I was on an old C-4 with MSC which was converted to a Missile Tracker. We were up off the Russian Kamchatka missile range in January waiting for the Ruskies to launch missiles. we were riding in the trough and rolling 45 degrees each way for 2 weeks. I walked by the main circulating salt water pump (big sucker) and I saw water shoot out from the joint between the circulator and the big gate sea valve on the roll. we rolled back over to the same position and out comes a 5 foot squirt again. The circ was working itself loose. The first engineer and I sledge hammered it back down so it didn’t sink us.
I was on watch on a ferry. Thick fog. We had slowed down to @10kts or less. 17 miles from shore, nothing on the radar as we crossed the shipping lane. As I pulled the horn again I looked down and to starboard, for a moment, I saw 3 kayakers staring up at us. They quickly faded away into the fog.
P.S. I just noticed this was in the Engine forum. Oh well, I was the deckineer at the time.
We were at anchorage off Gabon near the Port Gentil beach bar. The C/E and I were working on the deck crane when the oiler comes up and says she was cleaning bilges a noted a small pin hole in the hull. Chief goes down to check it out and after five minutes I decide to go have a look myself. When I open the door to the engine room I see the chief trying to hold back a geyser that is hitting the overhead. Told the oiler to crank them up incase we needed to beach the boat. Luckily we got it plugged before any drastic decisions had to be made.
a WWII vintage YO converted to a fish processor in Alaska in a January storm with seals in steering rams failed and literally gallons per minute of hydraulic oil pouring out. Only way to prevent total failure…catch the oil as it drained out and pour it straight back into the reservoir tank. Six people had to sit down there and pass buckets like a fire brigade!
Had the steering failed completely not much could have saved the ship since it was single screw
[QUOTE=c.captain;101938]a WWII vintage YO converted to a fish processor in Alaska in a January storm with seals in steering rams failed and literally gallons per minute of hydraulic oil pouring out. Only way to prevent total failure…catch the oil as it drained out and pour it straight back into the reservoir tank. Six people had to sit down there and pass buckets like a fire brigade!
Had the steering failed completely not much could have saved the ship since it was single screw[/QUOTE]
This one happened on a Tug out of N.Y Harbor. We were heading back to N.Y. Harbor from RI. This was a Automated boat so I was the only engineer. I was making a round of the E.R. and found water spraying from the aft sea chest. I was able to slow the leak by packing rags and using some wood that I had laying around. So, I went up to the wheel house to tell the Captain (who was one of the biggest assholes that I ever worked with). I started to tell him that I had a problem and he starts bitching and saying that I should just deal with what ever the problem was. So I lean over and look at the radar and ask how far are we running from the beach. He looked at me and said about 5 miles. I looked him right in the eye and said you might want to get closer as we are sinking! He jumps up and say why didn’t you say that before. I said I tried but you just kept running your mouth and bitching. So after he calmed down a little I explained what the problem and told him I would be spending the rest of the trip down below. We made the trip and then went into the yard where they put a cement box on the sea chest. That patch was there for the next three years that I worked on that piece of crap.
[QUOTE=Sweat-n-Grease;101945]We do what we have to do.[/QUOTE]
Indeed and I lived to tell the tale but luckily I was not one of the poor miserable sods who had to be back there for hours on end. I was the mate and on the bridge pucking my effing guts out. Those vessels are HELLSHIPS in a following sea. That is probably the worse job ever for me and I consider myself luck to have survived to ordeal!
[QUOTE=c.captain;101967]Indeed and I lived to tell the tale but luckily I was not one of the poor miserable sods who had to be back there for hours on end. I was the mate and on the bridge pucking my effing guts out. Those vessels are HELLSHIPS in a following sea. That is probably the worse job ever for me and I consider myself luck to have survived to ordeal![/QUOTE]
After months battling a Chief Mate no one liked aboard a gasoline tanker with NO automation I awoke one morning to find my relief waiting. With a huge smile on my face I signed off the ship, packed my bags and went to eat breakfast. I was almost finished with my last meal when the AB came rushing in the mess saying “The chief mate just wondered into the engine room and… well you won’t F’n believe what she did! Get out on Deck… you gotta see this!”
