Wind affecting berthing operations

Almost every voyage culminates in a manoeuvre to berth the ship safely along a quay or wharf. During this phase a ship is affected by a number of factors, one of them being wind. This paper seeks to understand how wind affect a ship in regards of power consumption during berthing. A field study was conducted on a car passenger ferry, where every approach in one harbour was logged and analysed over a period of four months. The goal was to provide greater knowledge about energy usage and the study presents several interesting findings. It is estimated that power consumption is stable when the median wind speed is less than 4 m/s. Stronger winds have a significant effect on power consumption, e.g 17 m/s gives an 106,31% increase from calm conditions. Furthermore there is not discovered any correlation between consumption and wind direction in this study.