text&audio Anchoring. Better not to go near

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Anchoring. Better not to go near ...

Very often, before entering the port, ships are forced to wait their turn at anchorages from several hours to, sometimes, several days. When coming to the place of waiting, the captain gives an order for the ship to anchor. The command "Drop the Anchor!"

In fact, literally the anchor is not "droped" and so on. There are certain commands that have been used in the Navy for more than one hundred years. Definition from the dictionary: "A command is a verbal short order in the established form". Such established phrases include "Drop the anchor". This means "to lower the anchor into the water so that it lies on the bottom along with the anchor chain, and thus keeps the ship from drifting." All this was determined by the Sea Charter and other Instructions (Regulations) and applied both in the military and in the civilian fleet.

Sometimes it is enough to drop one anchor, and sometimes - both anchors. This seemingly simple operation has its own nuances, both technical and safety-related work.

An anchor is dropping in several stages, a certain number of shackles at a time (shackle is a piece of anchor chain 25 meters long for Soviet ships, and 27.5 meters long for foreign-made vessels). Then the movement of the anchor chain is stopped, and after the stop is released again. This is done in order to not lose the anchor along with the anchor chain. With uncontrolled releasing of the anchor chain at high speed, there is a danger of tearing off the senhouse slip (the device by which the anchor chain is attached to the bottom of the vessel) and the loss of both the chain and the anchors.

Either way, the chain still has a high speed and at the time of releasing, rust flies off from it as well as dried silt,  (if it had dried out after the previous anchorage). Therefore, a seaman who directly controls the speed of the anchor chain must be well protected with overalls and glasses.

At the moment of anchor chain releasing, only the specialist controlling the anchor-chain stopper can be directly beside the anchor device. The remaining team members involved in this operation must be located at a distance from the anchor chain. This is a security requirement.

The whole process of anchoring you can watch on the video (subtitles are in several languages).

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