I quickly grabbed my bags and headed out to find that the ship was surrounded by gasoline. The AB then said “She went into the engine room then she”… I cut him off, said I didn’t want to know, and proceeded toward the gangway. As I rolled my luggage down the pier she came running after me screaming “you HAVE to help!”.
I just kept walking.
I had to jump in front of a taxi and bribe him with $50 to take me to the airport but it was worth every penny because moments later we were passed by 4 cop cars… followed by 2 firetrucks, an ambulance, a HAZMAT unit, a helicopter and the US Coast Guard all with lights and sirens on.
To this day I still don’t know what “she did” in the engine room that morning… nor do I really care
Chief Mate on a rusty old POS reefer ship (MSC T-AFS), established the “hole of the week” competition, giving whoever chipped the biggest hole in plate steel during the week a day off on the beach. After a month or so of this incentive working very effectively, on a Friday afternoon in Guam, an A/B chips a hole through the hull below the waterline, and immediately reports it to me. The Chief Engineer and I investigate. The hole was on a horizontal stringer that had trapped water for years. Every time we applied pressure to stop the leak, the crack progressed further along the stringer. The space had no watertight door, only a non-tight door. With several gallons of underwater epoxy, the CHENG and several of us assisting finally got the leak under control. The crack extended about eight feet along the stringer, about twenty feet below the surface. We were in knee-deep water when we got it slowed down.
I stopped the incentive program the next week.
Ten days later, with a cement patch on the leak, a typhoon was approaching Guam. The Navy ordered us to get underway for storm avoidance. Virtually the entire crew understandably refused to get underway on this POS.
( not me)
Before college dad let me do a trip on one of his ships, went to Colombia, was introduced to top shelf icing sugar.
Left port with a couple of shoe boxes full, used one on the trip to Miami and we painted the whole topsides.
Getting close so I say dont you have to throw it all overboard before we are boarded, old guy says no problem I’l show you what to do.
He proceeds to rap in plastic and tape to underside of the gangway, no way will that work…
He says you wait the dogs dont turn their noses on till they are on board…WTF?
Sure enough dogs run up the steps and on board and they go berserk as residue everywhere but no stash found, they then run back down and gone
Gutsy effort when they know who my dad is but ship looked very nice.
One Chief mate I worked with told me this one. He was in Martinez, CA discharging gasoline on the SS Golden Gate. He looks over the side and sees some guy in his 50’s putting the wood to some older gal in a small boat drifting down the Sacramento river. Jim calls over to the the captain and says, “Check this out!” The two people screwing in the boat jump over the side to “finish” without being in sight of these guys. Then they can’t pull themselves back in the boat. They had to be rescued by the Coast Guard, in the buff no less.
Running a rustbucket as a halfass supply/crewboat offshore in the Northeast winter years ago, i had a foreigner deckhand/wannabee engineer. The bozo was obsessed with ‘pumpa-tha-beelge’ and we let him do it offshore as a little treat for good behavior, no joke. One day we are in some real crap weather and i hear him turn the bilge pump on a few times, maybe a minute or two each, and i try to ignore it. Not in the mood to fight today. As the day goes on, it goes on a few more times, longer each time. Finally I am down in the galley eating a few hotdogs and coffee (crap weather treat i’d make my crew watch me eat, the sight made them puke!) and I say WTF, stop pumping the bilge. Enough! I don’t care how much water is down there (usually a few inches, he did it out of boredom). More time goes by, now i have like 17 passengers and we start steaming in, probabling pounding into a 10’ headsea, miserable. He comes to the wheelhouse, asks to have a word with me. “WE ARE SINKING! SINKING!” shut up, you just want to pump the bilge! He got me nervous though so I went down below, and the water was up to the deckplates. Ok, pump her! we found a penetration about the size of a quarter, so you can imagine the geiser that creates 8’ below the waterline. An extendable boathook and some rags got us home. Few days later I had to take the thing to a shipyard 10 hours away in a goddamn gale. Had my survival suit out of the bag all unrolled tethered to a handheld with everything else within reach. What a hellride.
