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Just like magic…..

Published November 16, 2008 in USA, oil and water, Engineers, environment and From the ship. 2 Comments

For all the landlubbers who think that ships are polluting the oceans, well I’m afraid that in some cases they are right, unfortunately.

I just read about another case of the “magic pipe” being discovered on a ship by the US Coastguard in Tampa, Florida. A magic pipe is a home made pipe used to bypass the oily water separator and to pump the oily water over the side into the ocean. Some ship operators seem to think that it is cheaper to pollute the ocean than to use the equipment fitted onboard to separate the oily water, and in this case the company had ordered their engineers to routinely dump oily water over the side.
Every ship has a log of all oil filling and transfer, even oily water, but these logs had been deliberately falsified so the illegal oil dumping could take place.
So how did they get caught? They had covered up their tracks, faked the records, and removed the magic pipe before arriving in Tampa.

Someone onboard blew the whistle, and tipped off the authorities, so the USCG came onboard and found what they needed to hold the ship and make arrests. Two Filipino citizens now face up to 6 years in prison and fines of $250,000. They carried out the act so they carry the can, but they were ordered to carry out the deed by their company in Japan, or probably lose their job, so lose job or go to jail….magic! They have 6 years to think about what they did.

And the whistle blower? He gets a hefty reward, probably more than he’d earn in a year. Maybe he might think about his shipmates in jail?

And the company, hardly a cheap alternative…not so magic really.

And the magic pipes? They will magically appear again on some other ship, carrying flat screen TV’s or cars or oil or whatever…….

Be nice to the spanners

Published September 5, 2008 in practical jokes, Cadets, oil and water, deck and engine room, From the ship, pinch of salt required and On the ship. 3 Comments

Have lost contact with the muse recently and got entangled in the Wire. All 5 series seen now, and I feel like Jimmy Mc Nulty after a wake at Kavanagh’s bar. Still it’s a great show.

Anyway back to blogging. I heard one about a cadet who thought he was very clever playing pranks on the spanners, a deck cadet needless to say who got great pleasure one day leaning over the skylight to the engine room and tapping a chipping hammer off the coaming to the rhythm of the engine. The engineers thought that one of the pistons had a knock and a general panic ensued with spanners running around like headless chickens trying to find the source of the knocking sound on the main engine. The cadet nearly lost the run of himself with laughter and dropped the chipping hammer into the engine room, nearly braining the first engineer. Well on a ship, you can hide but you can’t run, and you can’t hide for too long. He got away lightly with a few digs and a severe warning on pain of death if he ever wanted to pull a stunt like that again.

This could have ended the tale, but one of the engineers wanted some proper retribution. No better night than when the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see past midships, and everyman and his dog was on the bridge keeping lookout and stretching ears to hear the sound of a fog horn. The old man was pacing up and down nervously as he had a bit of a nerve problem and was jumpy at the best of times, the radars were manned and the ship was on reduced speed in the English channel. Suddenly there was the sound of a fog horn on the port side, all hand on the bridge went into action mode, but with binoculars pressed hard against eye sockets and nothing on the scope, it was a mystery. Then all of a sudden the fog horn was heard again but this time on the starboard side,all hell breaks loose in the wheelhouse, the old man nearly shit himself with fear.

Then the second engineer walks onto the bridge with a clarinet in hand, grinning broadly. He said I think this belongs to the deck cadet and walked off.

Be nice to the spanners or they can make life nasty.

Keeping the peace

Published July 30, 2008 in milk, deck and engine room, oil and water, About, Deckies, From the ship, Engineers and On the ship. 3 Comments

Sacred Heart

Note to self…don’t order fresh milk for the ship again in the hot summer months.

There were a few sour tempers between the deck and engine room departments today so I had to use all my skills as a mediator even though I knew that the spanners were to blame. I can’t take sides as I did before, even if I’d like to. It was a bit of a storm in the preverbial tea cup, but it had it’s lead up, minor words here and there and then an all out shouting match that would have the security guards charging in with riot gear.But we don’t have any security guards only me. I waited for the heckles to lie down a bit and then called a meeting between the warring parties. I asked for silence and said that I would speak having spoken to both sides individually. I could see in the eyes of the two factions that it would not be easy and for some reason I was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

The milk was probably standing on the back of a truck somewhere with the rest of the stores overnight, growing cultures of bacteria. The frozen stuff was Ok, and the fruit and veg, but the milk was off, again.

Thinking about the milk stopped me from laughing, I gave some bullshit about peace and harmony and threw in a few lines I’d heard on “The Wire” TV show about “showing me the love” and in the end they agreed to act in a more harmonious way. A compromise was reached and mutual respect was agreed on. Later the two individuals came up to me at separate intervals and said that the other guy was “mentally ill” and “a stupid f..cker” respectively….so much for showing me the love. Ah well as long as they don’t kill each other.

Now years earlier when I was a second mate, there was an incident on a ship that started off with an engineer slagging off a radio officer. Seemingly harmless gibes about being a “half deckie, half engineer” and “useless at both”. Now yer man the engineer was a Scouser and yer other man the R/O was from Limerick. If you know anything about Limerick people you don’t want to start picking on the wrong one, it ended up with the Scouser calling out to the R/O in front of the other engineers “hey Paddy I think the skipper needs you to wipe his arse” there was dead silence. And Paddy (not his real name by the way) went off quietly and said nothing.
Now as far as I knew this Paddy guy was an angel, in his cabin he had a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the bulkhead, and he had a photo of his mother beside the bible on his locker. He didn’t smoke and only had an occasional beer, always on time for work and did his job well….model citizen?
That evening at the dinner table in the saloon, there were steaks on the menu and just when everyone was busy scoffing down their prime beef, Paddy jumps up from his place with steak knife in hand and places it firmly up against the neck of the bould Scouser.
The place died. The silence was murderous. Then Paddy pipes up in a quiet voice…” you ya f..cker, if you ever look at me again I’ll f..cking well open you up” with that he went back to his place and continued to eat his meat. Our friend the engineer, didn’t have anything clever to say then and there, and he walked out of the room , very pale and with his tail between his legs.
The old man who had witnessed the entire proceedings said nothing, and neither did anyone else, there was a collective holding of breaths until Paddy left the room.
Now the gas thing was, we were weeks away from port, so the two of them had to work onboard until Paddy went home on “sick leave”. I don’t know what the old man did or said to either of them but the steak knife brandishing was the high point of the affair. (no pun intended), but it was amusing watching them meet in the alleyways and around the saloon. There was a magnetic effect, of opposition!

I’m glad I only have to worry about sour milk and a bit of shouting.

Dirty Work

Published October 20, 2007 in Tank work, oil and water, Tankers and On the ship. 1 Comment

P8240010

The picture on the left is a cargo tank after unloading Heavy Fuel oil, it is black and smoky, it is heavy lower fraction oil used for fueling ships and factory generators and old style electricity power plants and the like, smoky because it has been heated to 85 or 90 degrees Celcius to get it out of the tank. The pump won’t get any decent suction if it’s cooler than 50 degrees Celcius the viscosity jumps for every degree colder it gets. Tricky because you have to stop heating before you empty the tank or rlse the heating coils will get too hot….. Heavy dirty smelly poisonous and a bastard to get clean after.
The picture on the right is the same tank 5 days later after cleaning, first soaked in diesel then washed with near boiling water and finally with a high pressure water jets. Ready for loading clean products again. The silver pipes are the stainless steel heating coils filled with thermal oil which heats the cargo. Next cargo? Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel, the really environmentally friendly fuel called City Diesel and Green Diesel. Drive carefull now!

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