My second overnight onboard SLATER was less eventful (thankfully) than my first, mostly in that there were fewer folks and they were a good deal older. The same routine, move in, eat, tour, learn, sleep, move out, and play prevailed. Of course the weather was nowhere near as wet as last time, and the dawn was much more pleasing to the eye, although it was more cloudy than I would have hoped.
But that was Saturday night -- let me return to Saturday. Remember that valve from last weekend? The one that mocked me silently from the vise? The one that another volunteer was kind enough to return daily and oil? Well, when I put the wrench on it Saturday morning, you guessed it, not a dang thing happened. I still looked silly. So instead I went off and helped Gus and Carl and some others from the Deck Division move the items scavenged from Newport News down into the engineering spaces, inventoring and stowing them as appropriate. Of course getting that load of stuff down some small hatches proved to be difficult, but we were fortunate enough that the Duty Electrician got one of the blowers working, so there was a good deal of air circulating as we did our work.
After lunch, I returned to the machine shop, despite the mockery of the valve, to find that another volunteer had managed to loosen the bonnet! Success, at last! With little hesitation (I don't even remember now why I was going into the machine shop to begin with), I stripped the valve down and began the rough work of restoring it. It still doesn't look like that much, but give me time, it'll look good before I'm done with it.Well, I'm afraid that's about it. However, I decided that since there was little to say, I'd add a little bit of eye candy at the end, just to make up for it. Perhaps I'll have more to do this weekend. If that's the case, there'll be plenty more to update you on next week.
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