Week Three: The Maldives and Indian Ocean


Week Three began Ashley and I’s first rotation in the engine room. We started by helping Loren, the third engineer, fix the saltwater line for the air cooler for the #3 generator. The majority of equipment in the engine room is saltwater cooled, which causes issues. Before we got on, the ship sat at anchor for a month, and so a lot of the equipment was not run at full capacity. This has caused a lot of salt water residue to build up on the inside of pipes and various heat exchanger plates. The salt water line for the air cooler had a pinhole leak at the weld seam on the flange. The pinhole was created by salt water corrosion on the spot where the flange meets the pipe. So we ground out the corroded sections with a grinder and then Loren welded it back together.

We started to learn how to weld. Welding on a ship was a new experience for both of us because the piece you’re attempting to weld will move. It was pretty cool though. We also worked on tracing systems for our project—we have to create nine different system schematics. We traced the ventilation system first and then the fuel service system.

This week, we sailed through the Indian Ocean to the Maldives and then onwards towards Australia. The ship stopped offshore of the Maldives so the security team could get off and to pick up some fresh fruits and vegetables. During this time, the main engine was stopped so the engineers could perform a crank case inspection and so they could clean out the main engine jacket water saltwater strainer. Ashley and I helped clean the strainer out—there was a live crab!—and then got to go look at the engine. Abi and Will came down so they could see the crankcase open too. That was awesome! We got to see the pistons, crossheads, connecting rods, and all the different oil lines. We also got to look inside the air receiver. The engine on this ship has seven cylinders, which is about average sized. Some ships will have twenty cylinder engines.

The air receiver

A piston 

Talking about valves

 Abi was excited

After the Maldives, we traced some more and helped clean out an evaporator. The evaporator condenser has fifty plates, all of which were covered in the orange-red muck the first engineer, Jim, is calling “spaghetti sauce”. It’s pretty nasty. The boys got to clean pipes; we got to clean plates.

This week was the boys’ first week on deck. They were pretty busy standing watch and doing deck work. They learned how to do celestial navigation. Abi and Will helped Virgil, the pumpman, work on pumps for some of the week and then worked on painting and chipping for the rest of the week.

On Sunday, all four of us worked on tracing the steam system and watching movies. Next week we are scheduled to get into Freemantle, Australia, which is our last stop before Antarctica.