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4.20.2007

One Down, One To Go


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Originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.
Well, that's it. I made it through the first ship here in Brest. I had some easy days in the middle of the job and then (predictably) it got a little crazy at the end. But the Millennium is in the water now on her way to South Hampton. From what I've heard all the important stuff on the ship works fine. You know important stuff. . . like the integrity of the hull.

So now I'm 'stuck' in Brest for the next ten days with a guy from purchasing, a rental car, a hotel room and an expense account. . . what could go wrong? We were toying with the idea of going to Paris cause BB has never been but it's about a six hour drive and there actually is work to do here so now we're thinking that we'll head to Normandy this weekend since it's only 3 hours away.

It's pretty fun driving around the city. A little harrowing, sure, but a good challenge. I do okay with the traffic circles but the larger ones that have traffic lights built into them are a little harder to decipher. We went through a circle today that probably had six major streets feeding into it so there were lights for each of those intersections within the circle and coming into the circle too. Couple that with the fact that I didn't know where I was going and you've got a stellar morning commute.

I'll try to get some better pictures up soon. I've got an office at the shipyard here and should have a good internet connection at the hotel too so look to Flickr if you want to catch some more photos. . . and not just photos from the shipyard. By the way the pictures above may be hard to make out so I'll tell you what you're looking at.

The whole reason for these drydockings that I'm working at is the large item on the right side of the frame. On the right you'll see a section of hull that's been prefabricated and has a shiny new diesel generator slapped onto it (though I think they're pretty careful when they do the slapping). The mess on the left side of the frame is a giant hole in the hull of the ship. So they just discarded the old hull material and slid that new one it. Easy. Pretty slick actually cause the new portion of the hull is on a flatbed vehicle with about fifty wheels underneath it that can turn three-hundred and sixty degrees. They just drove the new section right into place. You should have seen the mess of piping that they had to fit this thing into. . . but somehow it fit within ninety percent which is pretty amazing.

Guess I'll get back to work now. Somebody reminded the other day that I get paid to be here which is kind of easy to forget after enough time passes. Au revoir.

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