200412 Repairing a Gasket

Repairing a Gasket
MARS Report 200412

The ship that I was sailing on was a 20 year old tanker of 109,000dwt tonnes. At the time she was in the process of being sold on for further trading. Therefore, for the preceding 6 months or so the ship's staff had been very restricted on the amount of work that could be carried out on the ship due to the company deciding to spend as little money as possible on spare gear and stores. This was understandable for a lot of items as it would just be wasted money. However, we did still need some consumable items to keep us going, one of which was jointing (gaskets) for repairing leaking steam pipes etc. There are lots of different types of jointing designed for lots of different jobs, water, fuel, steam pipes etc. There are also lots of different manufactures of jointing, the well known high quality and the less known, unknown quality brands, there is also a large difference in price between these.

As it turned out, we did not receive the sheet of high quality jointing suitable for use with heavy fuel which had been ordered, this had been "red-penned" by the superintendent as too expensive (the ship only had another 4 weeks service to go with the company). Prior to arrival in Singapore it had been found necessary to investigate a shock absorber on one of the main engine fuel pumps, this was removed and overhauled in port and was then replaced. However, as it was common practice not to purchase ready made joints from the manufacturer of the engine it was necessary to make one up from the ships supply. So the best looking jointing from what remained was selected, this was of far eastern manufacture and gave no real clue as to what its rating was but it 'looked' O.K. for the job.

We sailed soon afterwards and, once out of the Singapore Straits with the engine room had settled down, the ship went UMS. Approximately 5 hours later the duty engineer was called out of his bed by an alarm. On entering the engine room he immediately noticed a overpowering smell of fuel so went straight through the workshop to look down over the engine room.

What he found was a large spray of fuel emitting from the middle of the engine, so he immediately stopped the engine, sounded the engineer's alarm, phoned the bridge to say that they had no propulsion and rushed to isolate the fuel from the engine as it was still spraying out.

Yes, the unknown joint material had failed and heavy fuel oil had sprayed everywhere. We were highly fortunate that the oil had not landed on the exhaust of the main engine and ignited. The Master managed to use the ship's way to get out of the traffic lane and anchor safely. It was found that the fuel must have been flowing for some time as the alarm that alerted the duty engineer was a bilge well which had filled with fuel. The fuel had flowed down every deck of the engine room and the fuel mist had risen up and settled on all surfaces right to the top of the engine room. After a short while, the offending joint was removed and another made (using another unknown brand on board) and the best effort was made to clean as much fuel as possible from the top of the engine before it was restarted. However, the fuel had also sprayed all over part of the main superheated steam line that fed the cargo discharging plant and turbo alternators. The lagging on the pipe was smoking heavily and so the section was isolated and a fire watch was placed to keep it under observation.

At this point the ship got underway slowly as the top of the engine continued to be cleaned up to an acceptable fashion for the engine to be brought up to full speed. The steam pipe was wiped down as much as possible. However, due to the fact that we did not possess any new insulating lagging to replace the oil soaked material, nor could we remove it as the heat of the pipe would damage the electrical wiring overhead, we could just warm the pipe back up and wait for the fuel to 'smoke' off (with a fire watch in attendance).

Now, in my personal opinion the ship should have not continued on a voyage but should have returned to port for a shore squad to help with a clean up because with all that fuel lying around the place we had a real risk of a fire breaking out somewhere and spreading very fast. I tried to get the 2nd mate (who was the Safety Officer) to look at the engine room and try and force the issue but he was not interested, and did not go down until 3 days later when most of the oil was cleared up. The engine room took approximately 5 days to clean up with lots of hard work being put in by all of the engine room staff. So, was it really worth scrimping and saving by not purchasing the correct materials and potentially having a serious fire in the engine room?

The most shocking thing though was to come though, at some point in the chain of command, the information about this incident and 2 other ones that had occurred in the previous two weeks, did not get through to the safety people in head office. I know that the incidents where reported from the ship but were nowhere to be found in the safety statistics - 'No incidents again this month etc...'. I am sure that this occurred because we where being sold at the time. Buyers do not like this sort of thing and no one likes to say that it was their "red-penning" which caused the accident.