My second chuckle of the day.
Iāve come close to beheading a couple Oilers for losing a bob and not trying to remove it or tell anyone. All of a sudden your numbers come up short until you think to check the sounding tube height!
Also love seeing a note taped on the sounding tube or tables āAdd 6" to Soundingā
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Thanks everybody for the info. Iām really trying to get signed off. I canāt wait to make good money and have a lot of time home!! I have worked on deck with some guys and they said they will sign me off, but that may be tough because I need all specific dates and stuff and I should have logged that then. Oh well. I suppose I should ask for a transfer within my company to a boat that is a Iāll working with Vane. If anyone of you know of any other good starter companies let me know please. Thanks for the intel guys!
Good luck sir. Sure you got an earful from us old farts. I nearly doubled my meager salary at the time going from OS to ABT . Hope it works out for you. And yes, get it on paper, dated and signed. Always glad to see our young mariners get to the next level.
Have you ever had this happen? They drilled it into your head 100 times that rule no 1 is donāt cut the hermetic on the valveā¦rather guesstimate the sounding than do that.
Itās happened a couple times. But mostly there were a lot of surprises during tank inspections - one year we found at least 6 sample barrels in various cargo tanks (2 in one tank) that definitely were not ours, and we had no reports from the gaugers that they had lost anything in the tank.
Thereās no reason for it. The samplers mostly are incredibly lazy and want to get their job over with as fast as possible, so they slam that sample bob up into the vapor lock every time, and over a thousand uses or so something gives way and then one day it just doesnāt come up. Do they tell the ship? Hell no, because then SGS or Intertek or whichever outfit that guy works for would be on the hook for the bill. And it would be something along those lines ($250k) - several days off hire, fuel costs, etc. So they just keep their mouth shut because you usually canāt trace any of them back to a specific incident.
Ah, I remember once the amspec guys forgot to bring the closed gauge and ours was dirty, so we cracked the tank tops while we were inert. fun stuff
That is why the C/M takes over topping off tanks with the A.B.s and sends the āNew3Mā around with the samplers.
New3M has been around here with that name for something like 12 years. Iām guessing heās now neither new, or a 3rd Mate.
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Yea, I donāt really let the ABs top tanks too much. Been burned far too many times by a guy who canāt read a tape and then breaks it.
Yea, Iām neither new, or a 3rd Mate anymore. Just canāt quite figure out how to change my usernameā¦
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I intended to say something witty but apparently only succeeded by half.
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