on the possible dangers lurking out there. Prior to listening to you today, I just assumed you had a relatively safe job, excluding the normal boating things that could happen. thank you.

Hi Tim,in the Fall of 1983 I think.A tug sank in the Kills assisting a ship.All the crew survived. The wreck blocked the channel for a week or more.They brought the Witte Heavy Lift crane barge to lift the tug out of the water.Divers could only work at slack water.I was there enforcing a security zone by COPT. The other sinking was a tug towing a scrappy on Long Island Sound when barge sank pulled the tug down.I wish that I could remember the tug names.A lot of water under this keel.Lol.All the best,be safe.

Great talk Tim - But I'm sorry - the guys letting out the hawser lines for the drydock kept distracting me, yeah and the water starting to flood the bottom of the drydock too... I'm such a bad student... :)) Will have to watch it again...and probably again.

"Pulls a Crazy Ivan..." LOL!

Thank you for talking about your profession in ways that this armchair sailor can understand. You are obviously very competent, you obviously like people, and you obviously enjoy what you're doing.

One of the more endearing things about a Navy ARS salvage tug is it carries two 35 ton keging anchors midships well above the main deck. When you are in the engine room with the four turbocharged diesels ruining your hearing and warming the place to 90 deg or more you can look at the inclinometer moving past say 20 deg and think about those anchors. The Preserver towed a LST that had been converted to a diving support barge from Jacksonville to Panama. When we were transferring the barge from us to the harbor tugs the barge stopped and starting backing. We kept going forward with our towing line still connected to the barge. It went straight and tore the guide off the stern and actually overcame the drag on the winch. That was a scary moment . Fortunately no one was hurt but the shipfitters had some welding to do. Yours is the first channel I want to subscribe to once I figure out how.

Thanks for the direction to this video. I then take it you do not have an emergency release (panic button). I do remember this video as it was so cool watching the floating dry dock sink. The program I was talking about was towing a ship and then running aground and they had seconds to release the tow and their panic button failed to release in a timely manner and rolling the tug.

The crush injury you mentioned, related to the guy who got caught between the wire and the hull: As long as the pressure is on, the side of the body with the heart and the head in it is still working fairly normally. As soon as the pinch pressure is removed, there is a catastrophic drop in blood pressure as blood goes into the space again, often also an uncontrolled bleed, plus a bunch of other injury related chemical imbalances, and it is nearly impossible to survive. This mechanism of injury will show up in train jumpers, industrial accidents and MVC's. When it is just a limb pinched off, the medic will start a big bore I.V. with a big bag of saline hung BEFORE extricating the patient, in order to be able to treat the blood pressure drop immediately with a fluid bolus. Overboard...not happening...

I find all this very interesting.Thanks Tim for explaining and bringing us along with you.

Saw a heavy poly line break under tension one night while assisting the docking of a barge. It sounded like a gun going off and pieces of it where just hanging in the air as though they weren’t moving in a cloud of smoke. All this under the bright glow of the deck lights. Quite surreal actually. Crew on deck, and on the barge just went back to what they where doing as though it was just another day on the boat.

If memory serves me, I remember that one of the possible causes of tripping with the old Army 65' tugs was making a sharp right(?) turn at high speed, then backing down hard with opposite rudder. A maneuver often used when approaching a ship to aid it in steering. They were very top heavy.

You're right on your analogy. F=ma. Mass and Acceleration produces the resultant directional force. Some simple numbers, m=1 & a=1 results in 1 in force. m=2 & a=1 results in 2 in force. m=1 & a=2 results in 2 in force. Notice that doubling mass with acceleration remaining the same doubles the energy of force. Reversing the numbers of 1 in mass and 2 in acceleration also doubles the energy of force. Doubling either mass or accelation has the same effect regardless of what you are talking about. You explained it well. As a layman water worker I can suggest this, use a remote winch. The captain can lax the strain on line by chopping the line, real-out or backing up to prevent tripping. As a safety measure when pulling a heavy load, use a float behind the tug. Attachment tug, float, towed boat. The float should trip first signalling that quick action is required. Also if a line snaps, the float will take most of the hit. Get the tail towards the line. The tail will be flooded but you have time to escape before the tug sinks. Again, I'm a layman. Thanks for the video.

