Never stop. Never touch.

Stores cross on the jackstay. A highline is rigged and tensioned from a kingpost on one ship to a high point on the other, and a traveller block rides it, carrying the load in a sling or basket. Inhaul and outhaul winches walk the traveller across — out with the load, back for the next lift — while the highline’s own winch holds tension through every roll. Heavy rigs move stores to the two-tonne class; light rigs handle light loads and, under the navies’ own procedures, personnel transfer — the same machine, at its most carefully supervised.

Fuel crosses on the spanwire. The hose string rides the tensioned wire on saddles, spaced by saddle whips so the hose hangs in even bights, and ends in a probe that drives into a bell-mouth receiver at the receiving ship — self-aligning, self-sealing, made for a moving target. Between pump and probe sit breakaway couplings: deliberately the weakest link, engineered to part cleanly and seal both ends if the ships open beyond the rig’s reach — the fuel-transfer discipline of our aircraft refuellers, applied between hulls.

Constant tension is the whole game. Two hulls roll and sheer out of phase: the gap breathes by metres on every swell. A fixed-length wire would slacken and then snatch — multiplying loads through rig, structure and cargo. So every primary wire lives on a constant-tension winch that pays and recovers continuously, holding the set tension both ways — the discipline our davit line applies to one boat, applied here to a whole rig. And above it all stands the rule that makes the connection safe at all: the emergency breakaway, by which the entire rig — wires, hoses, traveller — can let go cleanly at any moment.