43.142 degree North by 082.400 degree West. Just about to leave lake Huron and enter the St. Clair river , we should pass Detroit in about 6 hours. It took a lot longer to load the lime stone in Meldrum Bay but we are on our way to Pointe noire. We should get there in about four and a half day. So I should have Internet signal to see all the girls costumes on Halloween night, hopefully.
Our next trip after unloading in Pointe Noire will be iron ore from Pointe Noire to Nanticoke, then a load of grain from Toledo to Baie Comeau.
So I am still chief engineer but only until Wednesday morning when the previous chief returns in the Welland canal. I will return to my normal position until my next vacation, which should normally start on November 15 or so, but I think I am going to delay it by a few days. Mostly because that means I would have to get off the ship at Baie Comeau, and I don’t feel like doing that. So maybe between two and four days later.
The chief job was pretty relaxed at first, then the excitement started. On our way between Montréal and the Welland canal, one generator started giving an alarm. But it didn’t make sense. So in conjunction with the office, I got a service technician to look it over. You probably wondering why we cannot do that ourselves. Well the reason for that is because these are Caterpillar generators with lots of electronic systems and special tools are required for just about everything.
On the phone, the Caterpillar people were telling me that it most likely is a electronic fault and nothing to worry about. But I didn’t take any chances and I told the engineers on watch not to run it until further notice. The technician got onboard the next day while we were transiting the Welland canal. He checked the machine and finds out that an exhaust valve had broken its spring. The spring got caught with the secondary spring, broke the top end of the valve, which fell down in the cylinder. The bridge that connects both exhaust valves shifted which made the other valve break as well. The exhaust valve rotocap that got loose and created the short in the wiring of the injector, thus giving the alarm. So two valves that broke got hit by the piston and got bent, the head is damaged and most likely the piston too. So that generator is out of business now.
Two repairmen are scheduled to board the ship at the first lock in the Welland canal, with all the parts needed for the repair. Hopefully, they will not find any other damage. Meanwhile, we had to unload the ship on two generators, which is not a big problem, just a tad slower.
While unloading in Toledo, I was talking with Melissa, the first mate when she was controlling the unloading computer. Next thing we see, the unloading computer show an error message. “Error at address blah blah blah, the application will shut down”. I was freaking out “WHAT THE HELL?”. The computer program that controls the unloading, all the motors, the hydraulic gates, hydraulic pumps, ballast pumps and valves is going to SHUT DOWN on me!!! Noooooooooo! Big trouble if it does, oh man! I tell Melissa “do NOT click OK, just shut all your gates”. I grab the radio and scream “the electrician is urgently required in the unloading control room”. He shows up a few minutes later. I tell him to take control and attempt to do a normal unloading system shut down. Luckily it does, then I tell him “Reboot the computer and lets cross our fingers”. Oh man, what a big scare, the computer restarted and the unloading program came back normally. So we lost about 15 minutes because of that, not too bad. But it could have been much worst, if the system would have shut down with everything running and no way to control it. Do you think the space shuttle computers runs on a Window operating system? No damn way, I say.
Next day, we took some fuel, 63 metric tons of marine diesel fuel and 250 metric tons of intermediate fuel at 60 centistokes both together worth $216750, so we should be good for about 2 weeks with that. I had to sign for that, I’m just glad I don’t have to pay for it, lol.