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Originally Posted by Rip
Most people don't realize how hard those emergency underway in foul weather events can be. I recall doing one and as is normal in such events there was not sufficient time to bring up the plant so we only had outboard and EPM (emergency propulsion motor) on the diesel. You can't get much thrust out of the EPM so you had better take into account drift. Must be nice for those skimmers with gas turbines to just crank it up and take off.:hmm:
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We are in the incident reports. Total startup time was amazingly short considering how long it normally takes. Got underway with the port main engine and the port SSTG on-line and the plant critical but not quite up to NOT/NOP. If I remember correctly the diesel had not been loaded long when the SSTG went on-line. The NAV (he was the CDO that night) said we gotta go and go NOW and that was what we did.
Once we got things stable we brought the other side up by the book. We did not break anything, we did not break any rules, but boy did we flex and tweak them.
Was it fun? At the time? No. Afterwards, looking back.. oh HELL YA. I can still remember vividly some of the shouted communications, the concerns, and the 'go for it, get it done' attitude we had.
Before any of you start thinking that this was a dangerous and risky thing to do, please undertand that:
a) These are actual procedures, their are rules and guidlines that are in print, trained upon, and followed when doing these sorts of things.
b) These plants are engineered to DO these sort of things. They are REALLY hard to break unless you do something stupid.