AFAIK most, if not all, freighters use water for ballast.
I loaded a box weighing 110K lbs. , onto a small ship in Balt. They used the
2 ship cranes to pick it. The ship heeled over when they tried to lift. Had
to wait what , seemed like an hour, to fill the starboard side ballast tank.

Scotty


"Scout" wrote in message
...
Doug,
I had a friend who told me they use sea water as ballast on bigger ships
in
the navy, possibly CG. Of course, he's since gone mad and I can't confirm.
Scout

"DSK" wrote in message
...


otnmbrd wrote:

Only on Navy combatants .... otherwise there'd better NOT be any
sal****er in those main storage tanks .... water, maybe some (from the
fuel) but not sal****er.

On the big ships I did contract work on, more than a few (maybe half?)
had
service
or ready tanks and transferred fuel daily. The really big diesels are
apparently
capable of gulping in a few gallons of seawater now & then. The
steamships
aren't
any problem at all unless it is a big enough slug of water to put all
the
burners
out at once. Of course it's pretty bad for the machinery, but why
complain
when we
were making so much money fixing it?

A good thing, too. The wipers are *supposed* to check the seperator
bowls
at least
hourly, but I used to put notes on the seperators in big letters "Bring
Me
This
Note Immediately Upon Finding... $5 Reward" and had the whole watch go
by.



Main reason on larger vessels is to clean and for heavy fuel, to get
to
right temp.

Just this past weekend, I was explaining to a guy with a big motorsailer
what a
"cleavage manifold" was. That's always been one of my favorite terms!

Fresh Breezes- Doug King