Is this Bow or Where did all the rust go

We have been working on scaling the bow; in fact it started when we were back in Honduras last Fall. As you can see, it needed it. However, as we were stripping off the paint, we are finding many shades of white paint, grays, some light green, black and of course orange and red primer layers.
The thickness reveals 50 years of painting. Based upon the colors used and pictures we have seen of the CBM before she came into the service of the King, we may be stripping of some of the original paint. The paint is older that most of the CBM past crew member and a couple of the current. However some of us do predate the paint.

Katie peeled off some layers of paint to reveal a practical joker who wrote Hi. It had to have been a CBMer in that it was written on the White paint. If you ever wonder how much paint is on the vessel. Well the 1 square foot of the paint that is being chipped of weighs approximately 1 pound (we used a postal scale to weigh the paint pictured). The paint is 5-6 mm thick and we lost count at over 30 layers, with about an even 50/50 split on thickness.

Unlike the crew of the past(we have the luxury of time and no current schedule), rather than chipping only the rested areas, we are stripping down to the raw steel, sealing the steel, priming twice and will paint a new fresh white coat in preparation for the new mission that God has for the CBM. As you can see we are well on our way.

Jeremy, Katie the Needle gun queen, Kathy, Tom and I have gotten very familiar with rust. In fact Katie said at Community Meeting tonight that when she looks at metal, she looks for the rusted areas to be removed. We will update the Blog as we progress with this project. Other projects are, cabin overhead rip outs, cabin deck removals, passageway deck removals as highlighted in another report.

Keep checking this site as we bring you the continued saga of the transformation of the King’s vessel in to the new and improved Caribbean Mercy, ready to go anywhere, do anything that the King calls us to do in His name. It not by our might that anything is accomplished but by His Calling and direction.

Katie takes over...

I guess I better get back to bloggin on this thing before Katie takes over...

When Jamies kids were here we used (or should I say they, I was pre-occupied with my weekly grocery shopping) the elevator to send all the canned items from the storeroom up. They are all in the cooler (its off) upstairs in the galley. I am using my walk-in cooler like a pantry and we are also using the boutique as a small pantry of sorts. We tend to keep stuff that would be more beneficial to the caretakers in there like chips, crackers, cereals, fresh fruits...Things of a single serving nature easily accessed at any time.

I will eventually move all the pasta and beans upstairs from the storeroom to the galley and also store them in the cooler/pantry. To my surprise I realized the storeroom cooler and freezer doors were being shut while I was trying to leave them open to 'air out' after they have been shut off...So now I have mold and mildew on the plastic strips in the door and more fuzzy creatures growing in the holes of the rubber mats on the floor. So I guess I just figured out what my next cleaning job will be.

The galley is pretty hot now that there is no AC in it...But its cool compared to the galley on the Anastasis! Although, the heat and dirt that is in the air from work on the ship has my face breaking out like a teenager with bad skin!

I heard the comment before everyone left, 'why should you need much money with such a small crew left'. Food items cost more when you can't buy them at a bulk rate, don't have large amounts of storage, or spend part of the year in Central America (that keeps cost down some too). When I mean 'cost more' I mean per person per day, not feeding 9 people on a 100 person budget.

I let everybody have a say in what I shop for with meal preferences and etcetera...Come on, you really didn't think we were going to alternate cauliflower and squash (as a vegetable) & pork and meatballs (as a meat) till it was all gone did you?!?!?!

Its like I am personal chef for 9 people (sometimes more with guests).

For some of you who know how I sleep, or don't sleep...Off and on with crazy hours in between...From time to time I scare Maria Elena when I am coming and going or moving around the ship because she has the night watch except for the days she is off and Jeremy does it.

I guess Keeper (the dog) is doing alright...I don't mess with her much because its always a 50 percent chance she (psycho) is going to bite me. I have been bitten before by a pit bull and it was bloody with some scaring (but the scars are unnoticeable now), so I am not really worried about actually getting bit. Its the 'making me mad' part I am worried about, so its better just left alone.

