Abstract
When ship runs in restricted water such as channel or narrow waterway towing other ship or barge, length of towing rope is depending on surrounding environment. It is known that course stability of towing ship and towed ship becomes unstable in general if length of towing rope is relatively short. From view point of safe navigation of towing ship, it is important to know the characteristics of motion of the towing ship and towed ship system. In this paper, we examined the manoeuvring motion of ship that is towing barge in narrow water in order to propose the guideline for safe navigation of towing ship in restricted water. We carried out numerical simulation of ship manoeuvring motion considering with the influence of length of towing rope and position of towing point on ship motion. From the numerical simulations, it is shown that towing ship can run along the expected course when towing point of towed ship is positioned at the front of F.P. even in the condition that length of towing rope is short. This towing method is especially effective in a contrary current. However there is no advantage of this method when rope length is longer than five times as length of towed ship.
