Arival on site

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Joined the ship 07/07/09. Supposwed to saiil the following morning. When we tried to run up the port steering gear it wouldn't start. Big problem. Sailing put pack. Spent hours swapping arround components with spares and parts off the other side but couldn't find the problem. Called in the local hydraulic guys. By 17.00 they had run out of ideas. called an a company from Southampton. By 02.30 they had given up as well. The only thing left to test was the main hydraulic block wich is basically a large cube of steel drilled with holes that give passages for the hydraulic oil. They took the block away and showed it to further specialists who couldn't find anything wrong with it other than findin an old seal floating about. That arrived back onboard and we reluctantly swapped over the block from the other side. Quite a work-up. Port steering gear works. Must be the block, new one required. Away it went with an estimate of 5 days to machine a new one. Back on the 16th only to find that they had drilled the holes for the LP outlet fitting the wrong size. Back again. Fitted it again the following day only to find that the new one didn't work. They haad obviously machined the problem into the new block. After further head scratching we decided to bock one of the ports redundant ports to see if it made any difference and yippee we ere working again.

So we have now traveled up the channel and are just about to start work on the Alpha Ventus wind farm. The first German wind farm. They are a bit slower than the rest of Europe. But then they are a waste of money. Which is paid for with our tax money.

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