2008 Week 15 in Review

An Update on the Maris Pearl

I spent most of the week wrestling an octopus called the Maris Pearl’s oil cooler. It has four lines running to it, all welded pipe going to threaded fittings on the cooler. It all needed to be carefully fitted and welded together just so.

This may be straightforward in a shipyard or a working facility, but the Maris Pearl is docked at a recreational marina that doesn’t allow hotwork or other “industrial” activities. I had to measure, fit, and mark up the pipe fittings, then take them up the 800-foot dock, drive a mile to my shop, weld the pipe, drive back to the marina, take it back down the 800 foot dock, get it down the engine room ladder without breaking the new welds or bending the pipe, bolt the flanges together, then measure, fit, and mark the next fitting… and so on. This turned the procedure into a week-long ordeal that really is best described as wrestling an octopus. The four-inch seawater line especially was torture, but I finally got it all done.

The next step is to test and flush out all the lines.

And in other news…

Actually, there is no other news. The oil cooler really took up all my time this week.