2008

MANLIFTS

So it’s ’08, the glorious looking Isabella and I have sailed from Grenada through the Canal, to the Galapagos and through French Polynesia to American Samoa, Pago Pago to be precise. We’d made some money in Fr Poly (see Engines) but the south Pacific is not the least expensive area I’d sailed. The cruising kitty was looking like road kill. Despite American Samoas’s marginal reputation as a cruising destination, we needed work, the cruising guides wrote about the big tuna fleets that were based out of there, surely there’ll be work for a boat bum with, electrical, mechanical and refrigeration abilities and while I’ve never actually done ammonia based refrigeration systems. How hard can it be? It didn’t take long to find a chief engineer from a purse seiner in a bar, there’s that bar thing again. “So where are the service industries for the tuna boats on this island?” I asked when the time seemed right. “Are you nuts, there’s nothing here. If we can’t fix it ourselves, there’s either New Zealand or California.” He laughed hysterically. “Why?” he inquired when he got hold of himself. “Well, I’m looking for work.” I explained “So what do you do?” he asked I told him how I’d been earning my rice, beans and run for the last 16 yrs and he suggested working on a tuna boat, his in fact, he went on to describe how many trips I’d have to do before I could rise to, say, assistant electrical engineer and what the share/pay scale would be like along the way. Sounded like more time than I was prepared to invest in American Samoa and a little old to be a deckhand, but ultimately the money was pretty good. His 2nd piece of advice was easier to follow and the next morning found me going out to the shipyard to look for work armed with a copy of my CV and found the manager, Bob. He quickly read through my CV and asked “So you fix things?” “When everything goes right, yes” I replied. He asked me to come with him and we went back into the yard where they were sandblasting a 150’ Taiwanese long liner by a guy in a steel cage holding a 2” sandblasting hose, lifted by a 12 ton mobile crane and secured by 3 guys on the ground to keep the cage from spinning. The biggest mobile compressor I’d ever seen was roaring and dripping oil in the background. “That seems like a lot of people to be doing what ought to be a 1- 2 man job and putting hours on that mobile crane is pretty expensive. Don’t you have any self-propelled manlifts?” I observed. “You catch on quick, we have 4, but they’re all broken. Can you fix them?” he inquired. “well, I don’t know, I’ve never tried, you don’t see a lot of them on boats, but they’re just hydraulic systems with wheels, I can try.” I stammered. “Good we’ll call it the job interview” he stated firmly. “Ok, which one do you think is the least f**ked up?” I asked praying for clemency. “I’ve only been here a month myself, but I can show you the prettiest, it’s 24v electric scissorsliftand hasn’t worked in 2 ½ yrs, but so far 4 electricians have said it’s hopeless and to cut it up for scrap” he said leading me to sa shed where the prettiest one sat covered with bird s**t and looking seriously tired. “Ok, I’ll go out to my boat get some tools, a meter and old clothes and take a run at it. Upon returning to the prettiest I found the 6 volt batteried bank to be sitting at 17.5 volts, too low to even fire the relays. I plugged in the on board transformer, which hummed encouragingly, but nothing came out of it. I yanked the battery charger and opened it up and found a little PC board that operated a relay to regulate charge, it was cooked. So I bypassed the relay and plugged it back in and it immediately started charging long dead batteries, I put water in the batteries hoping they’d actually take a charge so I could continue troubleshooting it, but things seemed to work. Three hrs later I was driving the thing around singing “Born to be Wild” at the top of my lungs. The yard crew came running up to me screaming deliriously “You fixed it, you fixed it” Praise is good, but honesty is best “Well, actually it wasn’t broken” I firmly said “It hasn’t worked in over 2 yrs” they shrewdly pointed out. Well, s**t they had me there “It was the battery charger” I tried “”You fixed the battery charger?” a valid question “Not exactly, it’s now charging unregulated” I tried to explain, but by then I’d lost my audience “Can we use it?” Was all they wanted to know, no interest in technical explanations “Sure, I don’t work here, just keep it plugged in while you use it and overnight, unplug it in the mornings so I can figure out if the batteries are any good” “Thanks” and they were gone. Bob came down having seen the yard activity through his window and said incredulously “You fixed it already?” I figured this was no time for honesty and told him the issue with batteries and charger. “But we can use it in the meantime, until the parts come and you can install them?” hmm, it sounds like I may have a job. “Oh yeah, no problem, we just have to be a little careful with battery voltage and charging time” trying to make myself sound indispensable. “Great” says Bob “What do we have to pay you?” We agree on $20/hr cash and Bob introduced me to the other 3, they weren’t nearly as pretty, 2 cherry pickers and 1 more scissorslift. “The cherry pickers are way more versatile than the scissorslifts, but let’s face it, anything you get running will be a blessing, the compressor will support 4 2” sandblasters” he advised “So go nuts” and returned to the office. The next cherry picker took a week, the engine ran fine, but I had to run a 2” poly hose up to the bucket for the new wiring and build a weatherproof PVC box and fill its face with momentary contact double throw switches c/w weatherproof boots and laminated labels, ok they were just Scotch tape, but the workers were impressed. The remaining scissorslift took better than a week, the Honda industrial engine hadn’t been put away clean and getting the varnished 6 yr old fuel out of the carbuerator and fuel tank took forever and when it ran the hydraulic controls didn’t work, it looked like they’d been beaten to death. “Yeah” said the workers “When we needed it to work we’d hit the hydraulic block with a hammer” “Oh good, that explains it, that’ll make the spool jump and operate briefly” I said “Yeah, you had to hit it just right and often” they concluded helpfully “Wanna see?” “No that’s ok, thanks, I understand” I replied. The scrapyard in the back gave me a new/used hydraulic block that hadn’t been attacked and my reputation grew. There was no muffler on the now working scissorslift c/w yet another weatherproof PVC box and switches to the welding shop so they could replace the rusted out floor of the working area. “You’re magic” enthused Fana’a, the welding department boss “This thing hasn’t worked in 6 years or so” “It seems ok now, but make sure you put a muffler on the engine, it’s gone” I advised “Hell, we don’t mind a little noise” said Fana’a “Yeah, but if the engine doesn’t have some backpressure you’ll damage the exhaust valves” I explained “Ok, we’ll take care of it” He didn’t, he put in a new floor and sent it out sans muffler, 10 days later it dropped an exhaust valve and trashed the motor. The last cherry picker was a serious nightmare, it was a relatively recent Grove and everything ran through complicated relay boards that were double layered and I couldn’t follow. It was pretty slick at one time, everything was beautifully synthesized so when you elevated the boom the bucket angle would automatically change. The boards kept burning, they’d had it fixed twice and the cost of flying a mechanic out with the parts was astronomical. In disgust I bypassed Grove’s wiring and it became purely manual like the 1st cherry picker, but at least I already had a weatherproof box to mount the switches in and 2” poly pipe once again carried the wires, but at least it worked.

And so it went, the place was great they had a whole room full of dead welders, arc, MiG, plasma cutters, you name it. I was told to fix what I could. Latuea’a the head welder took me to a particularly old welder and asked if I could do anything for it, it was his favorite, claimed it welded sweet, whatever that means. So I downloaded the schematics and using an unlimited amount of used parts cleaned it up and asked him to try it “What did you do it, it never welded this sweet before” he enthused. Like I said a very gratifying place to work. George and Thalia

“If I’m lyin…”