Saturday 4 May 2013

Little steps make big steps


Three recalls from previous posts:
  • Frustrating shopping trips with little obviously achieved and time eaten up.  Sometimes a necessary evil and an essential precursor to success.
  • The little issue of the cutlery draw. 
  • Recovering Fred in a simulated MOB exercise.

Now hold those thoughts – or go back and reread them?!

Today three little steps bore fruit; emergency torches housed throughout the vessel,
 
 
 we also have a prototype boom crutch 



 I have no idea how it will be received but both Scott and I are delighted that it has reduced deck clutter and made getting about much easier.  I also think it brings additional safety benefits.  I hope that it won’t stumble against the “that’s not how we have done it before” argument.  (Just to be clear I completely understand and support authenticity as a powerful argument in the preservation of the vessel.)

 




Now for the third; spot the two differences:
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Give up?  OK, they are very small but here they are:
 
 
Replacing the nuts and bolts with R-clips to hold the stantion posts in their housing might seem like semantics and not worth two-man days of shopping and work with grinders, punches, heavy hammers, socket sets and some cursing. 
 
 
 
 
And why replace a bespoke shiny rigging bottle screw with a lashing?   

 
 
 
 
 
Well, in an emergency we can now rapidly drop the guard rail and stantion posts with a pull of a clip and the slash of a knife. 



Quite useful to say, launch the life rafts or recover a man over board.

So again it’s the little things that are important detail.

Now it’s back to work; I have also discovered that although the fire pumps work, the hose fitting doesn’t connect properly to the pump. . . . .   probably a bath in paraffin will do the trick, that’s the connector not me!!
 


 

1 comment:

  1. I love reading this blog Richard...thanks for the extra explainations for none sailors like me

    ReplyDelete