Another stormy day with science on hold. After six weeks my body is finally doing a little bit better. Not much, though. If science is on hold and I am not feeling miserably that is something. I have to say I have not had a day in which my stomach feels normal yet, but I am working on that.
Today we are going to go where we have not gone in six weeks. We got to visit yesterday the ships innards, the last frontier within the icebreaker: the machine room!
The engineers scheduled tours to visit the machine room. I do not know what you imagine when I say 'machine room'. Until yesterday, I imagined a dark, musty room full of greasy machines with lots of moving parts. A little bit like Charles Chaplin's 'Modern Times' but crammed. The experience could not have been any different.
We went down a flight of stairs to find the control room. We saw JP, the chief engineer, seating a this post with Gerald, the 1st assistant engineer, and Bryan, the 3rd assistant engineer. JP sat in front of the control console and a large window overlooking the machine room, and with his back to a wall full of lights and dials.
We got a guided tour of the engine room at the Palmer. JP , on the right and the chief engineer, explained us quite a bit of how things work.
We received a quick introduction with a safety briefing. We were to wear earmuffs due to the loud environment behind the glass window. Here I am getting ready to visit the roaring machines.
I am getting ready to venture into the loud engine room
The rooms, because there are more than one room in the machine room, are very colorful and clean. Machines and pipes are color coded according to their function. The main engines, generators and pipes with fuel are yellow, the grey pipes are for oil lube, green is used on the service areas, blue is drinking water, and orange is for seawater. The advantage of color coding is that if they see a leaky pipe they know immediately what is leaking. There is no musty odor, but a clean smell, and there are very few moving parts visible. There was one room with a heavy smell of diesel, but the rest of the smells were not offensive. It is definitively a loud place and I was happy to be wearing the earmuffs.
One of the four diesel 8 cylinder engines on board
The first room has the electric generators and the water distillers for desalinating seawater (the silver domes below). The distillers produce 4500 gallons of fresh water a day, that amount 'barely covers the amount of water that you guys use, but we do not have any water restrictions' said JP.
Water distillers in the Palmer that desalinate seawater
We went down another flight of stairs to find four diesel machines with 8 cylinders each, two per shaft. We are currently using only two to conserve fuel. The ship has a direct drive with two engines on each shaft. This means that the shafts, which always spin at 900 revolutions per minute (rpm), go straight from the diesel engines to the propellers. Most ships have a hybrid diesel-electric engines, in which the diesel engines produce electricity to power the electric engines that drive the shaft. The speed on these boats is regulated by the shafts' spinning rate. With the direct drive, since the shaft spins always at the same rate, the speed is controlled by changing the angle of the blades in the 13.1 feet propeller. This type of blades are also called feathered blades. JP said the direct drive allows them to conserve fuel when going through ice, since they can have only two engines running instead of four. Even on low fuel mode, which is what we have been sailing on due to the length of the trip, we are using an average of 5300 gallons of diesel per day.
We could not see the propeller because it is outside underwater. I did see a couple of spare blades in the cargo area. We have them for emergencies just like we have spare tires in our cars. The big difference is that we cannot pull over and change the blade in the middle of the ocean; they need to be able to get to a dry dock, but at least they have the spare parts with them.
I was going to show the spare blade here, but Lily, one of the Marine Technicians, gave me the following picture that was taken when the Palmer was on the dry dock two years ago. She is standing all the way to the right. You can get a sense of the size of the propeller.
Lily, on the far right, is one of the marine technicians on the Palmer. She visited the propeller two years ago when the Palmer was on a dry deck.
The ship is very well insulated, so even when sailing on very cold waters they have never turned the heaters on the machine room. JP said they do suffer when crossing the equator when the machine room does get very hot.
I learned that the Palmer spends three weeks every two years at the dry dock. This year, though, is its 20th birthday so it will go for a very extensive check up.
JP said that the equipment was top of the line 20 years ago, but it looks dated now in comparison to newer ships. The two master computers are 486 PC that are not replaced because the software does not run in newer machines, and the company that built the software is out of business. He expect the whole system will be updated soon because a lot of parts are not made any more. They have had to do several modifications to the original systems.
Bryan, who is the third assistant engineer, is on loan on this trip form a newer boat in Alaska. He says it is different to work on a newer boat, but the principles are the same. Newer boats have a more electronics controlling the mechanics. On the newer boat, he controls most everything from four computer controls.
I do not know much about the machines, but send me your questions. All the engineers are very knowledgeable and helpful. It was a great visit with the engines that are pushing us in the waters of the Southern Seas.