On Saturday, I was assigned with Dave and Larry to work in the engine room (deck #1 - as far as you can go down in the ship, not counting the ballast tanks). We first had to get our ear guardians and steel toe shoes. They had a big bag of shoes for people to use, but I couldn't find anything that was actually my size. I found a pair one size larger than I thought I wore (they used European sizes), which I could get on my feet, but they were pretty floppy, and make going up and down the stairs pretty dicey.
Once we had our feet and ears protected, we went down in the engine room and had our safety briefing. This mostly involved walking around the four main compartments (generators, main engines and cooling, machine shop and fuel bunkers) and pointing out the various fire extinguishers, emergency exits and waterproof bulkhead doors. There were also the various alarms that would go off, most of which we actually were supposed to ignore, unless there was a general alarm, which would mean heading to our assigned muster stations.
Elanor spent most of the day working with us, since she was responsible for “Vision Teams”. First went to the most aft compartment in the engine room, which housed one of the main fuel bunkers (heavy fuel oil). It had been primed once, but we had to wipe it down with solvent (to remove any film from the constant oil in the air) and then give it a second coat of primer. Once we had wiped down the wall, we got paint and small rollers (much smaller than normal rollers: about 1 inch diameter and about 4 inches long). Talking with Elanor while we were working gave us a little snapshot of life on the ship.
The next painting project was a small workshop they were building for the chief engine specialist (I don't remember what his exact title was), where he could have a more controlled working environment for his specialized tools and sensitive engine parts. I'd actually had about as much as I could take with solvent fumes, so I volunteered to do power wire-brushing of some of the extruded steel supports on the outside wall of the workshop. This was a little more “fussy work”, but actually suited me better. It was tricky getting in all the tight corners to get at all the rust, since the spinning wire brush was about three inches in diameter, and the tool was big enough that it made it difficult to get around some of the other stuff in front of the wall we were painting. You end up holding it about 6 inches from your nose. Yea, look out in case it grabs and kicks back at you... ;-) Dave, Larry and Elanor were working on painting the inside of the shop while I was working on the outside. Once I had finished wire brushing, we were able to complete painting red primer on the outer wall.
I was glad that I had brought a pair of grubby jeans to work in. We were definitely filthy by the time we were done, not to mention exhausted!
By the time we mostly finished that job, it was time to clean up. Since this was on a Saturday, which is the end of the week for the crew, we spent the last hour or so doing what they call, “Hour of Power” -- doing a more thorough cleaning of the whole engine room area. The team was in the middle of moving some equipment lockers around in preparation for the “Heavy Oil Project” (setting up to process the cheaper, but dirtier heavy fuel oil to run in the generators and main engines), so that had to be straightened up. We also helped with hauling out garbage, which included various scraps of steel and other parts that had been left over from other jobs, and hauling it up the very narrow and steep stairs to the deck above (#3) where we left it in a large drum to be dumped later.
One of the things that Elanor said was that she really enjoyed working with short term Vision Teams, perhaps even more than some of the other departments, since whatever the teams down in the engine room did, it usually made a visible, long term impact on the ship. When you paint a major piece of equipment, it's obvious when you were done. You can point to that job and say, “That's where I made a difference.” Other assignments, such as working in the book hold or helping in the galley, were perhaps just as important, but those were often ongoing activities where it was much more difficult to see a long term, physical impact on the ship. As we finished up sweeping, the engineering team expressed how thankful they were for the contribution of our team. I was tired and filthy with oil and paint and rust, but I definitely felt like I'd accomplished something, and made some good friends.
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