"Retard Assist" aka "Retard Maneuver", calls for Tugs to slow down large vessels by trying to divert them, rather than STOP. See link at bottom.
No one is suggesting that Enbridge's oil tankers, carting Alberta's petroleum resources to foreign ports of call, should be denied by a fellow province.... accept by Premier Christy Clark. No one is suggesting that these huge oil tankers will be making a U-Turn in Douglas and Principe Channels, nor is there a suggestion that they will be running these ships at open Pacific Ocean speed.
Many, actually all of the images that Enbridge has produced for public consumption, show our British Columbian waters as
idyllic (extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque).
Enbridge promises that there will be two tugs assisting the tanker(s) from the Pacific Ocean to Kitimat empty, save for ballast..... and again from Kitimat to the open Pacific Ocean, fully loaded with sand laden with oil.
One tug, as depicted in the cartoon below is to the Port of the slow moving tanker. The second tug is Astern of the tanker and that tug is reversing the whole distance from the Pacific to Kitimat and back again.... under idyllic coastal water conditions. We know the Astern tug is in reverse because the sharp pointy end of a boat, the Bow is going in the opposite direction as the vessel that it's tied to. The blunt end is called the Stern and it's facing the Stern of the oil tanker. This method, that Enbridge has displayed in their artist rendering, this Cartoon, below, is a
sure-fire way to send many a good seamen to their watery graves. The steel hulled Tug, NOT DOUBLE HULLED, will reach the bottom of either of the two channels,
before you can utter.... Holy-cow. Plus if there is a rescue attempt made, it will be akin to the demise of the
Atlantic Convoy stragglers. The "other" tug, in this case, couldn't leave their charge, the massive oil tanker, alone in treacherous waters!
Because of their huge mass, tankers have a large inertia, making
them very difficult to steer. A loaded supertanker could take as much
as 4 to 8 kilometers and 15 minutes to come to a full stop and has a
turning diameter of about 2 kilometers.
The only way in which Oil tankers and the assisting tugs could have Quieter engines is if they were to use
Lithium created energy for propulsion like that of
Foss Hybrid Tug.
Here in Vancouver, Canada, ships entering our Harbour have
two THREE tugs, Two at the Stern of the oil tanker, facing the same direction as the larger vessel's direction.... Third tug at the fore.
And if you missed the headline August 23, 2012,
Globe and Mail:
"The ship currently docked at Kitimat looking like a prizefighter with a
broken nose is an ugly reminder of the threat posed by proposed
pipelines and tanker traffic to the territory of the Gitga'at First
Nation," said the statement issued by the band, which is based in
Hartley Bay, on Douglas Channel.
Last but not the Least, of importance is this handy-dandy booklet that we found by using this search criteria in Google:
how powerful has a tug got to be to stop an oil tanker
Retard Assist Page 21 of 154
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Something else you should be looking at, is the speed of an Oil Tanker out in open Pacific Ocean:
12 knots = 13.8094 mph = 22.224 km/h
To put this all in perspective, British Columbians have heard about the BC Ferry system which run out of Horseshoe Bay and over to Departure Bay is 23 knots pushing 10,034 tonnes along..... those Oil tankers, the ones plying to and fro our coastal waters, like a Suezmax Tanker, Loaded, to 125,000 dwt is TWELVE times larger, in weight, than a BC Ferry... built in Germany.
Enbridges says in their "cartoon" up top that "tankers travel slowly but the speed will be reduced".
"Retarding Maneuver", NOT stopping, means that this particular vessel, with Rudder problems, will travel 6,000 feet forward, and another 6,000 feet to Starboard.... but on the diagonal..... Hmmmm where did we leave our Grade 8 Math of
Pythagoras Theorem?
C = 8,485.28 Feet
