Entry & progression
Rounds are the job. Everything else below is a consequence of what the rounds found or failed to find. A rating who does honest rounds and writes down what he actually saw is worth more than one who can quote the CFR.
Use all four senses
The instruments will tell you what the plant is doing. Your senses will tell you what it is about to do.
- Look — levels, leaks, drips, discolouration, missing lagging, a wet patch that was dry, a nut on the deckplate that came from somewhere.
- Listen — bearings, pumps, turbochargers, air leaks, the change of note that is the first thing to go.
- Smell — hot oil, burning insulation, exhaust in the space, refrigerant, sewage, fuel.
- Feel — with the back of the hand, never the palm. Vibration you did not have yesterday. A casing warmer than its twin.
TIP — Compare the pair Almost everything below comes in twos — two mains, two or three gensets, two chillers, two of most pumps. The fastest diagnostic in engineering is comparison. If one of a matched pair is running hotter, noisier, or drawing more than the other under the same load, you have found something, and you have found it before the alarm did.
Readings, and the point of them
Readings are not a chore performed to fill a page. A single reading tells you almost nothing. The trend tells you everything. An exhaust temperature of 380 is a number. An exhaust temperature that has climbed 25 degrees over four days, on one unit, at the same load, is a story with an ending.
So take the readings at the same points of the plant, at the same interval, at a comparable load, and record them where the last set can be seen next to them. And never — not once, not when the boat is rolling and the deck is hot and the numbers were fine yesterday — write down a number you did not read.
WARNING — The invented reading is the one that sinks the boat A pencil-whipped log is worse than no log at all, because it manufactures false confidence. Everyone above you is making decisions on the assumption that the numbers are real. If you did not take the reading, leave it blank and say so. Nobody has ever been fired for an honest gap. People have been killed by an invented one.
The log
The engine room log is not a diary. It is the vessel's record of what the machinery did and what was done about it — read by the chief, by the manager, by a surveyor, by an insurer after a claim, and occasionally by an investigator. Write it as though all four will read it, because one day they might.
- Times, in ship's time, of every event — start, stop, alarm, changeover, transfer.
- The reading as taken, not as expected.
- Alarms: what came up, when, what was found, what was done.
- Work done, and by whom. Work not done, and why.
- Facts, not opinions. "Number two genset shut down on high water temperature at 0412" — not "number two playing up again".
CAUTION — The Oil Record Book is a legal document with its own rules Bunkering, transfers, sludge, bilge water and anything discharged through the oily water separator are recorded in the Oil Record Book, and the obligations governing it come from the pollution regulations — not from the credentialing rules in this course. Falsifying it is a criminal matter, and prosecutions in this area are real. Learn your vessel's actual requirements from your chief and from the applicable regulations, and never make an entry you were not present for.