Month: July 2020

This week I was put in charge of the crew that was reinstalling the ADCP windows. It was more challenging than I was expecting. I had to really watch what the crew was doing to make sure everything was right and they were doing it exactly how we wanted. The first step was to put contact cement down on one side of the gasket to stick in place on the bottom of the hull. Then 5200 was put on the gasket and the glass was pressed on to it. There were then 30 though bolts put on. This was tricky because some had to be down in the transducer well putting on the nuts while some else was outside the hull torquing down the bolts. Once all the bots were in place the outer edge of the window was filled in with 5200. We had two of these windows to install. Once the 5200 cures we will fill the well with water to test for leaks. If there are no leaks then we will mount the transducer.

I went into the transducer well to clean up all the leftover adhesives and grind everything down so we would have a good clean surface to remount the transducers. I used a weir wheel to clean up all the mounting bolts for it as well. 

We are using one of the university’s vans while we are here so we can get around to get supplies as we need them. The van hadn’t  been starting all the time but we were able to jump it. It would have this problem about half the time, but then other times it would be fine. I decided to see if I could fix it. I used a multimeter to run some tests and I narrowed the problem down to a bad alternator. There was a NAPA close by but by this time the van got worse and could not even stay running at this point. So I took a bicycle to the store and picked up a new alternator. I installed it that night and the van has been great since. 

We have also had problems with our air conditioning on the ship this week. It stopped working all together at one point. Normally when we are in the water we just pump the sea water right from the hull and through the AC system but because we are up high out of the water we have to have hoses run up from the ocean and water is pumped up to the ship. We have to match the water pump’s pressure with the ship’s AC pump. Too much pressure and the pipe could rupture, and not enough it could burn out our pump. We had pressure but not too much but the system was still not working and pipe connections were starting to fail and leake. We ended up checking the whole system and found down below off the ship the outlet hose had become kinked which was putting a ton of back pressure on the system. We unkinked the hose and fixed all the leaks and the AC started working well again.

We finished getting everything ready and we departed for Tampa on the 20th at 7:00am. The weather was calm. Once we were under way we started our watch schedules. My shifts were alternate to the chief engineer. When I was on watch I would do an hourly check on the engine rooms if I wasn’t already down there working. It took us about two and a half days to get to the shipyard. The seas were very calm for the whole trip. The trip was a lot of fun and it felt really good to get out on the water.

Once we arrived in Tampa we docked for the night. The next day the ship was dry docked. The ship yard’s drydock is like a floating barge. Ballast water is pumped into it and it sinks then we are pushed over it by tugs. Divers go underneath and set blocks for the ship to sit on. Then the ballast water is pumped out of the dock and it floats up thith the whole ship supported up on the blocks. 

Work began on the ship the next day. I decided to take on one of our big projects which was removing two of our large transducers. They each weigh about 150 pounds each. They are set into the bottom of the hull. To remove them they need to be pulled out from inside the ship. I had to climb down into the transducer wells and un bolt them from the hull. Then I set up a lift point where I could hook up a chain fall that I attached the trancedusers to to pull them out. Once I got them out they were cleaned up anong with their hard wear. One of the transducers had a lot of pitting and needed to be sent out to california to be worked on. 

I also have been helping out and supervising a lot of the other jobs going on. We had our rudders and propellers pulled out so they could be worked on. We’ve had all the through hulls removed so they could be inspected. The ABS inspector has also been going around the ship checking the entire structure of the ship.