A very long time ago we opened up a number of tanks and voids in the very bowels of the ship as the Pakistani shipyard workers began preparations to rip out and replace all the batter boards of the well deck of the Amphibious Command Ship LaSalle. She was a converted amphibious transport dock ship that still retained a full well deck and a couple of LCM-8 landing craft for use around the Persian Gulf and the powers that be wanted to trial the ability of Karachi yards and workers to work on USN ships.
It was a job that was scoped at a week or so and ended up taking a month. It was a long and painful process and I had little to do with the Planning, the Estimating or the Work. I was, like the other 190 guys, an innocent party that simply viewed with concern. The job immediately went out of scope when the actual Ship Repair wallas from Naples got involved and declared that all the tanks and voids under the batter boards had to be drained, opened and gas freed before the work could commence.
Those things are normally never opened except in full overhauls. Getting them gas free was not the work of a few hands for a few hours. The primary underlayment of the well deck was all the MOGAS and JP-5 fuel tanks for helicopters and other scary stuff. They had to be surface prepped to bare metal to get them gas free.
This came back to me as my plumber this morning asked me if it would be Okay if he opened up undiscovered country in my house eaves big enough for him to crawl into so he could pull a pipe out without knocking down a whole wall below. As the plumber's helper cut through the back of my closet I remember the good ole days in Karachi with the kid wearing an actual Oxygen Breathing Apparatus as he stepped up to each freshly opened tank and tested for combustible and deadly gases.
At the end of the day things came out alright. We were however, so sick of Karachi that we decided to leave the instant we could even though it was December 24th and meant we'd spend the 25th refueling to refill all the JP-5 tanks and fuel tanks we'd emptied for the job.
Funny how things come back to you.
On the other hand, I now have a new door hidden in my closet and I know it doesn't lead to Narnia...
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