This was the patch making it possible:
[ATTACH]3125[/ATTACH]
This certainly can not be compared to the trauma of all the above yet it is something I’ll never forget. I was the watch 2nd A/E on an old C-3 Steam Ship, it was near the end of my watch, as I was making out the log book my Oiler, from who knows where in Eastern Europe, came running up to me, yanked on my sleeve, he shouted “we are zeeking, we are zeeking.” I followed him on the run, as we entered the shaft alley you could hear the sound of water splashing plus the bilges were rising. “We are zeeking” he continued his shouts. I made my way back and found one of the packing rings on the stern tube packing gland came loose, water was indeed flowing in. The packing gland wrench was hanging in its place, a few twists on the gland nuts solved the zeeking problem yet did nothing to erase “we are zeeking” in my memory bank.
I noted in the log book, “We Are Zeeking was noticed at 0330, problem fixed.”
A little correction, it was the 4-8 watch, so the zeeking was noted at 0730, hey it’s been a few years. Give me a break
Worked on this ship with big recip air compressors. Every once in a while the oiler would have to go out, open the manual discharge outlet valve and fire the compressor up - maybe a 75 or 100 kW machine.
Now for some reason the oiler didn’t open the valve, but started the machine. As pressure built up (rapidly), the safety valve malfunctioned and the piping was “overwhelmed” at a flex connection. In the control room there was a massive concussion and noise when the flex joint gave way, bending the 3 inch Sch 80 piping upward about a foot.
I barrel out of the control room to see the oiler standing there, his eyes bugging out of his head, basically unable to understand why the rig just blew up. Now ole’ Rueben wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box, but luckily he was unhurt - apart from being stunned. One look at the pipe told us what happened.
The look on that guy’s face was absolutely priceless after the explosion. To this day I laugh so hard I could piss myself.
I was on that missile tracker in the first post. We used to get a lot of young inner city kids from Oakland, Ca as wipers at MSC. This wiper was painting the turbo generator and his paint (high heat aluminum) flashed and caught fire and he ran into the control room screaming, FIRE, FIRE. I walked out to where he was painting and his brush was on the deck with a small flame on it. I put it out with the sole of my shoe the piping was no longer on fire and had gone out. He was wide eyed like one of the little rascals when he ran into the control room. It was priceless. He says, “Man you be cool, you be cool.” I told him not to panic and put it out while it is small and never to paint hot steam lines either.
Worked on a ship with SW flush toilets and some public heads. Every once in a while a pump would go down and some air would get in the system. Okay, pump back on line, but a ferocious air bubble might build up in the flush line piping from time to time.
Unlucky soul uses a public day head just after such an air bubble has built up.
Unfortunately when he hit the flushbuttion, the toilet bowl erupted upward in an air powered shitstorm, coating the walls and overhead.
No one ever admitted to being to being the Mad Flusher.
But I guarantee his expression at the moment of realizing what happened would have been well beyond priceless…
[QUOTE=“z-drive;102124”]Running a rustbucket as a halfass supply/crewboat offshore in the Northeast winter years ago, i had a foreigner deckhand/wannabee engineer. The bozo was obsessed with ‘pumpa-tha-beelge’ and we let him do it offshore as a little treat for good behavior, no joke. One day we are in some real crap weather and i hear him turn the bilge pump on a few times, maybe a minute or two each, and i try to ignore it. Not in the mood to fight today. As the day goes on, it goes on a few more times, longer each time. Finally I am down in the galley eating a few hotdogs and coffee (crap weather treat i’d make my crew watch me eat, the sight made them puke!) and I say WTF, stop pumping the bilge. Enough! I don’t care how much water is down there (usually a few inches, he did it out of boredom). More time goes by, now i have like 17 passengers and we start steaming in, probabling pounding into a 10’ headsea, miserable. He comes to the wheelhouse, asks to have a word with me. “WE ARE SINKING! SINKING!” shut up, you just want to pump the bilge! He got me nervous though so I went down below, and the water was up to the deckplates. Ok, pump her! we found a penetration about the size of a quarter, so you can imagine the geiser that creates 8’ below the waterline. An extendable boathook and some rags got us home. Few days later I had to take the thing to a shipyard 10 hours away in a goddamn gale. Had my survival suit out of the bag all unrolled tethered to a handheld with everything else within reach. What a hellride.