Well, gotta go...Have some blanching to do this afternoon. First we will do the Aparagus, then the fresh green beans that I already 'snapped'...later I need to poach some pears for a great dessert.

What are you having for dinner?

tyronebcookin

My Discovery

Today I found a new way to get to B-deck: through the floor of A-deck. This afternoon we tore up the floor (I guess technically you'd call it the deck) on A-deck, right outside cabin 353. Jamie was breaking apart the concrete and rust with a sledgehammer, Kathy and I were moving the chunks of concrete and rust from the floor to buckets, and Tom was moving the buckets outside into the ever-increasing piles on the dock. I grabbed a large crowbar at one point and started chipping away at the layers of rust, when I lost half of the crowbar underneath the section of rust I was working on. I had found our first hole in the steel! The novelty of it was short-lived as we discovered many, many more holes. I'm definitely treading a bit more gently around the ship now.

Random Topic For The Day

So i was bored last night on night watch (imagine that) and around 3 a.m. or so i ran across the website of Hurtigruten, the 115-year-old Norwegian ferry company that used to operate the Caribbean Mercy before it became a Mercy Ship. Formerly MS Polarlys, as you probably already knew, she was purpose-built for the ice and storms of the far North Atlantic, and she served about forty-five years connecting the little fjord-isolated villages far to the north of Bergen. (see photo)



Interestingly, they replaced our little ship with a new Polarlys that entered service in 1996:


I know at least one CBMer who has sailed as a passenger on the new Polarlys. She said that when the crew discovered she was from their old ship, now the Caribbean Mercy - which many of them remembered well - they took her in and adopted her like she was family.

Maybe theirs is newer, but i say ours is prettier. So there.

My Imagination

This afternoon all of the "keepers" went to see the new Batman movie, except for Maria Elena and me. I'm a little nervous at the thought of keeping our not-so-small-when-you're-one-of-two-people-on-it ship safe. Especially if another engine room alarm goes off that I won't know what to do with. Today the low pressure alarm went off, so I silenced it, went upstairs to my cabin, turned on the shower, thought the pressure to be fine, and figured everything to be alright. (Just kidding, Ciaran!)

I took Keeper the dog for a walk, during which we had loads of excitement. There's something on the dock that looks like this:Sometimes I get too curious, but I listened to that voice in the very far away place in my head telling me not to go there. Then we saw two things in the pool, one floating, one on the bottom, that looked like this:But, upon further examination, I found that they were just two workgloves that blew into the pool.

On a more realistic note, Keeper and I met our very first Chickasaw snake this afternoon. She loves to play in the tall grass after sitting in the river, so I let her lead me toward that end of the dock. She suddenly became very interested in something at the edge of the grass, and as she pushed her nose toward it, a snake came out and lunged at Keeper. I was happily about 15 feet away (yay for training leashes). For the next minute or so, the dog wavered between being very scared at what had transpired to wanting to go back in order to redeem her pride. My guess is that we'll be making many more tense explorations at the edge of the grass.

Darn Dog

My relationship with Keeper (the dog) has been strained lately. Yesterday I took her for a pee after lunch. She caught sight of the tug boat that was moving very slowly in the river, and stayed completely fixated on it for at least 20 minutes. I kept trying to pull her back towards her run, but she would have no part of it. Finally I decided that getting back to work was more important that letting her watch this tug boat, so I picked her up in my arms and carried her back. Then she saw Jeremy and wanted to run to him, so I let her off her leash. After she was done licking Jeremy, she took off into the field and refused to come back. She's still trying to pretend like she doesn't know her name. So, fine. I went inside and pretended like I didn't care if the alligator got her. She came back eventually. And I will not carry her back home again after the comments I have received of, "Now, are you training the dog, or is she training you??"

