CALL SEA TOW

I'm learning a lot about commercial freighters. We went aground at Ho Chi Minh City. It all started off with what is known as, "berth congestion".We were anchored off the Mecong delta waiting for a combination of high tide and an appropriate berth, knowing that there was congestion in the port.Time is money in this business so knowing this, port authorities make every effort to accommodate their customers. I surmise that it was because of these factors that we ended up in a less than perfect slip. As I mentioned before our stern extended out beyond the dock, and our stern lines were tied to a floating buoy.Heiner, Mal and I arrived back from Ho Chi Minh City at noon on Sunday. The Captain likes to have every one on board two hours prior to departure as a precaution against, "lost taxis" or "wayward crew members", so I knew that he must be planning to leave at 2:00 P.M. Imagine my surprise to find that,at noon, the ship was sitting up out of the water - Always safe aground - as they say. I watched the tide come in with some cynicism. Two hours didn't seem like a lot of time to refloat the ship. By 2:20 P.M. the pilot was aboard and the tugs in place to move us off the dock. Every departure requires a different technique so it is always fun to watch the preparations from the pilot deck. We were facing up river so we needed to get turned around. One tug had his nose to our starboard bow to hold us to the dock,while the second tug planned to pull our stern out into the channel; enough to allow the first tug to push the bow counter clockwise, and therefore point us in the right direction. No problem here except that no matter how hard the little tug tried to pull (she was just a little tug after all)nothing happened. This fruitless effort lasted almost twenty minutes.Finally the forward tug tootled down along the starboard side, passed behind the stern, and lined up with her nose to our port. Once again, but this time with a push as well as a pull, the tow boats tried, with all their might and main, to move the stern away from the dock. Nothing doing, we were really stuck in the mud. Finally the tug boats retired and, using our own bow thrusters, we moved the ship forward and out into the channel, being careful not to clip the stern of the boat in front of us. The tugs eventually helped us to turn around further up the channel. The elapsed time - one hour.