This was an exciting and successful week! We developed a plan to move the F.G. Walton Smith aft a few feet so that it would rest flush against the finger pier that tied up the stern, so that the A-frame would be directly above the dock and therefore would be able to lift the new engine onto the deck. This manuever had never been done before and so we needed to test if a couple things were possible first, so there was a lot of contingency planning and troubleshooting weaknesses in the plan. Some of the problems trying to lift the new engine block with the heads on were:
– The cranes onboard couldn’t lift the full 4780 lbs of the new motors with the jib fully extended. Therefore we needed to find a way to get the engines on deck and resting next to the soft patch, so that the cranes could lift with the jib knuckled in.
– The finger pier structurally has these wooden slats that are along the middle of concrete supports, which run along the whole pier. The worry being if the big forklift with a large boom extension carrying the new motors would be too much weight for the wood slats to bear. These wood slats are comprised of 3 2x4s held together by rebar with small 2×2 spacers in between them. We found out later that they are made of Ipe, a brazilian hardwood, that is actually one of the five strongest woods in the world. However, the slats are varying degrees of age and degradation and there was still worries.
– The A-frame boom rams when resting on the supports are completely stowed in the ram cylinder and provide an approximate 5-7 foot overhang off the stern. The centerline winch runs off the hydraulics powered by the generators and is rated for 7,000 lbs, which would make it ideal to lift the engines. The only drawback was that SWL was rated with the A-frame in the stowed position and not with the rams extended, therefore it was undefined and untested how far the A-frame could boom in.
So, at the beginning of the week we coordinated with the Campus Facilities personnel to put metal plates into the pier in lieu of the wooden slats. But upon later testing found that we also needed to strengthen those supporting it with the wooden slats and 6x6s as well. We moved the ship back timing it with the outgoing tide and working the lines, I learned from school this is called ‘warping’ a ship. The next step was to test the A-frame, pier, and forklift capabilities to move the engines weight. The crew had some old train wheels that in total weighed 5200 lbs lying around in the shop and those were forklifted out to the pier, brought down the finger pier and hoisted with the A-frame. The results were a success as the A-frame was capable to lifting the weight safely until at a vertical angle with the deck. It then would be possible to walk the engine from the center of the deck next to the soft patch utilizing Lock and Ron’s portable A-frame chain hoist bar. After these initial tests, we accomplished getting the brand new portside engine onto the deck and into the port engine room by Thursday afternoon. Here are some pictures of the whole process:
It was very exciting to conduct all of this planning and testing to find that it was a very plausible idea to get the engines onboard and moved where they needed to go and very rewarding to finally do it after all was said and done. On Friday, we put the engine mount dampeners in, moved the engine forward and blocked it up, then got back to cleaning the starboard side bilges. The starboard side engine room brings more challenges than the first, so our successes with the portside engine quickly turned into worries about doing the other engine. But that will be figured out hopefully soon as the plan is to attempt to get the other one on board next week.