I love the series of videos but I knew that at some point you would get to this topic. When some goes wrong under tow it tends to happen fast and the results can be deadly. To you and all the crews, be safe.

I must admit, I was paying you such close attention that it wasn't until the dry dock's deck started to lap water that I even noticed it had moved! Another fascinating video and subject Tim, thanks very much. There was a tug in the Geelong Harbour, down here in Australia, that was tripped and sunk whilst working a ship at the Yarra street pier. The person relating the story said she was "girdered" or "girted" and I've always wondered just what he meant and how it happened. You've explained it for me perfectly.

Great Videos. Just retired from OTR Trucking. Its nice to hear a bit about how you all do what I have seen from shore. Keep up the good work.

I enjoyed the episode very much, very interesting topic. The activity going on behind you with the floating drydock was interesting too. I would have loved to watch the rest of that operation and see what's involved in getting a vessel in and out of a drydock like the one in this video.

Very much enjoying the channel. As a kid my grandparents owned a home along the Tolchester Channel and I am still fascinated by the traffic passing by that location. I'd be glad to see more videos of work days, and whatever your employer will allow.

Tim talking about how fast a tug will sink made me think of the tragedy a couple of years ago at the Tappan Zee construction when that tug went down. Scary fast.

Another great video, From the shore you wouldn't think about tripping.

Tripping can occur in recreational boating too. Hooked up to a stranded fellow boater and the wind changed on the way to shore. Started pulling my 19 footer over. I had a buddy with a hunting knife standing ready in case. And indeed...he quickly cut us loose!! Ruined my line but saved my boat and all of us in it. Thanks!!

Thank you for the great video! Very insightful and full of experiential wisdom.

Good morning Tim, Thank you for the video and information!! Take care and catch you next time 👍😎🇬🇧.

New to this & really enjoying watching the videos ' always had an interest tug boats. And great at explaining everything Tim

Like your videos, particularly like this one. The sounds remind me of the suburb I grew up in, surrounded by commercial shipping. We had a decent sized container terminal two blocks from our house, a VLCC terminal around the point and a huge commercial harbour on the other side of the peninsula. We also had two of the largest tug fleets very close by. I'm old enough to remember waking up of a morning to the sounds of big ship diesels and tugs communicating by horn.

Another great informative video. Sorry, but I was at times busy watching the dry dock moving and starting to submerge.

Yet another great explanatory video. Safety minded all the time. Have a great day captain.

Good story, thanks! (and I liked watching the submersible going down in the background!)

Thank you very much for the explanations.

Hearing you talk about the danger of cables reminded me of the time I witnessed 3 strands of a cable break from a tow truck to a semi that was trying to get up an incline with a load of wood when I worked for my dad's logging company in my youth (over 50 years ago). One of the strands went through the windshield and ripped the seat next to the driver to shreds, missing the driver by inches. The driver was so shaken he could hardly walk when he got out of his truck. So, there are least two things I don't do. One, I would never jump out of a perfectly good airplane, and two, I never go near cables under load, or rope either for that matter.

Its one of the biggest fears is getting rolled over by your tow, been close calls where the tug is getting dragged sideways and the bullwarks are plowing water. Major incident happpend 11 years ago, full capsize didn't sink the scow got caught in an ebbing tide swung around tug was shortened up too much, the decision to try overpower it didn't work. A 600hp 42x17.5 tug towing 172x48 ramp scow probably had 200 tons on it. Common size coastal barge for getting into inlets hauling heavy equipment and fuel oil for logging camps. Canadian coast guard started enforcing keeping engine room hatches and water tight doors closed. A rule came into effect deckhand must be near winch brake when transiting narrows where you have to wait for slack water to transit. The current in some of these areas can reach 14 knots no tug would be safe to transit at those times.

I could tell right away you have a lot of back ups you do that are quite awesome. Looking forward to watching a craftsman at his craft. Btw, I hope this isn't a silly idea regarding your question about the wire, but piano companies might be a place you could inquire. The harps inside and all that tension is pretty awesome stuff. I bought a full grand piano years ago, turned out to be quite a collector. The man I had tune it up started freaking out, tightening nuts, because I guess someone before me thought they might paint the piano and was probably loosening things, thinking they could take the harp out. He said loosening all those strings is like an explosion! He said ppl actually dropped piano harps in war time! Not sure how true that is but it's all very interesting for sure.