Community Meeting

Tonight is Community Meeting. If it's anything like last week's meeting, I'm really looking forward to it. I made virgin pina coladas, Bill set up the beach umbrellas and made a fire, and we all sat around for an hour or so. We even rummaged through the function-ware and used those nice water glasses =)

Poor little ant

I learned how to needle-gun, air-chisel and wire-wheel yesterday! Well, not really wire-wheel; I'm scared of it since I saw that episode on Season 2 of 24. Yesterday I needle-gunned 2 ants, 1 beetle, and a small portion of the bow. Today I needle-gunned one spider and a larger (but still pretty small) portion of the bow. It wasn't so bad, except after the 10:00am break when it got really, really hot up there. The coveralls were pointless after that, since the sweat that started at the filth on my face and neck carried the filth into protected areas. I got much dirtier today, which was mostly Tom's fault because he was wire-wheeling about 3 inches from my face and creating a wind tunnel that swept right past me. I did not like the color of the stuff that came out of my nose and ears after (alright, alright, yes I did).

Yesterday we found out the reason why cabin 222 keeps flooding - the faucet across the hall was left on, probably for a couple of days. Mainly due to the ever-increasing nasty smell of wet dog, we tore out the carpet and lineoleum, then busted up the concrete and rust on top of the steel (or what is left of the steel). We hauled out buckets and dumped them onto the dock with the piles of concrete that were here before we arrived.

Big Ole Dude (Bob, now in Agriculture at the IOC )

As I was slowly packing away some stuff that I do not necessarily use (that's why its still in my old room 302) that I will carry home (one weekend) I glanced over to Bob's old cabin and realized that his room actually did have a floor!!! Better than that the room actually looked clean and his carpet was better than mine! If you had seen Bob's room the way he usually kept it, it would remind you of 'Sanford & Son' junkyard/salvage with maybe a 'runaway' Maringa tree growing from one of the cracks in paraphenalia laying around the room...Maybe from the odor eater sole of an old shoe.

Yep, I was amazed...But now I wonder if Bob cleans up that good?

Well on top of the B-Deck update below I would like to say that my new cabin (405) only faintly smells like an armpit now after throwing out the old mattresses and chair! And of course I have my own airfreshener that I brought from my old cabin.

You guessed it, the scent is WATERMELON! Surprised?

Tyronebcookin

UPDATE

B-Deck smells like wet socks.

Spiders and ants...

I thoroughly believe that some of you ladies (and men) that left this ship may not be able to 'hack' it if you stayed. This ship is being overrun by ants and spiders galore...Black, red, brown, & see thru ones. Yes, those colors in both species.

Tonight as I was coming back from a 'coffee' break at Moka's (something or another) a local (Saraland, about 10 minutes away by car) place that is quite nice, free wireless (which for some reason my laptop picks it up, and says its connected but doesn't work) and plugs for your worn out battery that never lasts as long as it should. And, in addition to that...It plays the Christian music station. Oh yeah, as I was saying...After coming back from there I also noticed an inch long bug or two that we (me and my home folks in Hunstville) call water roaches.

Out by the gate if you are walking anywhere (or running) we have deer flies that circle your head and touch down on you every so often, if you are unfortunate to stop for a few seconds (like trying to come back in the gate but the old crusty lock is taking to long) you are sure to get bit. And then you get this big quarter size whelp on your skin. Not pretty. If you try to slap them, wear bug spray, or run away it just makes them more aggressive. Its like a couple of Blackhawk Helicopters coming to do some serious damage to you on a secret ops mission.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time with Joyce Meyers (have a few of her tapes I found on board, thank you somebody!) and reading a little Max Lucado and Donald Miller. I occasionally sneak a Bon Appetit magazine or a chapter or two of Larousse Gastronomique in there just for culinary balance...And of course there is my Bible reading which comes quite frequently while checking the validity of these 'spiritual' books I am reading and tapes I am listening too...Hey! Don't take for granted they are telling you the truth, research it and know what you believe.

Oops, Ok let me stop getting on my soapbox. That's reserved for my own website (laughing to myself).

Tom is enjoying his brother here visiting.

The dog, Keeper, is just as playful as it has been...I think if it ever really does bite me severely I am just going to bite it back just as hard (literally). I don't know about turning the other cheek when its comes to this dog bite thing...I think that was just for humans.

