Every few days I accompany one of the inspectors on their block inspections (ships are built in pieces or “blocks” which, once completed are assembled on a slipway). This day was one such day. A little after noon, just as the thermometer was cresting 95, we got geared up and headed out to inspect a part of the ship I had yet to visit--the ballast tanks. All you need know about ballast tanks is that there’s some very confined spaces deep in the bowels of any ship, to which I was now being introduced.
To access these blocks you have to be part monkey, part Olympic gymnast. They are up on steel support trusses, about 6 feet off the ground, typically with no ladders to be found. So you find what you can and make a little pile of junk on the ground under the block to get you high enough to reach the first rung of the scaffolding, (which is hanging precariously off the block and you pray that when you grab it the entire structure doesn't collapse because from what you see it shouldn't be standing at all). Amazed when it doesn’t collapse, you swing your foot backwards to catch the block above and behind your head, push off of that while releasing your grip on the first rung and fling your arms out for the 3rd rung which is JUST high enough to allow you to get your feet onto the first rung and start climbing up the scaffolding as if it were a ladder.
Alternatively, on the occasions you're miraculously able to find a ladder, you then have to deal with ship yard workers playing the part of the movable staircases from Harry Potter, pulling ladders around randomly wherever and whenever they want, with no regard for who may be trapped by this action. I don’t know how many times I’ve found myself trapped at the top of a block I’ve JUST climbed because some helpful soul decided to move the ladders I had used to gain the summit to some other block. Did Sir Edmund Hillary have to deal with such tactics in his day?
So somehow we make it to the top of the block. Now using a mixture of scaffolding and reinforcing beams, we’re faced with a 4 story climb down to what will become the bottom of the ship. Once at the bottom, you get down on your hands and knees, and somehow find a way to fit through a tiny circular opening about halfway up a wall to get into the ballast tank. The opening appears to be about half as wide as I am and leads to a pitch black compartment about 10 feet wide by 10 feet long, and about 4 feet high with reinforcing beams on the floor and ceiling running the length of the compartment and spaced every 3 feet or so.
To make it even more fun, this block was sitting out in the sun so the metal which we were standing and crawling on was piping hot, and workers were welding and grinding above our heads. So from a crawling position, I reached my arms then torso through this tiny opening, place my hands down on the other side shimy, shimy, shimy, and finally squeeze through onto the other side.
Once through, I moved aside for one of the Chinese quality control inspectors, who had his own method of getting through. Put one foot through, duck your head through, then simply step over to the other side! They are SO small! He laughed at my surprise and told me tai da le (too big). Once inside this room the fun had only just begun: this was only the first of about 30 sections of the ballast tanks, all connected in a strange sort of labyrinth of rooms and each needed to be inspected.
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