Great video I like the explaining for tripping I worked on a trawler in the ocean pulling nets so i know what you are saying thank you for sharing have a great and bless day

How does the KZhead algorithm do it? I never knew how much I wanted to watch tugboat videos, but here we are. Great channel! Subscribed.

I am replying to what you said last. In martial Arts there is what they call a four finger death punch.This is where your fist is exactly the distance of your middle finger away from your impact surface.This is enough force to explode your heart and bread every rib within a 8 inch radius..So I would say the theory is dead on point.

Great Video. Thanks for sharing.

Loved the dry dock operating in the background

great topic, very informative!

I know this a year old, but your deck hand Dalton’s Grandfather was on a tug that tripped in NY harbor. He was on the single screw Turecamo Boys(Girls?) back in the 60s that tripped and sunk. Everybody got out but the Engineer had a heart attack and died.

Great video. I was working for the bath iron works in the 80s on the Maine state pier in Portland and one morning the end of the pier was full of official cars. Seems a tug and barge w as coming in and lost track of the barge at night. It had been tripped and it was a body recovery . The tug was capsized. Very bad day for all. I tell my daughter , a McAllister captain on that same pier, be careful. Working on a boat is like being in jail with a chance of drowning!

That was a great video Tim. Bits of it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up just thinking about being "Tripped" down here in Australia we call that being "Girdered" i believe Im not a Tug person myself. I think I might just stick to our Sailing Ships on Sydney Harbour .

Thanks for the info Tim. Hope you’re doing well my friend.

Tim, let me make a suggestion for a better video, most You Tube creators, use a remote mike. I have noticed a few of your videos, you are hard to hear, as this one is. Especially when there is background noise. Just a friendly suggestion to up the sound quality. Hope you don't take any offense, none was intended.

I'm learning what I can from you to make operating my 3½ ft long, 35 pound tugboat "Atlantic" safer and more fun. One of my very first times out I tripped the tug, on the wire with my 17ft, 300 pound kayak. I very nearly sank a $1200 model! She's incredibly stable... rolled at least 70° to port... and thank goodness I built a very capable bilge pump into her, because she buried her stern clear over the engine room hatch. It's held down, but not watertight. I still don't understand how I did it, but I think the wind blew me so far sideways to my course track that I ran out of helm authority, something I really didn't expect to happen with 90° of travel stop to stop, and dual azi-pods. Can that trip a tug? The tow getting blown off track so far the tug just gets pulled over? I didn't pass it, but the stern got pulled under a wave, she rounded up against the helm, and over she went. I cut power and let her get pulled around, my cable attaches behind her center of rotation, but if I hadn't released the throttle and centered helm she was going up on her beam.

Great information.

Thank you Tim

Love your videos. With regard to the question of the energy in the wire moving back and forth under strain, the basic formula is a Force equals Mass times Velocity. In that case, it’s the enormous mass of the wire, rigging and the tow plus the force exerted by the engine and propeller of the tug, times the velocity of movement of the wire and doughnut. Because the mass is large, even with small movement carries a lot of energy. It’s like hitting the dock at very low speed with a huge ship.

Thanks Tim what a great video thanks so much

Cap, I work on the schooner Harvey Gamage in Portland, Maine, I believe you had stated in another video that your dad lives in the area. While my work is very traditional, I've appreciated your personal approach in your videos. I've learned a lot about an aspect of the harbor that I never really interact with. Cheers.

If no remote mike is available, there's a thing called the proximity effect in microphones. Basically, the closer you get the louder. So in this scene, if you just get ten feet or so closer it will mitigate the background noise by perhaps 40%. Or go in the wheelhouse where it's quieter. But whatever you do, don't stop! I am enjoying these videos!

