So on the 16th of April, Monday of the week, we were moored securely to a small jetty in
Oro Bay, papau new guniea.
The jetty itself only has one berth, meaning only one ship can stay at any time.
There’s a tanker coming in for the spot and so we were required to depart, to go somewhere
else.
Now here are the complications:.
1.
For the rest of the week, we are still doing health care, dental and eye surgeries in this
area 2.
There is no other port or jetty infrastructure remotely CLOSE to that area, so we have to
anchor.
3.
Major problem – is that we cannot .simply.
Anchor.
Heres why, when at anchor, the ship will swing freely depending on wind and current, and
if seas swells are coming at a different direction the ship will roll…so that leads to complication
number 4.
Which is… we are doing eye surgeries, we need the ship to be stable.
Doctor holding medical knifes and lazer thingys doing microscopic cuts at the eyeball, it
gets dodgy if the ship rolls.
So the solution?
Well we had to improvise and do something that probably no ship has ever done before,
code name Mooring operation Tango Remeo 33 aka.
Mooring TR33 It all started the day before the mission,
with the combine knowledge & risk assessment between DPA, captain and the bridge team.
A plan was drawn up.
Captain took the boat out and did a survey of the whole bay, yes the whole bay.
And just like that we are more confident about the sea bed and depth.
Then the next day early start at 5:30am, deck and engineering team assembled on bridge and
we briefed about the plan, specific task and positions were assigned , along with the usual
toolbox and risk assessment.
Once all is ready and here we go
departure checklists,disassembled
the gangway, heaved up the gangway, secured everything and put the blue boat with 4 crew
into the water for later use, we will come back to that.
Rudder, Thrusters , main engines fired up for manoeuvre.
We brought the ship from the berth to anchorage spots, which is literally “how many meters?
650 meters” Drop the anchor, pay out to 5 shackles on
deck.
With two engines, the captain up on bridge maintain the bow into swells and stern towards
the beach.
The easy part is now done.
Here comes the main course and complication number 5.
We don’t have enough mooring rope, length wise to do Mediterranean moor.
Med moor is done a lot worldwide.
it is where two lines run from aft to hold the ship in place.
we only have 8 mooring lines 50 meter each, so 200 meter to the palm tree BUT that will
puts the ship way too close to danger.
So the plan was to connect 6 mooring rope, to the stbd stern bits.
We bow line’ed everything together and fed out the rope.
Remember the blue boat?
Their job is to take the line to shore and secure it on the tree.
The goal is to secure the load evenly onto these two palm tree.
Once stbd stern is secured, next is to tow the port stern line and tie off another bowline
to secure both side stern.
Last step is to fine adjust the position of vessel by the anchor for a few meters so that
there is just slight tension on it.
And that my sailor friends, is how we put the ship in a position where it wont swing
into swells with just two palm trees, in an extremely remote location.
Ultimately with this mooring, we were able to get eye surgeries going.
To be a part of the team to make this happen, to restore eye sight to patients is quite
a fulfilling task.
Without doing this, eye surgeries would not have been possible
Watching the patient take off their eye patch and see their family first time clearly ,for the the longest time not being able to
that joy in their face is perhaps the most touching experience ever.