This week we are getting ready for our ABS inspection. We were supposed to do this inspection a few months ago but it was canceled at the last minute due to Covid-19. We are now scheduled to leave here Saturday the 20th. The rest of the crew returned to the ship this week including the captan. For the last two months its just been me staying on the ship. We had to do a little bit to get things ready to sail again. First all the crew needed to get a Covid test done. So the university of Miami set us up with testing at their medical campus. We received the results the next day. Everyone came back negative for Covid. We also needed to have a small ABS inspection done before the ship was cleared to leave, because at this point the old one was expired. ABS sent one of their inspectors to the ship on Friday. We went through everything with them. They found no major problems so we were given a temporary pass. This pass was just for the trip to the yard in Tampa where they will to the full inspection upon arrival. We also cleaned, organized and made sure we had everything we needed for the yard period.
Category: R/V F.G. Walton Smith Page 6 of 9
This week we did a few different projects. We went through all the air conditioners and cleaned all the filters. We are also experimenting by spraying the ACs with vinegar to inhibit mold growth. We went through all of the ship’s spill kits. The ship has a chemical spill kit in the wet lab. We have it just in case there is a chemical spill it can be cleaned up right away. The wet lab is also the only part on the ship that the scientist used dangerous chemicals. The other spill kits are meant for oil and fuel spills. These kits are kept on the deck. The ship has 2 windlesses which are used to lift the anchors. We took them both apart and made sure there were no problems. We cleaned the parts, then added new grease and reassembled them. We also cleaned the bilge and AC sea strainer for the communications room. This room houses all the computers, and is where all the electronics connect to. It can generate a bit of heat. it is really important to keep cool so it has a separate AC system just in case the main one goes down.
The university sent two people from their medical campus that were in charge of health and safety to the ship. We gave them a tour and they gave us suggestions on how we can improve how we handle covid. They also checked our chemical lockers, wash station and fire fighting equipment. This was all done to start to prepare the ship for our ABS inspection as well as future trips. We may start doing trips again starting in July. At the end they gave us some good advice and a few small projects to improve things on the ship.
It’s been a rainy week. There was flooding happening in downtown Miami. We decided to finish some indoor carpentry projects to stay out of the weather. We made some shelves, doors and a cover of an air conditioner unit. We also decided to test the emergency shower in the wet lab, but when we turned it on we could not turn it back off. We then needed to go to the maine water shut off valve for the shower but that was also not working so we had to shut down the ship’s entire fresh water system. We spent the day fixing the plumbing for the shower and fixed both valves. Now it’s working better than ever.
We did another test and inspection of the safety equipment this week. We ran the fire pump and emergency budgie. We inspected the fire suppression systems for the engine rooms. We also went through and tested all the emergency lights. Testing the emergency lights is normally done by the deck crew but they have been away for a while now due to Covid-19 and the lights were due for an inspection. We found three lights that were not working properly. The emergency lights are wired so they stay off as long as the power is going to them but as soon as the power goes out they light up powered by either a 6v or 12v battery that is wired into each light separately. The lights that we discovered not working, each had a different problem. One light had a dead battery that just needed to be switched out. One had a problem with its test button. The test button normal temporarily shuts off the power inside the light when it’s pressed so you can tell if it is working properly. This light would not light up when the button was pressed but would light up when we shut the breaker for it circuit off. So that shows the light was functional all it needed was a new test button. The last light needed to be replaced with a new one. From our test it looked like its circuit board was fried.
We spent a lot of time this week servicing all the air conditioners and fixing some of our refrigeration systems. We also had the ship’s black water pumped out. The ship has around 14 Air conditioners. For most of them we just need to check them out and clean the filters. Unfortunately we had 8 that were getting cover in mold. The mold grows in the inside of the air conditioner unit and it can get pretty thick. This can actually put extra wear on the AC and cause it to run less efficiently. This mold can also have a negative impact on the air quality of the ship. Cleaning them can be a little tricky. We have to partially disassemble the AC to get to all the parts that need cleaning this process can take up to 2 hours per unit. So it took up alot of our time this week, but we got them all cleaned and checked out. 
This week we worked on the ships two deck cranes. The ship has a port and starboard crane. We used them for loading and unloading equipment. We also used them to deploy different scientific equipment. The cranes are integrated to the ships hydraulic system. The system has two large pumps that continuously pump fluid through the system. When you would like to use one of the machines once the pumps are turned on you just need to open the valve for it. The cranes and pumps have been running really rough. We found the problem was air in the system. Because the system is constantly circulating we were able to just run the cranes for a while. Working them in all different directions till the air was all cleared out. We then cleaned and greased all the fittings, joints,and roles on both cranes. While we were doing our work, Don showed me how to operate the crane. It was really good to learn how they worked and I also got a lot of good practice running them.