Hey Captain you should open a tugboat training facility excellent Video as always tremendous amount of force in that 2 inch wire stay safe see ya on the one

Excellent content! I too enjoy the sounds in the background, I can hear you fine but, that being said I suppose some listeners could be hearing impaired. I do have a theory that people partly choose career paths based on the sounds and smells of the work environment. I love the smell of diesel and the Sea...In my case, as a young man I worked below deck and some above deck work but, ended up driving city buses for 25 years. I loved the smell of starting up the bus in the morning but, not so much the smell of some passengers. HA! I love the discussion of the physics involved with Towing! I am in the Coast Guard Auxilary, it's small potatoes compared to tug work but, we end up towing vessels adrift and in less than ideal conditions. Lots to look out for besides the unpredictable actions of people under stress.

Nice to see you Tim ! Stay healthy and safe. NCL canceled cruises until at least April 11th. I hope your job remains busy and unaffected. Do you have emergency cable cutting tools on board ? Like a big cut off wheel / abrasive disc? Im sure there's a 4" or a 4.5" side grinder in the engine room workshop, but what about for up on deck ?

I had a bad trip once..the 60s were wild man

I spent 43 years in the oilfield running a winch truck. I can testify to how much kinetic energy, we call them winch lines, store. I have seen them tear up a lot of stuff when they break or come tight after being way slack. I have a request. Could you talk about yourself as a captain and your crew. How one goes about hiring out. Years it takes to work up the chain. The duties of crew members. If you could figure out a safe way of discussing wages. Food, does everyone through in money at the beginning of the tour? Just generally discuss boat family and how that effects blood family. I have been subscribed for a couple of months now.

Much as I'd have liked to work on a tug, a fishing boat or be a scaffolder you need the right stuff for all those jobs

Very nice video thanks for sharing

Gee never thought of these dangers very interesting Tim I guess it all comes down to good training & diligence. Ingat kuya

Tim I thought you were gonna play a little Hendrix! God vid! Cheers.

Love this channel

One of those Green Burbon supply boats got pulled over and sank in the North Sea towing an oil rig a few years ago getting cockeyed on the tow line...

The reason why you get *sucked in* and slam into the ship you're trying to aid is because water has an awesome amount of tensile strength similar to a rope(water binds to water.) To see what I mean simply fill a glass with water and start dropping dimes in it. That glass will take a surprising amount of dimes and literally stand well above the physical top of the glass before *breaking free*(spilling to the sides of the glass.) Same said be true of any large displacement vessel: the water is pushed down by the mass of the hull but next to that *lower water* is a wave caused by how the water sticks to itself. This causes your smaller vessel to get *sucked in* towards the object you are sent to work on and slam into it. It might be cause for any bobbing effect as described here as well as you're basically working on top of a wave when either pushing or pulling.

I'm reading this a couple of years late, but when thinking about the "wire through the donut" scenario, one could set up an experiment where a watermelon (perhaps in a bag) is hung from a frame (a simple wooden frame, similar to a kid's swing-set) and positioned in a place where it would be struck by the wire as it (the wire) swings/snaps from one side to the other. You'll know pretty quickly if the "swing/snap" of the wire is fatal to a persons head or hips or some other body part, if struck.

Hello from Connecticut Have a safe journey

Great video. A line like the one in the video behind your left shoulder parted during an exercise. No way to snub it. The bitter end came back on the ship like a missile. No one was hurt, but the incident was a reminder that around lines and wire rope, bad things can happen fast and have disastrous results. PS: Could we get a bridge tour?

Tim as a fellow KZhead creator, I appreciate that you take the time to reply to your comments. My hat is off to you sir... also great content.

I think what comes to play in the case of the grain of sand, moving at a high speed, and the wire, under the influence of something very heavy, and moving side to side, would be momentum. It is clearly explained in physics (I only got to understand this when teaching my 7 year old kid. I did make a mess of my physics grades, while studying chemistry). It is an interesting, yet complex phenomenon - momentum, not my poor grades. Momentum is a product of mass and velocity.

Anything that is under tension or stress is dangerous, that includes your girlfriend. Tim your sound is ok don't worry about it, I just turn the volume up and pay closer attention. Just keep making videos I am learning a lot.

Many years ago a buddy's father was killed in (off-shore) Alaska while towing a pulp barge; night time, winds pick up, fog sets in and as they turned to make a safe harbor they get slack wire. By the time they figure out what was happening the barge has already been blown past them (they cant see it---and this was before modern radar). I never heard the word "tripping" used before but the tug rolled with only one deck hand being rescued to tell the tale. As the story goes the rest of the crew was never found.

