© 2004, Martin Baltes |
When I finally, after many very disturbing security checks by the American immigration
and the airport controlers at the end of January 2002 came to the vessel,
I could not help thinking: this is where civilisation ends". Such an old ship
I never had so far; even in the twilight it looked even bad. I relieved a Mexican
Chief; he had just half an hour to handover, while he was still packing his
bags, in a small cabin at starboard. The cabin was obviously stained by all kinds
of dirt on the carpet, but especially because people walked with their oily
boots on it. The stains continued even inside the separate bedroom. If the oil
already flows until inside the cabin, I thought, Iit will be just another of those
ships that you have to work on continuously to keep it working. And I even
hadn't gone to the engine room yet! The skipper, from Germany, came to tell me,
that as soon as I felt comfortable with it I could start the engines for departure,
but the sooner the better. The Mexican left with sorrow in his eyes and I
was left with a second engineer from Uruguay, who quickly showed me the small
engine room. There were even DC generators en electric motors installed; I had
not encoutered those in whole my career of 27½ year! DC was used to drive a small
tunnel thruster at the stern and for driving the standby lubricating oil pumps
for the main engine and the gearbox, Léon told me. The pumps and electric motors
of the cooling water and bilge/ballast were so rotten that I later removed
and scrapped those and replaced with AC driven pumps. This gave me a lot of space
in the engine room. The main engine was of a type that I never had heard off
and that even had a built-on sea cooling water pump (first time experience here
as well). According to Léon the engine was not in a good state. It was not capable
of producing it's designed load again. He thought that only 50% of that
was left, but later I found out that even that was too optimistic. After my adjustments
it was slightly better. Léon was capable of starting the engines up, so I said: "let's go then". It was still my shift, however, and he had worked all day because of a repair on the hydraulics of the controlable pitch propeller, but he volontiered to continue so I could go asleep when we were underway. It appeared that he became a good collegue of me |
On the left one of the DC generator engines and the DC switchboard. Above the electrical
heater of the lub. oil purifier, that hadn't worked since ever remembered. |
Above the two new AC-generator engines; behind that was the AC switchboard. On the
right the massive steel block of the Ruston & Hornsby main engine from where
750 kW could be dragged. |
Together with the Philipino motormen we tried to make the best of it. We started
off cleaning and painting, demolished rotten pumps and even a starting air compressor
and replaced with moderner type of equipment. The lub oil purifier was given
a big maintenance overhaul, we even had the parts for it, and made it run
after many problems. The lub oil of the main engine was so dirty that we began
to clean the purifier, no not a self-sludger type, every half hour. The motormen
took turns for that withou complaint and not after a long while we could enlarge
the periodes. In the end it just needed cleaning only once a day. Where the
rotten pumps were removed new pumps were installed that I connected electrically
in the switchboard. The open holes in the steel engine room floor plates were
nicely closed and freshly painted. The main engine was technically adjusted and
optimised so we could get some power out of it. Also some problems with the
control of the controlable pitch propeller were solved. A new starting air compressor
came and was installed, cables were pulled and connected to starterbox and
switchboard. A lot of improvement was achieved so it looked a lot better. Even
the captain, Kai, became enthousiastic and said that he never had experienced
that so much improvement was made. My cabin I had cleaned out completely by the
steward, so it became more bearable to live in it. Furthermore, the little ship
behaved very well on the sometimes rather hugh waves of the Gulf of Mexico,
so in the end it became a rather nice and cosy trip, while we came into port every
forthnight so we could go shopping, grab a beer and eat an American Hamburger.
After six weeks the trip ended suddenly when the ship was laid-up in Fourchon.
On our way to Fourchon we had to assist a fishing boat that ran into trouble
because of the bad weather. Check it all out at "CONT'D". |