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I work for a company which make the full deployment line for submarine cable laying ships; first time I visited one -Incidentally, a sister ship of the CS Durab
by lb1lf 8y ago
I work for a company which make the full deployment line for submarine cable laying ships; first time I visited one -Incidentally, a sister ship of the CS Durable referenced in this article- I wondered about the precise same thing you did, beginning to sketch solutions in my mind while looking down into the tanks.
A supervisor comes over to me and says something like "I can see what you are thinking. There's no use - it is cheaper this way."
The point was that while the ship was in port taking on cable, it was fully manned anyway. Crews need something to do - so might as well stow cable.
That's our kit in the topside photos. Small world!
) We do all sorts of other things as well - relying on cable laying alone would be too much of a niche market!
- michaelt 8y agoThe point was that while the ship was in port taking on cable, it was fully manned anyway. Crews need something to do - so might as well stow cable. Right, but if they could take on cable faster couldn't they get under way faster? Four weeks to load a ship sounds like a long time.
- lb1lf 8y agoI guess that depends on how fast you can make the cable; I have no idea how that pans out - but the cable is put onto the vessel straight from the production line (which, I guess, may have had its speed optimised to the speed at which crews can reliably put down cable.) I am now curious; I'll fire off an email with a few questions to my liaison at TE SubCom. With any luck, answers arrive in time to be relevant to this thread.