Maritime Transportation And Shipping Talk

As most Seafarers know, mechanical splices can slip and your Eye Splice on the wire becomes a choker type eye. If this happens to a mooring wire used in the Seaway you have a problem to get the wire loose from the Bullard and in most cases the wire has to be cut. The new regulation for the Seaway that came into effect a while ago, specified that no more mechanical splice was permitted on the mooring lines. It is still permitted if the eye is of a “Flemish” type. In that case the mechanical splice is just for security lock and are not bearing and significant pressure from the tension on the wire. Scenario that brought this into effect in the Seaway was as follows: Traffic is heavy and the transit time of each vessel is minimized at the maximum possible. Mooring with wires that had a poor mechanical splice and the tension on the wire was just enough to make the splice slip and the eye was tightening around the Bullard. The only way at that time to get it off was to cut the wire. In this case, valuable time was lost and created a problem for lock crew. The wire was finally cut but in meantime a whole chain of events had happened, oncoming vessel had to tie up on the approach wall and vessel behind had to slow down also.

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