Sunday 27 July 2014

Heavy engineering


I went to the Flea-Market yesterday with the intent of bringing back some fine Georgian glass, and ended up by purchasing this 15 pound lump of iron. Do you know what it is? Would you like me to tell you? Well tough. I'm not going to.

Oh all right then, it's a military tow-hitch for a Land Rover. I have a friend who is a bit of a Land Rover nut, and he recently bought a military trailer to go with it which I quite fancied borrowing, but without one of these attached to the back of the Volvo, I can't. I can't tow a howitzer either.

He already has one, but he does have another Landy without one, so I'm giving it to him.

My friend is the Chief Engineer on board a ship which is normally employed in the oil world, but right now he is laying the foundations for an off-shore wind-farm, somewhere in the North Sea - I think.

To give you an idea of the scale of this operation, the ship is fitted with several cranes, each one of which is capable of lifting 1000 tons. I thought that was quite a lot, but he has worked on boats with 7000 ton cranes.The foundations for the legs of the turbines are individual units which are simply dropped onto the sea bed, and because they weigh 500 tons each, they bury themselves into the mud without the need for excavation.

The cranes are operated from the bridge with the use of a lap-top computer-type thing, and the raising and lowering of them is effected by touching parts of the screen. That's quite an app.

The Chief Engineer does not just do the glory jobs like this, but everything else that involves taking machinery apart or putting it back together again. One minute he will be fitting a new piston into the main engine (he tells me that the pistons are so big in this machine that a man can stand in the pot which contains it, and not be seen from the other side), and the next he will be clearing blocked units in the toilet facilities. I think he delegates this job to a subordinate.

When they find old condoms in the blockage, they try not to ask themselves what they are doing there on an all-male ship. Worse things happen at sea - Britain's first female Naval Commander has just been relieved of her duties for - allegedly - having an affair with another crew member.

He does the usual routine of one month on, one month off, and during the 'off' month, there is nothing he likes better than coming into the pub where this photo was taken, when he is not restoring his old Land Rover. No alcohol is allowed on board, but recently one of the crane drivers - of the 1000 ton cranes - was found paralytically drunk in the cab of his crane, and went home early. I think he had discovered some medical spirit hidden away somewhere.

After one period of leave recently, he went back to his ship to find that another engineer had bent one of the legs of the cranes. These legs are so tough and so big, that you can lower all four onto the sea bed and lift the whole ship out of the water, so nobody could quite understand how it happened.

A little mistake like this costs millions of pounds, so I suppose in the scale of things, me dropping a quarter-ton piece of marble worth £200,000 is roughly proportionate.

It's all academic as far as I am concerned though - if I dropped that marble, it might as well be a 5 million pound mistake. Sheep and lambs.



Just bought this other metal item today - it is getting much interest already, despite/because of the hostility/sympathy toward all Moslems right now.

15 comments:

  1. The difference is being self-employed, although a big enough mistake on his part could put your friend on the dole. Do you still have the dole in Britain?

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    1. You would be amazed at what insurance policies cover, Joanne. Yes there is the dole here still, if you think you could survive on £10 a day.

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  2. Could it be a Medieval Nike+ Fuel Band?

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    1. No. The +38 has gone to your head.

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    2. Oh - good to see you read my blog too.

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    3. Of course I do, but very often I have nothing useful to say about anyone's, so I don't comment.

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    4. Vice versa, Prince Charming.

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  3. My Curry's brain finds it impossible to take in some of those big numbers and also to understand how cranes on a ship can lift that kind of weight without the ship sinking.
    Can just about get the condom thing - I wasn't born yesterday - maybe the day before.

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    1. Think legs, Weave. As far as the rest of it goes, try not to think about anything at all.

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  4. How funny - I had almost the same experience at a bric a brac market in Dorset today. Having gone along looking for some decorative chic items, I came home with a photographer's darkroom safe lamp ( c1900), an old daisy lifter c1920s, a battered red Fire bucket, two well loved cricket bats, and a 1920s modernist watercolour of Montmatre . But what I really wanted and left behind ( after much joshing by Mr EM) was a small, almost heart-shaped, but very heavy, galvanised old water trough. An ideal garden planter for the early adopter moneyed classes searching for something different from the ubiquitous galvanished buckets and watering cans.

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    1. All of those sound like very good items which I would have liked, but I think you missed the most coveted one with that trough. Listen to your heart, and to hell with what others tell you.

      I bought the Islamic jug today which I have just included above. Now, I have a feeling that this could be something a little special...

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  5. My yesterday's haul was an oval white plate, an antique breakfast bowl, and a piece of metal swaggery. I could almost have written this before the event. Predictable.

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  6. I once toured the Naval Ship , USS Abraham Lincoln when our son was stationed on it. Amazed how over 5000 fellows seemingly got along. But I did not venture into the nether regions of the ship like your good friend. This mother revels in denial. And on another topic, tis a shame that such a piece of art as your metal jug might not be appreciated due to todays wars. Art is art and that piece is stunning

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    1. Fine Islamic art - or even Islam itself - has nothing to do with the thugs that call themselves Jihadists these days, and make the lives of the majority of others a misery. People who paint all Moslems - modern and historical - with the same brush as the handful of nut-cases do not collect Islamic art, obviously.

      I once had a piece of the holy cloth which covered the great shrine in Mecca (it is cut up and distributed to dignitaries every year or so) and that really was a hot potato. I eventually swapped it privately for something else, and nobody dared to buy it.

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