In development for close to seven years, the Timm Snap Back Arrestor is a genuine market first.
Despite the industry’s best intentions, such as designating hazardous snap-back zones on mooring decks, or the drawing up of detailed line management and mooring plans, mooring remains an incredibly high-risk task. Serious, often fatal, accidents continue to happen with depressing regularity, with seemingly no end in sight. Until now.

Proving impossible to accurately calculate or predict just how fibre ropes will behave when they fail and snap, Wilhelmsen Ships Service have instead developed a unique solution which dramatically reduces a rope’s recoil, or snap-back potential.

The Snap Back Arrestor (SBA) is an energy absorbing core which sits within the Timm Master 12-strand plaited mixed polymer rope. With the appearance of a rope, held within the heart of a 12-strand mooring line, if the outer, load-bearing construction breaks, the SBA absorbs the snap-back forces, transforming them from a potentially deadly snap, to a much safer, slump.

In development for close to seven years, the Timm Snap Back Arrestor, is a genuine market first. The result of a laborious process of trial and error, 25 different variants of the system have been tested in more than 120 different tests. Finally identifying a viable alternative in early 2016, DNV GL verified our SBA solution in May 2016. Since then the Timm Master 12 SBA has been exhaustively tested, passing both TCLL testing and OCIMF MEG4 tests both in dry and wet conditions.

“The Snap Back Arrestor is a massive step forward in maritime rope safety, significantly mitigating the considerable risks personnel are exposed to during mooring” -  Veronika Aspelund, Business Manager, Ropes.

She adds: “Using the same material composition as our best-selling premium Timm Master 8 rope, Timm Master 12 SBA is buoyant, light, reliable, features anti-twist colours and offers one of the best strength-to-weight ratios on the market. These are all of course great selling points, but the safety element hidden within its core is truly unique and could quite literally be a life-saver”.

Tried, tested and recently Type approved by DNV GL the Timm Master 12 SBA is produced according to ISO 9554:2010 and ISO 10556:2009 and tested according to ISO 2307:2010. It has also been tested according to the latest 4th Edition OCIMF Mooring Equipment Guidelines.

The Snap Back Arrestor technology will be rolled out across our entire 12-strand range.

Source: Wilhelmsen