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 2^nd 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!!!!!!