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I can hear my father. "Button, Button. Who's got the Button?" For two days running we have had important items go missing. We had them just a few days ago. Now they are out of reach and alternatives have to be conjured up. I am angry and frustrated. Which is in deep contrast to the overall mood of the ship since the weather has turned glorious after a whole week of rain.

With the good weather, the yard is advancing steadily on bottom painting. If nothing goes seriously wrong, we should launch back into the water this coming Friday. My intentions are to take the weekend to get back to Baltimore sometime Sunday. The crew should then be pretty familiar with underway operations and thus ready for the beginning of the season and the annual USCG Safety Inspection set for Monday April 21. Then there are only two days to get ready for the big Gala Event that Pride, Inc. is holding Thursday April 24. On Friday, we leave Baltimore for the summer by first going to Annapolis. So it will be a busy week.

The rain was rather frustrating. It easily delayed us some four days. Being in drydock costs us around $500 per day. This estimate includes yard lay-day costs and hotel accommodations for the crew,m but does not include work actually done by the yard, which is an extra cost. Thus the delays give additional emphasis to the phrase "on the hard" indicating a dry-docked ship and life during such occasions.

The up-side of being drydocked so long as we waited for better painting weather is that the crew was able to do lots of maintenance down below. All of the white area of the down below mid-ship area has been painted gloss white for the first time in more than seven years. Meanwhile the rigging that could be done in the rain was done. Now that the weather is fair and while the hull is being painted by the yard, the crew can work on deck cosmetics as well as rig care. Today they applied a coat of varnish on the bulwark rail cap. Meanwhile they are also able to continue building up spot coats in other damaged varnish areas. Before we launch we may be able to put a whole coat of varnish on the "furniture" in the middle of the ship and begin to look great for the first major event of Pride II's 2003 season.

Meanwhile we have been getting to know the gang at Ocean Marine Yacht Center. Their facility has to be the cleanest yard we has ever been in and may be the cleanest I have ever seen. To be sure they are brand new. But still, they have a clean setup and they keep it clean. The dry-docking mechanism is called a synchro-lift. It has a lot of capacity at 1,200 tons max lift. It can accommodate a vessel of 200-foot. Plus it can haul deep draft vessels of more than 20 feet. The yard crew is very helpful too, especially the managers, Darrel and Wayne. Both worked closely with me on all manner of things and were very understanding when the issue of X-ray work came up. Their decision could easily have been to request the X-ray work be done after working hours as a way of not hindering in their own work while radiation was being used in the yard. Doing radiation work in the normal working hours is the cheapest way to go. Labor costs go up when the job runs into evening hours or weekends. Sundays are double over-time. But once they met the president of the firm that was slated to do the X-ray work, it was easy for Ocean Marine to agree with letting the work be done during the normal working day. Because of the dry-dock facility and the managers and yard crew, I enthusiastically recommend this yard to any vessel for their dry-docking needs. Meanwhile, with the good weather here now and the need to get the ship into the water as soon as possible, the yard crew are working with a will. Everyone in the crew is looking forward to the ship getting back in the water Friday.

The X-ray process is interesting to learn about. The need for doing it relates to the periodic hull fastening exam requirements of the USCG. They are interested in two general areas. Underwater hull planking fastenings and keel-bolts. In the case of hull plank fastenings, we physically removed a number of them for inspection.

But keel-bolts are another matter. Removing them is impossible without weakening the strength of the hull. While there is the potential for weakening the hull through hull plank fastening removal, there is no non-removal means of checking them, so we removed them. But we sought out a nondestructive testing technology for the keel-bolts and were directed to Si-Tech, Inc. here in the Norfolk Harbor area. Bobby Dennis, the president of the company, was very helpful, maybe in part due to having a bit of art on his office wall that shows the Pride.

When the time came to do the job, two technicians came out with a pickup truck carrying a fiberglass cab in the back that served as a film development lab. To take an X-ray shot, they pointed a cable with a special end on it at the area of interest. On the backside of the area of interest film is placed. Some distance from the transmission end of the cable is a special metal box that contains the energy source that makes the X-ray. Inside the metal box is a pellet of the radiation material no bigger than the eraser on a pencil. There is another cable coming out of that metal box that loops some several feet out and back to the metal box. At the half way point in the loop is a crank handle. When the shot is set up, the area is cleared for about 80 feet around as well as above and below if there are people in those areas. Then the crank handle is worked to extend the energy source out of the metal box to the cable end where the exposure will occur.

On the hard in Norfolk

The exposure time is guessed at according to the density of the object and the distance to the film. Due to the unique aspects of the shooting of Pride II's hull, the first shot was for only five minutes. After the shot, the film was developed and the results studied. Due to a very dim image the exposure time was quadrupled. This exposure time seemed to work well. We could see the keel-bolt including the detail of the bolt thread near one end. Of four shots taken, the last two were taken with more energy. Adding a second pellet to the metal box provided this greater energy. Those exposures seemed to be a little brighter or clearer. But all the shots clearly showed the profile of the bolts. I will show them to the USCG and hope they will find them acceptable as substitutes to the idea of pulling a keel bolt.

Cheers
Captain Miles