Entry & progression
Assistant Engineer-Limited is a watch officer's endorsement. The regulation gives you the right to stand the watch. It does not tell you how to stand it. This module does.
Taking over
Never accept a watch you do not understand. The handover is not a formality, and it is not a conversation held in a doorway with your coat on. Walk the plant before you sign for it.
The takeover walk
- Read the log and the standing orders. What did the last watch do, and what did the chief tell them to do?
- Look at the alarm history, not just the active alarms. A cleared alarm is still information.
- Check every level you can check: sumps, day tanks, header tanks, expansion tanks, gearbox, stern tube.
- Take temperatures and pressures against the normal values for this plant at this load — not against a textbook.
- Physically look at the running machinery. Leaks, mist, discolouration, chafe, movement that was not there yesterday.
- Confirm bilge levels and the state of the bilge system.
- Ask what is defective, what is isolated, what is on manual, and what is being watched.
- Only then take the watch.
WARNING — The defeated alarm is the one that kills you Somebody silenced it, somebody bridged it, somebody put the sensor in a bucket because it was nuisance-tripping. If it is not on the handover, you will not know it is gone until the thing it was protecting fails. Ask, every single watch, what is defeated. Write the answer down.
What you are actually watching
Not the gauges. The gauges are the last thing to tell you. You are watching rates of change, and you are watching differences:
- Trends, not values. A jacket-water temperature of 82C is meaningless on its own. A jacket-water temperature that has climbed 4C in an hour at steady load is a problem.
- Differentials. A rising differential across a filter means the filter is loading. Exhaust-gas temperature spread across the cylinders tells you more than any single reading.
- Balance. Cylinders should behave like one another. The one that does not is talking to you.
- Consumption. Fuel, lube oil, freshwater. A step change in consumption is a leak, a fault or a theft, and it is never nothing.
- Sound and smell. You will detect a hot bearing with your nose before a sensor does, and a slack chain with your ears.
Handing over
Hand over the way you would want to receive. Tell the truth about what you did not finish, what you could not fix, and what you are not sure about. The engineer who conceals a problem to keep his watch looking clean is the engineer who hands his relief a casualty.
The log is a legal document. Write it as though it will be read out, because one day it may be. Times, values, actions, and who you told. "All well" is not a log entry; it is the absence of one.
Standing orders and night orders
The chief's standing orders define the limits of your discretion: what you may do on your own authority, what you must call for, and the values at which you must act. If they do not exist, ask for them. If they are vague, ask for clarity in writing. An engineer who does not know when to call the chief will always call too late.
TIP — Call early, and call anyway No chief engineer has ever been genuinely angry about being woken for something that turned out to be nothing. Every chief engineer has been angry about being woken at the point the machinery was already destroyed. If you are wondering whether to call, that hesitation is the answer.