Autoship System Software Used In The Recovery of The USS Cole
Autoship Systems Corporation (ASC) of Vancouver, Canada is pleased to have been part of the successful return of the USS Cole from Yemen waters back to the home port of Newport News VA. The Cole was struck by a bombing attack while in port in Yemen that killed 17 sailors, and wounded 39. Two programs developed by ASC were used to help in the return of the Cole: Autoship-hull design/surface modeling and Autoload-onboard stability.

The heavy lift ship, The Blue Marlin, operated by OHT (Offshore Heavy Transport of Oslo Norway) was used to transport the 9,000 ton destroyer back across two major oceans without incident.

Autoload was relied on heavily to both plan the stability and the deballast plan ahead of time and to monitor both in real time using the PC in the Blue Marlin's loading control room. Before the Blue Marlin left Oslo for Dubai, OHT used Autoship to develop a combined hull geometry file model of COLE-BLUE MARLIN so that the stability would account for both hulls.

The breached engine room was easily modeled in Autoship as an open damaged compartment and the flooding water in an adjacent flooded auxiliary engine room (which flooded via a small hole in the transverse bhd) was treated as an added weight with a free surface. To improve stability, especially at the point of minimum stability just before the pontoon deck emerged, the Blue Marlin maintained about three meters of stern trim and one-half degree of stbd list through the whole evolution after the Cole was seated on the blocks.

Prior to seating the Cole, the submerged trim and list of Blue Marlin had to be adjusted so that the keel blocking aligned as close as possible with the Cole's keel to prevent any knuckle reaction or unnecessary heeling moment when contact was made. OHT used Autoload to calculate this condition.

Autoship Systems Corporation of Vancouver, Canada is a world leading developer of load planning systems, on-board stability programs and integrated marine CAD/CAM software.