Some parts of Florida are beginning to re-opened even though there is still a threat from Covid-19, but Everything is still locked down on the University of Miami campus for now. Which has been good. I’m able to stay pretty isolated the way things are. My only contacts are Don the chief engineer and occasionally Denis the marine tech.
Don and I finished a few projects together this week. We replaced a coupling for our fire pump to its motor called a love joy. It turned into a tricky project because everything was seized up which made it very difficult to take apart. Then it was tricky to get back together because we had to line up the motor’s shaft perfectly with the pump’s shaft. It was pretty difficult to get it perfect but we managed to in the end. We had another tricky task we took on. We replaced the main aft door gasket which was difficult because it has to be glued in place perfectly, then needs to seal totally with no gaps around any of the edges. Once we finished that we went around and tested all the bilge alarms. We only had a problem with one getting stuck on but we were able to free it up. As I was looking closer at the alarm panel I noticed one of the voltage regulators had burt. It hadn’t affected our bilge alarm so we will test the smoke alarm system next and order a new regulator unit to replace the old one.
The crew is still on leave so it has been just Don the chief engineer and I working on the ship. It has been really quiet around here but we have been able to get a lot done. Our starboard generator was due for an oil change. I Have done multiple oil changes to marine engines in the past but each ship has different procedures to how they like to do each engine. So it was good to do it with Don to learn the best way to change the oil on this engine. We replaced both oil filters as well as changed the fuel filters. Once we finished we pumped 55 gallons of new oil to our ships oil holding tanks. Now that we have the time we might start going through and changing the oil on the other equipment as well. We have been doing alot of engineering work on this ship because our other operations have been suspended for now, but this has been good practice. Don has been taking his time to show me all the different systems on board. The last thing we did was go though the whole fier pump and bilge pump systems which have been very helpful. Don also lent me his two QMED study guide books and a stack of flashcards so I can start studying for the QMED. The QMED is the Coastguard engineering licence it stands for Qualified Member of the Engine Department. Studying these will help me a lot in having a better understanding of all the working on the ship, and it could also prepare me for the examination. I would like to take the test in the future.
Our trip to go to the dry dock for our 5 year ABS inspection was postponed due to the coronavirus. We have a stay in place order till further notice. We had done a lot of work to get ready for the inspection though. We spent a lot of time in between the decks and in all the void spaces to inspect the aluminum for pitting. We cleaned any salt that may have built up over the years as we went through. It was not easy to do. The chief engineer and I crawled around some pretty tight dirty spaces for a couple of days to get it all cleaned up. But lucky we did not see any major corrosion or cracks.
Now that we have been staying in place I have been doing alot of other work. I fixed two of the ship’s pneumatic pumps. I took them apart and I found two of the check valves were fouled up with debris. I cleaned them out and put the pumps back together. I tested it out and they worked. The ship also has a distilled water system for the scientists, but the system has not been working for months I was told. We ordered new pressure gages for it because the old ones seemed to not be working. I had a little bit of extra time so I decided to install the gages and see if I could troubleshoot the system and figure out the problem. I narrowed the problem down to the pressure tank. I read the manual for the tank and found out it was possible the air pressure in the tank could be too high. So I used a car tire pressure gage and found it was at 45 psi and it needed to be at 18psi. So I let out air till it was at the proper pressure and turned the system on. Once everything was recharged and all the air was bled out of the system I tested it out and it worked.
The rest of the crew have been asked to stand down until april 15th due to the coronavirus. So they are not coming on board the ship now and are trying to do what work they can from home. Now just the engineer and I are staying on the ship to make sure everything keeps running smoothly and we continue to chip away at projects.
Yesterday we noticed the black water pump was not shutting off. Which means there is either a problem with the pressure switch or the system had a leak somewhere and are losing the vacuum pressure that way. We shut the system down last night and decided to work on it today. We did a lot of trouble shooting to figure out where the problem was. We figured out that it was not a problem with the switch but a vacuum leak in the system. This is not an easy thing to find because the system runs throughout the ship and the leak could have been anywhere. By shutting down different parts of the system we narrowed down the leak to the part of the system where all the other parts come together to the vacuum pump. We found that there were two bad check values that were letting air escape. We replaced the valves and tested the system and it solved the problem. This kind of problem shows the importance of having someone on board the vessel. If this had happened and no one was here to catch it. It would have kept pumping and could have really damaged the system and the pump would have needed to be replaced.