Wednesday, February 19, 2014

T-3 DAYS TIL TAKEOFF

I am sorry to say we do not have much to report about our last Oahu trip. We had plans to go on a short lighthouse hike, which would have been great. But then:
-it’s really far away
-bus doesn’t go there
-rental car really really expensive that day
-and rain.
So instead we went to visit the market at the Aloha Stadium (not much to say about that either). And then we came back and were lazy.
We did work with the Chief Mate for a little while, looking at CargoMax again, this time with container weights AND tank weights. Upon arrival in port the chief mate is in charge of making sure the office’s loading plan fits the ship’s stability criteria by putting all the information into CargoMax. If it works, the mate then has to make sure loading progresses correctly so we stay stable. Problems can happen when late, unexpected cargo shows up, especially if it’s heavy, because then it gets loaded highest on the ship where it has the greatest effect on stability. But you never want to turn away cargo.

After leaving Hawaii, we did another of my early cadet jobs again- checking to make sure the containers are in the right places. It took longer this time because we actually had containers, even though most of them were empty. We were even carrying a chicken coop container, but no chickens.

Yesterday, the first engineer had us make a piping plan to give to one of the engineering companies we contract maintenance out to. A pipe to the chloropac needs to be replaced and they apparently need the cadets to show them how to do it. As the first requested, we tried to make it “idiot-proof”.

Some more programming got done, which was (of course) exciting. I left relief notes for the next cadet with specific instructions to NOT. TOUCH. THE PROGRAM. Hopefully Matson will be able to use this program for a while, but judging by the number of changes the office has already wanted I think that is unlikely.

We also tested the cargo hold bilge alarms with the chief mate and electrician (Bruce). For me this was not very exciting because I lost rock/paper/scissors and my job was to be in the control room making sure the alarms came through when Bruce, Diana, and Andy set them off.

Today, we helped the 2nd engineer replace one of the potable water pumps. The coupling is connected to the shaft by a small key, and the key and keyway had been worn out. We took out the old pump and put it away. Before putting the new one in, we cleaned it up (it had been sitting there since 2011 and was pretty grody) and connected the pipes to it. We also got a new coupling and put that on. Then we put the pump into place.

OH NO!!!! we forgot to put the seal on the coupling so we had to start over. But we got that done, all the pipes connected, and tested it.

WATER GOES EVERYWHERE!!!! We forgot to blank off the place where a pressure gage would be attached, if we had a pressure gage. So we fixed that and tested it again. Looked ok this time, so we bolted it down.

Then, we had to unbolt the pump motor and wiggle it around to get the motor shaft aligned with the pump shaft. This involved the use of a big electromagnet with a micrometer attached. The magnet goes on one shaft and you use the micrometer to see how far off the other shaft is. A small distance makes a big difference, but when we were 0.002 off we decided it was ok. We attached both halves of the coupling together (it uses a spring) and put the bearing on. When that looked like it was running ok we put the coupling guard back.
Only 2 work days left. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhh!!!!!!



Thursday, February 13, 2014

SEATTLE/OAKLAND/SAN FRANCISCO

We had another short stay in Seattle this time. Technically it was just about 24 hours, but since we arrived and departed around 0100, there was a lot of time spent sleeping.
Only Justin was around this weekend, so we tricked him into having lunch with us and then at his suggestion signed up for the Seattle Underground tour. I won’t say much about it for those of you who may one day want to attend it, but I definitely recommend it as well. There was a lot of interesting history and bad jokes there.
And yes, we finally made it to San Francisco! Originally my buddy Shreyas Chand of Berkeley was going to come with us, but then he had to do work, so he just met us at the ferry dock in the morning for a little while instead.
The ferry ride was exciting. And also frustrating because we go right past our ship, but then have to go on land and drive way around to get back to it. Fortunately we had good luck with that this time. Although no cab we called for ever showed up, we managed to hitch a ride with a visiting day worker in the morning and jump on a cab that was dropping someone off at the ferry terminal in the afternoon and trick him into driving us back.

Anyway, there were many good ship-spotting opportunities today. Our terminal was very busy.

there was just a conveyor belt dumping scrap metal into this one’s cargo holds


(what is AS?)

aw yeah Matson + approaching containership


“no don’t take my picture”



We don’t have any enclosed lifeboats so I’m pretty jealous


Manoa glamour shot #1


does the IMO number need to go in the seaterm project? because if so, don’t worry I got it


The back of our house



“maybe we should ask the ferry guys if we can be their cadets for a day”





Manoa glamour shot #2


such containerships


much traffic


wow


#3

















just in case

Don’t worry, all this is just the outbound journey.

We arrived at Pier 41 about 45 minutes later, which put us directly into the middle of tourist-land. The first thing we did was walk over to Pier 39, which is right next to the aquarium and has been flooded with sea lions.

Some things about sea lions:
-they smell. Bad.
-they’re really loud.
-they do this a lot












Unfortunately, we didn’t really have time to do the full aquarium justice so we decided to skip it.



Back to tourist-land.

I found my new favorite carousel ever.

We stuck around on the pier long enough to have lunch and then wandered off in search of very important things which you will find out about soon. On the way, we got distracted by the maritime center.


how could you not get distracted



a paddlewheeler


+ the remains of a paddlewheel


NOT part of the maritime center






also not part of the maritime center but SUPER CUTE





super weird shaped boat















And now, for very important things…



so fat. so worth it.

Ice cream at Ghirardelli Square was basically the #1 objective of our trip today. Having completed this, we wandered in and out of some art galleries (just looking, no thank you, not buying $2600 paintings, ok) and back down to the ferries and Pier 41.




Important detail


We found the cable cars although we did not ride on them.



Here are the submarine and the Liberty ship we did not visit today because time and $$$$.



And now it is time for the ferry to depart.

Revisiting our old friend, Sailboat Guy:

Pilot boat!















a high school field trip happened to be on the same ferry as us, both ways



And here we are at Containership Row



And that concludes our California time today.

On the shipboard side of things, we now have another new Chief Engineer. This brings our total up to 3 for this seaterm.
We have still been mostly working on our projects with some significant progress made. However, today we took a break from this as the new chief enlisted us to make 15 or so tiny boxes out of Plexiglas to cover buttons in the engine control room so that people won’t push them by accident. I won’t say much more about it except that by the end of the day I was ready to commit a superglue homicide. If it takes 10 minutes to dry, sorry, it’s not superglue.
I also have to report that the molasses pump room spider has disappeared. Apparently he took offense to the 2nd engineer, junior, and wiper cleaning the strainers today.
We are now approaching our last Oahu stop. The chief mate may be having us work with her for some time in port so we can see some deck operations.