A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

A special section just for steam engines and boilers, as without these you may as well fit a sail.
Mike Rometer
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by Mike Rometer » Wed Aug 23, 2017 9:29 pm

cyberbadger wrote:Probably the nastiest thing I've heard off involved a traction engine and it was criminal if it was intentional... Unfortunately it could happen at a dock. Someone closed the two valves on the sightglass of a traction engine, and then opened a drain on the boiler. The next morning after all the water was long gone it appeared as if the boiler was full of water when it was bone dry. Luckily the engineer had a habit of proving the site glass and caught it before a match was lit.

There was also a traction engine that some vagrants used as a stove for a while. :x

-CB
Obviously done by someone who knew EXACTLY what he was doing. Knowing how a gauge glass works isn't just common knowledge.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by dhic001 » Fri Aug 25, 2017 7:45 am

Doesn't every steam engineer always check the gauge glass is reading, whenever they walk into a boiler room? I certainly do, whether its my boiler room or not. It is actually a very hard habit to get out of. I worked for a time in a big glasshouse complex that had gas fired hot water boilers, fully automatic and feed from a huge header tank. They didn't have sight glasses at all, but despite knowing this I always glanced up to where they would be, whenever I walked into the boiler room. It took years to stop doing it.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by Bob Cleek » Tue Aug 29, 2017 8:46 pm

There are two problems to be solved. One preventative and the other corrective.

Rule one: Stay on the boat. This is accomplished by use of tethers attached to a harness which also contains an inflatable life vest. There should be two tethers, often made of ballistic nylon tubing with shock cord inside it, so that they extend to full length under tension, but don't take up so much space. Two are necessary, with carabiners on each end which will release when under tension. One is attached and then the other released as the wearer moves. That prevents ever being unattached. These should be worn at all times and attached whenever on deck. Preferably, they should be short enough to keep you on the boat, but that is not always practical. The inflatable life vest is necessary with the tethers because, if you do go overboard, you may be, or become, unconscious. The special release attachment carabiners (or other such attachment device) are required so that you can release the tether from yourself or from the boat. Sometimes you will not be able to reach the attachment to the boat and may need to do so. If you are being dragged under, or tangled in gear that also went overboard with you, detaching yourself can be as essential a task as staying attached.

Rule two: Get back on the boat. Forget about pulling yourself up the topsides. The weight of wet clothes will almost certainly make this impossible, even if you are uninjured and in calm water. You need to have a ladder of some sort. If you are alone, there will be nobody to help you back aboard and even it there is, they may be useless under the circumstances. Sometimes steps attached to a transom or rudder may be fashioned, but the bottom rung must be deep enough to permit you to access the first rung. The most practical device, and also the least obtrusive on deck, is one of the Jacob's ladders which stores in a bag attached to the rail and has a short trip line hanging down the topsides or transom which deploys the ladder when pulled.

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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by fredrosse » Wed Aug 30, 2017 12:37 pm

Safety Safety Safety. I often remember that motortcycles are legal, while riding in an automobile without a seat belt is illegal. If taking a logical approach, motorcycles, being about 10,000 times more likely to have a fatal accident than automobiles (on a passenger-mile basis), should be outlawed altogether. Not that I would support that, but it illustrates the absurdity of the apparent "safety culture" these days.

In my view it is OK to take a ride on my steamboat alone, without all kinds of safety equipment weighing me down, no harness, no ladder, no flotation in the boat. I know that when I hop on the Suzuki GSXR for a spin, things are orders of magnitude more dangerous, yet I would not want to ever give up that pleasure to the "safety police" authorities.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by fredrosse » Wed Aug 30, 2017 5:34 pm

From dhic001: "Doesn't every steam engineer always check the gauge glass is reading, whenever they walk into a boiler room? I certainly do, whether its my boiler room or not. It is actually a very hard habit to get out of."

Many years ago I lived on a farm in cold Pennsylvania. I had built an automatic unmanned coal fired high pressure steam-electric plant, which provided our electricity, and the exhaust steam heated the house. The entire steam plant was located external to the farmhouse, in the old "summer kitchen", a stone building about 12 feet x 16 feet size.

During one particularly cold winter, the wife said her new baby goats might freeze, and she asked if she could move them into the powerhouse. I told her Rule No 1: "On entering the powerhouse, immediately look at the boiler sight-glass, to see the water level in the boiler. If there is no visible water level, leave the building immediately, turning off the master switch on the way out."

