Boxes and Holes In The Ground

The politicians keep telling us that we are coming out of the recession.

I know that's nonsense.

"Are you a master of economics ?" I hear you ask 

"How do you know ?"  you say.

It's very simple.

A recession means that demand falls. 

People lose their jobs, they can't buy things.

Demand for luxury consumer products goes down.

This leads to more job losses and general insecurity on a global scale.

The harbingers of doom in the media who originally started banging on about a recession to match the great depression have managed to unsettle everybody.

Those that do have money, sit on it, to ride out the forecasted storm.

Demand falls further, factories close and the ships that deliver all the widescreen TV's with cinema surround sound aren't needed anymore.

The backwater ports get cluttered up with unwanted and  laid-up container ships like this one.

When this ship and the others like it get taken out of mothballs, I will know that things are getting back to normal.

In the meantime, the drydocks which are nothing more than holes in the ground, are largely empty.

I watched workmen working in this one and pouring cement into cracks in the ground, waiting for better times.

It seems that the only people who can afford a lick of paint and general wash and brush-up is the Danish royal family, who have their yacht in for some TLC.  

Dannebrog, built in 1932 is still the Imperial Yacht.

So, the Danish monarchs, unlike ours, still have their retreat. Mind you, the Danish pay a lot of income tax.

Under The Waterline

Today I got an invite down to the world of Hades from our Chief Engineer.

The subterranean (or should that be sub-mediterranean) engine room is a world I love to visit.

The engineers have been nagging me for a few days to connect up a rudder feedback potentiometer on the rudder stock.

This "pot" basically feeds details about rudder position, electrically back to the wheelhouse.

The steering gear was removed in the shipyard for an overhaul.

Ours is only a small ship of about 80m length, but the steering gear is the size of a smart car.

They cut a hole about ten feet square in the deck above the steering compartment, lifted the steering gear out with a crane and overhauled it ashore.

It was subsequently put back and the deck re-welded into place above it, once again sealing the compartment.

I love going down into the engine room through the watertight doors.

It is deafening even with only one Mitsubishi generator running.
We have two auxilliary gensets, two main engines and two shaft driven generators.

You wear ear defenders, communicate by shouting at each other or using sign language and they have all the tools, workshops and big machinery you could ever wish for.

The engines are started by compressed air, the cylinders are big enough to climb in and they have acres of computer monitors and instrumentation to watch in the engine control room.

The ship has to be largely self-sufficient when at sea, so they carry a full metalworking workshop, spares and a wide range of raw metals - a plethora of cables, steel bars, wood, plating and all sorts.

I really am torn between whether I like to play with electronics on the bridge or the big machinery like shaft generators and three phase switchboards down in the engine room.

Floating High on Tuborg

I'm currently working on a ship which is in a floating drydock in Denmark.

I don't ever remember seeing one of these floating drydocks on the inland waterways, presumably because they need quite a lot of water depth.

In essence, you float the ship above a larger "U" shaped compartmentalised vessel, called a floating drydock, which has already had its compartments flooded with water and partially sunk.

The floating drydock then has all the water pumped out of its ballast tanks, so it starts to become buoyant and rises.

The lifting action then raises the ship out of the water, literally, high and dry, so that it may be worked upon.

The advantage of floating drydocks is that they can be moved to where they are needed and don't need large amounts of earth to be dug out, so are advantageous if land is scarce.

 The ship is largely reliant on shore power and umbilicals for fresh water and waste.

As the engine and generators are raw water cooled, it's not possible to generate all our own power, although we can run the smallest auxiliary generator by using sea water cycled through the fire hose.

 As I've said before, life occurs in cycles and often has repetition and subtle links to it's past.

It doesn't seem that long ago, that we were cruising the Nene and passed the Carlsberg brewery at Northampton.

Today, Tuborg, who are part of the Carlsberg group,  officially release their Julebryg or Tuborg Christmas Brew.

Its supposed to be released on the first Friday in November, but in actual fact, it was released this year on Friday 30th October.

This is known as J-day and is usually the source of much rejoicing in Denmark.

Normally, as part of the promotion, the first "pint" is usually free in most hostelries.

The beer is only available for 6 weeks each year and is a strong Pilsner (5.6%).

For the beer aficionados out there, Tuborg Julebryg is a bottom-fermented, wiener beer brewed on lager, münchener and caramel malt with English liquorice.

The beer is dark-golden with a fresh aroma of caramel, grain, liquorice and blackcurrant.

There, I'm glad I got that out of my system.

 

 

Show Me Your Leaves, Dearie !

Just a reminder that if you find that the wash behind your boat is a different pattern on the water to usual or is making a strange noise, it could be leaves.

At this time of year, the leaves fall off the trees (so that's why the US call it "the fall" ??) and land in the canal (can I say that ?).

The leaves then start to sink and often get wrapped around the leading edges of your propeller as you're cruising, spoiling its hydrodynamics.

This causes a loss of efficiency.

Its worth just putting the gearbox into neutral every now and again whilst travelling and giving the engine a burst in astern, to blow the leaves off.

Obviously, make sure you do this on a straight stretch when no other boats are around.

Its also quite refreshing to see the leaves come to the surface with the reverse thrust, confirming your diagnosis...

The pattern of the wash is generally very telling. Not quite like tea leaves in the bottom of a teacup, but it can indicate things fouling your propeller.

