Priska's Journal Entry #1

Heraclitus in Dry-Dock, Mexico


Priska with her mother and father in Mexico
during the Dry-dock of Heraclitus

Docked Next to Three Fishing Boats

We arrived in Ensenada in December. Our first dock was next to three fishing boats. We were all very excited about being in Mexico.

We took our chance, clambering carefully over the three fishing boats to go explore the new town.  When I came back, the crew on Heraclitus watch had already made some friends. A 120-foot fellow ferro-cement ship called Infinity was anchored across the bay from us. We found out that it had been built in 1975, the same year as the Heraclitus, and in fact just across the bay in Oakland!  The crew consisted of a young German called Clemens, his wife Areti, their three children (Tara, 5, Rueben, 3, and Ali, 14) a South African called Collin, and Jonas (18) from Bavaria, who had just joined them a few months ago and would be sailing for a while.  We had made friends again, and the Heraclitus had found her sister ship.

That night, we decided to go and explore Ensenada some more. The roads were packed with cars and people sitting on the side of the road. After walking for 15 minutes we came to a park where we watched break dancing teenagers for a while.  Hoping to find more interesting things in town, we left.

The Civic Center was the first beautiful building on the other side of the bridge. Its fountain trickled to greet us and the doors were wide open to curious visitors. As we walked in on the marble floor, we saw a big crowd around a girl in a fluffy white dress, celebrating a big fiesta. After getting lost in the beauties of the civic center we followed the rock ‘n’ roll music out of the spacious courtyard. We decided to end our night out with a juicy dinner. So we went into the nearest restaurant, feasting upon two big grilled fish and chips with chili sauce. We were the last people to leave but we left with delicious food in our bellies and an evening well spent.

One Step Closer to Dry-Dock

We glided safely alongside the dock that brought us one step closer to being up high and dry.  We unloaded everything and brought it to our storage room.  We had only a day to get everything off the ship.  Our house team had been looking for a place to stay for more than a week.  It isn’t that easy to find a cheap house for 20 people.  But finally they succeeded, and we found our temporary new home, “La Casa Rosa” (The Pink House).  Before bringing the Heraclitus out of the water, we emptied the ship of our beds, clothes, and other bits and bobs.  We then took a truckload of those bits and bobs to The Pink House.

Coming Out of the Water

We safely maneuvered onto the wooden blocks that had been laid out for us on a rising and sinking wooden dock.  Some of the crew left the ship to film and photograph the Heraclitus as it inched its way out of the water.  I stayed on board and once we were out of the water, a skinny ladder got put alongside the Heraclitus which I climbed down.  I went to the house and helped unpack pots and pans and bits and bobs.  By the time we got back to the shipyard the Heraclitus was in position, high and dry and ready for some “care.”

The Trip to the Bufadora

The 7th of December was my father’s birthday. So my parents and I decided to go and see some of the countryside.

Our first stop as we headed away from the ship was the flea market. Its stalls were full of color and chattering people. We stopped for churros, a long, thin deep fried dough sausage and Flor de Jamaica Juice (red juice from an hibiscus flower).  We left the Los Globos flea market with a satisfied feeling and started driving east towards a village called Ojos Negros in the mountains. The drive took us past farms with ostriches, horses, sheep, chicken, geese and ducks all sharing one meadow.  I fell asleep, my ears searing with pain from the altitude. When I woke up, I saw the street leading us into Ojos Negros lined with yellow flowering cactuses. The small village had only two restaurants, the tourist place and the local place. It was decided between the three of us to go to Rosita’s, the local place which turned out to be a good choice. A winding road took us back down the mountains and into Ensenada again.

Then we headed towards the next goal of our day: “La Bufadora” or  “The Blowhole.” The highlight of the drive down South was a small red beetle car drive down a steep, hilly road through all the rocks and bushes. The town was basically just souvenir shops. It’s amazing what water spitting out of a crack in a cliff can do to a place. The Bufadora is a crack in the cliff where the sea water builds up and sprays out with such force it reaches up to 20 meters high.

We headed back to Ensenada with smiles on our faces.

The Crane Man

After all the small things had come off the ship, we needed to get the big things out, for example the main mast and the main engine.  Only a crane could lift them out. But the crane operator kept on saying he would come “tomorrow.” In Mexico, “manana,” that is “tomorrow,” can mean anything from two days to a week.  In our case it turned out to be three days. But eventually the main mast, mizzen mast and the main engine got lifted off the ship, and it was exciting and scary to watch the masts dangling in the air.

Now we could start banging holes.

What do you do in Dry-Dock?

This is more a manual than what I did:

Checking for Weak Spots

The first thing you do in a dry-dock is bang around on the cement with a chipping hammer checking for weak spots. If the cement crumbles you take the jackhammer to it and make a big hole into the cement. It’s like going to the dentist;  first you make the hole bigger so you can fix it properly.

Edging

Once the big holes are made all around the ship, you go around with a chisel, hammer wire cutters and a chipping hammer.  You try to make edges all around the hole so it can hold the pungji bar and the cement better. With the chipping hammer you take the rest of the loose cement out. With the wire cutters you cut the old mesh, but not too short, otherwise the cement doesn’t have a grip, and not too long, because then you scratch your hands.

Pungjing, Meshing, Bumping and Grinding

After all the fingertip work is done, you attach the new pungji bar to the old one (a pungji bar is a long black flexible, steel bar) if there isn’t any old pungji sticking out of the wall, or if it is too rusty, you drill a small hole into the cement and epoxy (that is a strong glue and sealant) in the pungji.  Next you measure the size of the hole and you measure the piece of mesh that will fit. The mesh gets pushed into place. To secure it you put a few wires through and twist them at the other end. This is called “bumping and grinding.”

