Page 93: of Marine News Magazine (November 2016)

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DECK MACHINERY

Peace of Mind on Deck

Workboat Operators Mitigate Risk by Eliminating Traditional Lubricants

By Joseph Keefe

Nabrico s a changing regulatory landscape impacts the North markets – saw the perfect application for its products on

American workboat industry, especially in the inland deck. Since then, more than a few workboat operators have markets, operators are always looking for ways to save come around to their way of thinking.

A money, improve operations, eliminate risk and avoid fall- ing afoul of the tightening regulatory machine. Both the ThorPlas-Blue Bearings long-awaited Subchapter M towboat rules and the EPA’s In a nutshell, ThorPlas-Blue bearings eliminate the need

VGP now cover signi? cantly more hulls than before, and to apply grease on deck to various pieces of machinery. Scott in a very short period of time. Hence, the need to tighten Groves, Business Development Manager for Thordon Bear- up has never been greater. ings told MarineNews in September that when it comes to

A good place to start is on deck where critical equip- deck machinery, there can be many types of bronze and ment can create environmental headaches if not properly grease applications, and when there’s rain water, there’s go- and continuous maintained. It doesn’t have to be that way. ing to be pollution. For deck applications, Thordon uses

Traditional appliances such as winches, roller chocks, fair- higher pressure bearings that can withstand pressures up to leads, gangway ramps, cranes and davits all need to run free 6500 PSI. Groves adds, “We are targeting applications like and stay lubricated. Using the usual grease and lubricants lifeboat davits and rolling fairleads. Look at steering link- can be messy, often neglected, and time consuming when age bushings. Particularly in the inland River system, you’ll it is performed correctly. Beyond this, the potential for have grease bronze jockey bars for tiller arm steering and these lubricants to leak into water is omnipresent. Hence, the alignment isn’t always good. You’ll get abrasives in the it wasn’t surprising that Thordon Bearings – perhaps better area. It is not a clean working environment.” known for its underwater shaft bearings in the blue water The effort to keep all machinery installed above the wa- *All images above courtesy of Thordon Bearings (unless noted otherwise) 93 www.marinelink.com MN