Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Port Port Revel Revel Revel: Hiphandlin Hiphandlin Hiphandling
Port Port Revel Revel Revel: Hiphandlin Hiphandlin Hiphandling
SHIPHANDLING
HIPHANDLIN
OCTOBER 2012
THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE FREELY USED PROVIDED THAT IT BEARS THE WORDING
WO “COPYRIGHT PORT REVEL”.
THE ART OF SHIPHANDLING
INVOLVES THE EFFECTIVE USE
OF FORCES UNDER CONTROL
TO OVERCOME THE EFFECT OF
FORCES NOT UNDER CONTROL
(Charles H. Cotter, 1963)
The third law distinguishes between actions such as those generated by wind, current,
propeller, rudder, tug, and reactions such as underwater resistance.
The added mass is not negligible as it may amount to around 10% of the ship’s
displacement. It is nil when the ship is at rest, and greater
when the ship is involved in oscillatory
motions (rolling, heaving, etc.).
The Centre of Drift (D) is the point at which the resultant of all hydrodynamic forces
acts: underwater resistance UWR, lift (R1) and drag (R2) as a function of speed and
drift angle.
The concept of Pivoting Point was described by the British Admiralty in the early sixties
as the point with no drift angle. Further developments were introduced by Hugues
Cauvier in 2008 (“The Pivot Point”, The Pilot, October 2008) and triggered much
discussion on the Pivot Point: what is it? Where is it located? Some of his concepts are
summarized in the next few pages.
The PP position can thus be computed for any track of the ship.
It is obviously a purely geometrical matter.
To conclude this innovative, pragmatic work, it might be said that we are now able to
compute the position of PP from a given track at any time. It will enable us to check
whether the “seafarer’s feeling” is in agreement with the calculated position. However, it
will probably not change the way seafarers handle ships because it may never be
possible to predict the position of PP on a real ship since it is a result of all the forces
that are going to act on the ship in the very near future.