On each side of the hole there are three layers so six layers of mesh in all. When all six layers are secured, you bump and grind in many places so the mesh becomes an almost solid wall.

Cementing

On the cement-pouring day you wake up at 5 in the morning and get to work. First the bonding agent is applied around the edges of all the holes. It is gray goo that smells kind of sweet and helps the new cement stick to the old cement. When that is done the cement is pushed in from the outside. One or two people are quality control. They are on the inside with wires, sticking them through to the other side if the cement has not been pushed through enough. After the cement is pushed through from the outside it gets back plastered from the inside.

Wet Curing  

After the cementing is done, it has to stay wet for at least 8 days so it can get strong. Blankets are hung on the freshly cemented holes to protect them from wind and keep the moisture in. The first day of wet cure you have to be very careful not to wash away the cement. At night someone stays on the ship to keep the cement wet. Ten days later you take down the blankets and see your beautiful result.

Here’s How We Did It

While everyone else was jack hammering away at the hull I was in the engine room.  The engine room was full of oil, grease, rust and loose paint. Carol, the chief engineer and I chipped away at the rust and loose paint until our arms went numb, and we scrubbed the oily floor until we got black faces and the grime stuck to our teeth. The last thing I did in the engine room was wire brush the web frames for the painters to paint epoxy.

After my oil and grease phase I moved on to some more chipping in a bilge and more wire brushing in the galley with my mom which left me with pieces of rust and paint in my hair. But I had moved up in my dry-dock worker’s career and I was moving up even more. I started edging the big and small holes. I became an expert at it, all of us did, and we became faster and faster at it. Unfortunately, we had to move on to punjgiing. Punjgiing didn’t take much time so we didn’t have time to get good at it.

The most time consuming job was meshing. We figured out different techniques and got perfect at it. Twisting wires when bumping and grinding became as simple as waving your hand, and so we became an ace team that attracted more volunteers as we went along.      

The Pour Day

On the 25th of December the crew of the Heraclitus Dry-Dock 2003 excitedly woke way before the sun came up. We forced our food down and jumped in the back of our truck. It was pitch black dark at the dry-dock but somehow we managed to find our way up to the ship. Synestisia was lit up with big lights and we all gathered around Laser, our dry-dock Captain, nervously fiddling with gloves and hats to protect us from the cement. We had only one day, one cement mixer and 22 hands to cement more than 10 holes (some of them very big) all around the ship.

My mother and I were in charge of snacks and food on the ship. We had cooked the lunch and the dinner the day before and had prepared all the snacks for the breaks. We were all told what our day would be like and that we would all be pulled in where ever we were needed. We were pushing bonding agent onto the edges of the holes. This is blue goo that smells kind of sweet and helps the new cement stick to the old cement. After being a bonding agent girl, I was running around after people and cleaning up their cement droppings.  It was a never-ending job. But the day ended with an exhausted crew and a fully cemented ship.  The Heraclitus finally had her body back, now she only needed her lungs.

Working on the Rigging

What Heracliteans usually remember about dry-dock is the part I have just told you about. It takes up about 2 weeks of the whole dry-dock and is also the most memorable. What comes after it just flows out of you for the next three weeks and is like going to work (actually it is) everyday. It becomes normal. Sometimes I didn’t even remember that I was at a shipyard dry-docking a ship. I’m still going to tell you.

 My first job on rigging was to make baggy wrinkles. They are a white fluffy thing usually 10 feet long made out of old rope. They get wrapped around the shrouds to protect them from chafing.  It is very boring to make them, especially if you have to make 200 feet of them, when 10 feet make only 1 foot when wrapped. It rubs your hands red and rips the skin by your nails. But I did the work that had to be done, and with two helpers we successfully made 40 feet!!!

My next task was to pull a rope through a canvas hose with Nicole. Although we only had to pull through three ropes, it took forever. We became pro’s at putting the small string through, unfortunately it broke whenever we pulled the rope. So for two days we tried and tried, until finally it worked. We leapt up in the air and shouted with joy. My hands were left sore from all the pulling, but I moved on to my next job, putting rope around the yardarm (it’s the last batten on the sail). We put strips of glue along the yardarm and wrapped the rope tightly around it, knocking it into place after each wrap. I got another injury, I guess it’s just an occupational hazard, but I knocked a piece of my thumb out.

In the second week of my time on rigging I started unwrapping shrouds. They look like long steel “ropes”and support the mast in heavy wind. Unwrapping them is no fun, it is like making baggy wrinkles. All you do is cut through the paint covered tart marlin and the canvas. After my unwrap team and I had spent a whole day carefully unwrapping all the shrouds we discovered that they were rusty and wouldn’t hold anything up. So the new shrouds arrived and we started wrapping. First we greased the brand new silver shrouds with yellowish grease that I couldn’t get off my hands anymore (not even with degreaser). Then we securely wrapped them with canvas strips. With a tool called a serving mallet we wrapped tart marlin (a thin rope that smells like pine trees) around the canvas so tightly that the grease squirted out on the sides of the mallet. Last but not least, we painted them all with black enamel paint and left them to dry.

That is all I have to say about dry-dock. We are back in the water now and can’t wait to begin sailing again. I will write again if you like it or not because there still remains a story to be told and it’s called: “Wet-Dock.”

Priska