Day 2

I decided to stay over again today.  I have an appointment tomorrow late afternoon so I will take advantage of the extra few hours.

So how has the day gone?  Well, not bad actually.  I have been flagging lately and focused on non labour intensive work.  But hard work cannot be avoided for long so I pressed on today.


Recap the target


1) Rewire some of the radio room units.
2) Remove the units from the walls and move them to the right side.
3) Remove the last wall panels
4) Remove the water pipes from the whole boat.  Starting with the piping in kitchen and corridor leading to the bathrooms.
5) Cut off a number of ceiling bits and trunking (might as well while I have the saw out).
6) Dismantle the UPS battery chargers in the wheel house.  Keep the transformers and store the rest.  


1)  Done.  Rather than try and undo the wires in the cabinets which is complicated I figured I would label each cable twice and then cut the cables.  That way I can get away with putting the whole lot through junction boxes and rather than have to fiddle in the cabinets I know that a simple like for like connection will do the job.  Saved a lot of time.  Still had to label nearly 25 cables twice.  The


2) Done.  With the cables freed I was relatively easily able to remove the two fog horn units.  I also unwired the long round the room loop of the optics cabinet and labelled all those too (twice).  The radio room is now almost free of wires in many parts of the ceiling.


3) The wall panels came off relatively easily.  The final one was behind the fire FM2000 (or whatever the stuff is) tank.  That had to be removed.  The down side is that it weighs 67Kg.  Thats a lot more than me.  (I know the weight because it is written on it).  That took some moving.  Luckily I was able to walk it to the other side of the room.


4) Done.  Although it nearly killed me.  The reciprocating saw does not do well with pipes.  Holding a heavy saw above your head trying to get the right angle not to plough the blade into the ceiling is hard enough.  But if the pipes have ANY movement in them at all then they start to move against the saw and trap it.  The result of the blade being trapped is one of two things.  The first option is to snap the blade (which happened once).  The second is like you would expect in a road runner cartoon.  The blade is gripped and the saw starts to reciprocate, with me on the other end.  This ALWAYs results in pain.  Apart from the fact it feels like every bone in your hand has been shattered it normally results in slamming your hand into a ceiling metal panel and getting hammered.  Ouch.   Anyway.  You learn a few tricks.  The first and main one is that to avoid the pipe gripping the blade at the end of the cut you need the pipe to be falling downwards from the end away from where you are cutting.  That way the pipe's own weight pulls it down and opens the cut rather than closes it.  The downside is you get a heavy pipe in freefall right over you.  Which is why I wear big boots.  Thank god.


All the water pipes are now removed (on this level).  The only remaining ones are in the toilets and they can wait as I have only just cleaned the loos and cannot face another round.  They will not take long and can be done when the loos are finally removed.


5)  Lots of small bits and pieces removed.  The two fire bells in the corridor and the fire alarm button, the showers in the shower rooms and lots of smaller bits on the ceiling.  The wires that connect to the fire tanks (fm2000) run in steel pipes across the ceiling for some reason.  So I cut those down as well.  A couple more to do yet but again they are not urgent.


6)  Cmon.  Give me a break.  I was working for 9 hours solid today!  I ran out of time.


All in all a good day.  Lots done.  The place is a mess again.  So tomorrow will be tidy up time.  The outside (rear deck) is now so solid with junk you cannot get out of the door.  I will not have time to get that off the boat but I will be able to restack it into neater piles and get it away from the main access door.  I may have a session with the saw and cut up the vast quantity of plywood into smaller strips and store it for burning.


Its a strange feeling but the calories put into each screw, each bolt removed, each wood panel cut away is never represented by what you see after.  You do all the crippling work and all you are left with is an empty room.  So in years to come when I look back at this blog I will need to remember clearly


1) everything hurts, every day
2) every screw is rusted, every bolt painted, bent and threaded, every panel weighed a ton, every wire was 5 times thicker than needed and impossible to cut.
3) everything hurts, every day
4) its worth it.  Every scratch, cut, bruise and ache is worth it.


Well, I think I have earned my shiraz tonight.  I have the outside power lines into the ship tonight so I can power my little heater.  So the wheelhouse is nice and cosy tonight.  I wont leave it on at night as it is too noisy but it will make the evening a lot more pleasant.