Large objects like mattresses, fleeces, whole tyres, etc have a way of announcing their own arrival - usually by killing your engine as you are approaching a lock entrance with a fair amount of way on.

However, smaller objects like carrier bags, leaves, fishing line, can just affect performance and this is often where wake watching comes in.

Get used to your normal wake pattern for different speeds, so you recognise anything abnormal.

I find the wake has a habit of not flowing directly behind - it goes sideways slightly, which is usually a sign of fouled prop blades, which plays with the thrust.

Something to think about as you are chugging along.

Piracy and Death in Dubrovnik

I have just returned from working in the fortified city of Dubrovnik in Croatia.

It is believed that the trading republic sprang from the remains of the roman city of Epidaurum, in the 7th century.

Although now very much a part of Croatia, the ex-Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik has an air of independence about it.  

Originally known as Ragusa, it became a independent trading centre, heavily dependent on ships. 

At one point, it had 4000 sailors living there and laws were passed to stop them sailing away on foreign ships.

Today, Dubrovnik is a tourist haven and a centre for visiting cruise ships.

The ships anchor off and the passengers come ashore in launches, as can be seen here, just in front of the fortress of St.John.

I first went to Southern Croatia in the mid 1990's and the famous and much photographed walls of the city were pock-marked from bullets and shrapnel from the war with Bosnia.

Now, the damage is repaired, the sun shines and the tourists come again in floods.

Dubrovnik is watched over by its patron saint, St.Vlaho, who is to Dubrovnik, what St.Mark is to Venice.

A Jadrolinija ferry at Dubrovnik port on the Lapad peninsula, seen here under attack from a pirate vessel.

Still fishing in the same way as they have for centuries.

This is the mysterious island of Lokrum, just offshore of Dubrovnik.

The locals say that if you spend the night on the island, you will be cursed and die - nice..

 

Looming Large

Since I mentioned in passing, the other day, that some of my "large ship" work was drying up as a result of the global downturn in trade, I have had several people ask me about making wiring looms for their new boats.

For those of you that haven't come across this concept, its a spin-off from the wiring looms that are now standard in cars and production boats.

Like cars, production motor cruisers such as Princess, Sunseeker etc are not wired one wire at a time, as this would be too time consuming and therefore expensive.

The cabling for these type of boats is made to pattern and length, so that the boatbuilder can just clip one loom into place and connect-up all the loose ends.

Visually, a wiring loom resembles a fish bone, with a main spine and various offshoots coming off.

This practise has now caught on in the narrow-boating world.

Its very useful for people fitting out their own hulls or sailaways, as it saves a lot of fitting-out time, time wasted sourcing small quantities of materials and specification guesswork.

The cables can be made to order as a bespoke loom and delivered to the boat in one or more pieces, subject to complexity.

It means that the person doing the fitting out can spend less time working in a cramped hull (which is no fun in winter) or more time doing some other form of fitting out, like the plumbing or tiling the shower.

Normally, I either start off by visiting the boat to discuss the layout with the owner and make a pattern, or if the boats physically too far away, the owner can complete a diagram by adding dimensions and a few other necessary details.

I can then make the loom in my workshop at home (not on our boat - not enough room !! ).

The loom is made up of correctly dimensioned cables for the current it will need to carry and is supplied as a finished product with marked cables within the loom, a wiring diagram and a list of the conductors used and their specification.
Looms are cable tied and heat-shrink sleeve wrapped for strength.

When the loom gets to the boat, the spine has to be fitted into place (usually alone the centre of the deckhead or under the gunwhale) and the dimensioned tails then fall into place to line up with the switches and light fittings. The person doing the fitting-out then has to connect the 2-wire connections on the loose tails to the light fittings and switches and the other end of the spine is connected to the outputs of the DC fuse box or distribution panel.

Its also possible to split the lighting circuit so that a failure on one circuit (e.g. blown breaker or fuse) doesn't plunge the whole boat into darkness or even one end of the boat. The loom allows lights to be interleaved, so that every second light would stay on, etc.

I can also make up heavy duty battery cables (up to 70mm2), which can be supplied to length, for new inverters, battery chargers, etc.

Clean The Screen and Fill Her Up, Please

We all need a little bit of care and attention, sometimes.

Even ships.

After our race around the Med, we are back in the U.K

As jobs go, it's not been bad. Got the work done, got some sun and managed to see a little of the places we berthed in.

This Wightlink ferry is getting a wash and brush-up.

Look at how shallow her draft is !!!

If your only experience of taking on diesel has been at the filling station or, if on a boat, at the marina or from a trading narrowboat, check this out.

The orange/red hulled ship is a bunker barge.

She exists purely to refuel other ships.

She currently has a flexible hose of about 10" diameter pumping fuel oils into our bunker tanks, to replenish what we burnt dashing around the Med.

Fuel on ships is measured in tonnes, not litres and ships can typically burn 20-60 tonnes a day. Bring back sailing ships I say.

At the same time, we have a lot of windows that are now caked with salt from the spray.

So, the windowcleaner is lowered in a permanent cage and hoses them all down - what a cleaning round, eh ?

This is the final chapter of this particular book.

So to part, a shot of a shuffleboard deck, as we shuffle off with our tools and gear (and it was a shuffle too - where did all that extra stuff come from ? ).

Back home to Willawaw and a new chapter - the start of our Autumn/Winter cruise.

Catch you soon.