I would tell you what we have been eating here on board, but I don't want you to become jealous or envious so just let your imagination run away with itself (within budget of course!).

Really though, its the people who cook when I am not working that really put out some good food. Maria Elena, Kathy, I think that's it right now...Lillian did some Papoosa's one night but I was gone (probably reading at Barnes & Noble) man was I disappointed I missed that! Kathy has done some excellent food, great quiches one night (everyone was surprised I actually came to sit down and eat with them, something I rarely do when cooking myself). And Maria Elena of course has fixed some great meals including a breakfast not long ago. If I was going to eat breakfast (which I hardly ever) I would like to eat like Maria Elena does, beans, tortillas, cheeses, actually throw in a few eggs some salsa and cook me some Carne Asada too because I want it all...Big ole mansize portions. Anyway...

Work and duty rotations carry on...Jamie's family will be visiting him this week and there have been some new developments just recently with Bill. So keep us all in prayer please.

Jeremy and Katie, well nobody has seen them for days...hahaha. But I am sure they are fine...oh, sorry thats not true, Jeremy just came thru on night patrol. All's well.

Off to bed for me...5am comes early.

tyronebcookin

Entertainment Is Where You Find It

I like the loud pops and creaks and crashes that come from our warehouse whenever there's a light breeze. Or a light breeze in the next county. Or a large insect flying anywhere within about a quarter mile.

There's a nice thunderstorm coming through right now, and it's brought things down to about 85 or so, according to the aft deck thermometer. Katie thinks it's hot. I say, down from this afternoon's heat index of 105 or so, it's okay by me.

Of course, as soon as our distinguished visitors leave again tomorrow, the A/C goes off again. On Sunday it was 103 on the pantry thermometer, and the pantry was cooler than the dining room. Much more of this and i'll be standing watch the way two certain motormen did once, a few outreaches back...'nuff said.

We're all officially certified Caribbean Mercy deckhands now that everyone's gone through the deck orientation. There was an engine room orientation as well, with about twenty-five different things to check (once an hour, every hour, all night), but the main actions on our part in any given situation, as best we can tell, consist of two steps:

1) Silence the alarm
2) Call Ciaran's cell phone in Texas.

Check back here in a few weeks. There ought to be some interesting stories out of that.

I'm first?!

I am surprised that I am the first one that is going to kick this bloggin' thing off...But don' worry 'bout a ting mon! I'll giv'it to ya straight...

Typical day (for now) is I get up about 4:45am and get ready to kick'it to the YMCA. They have been lettin' us Mercy Shippers come there for free for awhile now...Thank YOU! Kathy will also get up and we amble out to the Hoopty (my car) and get started on our way into downtown Mobile. The one thing I should tell you is we have this locked gate we have to open and close when we come in or go out...And its aggravating gettin' eatin' alive by bugs why you are doing this. The lock is not all that great either.

After a big workout, shower, and change of clothes its back to the ship to eat breakfast (or in my case read and check email) then in the 'lounge' for devo's and today's work schedule.

Since I am cooking for this 'left behind' crew I am usually doing just that, preparing for lunch and dinner. Kinda like a personal chef for 8 or 9 people ( I think there are twelve now until Ciaran and his family leave). That also includes cleaning, shopping, tying up loose ends from shutting down the big coolers and freezer. Occasional 'ship rounds' as called for 3 or 4 times a day when on 'caretaker' rotation, which happens about every 3 to 4 days...And then you are basically on call 24 hours and can not leave the ship. Sometimes I help with other projects...Just depends on what it is and how much time I have.

The dog we have here named Keeper wants to play one minute and bite me the next, so the jury is still out on that one...I think it's schizophrenic or has multiple personalities.

I like it that our 'Direct TV' has the Food Network. That's riiiiiight baby!!! That's what I am talking about!!! Otherwise I would have to spend what little time I have left before going to bed at night to think about whats for dinner tomorrow! Hahaha

tyronebcookin