Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Dynamic positioning (DP) is a method of maintaining a fixed position of a ship by using her own propellers and thrusters. This allows operations at sea where mooring or anchoring is not feasible either due to deep water, strong winds or other problems. Dynamic positioning may either be absolute in that the position is locked to a fixed point over the bottom, or relative to a moving object like another ship. One may also position the ship at a determined angle towards wind and waves. Dynamic positioning is much used in the North Sea oil industry. Important applications are oil tanker offloading in oilfields while fixing the position very close to the off-loading equipment. Diving vessels also fix their positions while having divers or remote operated vehicles in the water. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.