So I am at my day job, hours away, and I get a very excited phone call from the wife. She is obviously very upset, nearly hysterical: "There is a big steam leak in the powerhouse, the baby goats will be cooked alive….."

I calmly ask if she has followed Rule No.1? She states that she has not even considered this, but what should she do in this emergency? I tell her to go out to the powerhouse, and follow Rule No. 1. Turns out I have to go over this fundamental rule again, she forgot the rule.

About a minute later she returns to the phone, now up a few decibles, ultra upset, and she reports: THERE IS NO SIGHT GLASS!!!

And so, all is well after all. The sight glass had broken, and the automatic ball checks are doing their job of holding back the steam and water. Of course these ball checks leak a little, no big deal, although to a novice this seemed like a catastrophe. I reminder her to turn off the master switch, which shuts down the coal stoker, and every thing can then cool down slowly, until I get home later.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by Lopez Mike » Wed Aug 30, 2017 6:48 pm

I once was responsible for all of the science areas of a four year college which included a couple of electrically heated autoclaves. The water supply was not treated so every year I would have a student aid open up the boilers and chemically and technically remove the deposits.

When it was time to put them back on line I would begin by scaring the wits out of the aid by explaining the consequences of a rupture. I even showed him a book I had documenting locomotive boiler accidents. Not even remotely an issue as these onesoperated at city water pressure and were a simple 8" cylinder made out of schedule 40 steel. Probably good for 1000 p.s.i.!

I wore a face shield and used gauntlets in case of some piping failure and turned on the circuit breaker. Much simmering and a creak or two. Just about at the temperature shutoff point the sight glass failed. A big bang, a small room full of steam. I reached in and closed the gauge valves (yes they had ball check limiters) and as the room cleared I saw the aid backed up against a wall with his eyes bugged out saying things like, "Oh my god! You are dying!" I looked down and my white T-shirt was stained with blood. The needle like fragments of the glass were stuck all over my chest. I didn't feel a thing but it took a while for the aid to feel comfortable in that room.

Added to the annual cleaning was to replace the glass. It was behind a stout metal door so I didn't bother with a safety cover or change over to a reflex gauge.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by RGSP » Thu Aug 31, 2017 11:13 am

fredrosse wrote:Safety Safety Safety. I often remember that motortcycles are legal, while riding in an automobile without a seat belt is illegal. If taking a logical approach, motorcycles, being about 10,000 times more likely to have a fatal accident than automobiles (on a passenger-mile basis), should be outlawed altogether. Not that I would support that, but it illustrates the absurdity of the apparent "safety culture" these days.

In my view it is OK to take a ride on my steamboat alone, without all kinds of safety equipment weighing me down, no harness, no ladder, no flotation in the boat. I know that when I hop on the Suzuki GSXR for a spin, things are orders of magnitude more dangerous, yet I would not want to ever give up that pleasure to the "safety police" authorities.
I have a lot of sympthy with your view Fred. The problem comes when someone goes missing at sea, and then the rescue services have to spend hundreds of man hours looking for him/her, often in dangerously nasty weather. I'm not sure what the answer to that one is.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by Mike Rometer » Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:42 pm

Slight caveat, in the UK you may not ride a motorcycle without a specified crash helmet. I also believe that the statisics are not a true picture, they say 'per pasenger mile', but they don't take into account that only about 1.5% of those miles actaully refer to m/cycles. If that is factored in then the picture would be different.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by fredrosse » Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:57 pm

In the US, helmets are often the legal requirement, but the statistics are real.

Yes, far more passenger-miles in automobiles than on motorcycles. But the facts remain, when you drive an automobile x number of miles, there is a well known numerical probability of a fatal accident, and when going the same x number of miles on a motorcycle, the probability is also well known, and it is around 10,000 times higher than the automobile's probability. That is with US numbers, in the UK I would think motorcycle danger is far less, as the population there is generally more civilized, in my view.
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Re: A question of a Lone skipper falling overboard

Post by DetroiTug » Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:08 pm

In Michigan, it was just made legal for riders to go without helmets. Bikers fought to get that for many years to no avail, common sense won out, then the insurance companies figured out it's cheaper to bury a claimant rather than care for them, so they lobbied the state government and got the new law passed. Nice people those insurance companies. We've had several fatalities since, up 23% or something like that.

Fred, I just looked on Google and a motorcyclist is 13 times more likely to die in an accident. Of course daredevil motorcyclists are about 100 times more likely to do something stupid. All summer, often I see kids on their rice burners riding wheelstands down a busy street. Very few Police patrols now as most of the cities are broke and can't afford it, they are responders not patrolers.

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