I was listening to what you were saying but also watching the dry dock behind you. To bad you didn't get a time lapse of that. Oh well maybe next time. ;-)

We always kept the door to the back deck next to the fidley, closed. If the boat goes over and water gets through that door and in the engineroom, it's over.

good stuff thanks again.

Hey Tim! Like your videos... I am a sergent in the danish navy

Fascinating!!!

interesting video thank you tim

Although it looks like it's irritating him, I love the boat with the detroit's in the audio background

Good video boss

That was a hard one for me to keep in my brain. In a osha class I took the instructor put a glass mason jar on the table and said. Every time you call the wire rope a cable. It’s a dollar in the jar. 25 dollars later. I learned cable holds bridges and hooks to your tv. Once you hook it to a wench it becomes live. And it’s a wire rope or synthetic rope. But it’s rope. I learned Rope is the safe word.

Sorry there was so much background it was hard to get it..

Tim ... one of your comments here on autopilot failure was ... "We find that the cube relays are the things that go and go often on tugboats. The contacts stick and she goes hard over. CUOTO". How often is often on tugboats this going hard over (sounds extremely dangerous)? I know it would be hard to quantify but have you had it happen several times on your watches over your career? Another informative video. Stay safe ... CUOTO / CUOT2.

In that scenario involving the winch cable, if the cable snapped, it is likely that if it broke far enough out that the weight of the line is going to simply drop into the water. If it breaks close to the tug, the greyed line will cut through anything less weight dense than it will be cut through in it's path. When I say anything less weight dense and/or more brittle than it that includes humans, wood, glass, hydraulic lines, sheet metal, rubber, plastic, etc. (I pray that you get the picture that huge amounts of weight is the only stopping force of that heavy steel cable snapping) and refer to Newton's law of motion.

Still loving the content Capt! That's an interesting topic, I never thought about or was trained to deal with tripping... We would actually tie up some of our boats in a way that could potentially cause that if they could move faster lol we were pretty small scale so I'm sure you could imagine how that could cause issues when upgrading tonnage licenses.. I'd like to know how you train someone in the wheelhouse, I imagine its quite different from how the military taught me, but we would take people out and let them drive our small tugs and mess around with barges and what not so they could practice and get experience until we felt they were competent enough to drive on their own. Is that the same way you do it? I would think companies wouldn't want you burning fuel unnecessarily or giving up the wheel to someone inexperienced (although I'm sure they have to in order to pass the buck to the next generation).. But whats the process like for untrained wheelmen getting their towing endorsements? I think it would make a cool video to see the training process! Just a thought! Keep up the good work Capt!

I love to hear those lines taken up

We had a demonstration by the martial arts instructor.....I was the subject..(victim)...Standing in front of me with his hand two inches from my shoulder, and me expecting it to happen, he hit me and all but knocked me down....The wall behind me kept me from going too far back or over... He didn't weigh any more than I did either.....but he was able to accelerate so fast in the two inches and hit me that hard...Now imagine all of that energy in that cable and it jumping just two inches...And your body in it's path!

If you let a penny or a cent coin drop from the top of the Empire State Building, it would hit the ground at a similar speed to a fired bullet, there is a formula to calculate it right. If I'm not mistaken it's weight x distance something...

I'm an armchair sailor...LOL. Love the info.

Steel wire at that tension probably has zero give compared to the human body. It must be like getting smacked with a thousand pound sledge hammer. That is chilling.

Interesting content

I’ve nearly been tripped twice towing on the wire. Once when the tug went aground in the Sacramento Ship Channel, and once at sea when the tug lost propulsion due to loss of control air. Remember, barges are more slippery than tugboats. You need to be quick releasing the winch brake, or the tow-er will become the towed. I think we need little models to properly illustrates this stuff.

I don't doubt the energy in the cable jumping. I've seen several realitively small lines let go and the damage caused by it astonishing.

groovy video.. Trippin indeed..

Most jobs are dangerous if you don't know your business or are distracted. Training is a smart investment of time. Be safe on the water.

The Carnival Fantasy behind you is now in a scrap yard in Turkey

Leading cause of autopilot failure: The $5 potentiometer in the RAT(rudder angle transmitter) fails.