Week two begins with dog watches, where over the course of 24 hours we work shorter watches until we are switched, so I went from nights to days.
It's busy, as Winter is here. Nonstop more or less, but I got enough time off and a berth yesterday to get groceries, and armed with what I need my morale is reasonable despite working mostly nonstop.
It's cold. Approached zero a couple of times, we had snow and 2 ice storms, two days in a row that made trouble. Soaking rain gets between pipe flanges, where 2 pipes are bolted together, freezes into ice, and expands, opening up the pipe join, causing a leak.
That, and the damn rain got into the hydraulic valve for the boom (arm up/arm down) control for my port deck crane and it freezes periodically, locking the control and requiring a hammer to break loose, which isn't good for the lever...
...but we're holding
. My teeth are wiped and my ass is minty clean as the fresh water hasn't frozen, which makes a *huge* difference in morale aboard.
It's cold. Uncomfortable, and I slip on the ice on deck at times, but we're holding. Work gets done, maintenance too, though the occasional annoying non-routine task now becomes something arduous given the temps.
But we're holding.
We're between gales today. Days where tye wind is under 25kts are a treat. Gales twice a week minimum.
But we're holding.
3 comments:
Soaking rain gets between pipe flanges, where 2 pipes are bolted together..
That sounds like a real problem. I'm sure many minds have considered it. To a regular redneck it Sounds like some duct tape wrapped around to shield it would be an Ugly answer.. But,if it was that easy,I'm sure it would have been done already.
There's ways around it, but ice damage thankfully isn'tan annual event- generally everything is built heavy enough to shrug off ice storms, but every few years, right place right time, it gets us, somewhere, just one of the 1000 or so pipe joins. . .. with wind, flying sea spray and UV, duct tape lasts just a few days. We wrap some pipes, like my fresh water system's pipes, though, after they're insulated and then wrapped in densyl tape.
Sounds like something ya just gotta live with and deal with it when things go wrong.
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