Quicksand Fans

And not the drill kind

From CDR Sal
USS Port Royal is the CG here, the USNS ship apparently suffered a steering casualty, but this is what all that gas turbine power and All Ahead BENDIX is for The airedales fail but they aren't supposed to be up on ship-driving

Nice job by whoever had the con, likely the skipper at this point

Dad cursed being covered with fuel oil after such an occurrence once. The old tanker they were repping from lost steering and lines parted while still full. Collision alarm followed by BANG! SPLOOSH! %$#@^#!!!!!!

Bunker C would not have been a lot of fun to try and clean up, or off. It's slightly better than coal but, meh OTOH the turbines use Jet Fuel, so I guess that's a good news/bad news sort of deal.

Some of the comments are cringe worthy as a mariner

Like, "why didn't they turn right, instead of cutting across the bow??"

a) Shiphandling is not like driving a car, or even a half-ton.
b) If the oiler was backing down, and you have her pushed to the wall - especially with a gas turbine ship - once you check the swing and get the way on, control and seperation will be a lot easier, and faster going ahead. Once your pivot point is past the bow, and you still accelerating, a hard swing across will clear and there's no chance of collision

I've never driven anything bigger than a jet ski (on water) so can't really comment on ship handling, but DAMN......another foot and that would've been ugly.

The difference between writing up an incident report and having some fun later in the cruise book, opposed to being relieved of command for a collision at sea. Really need the nerves of steel thing here. And for every one like this, there are the ones which are the other end of the scale