So they cut extra ear-shaped bits out of the decks.
Perchance did they have an ex-policeman in charge of this? (Anyone who's sent any time in a police station (outside of the cells) will know of whom I speak. There's one in every nick.]
No. Really, ship maintenance is a chaos. Some more stories. It's a while ago now, so should be OK.
Photo below is what happens when... one of the big diesel engines of a warship is serviced by unskilled naval personnel. After a major engine refit, someone reconnecting lubricating oil feed lines forgot to remove a cotton plug from the end of a line. Ship set off on deployment. They noticed some overheating in one section of the engine, did nothing. Under full power, a piston seized in the cylinder liner. The connecting rod ripped the gudgeon pin (seen in pic) out the bottom of the piston. Flailed around in the crank case, taking divots out of the steel (visible in pic.) Gudgeon pin came loose, added to the clanging. Until it got jammed between a crankshaft lobe and something solid - where it is still solidly wedged in the pic. They'd taken out the liner, piston, and connecting rod, could not get the gudgeon pin out. Wish I'd had a ruler for scale. You don't get a sense for how big that is.
Whole engine had to come out AGAIN and be refurbished AGAIN.
Photo was taken with permission.
One time I was asked to remove all the thermocouple sensors from a main propulsion gearbox, so they could be sent off for calibration. About 12 of them. There were no numbers on them, or the mount points, no plans that I was told of. So how to ensure each one went back in the right spot?
I numbered them all, drew a sketch of the gearbox (it's about the size of a VW beetle) with all thermocouple mount points marked and numbered.
My boss the electrical works supervisor, said the cal lab were amazed. Never seen anything like it. Usually just got a box of random unmarked sensors to check.
A big ship's loading crane, with a strain gauge in the pin through the boom end pulley. The lift weight meter and overload safety circuit in the crane cabin was orphaned - manufacturer gone, no schematics available. And the card had gone faulty. Guess who had to reverse engineer the circuit, work out what was wrong, fix it, reinstall, then.... recalibrate it.
You know how they calibrate a ship's crane strain gauge?
A giant water balloon, and a known accurate strain gauge with radio send. Put that on the hook, hang the water balloon from it, Swing crane to ship's centerline, fill bag... But the cabin gauge circuit has span and offset adjustments. So it's unavoidably an iterative process. Fill the bag, empty it... repeat.
And if they swing the crane to the side while full (to empty it) the whole ship lists about 20 degrees.
I think every sailor on the ship hated me that day.
Also I got a black mark with my employer (ship's shore maintenance co) for giving the circuit to the ship's tech, rather than keeping it with the shore maintenance co. Sigh.
Couple of the ships had a special chair for the captain on the bridge. They were recycled business class airline seats. Very plush, and with every imaginable motorized adjustment. Except... all that active seat electronics expected to be talked to by the plane computers. Seat arm controls --> plane computer --> seat motors. Or maybe it just needed to be told it was OK to move, I don't know. But there wasn't even any connection to the socket in the base of the seat. So it was just dead, set in one position.
Discussing with the ship's tech guy, I offered to see if I could hack up a box to make the seat electronics happy and working. To assist, could he ask the airline if they had any tech info on the seat interface & protocol? He tried inquiring. Guess what happened?
It sent the ship's intelligence/security officers into a frenzy. WHY was he asking about that? Who was he talking to about it? Why? He was told to drop any thoughts of such a project.
Plenty more stories...
Working on the ships was a lot of fun, for well over a year. I'd started out employed by a refit contractor (Forgacs) then got contracted to do various 'no one else would do it' jobs. Which I was doing for way under the rate any company would have wanted, because I liked it so much. Then they decided they'd get me a proper pass to the base. So did a formal security check. Ha ha, oops. They don't tell you, but I gather I failed. Something to do with associations and stuff I suppose.