Once in port, crews anchor the ship, leaving plenty of slack in the anchor chain to prevent the motion of the waves from snapping the chain. "If you have a choice," Hardberger says, "you obviously want to find what's known as a hurricane hole, which is going to be a port with very good holding and with high cliffs or mountains around the harbor to protect you from the winds." Any Port in a Storm?Ĭargo ships don't always head for the nearest port when a hurricane approaches, because not all ports offer the same kind of shelter. Modern cargo ships are constructed of thick steel, but if the waves are large enough and their battering lasts long enough, the pounding of those impacts can still break a ship apart. The rolling is hard for the crew, but the worst thing for a ship is the repeated impact of the hull slamming into the troughs between waves. I've been on ships, for example, where we would go from thirty degrees heeled over on one side, and we would whip across to thirty degrees heel on the other side in a matter of three and a half seconds, so you can imagine something like that will roll your eyeteeth out." "When you have only ballast water way down in the bottom of the ship, the ship has a very wicked roll to it. "It can get kind of hairy, especially if you don't have cargo," former sea captain Max Hardberger tells Popular Mechanics. Ballast provides a little stabilizing weight when ships sail empty, but not always enough. That's because the weight of cargo helps stabilize the ship against the waves. The most dangerous ship in a hurricane is an empty one. "Anything you can get on a computer at home, you can probably get at sea through a satellite connection," Pickhardt says. Some vessels have more high-tech tools aboard, like onboard computer systems that help plan routes based on weather forecasts. Today, captains can also receive weather maps, satellite images, and other information by email. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Another system called Weatherfax uses higher frequency radio waves to send black-and-white images to shipboard fax machines. cargo ships are required to carry a Navigational Telex (NAVTEX) machine, a radio receiver that picks up medium-frequency radio signals and converts them into a text printout. A century ago, weather updates at sea were limited to Morse code messages, but since the 1980s, weather updates have come to printers or fax machines right on the ship's bridge. To steer clear of hurricanes, mariners need good weather information. Most modern cargo ships are designed to tough out all but the heaviest weather and stay on schedule, but hurricanes are the largest and among the most dangerous storms on the ocean, and no crew wants to find itself in the midst of one. Just the fuel alone on ships can be tens of thousands of dollars a day, so a two or three day delay or deviation can cost big bucks, so they always want to minimize it." Captains can't dodge every storm, because, as Pickhardt explained, "ships are typically on a very tight schedule. "If a ship is in the ocean, you're going to have heavy weather," says Fred Pickhardt, chief meteorologist at Ocean Weather Services. And they're an unavoidable part of life on the water. A major storm can batter even the largest, sturdiest vessels. Towering walls of water, driven by powerful winds, slam into the ship.
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