Stephen Brown

I mentioned the Stephen Brown briefly in an earlier post, but since my time at the AMC is nearly up, I thought I’d better take a couple more pictures.

The former collier was sold to the AMC for $1, and has since been filled with various bits of machinery. (That little ship tied up alongside her is Skipjack, the vessel they use to teach Coxswains. Some of the Master 5 practicals used her, too.) We’ve done several practicals on board including damage control, cargo lashing, maintenance, and engine work. Last week I was in the group that got to play with these:

These are two-cylinder, four-stroke, hand-started, air-cooled Petter diesel engines that came out of old lighthouses. We had to pull one cylinder apart, check the clearances on the piston rings, tension the bolts correctly, measure the bumping clearances, check the clearances between the valves and rocker arms, check and adjust the injector crack-off pressure and spill-time the injector pumps. Once we put everything back together, we had to make sure the engine still ran. For someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time playing with machinery, it was a really excellent day.

This one’s an air-started, V16 GM two-stroke diesel engine. We spent a good chunk of yesterday tracing the plumbing for air, jacket water, sea water, lube oil and fuel oil. Then we took turns starting it up and shutting it back down. Again, it was good to see something a bit larger than the engine on Windy back in Hobart.

Like I said, my time up here is nearly over. I’ve got an exam tomorrow and the final oral assessment next Tuesday. After that, it’s back to the ship to put my new skills to use.