On the night shift

Last Sunday, the 7th, I arrived back in Mobile from a short, wonderful trip home to Jackson around 7:20pm. At 7:26pm I got a call from my supervisor asking me if I was in town and wanted a couple of hours overtime. Sure, why not?! He told me to be at the shipyard at 8. AM? Nope. PM! I had 30 minutes to eat, change clothes and make it to work. Thankfully, I only live 10-15 minutes from work and he lives 45. I got there a little late but he was still a good bit away. I have never been in the shipyard at night. Honestly, it was kind of creepy how quiet everything was but I loved the way the shipyard was lit up. Granted, it was a Sunday night and most night shifts(including ours) are off on the weekends unless they are working on a special project. This being the case we had to modify a scaffold for the machinists so that they could reach ONE bolt. The modification didn't even end up reaching it, so my supervisor gave up hooked his harness to the highest point possible and stood up on the handrails of the scaffold to the job. We were all satisfied. The machinists got their bolt in place and we got 4 hours on the clock for about an hour and a half of work. ;)

I really wish I could take my camera into work. iPhone 3 quality photos just don't seem to do it justice.

That is the Gulmar Falcon. We really haven't done much work on it. It's a tiny boat compared to the ones we normally work on. Here is a shot of it during the daytime.

Sorry for the blurry mess at the bottom of the picture. I was trying to take the picture through bars on the Abraham. Ha, I'll try better next time.

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Views from Work (Part 2)

By now I am at work ready to "work on" for my 8 days. 

A couple of weeks ago we had several rainy, nasty days at work. On one of these days, I ended up having to work in the yard. When you are in the yard, you are basically left to unstack and reorganize material that has been brought back from the boats. It means a lot of lifting and packing material across the yard to the appropriate rack.

But, because of the rain, I found myself hiding here...

These are 2 steel pieces set on top of each other creating the perfect hiding place. And obviously I wasn't the first person to hide here because there was a chair in there just calling my name. That is a rack of material that you can see through the opening.

Normally the skyline is beautiful in the morning, just glowing and bright. Instead, it looked like this...

Kind of depressing. Notice that you can't even see the top of the buildings through the clouds.

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Finally Friday - Details of my job

I "worked out" yesterday. Worked out in the physical sense and in the work sense. They moved the Abraham up onto the dry dock yesterday. Translation: to get onto the boat we have to climb 4 flights of stairs. Add to that all the climbing of stairs and ladders that we do anyway and it's a killer of a workout. I literally had to climb down the boat 7 times yesterday. My leg muscles are loving it. HA.

I've been given new responsibilities at work. I am now a part of quality control and safety. Our mornings start off at 6 with signing in, JSA(Job Safety Analysis) and a safety meeting. We all do stretches as a group and then split off into different crews. Normally, I would go off with a crew but now I get to go sign tags. Every time we build a scaffold, we tag it(red for danger, yellow meaning caution and wear a harness and green meaning good to go, no harness necessary). Each day the tag has to be signed off on before the other crafts can use the scaffold. In signing them we have to inspect them and change/fix anything that does not comply with the tag that is filled out for it. The past few days I was over both dry docks, the Abraham and the Falcon. I start off with the Falcon(2 scaffolds) and dry dock 17(6 scaffolds). Dry dock Alabama(underneath the Abraham) has 8 scaffolds. The Abraham is the kicker. The boat is HUGE and has so many passages, holes, holds, areas, etc. There are over 50 scaffolds on that boat! It's a lot of climbing but I love my new position. I get some peace and quiet to myself while wandering around all areas of the boat. I have no idea what it is about the boats but I am beyond fascinated and would love to do drafting/design work for boats one day. It took me about 3.5 hours to sign tags yesterday. After I sign tags, I am responsible for pulling 10 people aside and filling out "near miss" paperwork. Basically it is a form that has to be turned into our office and then is taken to Safety. We list something that is a safety issue/could cause a problem. I have to write down the nature of the deficiency and then write out what immediate corrective action was taken or needs to be taken. The crew members sign them and I turn them in.

After the paperwork end of it is done, I get to join a crew and do some building. Yesterday, I didn't build. We have a lot of new people who haven't learned all of the material and basics of building, so I helped pass/gather/tote material. Needless to say, I am glad that it is Friday and I worked out of my shift. Today starts my 6 days off. I work back in next Thursday. I hate that the first day that I have off after every 8 day cycle of working is absolutely lazy and unproductive. I usually have the best of intentions but it never seems to get me anywhere... My body is just tired. I have nothing on my to do list until 4:15 this afternoon. We can't pick up our checks on Friday until 4:30pm, so I'll be back at the shipyard to pick it up.

Hope everyone has a lovely Friday! What are you looking forward to this weekend?

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Views from Work

If you are friends with me on facebook you probably already saw these pictures.

I love my job. No, it isn't easy. Yes, it is physically exhausting. But I love it and it is just what I needed at this time of my life. My favorite part of the mornings are between 6-7am. The first thing we do in the morning is do our stretches as a group then we head onto our respective boats and do "housekeeping". Basically, cleaning and straightening our materials up while the tags get signed and we wait for the welders and other departments to get there.

Here are some pictures I took from the boat I have been working on the most recently, the Aban Abraham.

I love looking at downtown Mobile in the early morning. It's beautiful!

This is the Aban Abraham. I have climbed around this boat so much in the last month. It's killer on my thigh muscles. ;)

Another boat came in to be decontaminated from the oil spill. It was huge. Unfortunately I can't find any pictures of it. It was a Helix boat. We built several scaffold off the sides of the boat and down in holes in the side. But unlike most boats, this one did not have railings on the ledges of the starboard or port sides.

That line you see on the floor is a rat tail. We hook our harness to it as we walk back and forth with material. The wall on the left is the dry dock, which is a dock that sinks down into the water and raises back up after the boat is steered onto it. So the only thing holding you onto the boat is that cable. Otherwise you have a 60-80 drop onto a steel dry dock. Ouch! I tried to get a good picture of the drop but because of where the sun was this is the only picture that even really turned out.

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