All
seawater valves should be kept closed unless needed.
True
Life Situation I was involved in
We
were at sea and we just newly hauled our nets with a good
haul of fish, we boxed them up and started to gut them,
after a while the hold man opened the hatch that takes you
into the fish room, he shouted to us that the hold was full
of water, the vessel did not feel strange because of the
amount of water in the hold (FSE) probably because of the
weather (Force 1-2) The skipper of our sister-ship put out
a Mayday Relay, we started our own pumps, but became useless
when they became choked with fish and debris, our engineer
tried very hard to clear them but the amount of fish we
had in the hold was broken up and the pumps had no chance,
very soon a rescue helicopter from Lossiemouth in Scotland
came to our aide with a portable submersible pump, he lowered
the pump to us and got it started, it soon became chocked
too with the amount of debris in the hold, one of our crew
(James Eddie Senior) took hold of the pump and by using
a plastic fish basket cut a hole the same size as the pumps
pipe, he slipped it through and tied a second fish basket
inside of the first one, thus giving the pump a filter system,
we put this back into the hold and it saved the vessel and
crew, this was ingenious on his part to think out how to
get the pump to work (Sadly James past away through an accident
at sea)
We
got the vessel into Lerwick where the vessel was emptied
of water and debris
Cause
of the vessel sinking?
The
metal freeing port being released, cut a hole through the
wooden deck, the vessel was slightly listed to starboard
with the big haul of fish and with the freeing port open,
the water went through the hole in the deck, the fish hold
was full of water within 4 hours
We
also found out that the bilge alarm wire was broken, it
had been checked just after we had landed the previous trip
New
Bilge pumping systems has been invented by "Banff and
Buchan College, Fraserburgh Scotland", these have been
highly recommended
Always
check your bilge pumping systems and alarms often
I
recommend CCTV throughout the vessel so you can see any
build-up of water or any fires
