31 December 2005
Happy holidays from the engine room
Imagine a car chase, but one that goes on for days or even weeks. That's our situation.
We have been on the tail of the whaler's factory ship for a week now, and our success hangs on the staff of the engineering department. If Nisshin Maru has to stop for a few hours to fix something, no problem. But if we break down or have to slow or stop, we could lose the whalers.
With that in mind here's an update from our chief engineer giving you an idea about what his team is up to for the holidays.
-- Andrew
by Mannes, onboard the Esperanza
Definition of an engineer's day off: Do the jobs you must do and between them, do the jobs that have to be done, but are of a too low priority to be done on a working day
Xmas Eve 23:00 we solved our problem on one of the lubrication oil coolers, all covered in oil we can sit back and relax now. Again we managed to solve another problem without loosing our target off the radar screen. Hard to explain that the cracking of one simple rubber ring is enough to make us shut down one of the main engines and took us seven hours to replace. Not too much is said, but we are all proud of our accomplished work.
Time to take a shower and spend the last half hour of this day to look forward to xmas.
Xmas Slava is the duty watch keeper for the day. Because it is xmas he takes it easy and starts at ten past eight instead of eight. Christmas or not, one by one the engineers that wake up dribble in to the engine control room (ECR) with their tea or coffee. On a day off you may as well get up early and enjoy every minute that you don't have to be there.
We finish our coffee and Slava starts his round, a two hour round to collect the over 300 parameters and figures that we need to determine if we will have a quiet day or not.
I do my own round and start transferring fuel from the storage tanks in the double bottom of the ship to a settling tank from were it will be cleaned and transferred into the service tanks, ready to be used by the engines. After this transfer of weight from one side of the ship to another, I have to shift other weights (fuel or ballast water) to correct the stability balance again to avoid that the ship is listing over port or starboard side.
One of our priorities is to keep the fuel tanks topped up completely with clean fuel so that, in case of a malfunction of the automatic centrifugal fuel oil cleaner, we have a full day supply to fix the problem. The last thing we want to happen is that we have to stop and loose the Nisshin Maru because of something that could have been avoided.
10:00 Slava returns from his round with the good news that everything is running fine at the moment, and that Viktor has gone down to the engine room to perform the three hours cleaning service on our two automatic centrifugal lubrication oil cleaners.
Slava starts logging down his gathered data in our engine room logbook.
11:30 Time to sound the fuel tanks and get the running hours of all the different machinery. Each day at the same time we sound the fuel tank levels to determine our fuel consumption.
13:00 Logging down running hours and update the maintenance system, and write down the new running hours related maintenance for the next day.
Viktor finishes his cleaning job, and all together we do a quick cleaning job in the engine room to make sure that the floor plates and engines are free of oil and we are ready for the second half of our day off.
14:00 Another fuel transfer and a quick round trough the engine room. Slava does his second round of the day.
The captain speeds the engines up to get closer to the NM, engine room alarms keep coming, and we run up and down to the engine room to adjust the cooling water flow to keep all the engine temperatures in range.
A last afternoon check is done and we go to the lounge to unwrap our Xmas presents.After diner one more fuel transfer for me and one more watch round for Slava.
Soon this day off will be over but fortunately.....we have New Year's to look forward to.
Comments
campagne in french for you greenpeace
Posted by: Andréas Guyot at December 31, 2005 11:51 AM
Happy new year out there! to you and to the whales.
I will be celebrating with you in my thoughts :)
Posted by: Ken Rabelius at December 31, 2005 1:16 PM
Hi Mannes,
I just can't believe that is your day off! This is certainly an eye opener for anyone who thinks Greenpeace crew are having a nice holiday at sea at their supporters' expense. I don't know anyone else who works THAT hard on their "day off" at sea or on land.
Thank you for all your hard work, which usually goes unnoticed by the rest of the world who normally see only the "actions". If it wasn't for your dedication there would probably have been many whales killed over the last few days since you would have lost the factory ship.
Happy New Year to everyone!
Lisa xxx
P.s - You look great in your new hat! :-)
Posted by: Lisa at December 31, 2005 5:37 PM
Happy New Year to all the crew!
All the very best for your mission in 2006!
Posted by: Leyton at January 1, 2006 12:12 AM
Dear Greenpeace: I am worried that perhaps the Japanese have sent, not a warship, but another factory ship. Do you know what kind of ship it was that you saw-- and do you have any idea where the harpoon vessels are?
Praying for your safety and that of our whales,
Arianne
Posted by: Arianne at January 1, 2006 4:23 AM
Very, very nice to get a report from below deck, emphasising the technical side of things. After seeing the engine and control rooms from the Esperanza a few months ago I realised even more what a hell of a job it is to keep a ship going. It is so often forgotten that it takes endless hard work and specialist knowledge to make sure all runs properly, and that without you guys there would be no chase at all. Keep it greasy men ;-p !
Posted by: Kyra at January 1, 2006 10:59 PM
Hi,
Wondering if there is any cooperation between the two 'task forces' of Greenpeace and Seashepherd...and if this can be considered a joint opperation?? It would benifact the objective I think ;)
Sincerely, Joshua
Posted by: Joshua at January 12, 2006 12:14 PM
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