A complete guide of bringing a ship to dry dock

If you have the experience of dry-docking of a ship, you would agree that dry docking is a great experience. I personally love to be on a ship due for dry dock. After all, you get to see things that you don't see during the routine operation of the ship. I was lucky enough to get a chance to be in dry dock in each rank I have served on. I was even lucky to experience the double-hull conversion of a tanker during dry dock. But if you have not been to a dry dock, there would be one thing that might come to your mind on hearing the word Dry Dock. And that is dry dock calculation that we read in ship stability, probably during our Mate's exams. That's purely the theory part. And I believe theory without practical experience is just a theory. So here I am going to write about the practical aspect of taking a ship to dry dock. But before I proceed, in layman's terms I will summarize what we had read about dry docking in ship stability. We read and understood these things The time from "when Stern touches the blocks" to when "full ship is on the blocks" is the critical period. During the critical period, the vessel's GM reduces. This is because the vessel's 'Gravitational center G moves upwards when Stern touches the blocks. It is required and a good practice to have the least trim while docking so that the...