Hydrostatic Mooring System. Final Technical Report: Main Report plus Appendices A, B, and C - Volume 1 and 2

The main conclusions from the work carried out under this contract are: An ordinary seafarer can learn by training on a simulator, to moor large tanker vessels to the Hydrostatic Mooring, safely and quickly, in all weather conditions up to storms generating waves with a significant wave height of 8 m. Complete conceptual design of the Hydrostatic Mooring buoy was carried out which proved that the buoy could be constructed entirely from commercially available standard components and materials. The design is robust, and damage resistant. The mooring tests had a 100% success rate from the point of view of the buoy being securely attached and moored to the vessel following every mooring attempt. The tests had an 80% success rate from the point of view of the buoy being adequately centered such that petroleum transfer equipment on the vessel could be attached to the corresponding equipment on the buoy. The results given in Table 3-2 of the mooring tests show a consistently improving performance from test to test by the Captain that performed the mooring operations. This is not surprising, in view of the fact that the Captain had only three days of training on the simulator prior to conducting the tests, that the maneuvering required is non-standard, and the test program itself lasted four days. One conclusion of the test performance is that the Captain was not fully trained at the initiation of the test. It may therefore be concluded that a thoroughly trained navigator would probably be able to make the mooring such that the fluid transfer equipment can be connected with reliability in excess of 90%. Considering that the typical standard buoy has enough power aboard to make eight mooring attempts, this implies that the probability that the mooring attempt should fail because of the inability to connect the fluid transfer equipment is of the order of 10{sup {minus}8}. It may therefore be concluded that the mooring operation between a Hydrostatic Mooring and a large tanker vessel can be carried out with near absolute reliability in all sea states up to a sea state where the significant wave height is 8 m