@66p1800inpieces said in The Kat (Long Read):
It sounds like you now have tons of experience under your belt. These days are you mainly on newer, well maintained, and dare I say cushy ships?
Not so much time but I've seen an insane amount of different equipment from the late 50's to brand new out of the shipyard.
I've worked: Large Cruise Ship, Various Ferry, couple Bulk Carriers, couple Product (Fuel) Tankers, Self Propelled Barge, and Tug.
Main Engines: High Speed, (2 and 4 Stroke) Medium Speed, and Slow Speed Diesel Engines, Gas Turbine, Steam Turbine, Dual Fuel: LNG - Diesel. Running on a range of fuels from the cleanest LNG gas to basically tar...
Propulsion: (both motor and engine) Direct drive, CPP, Azipod, Z-Drive (both motor and engine driven)
New vessels come with their own problems. It's usually not worn mechanical like older ships.
It's electronic weird things like PLC not booting back up, bad set points for actuators or sensors, hard drive wipes, and bad breakers, things wired wrong, things tuned wrong, equipment not fully buttoned down, questionable equipment placement (heat), questionable equipment choices. It takes about 5 years to get any vessel really sorted.