Klassement

Ik heb het nog eens opgezocht , mijn vraag aan Chicago mbt watersituatie bij lekkage a/b Mi Amigo. Ik kreeg van hem een antwoord in detail vele jaren geleden. Zie hieronder onze briefwisseling: From Peter Chicago…… The question : have got a question that concerns the ship Mi Amigo, not about transmitters, aerials or deejays but purely the ship. I know my way on the Mi Amigo since I visited the ship several times between 68 and 72 and are aware of the lay out onboard. The problem aerie the space under the plates in the engine room, near the stern of the ship, just forward of the wheelhouse. Lately I did read the Albert Hood book and he reported on the January 1979 problems with the ship shipping water. He wrote that near the cabins there was knee deep water and in the downstairs studio up to the record turntables. If that’s correct that’s an awful lot of water. However no reports on the same level of water in the generator room, so it looks as if the water level was higher towards the bow of the vessel. If you look at pictures of the Mi Amigo since 1974 and the new mast it looks as if the bow was deeper in the water than the stern. Could it be the weight of the tower that caused her to be deeper in the water at the front end of the ship and does that perhaps explain the fact the water level got as high as reported and also to be seen in pictures Marc Jacobs made after water problems . I know it’s a long time ago but this always intrigued me. I hope you have the answer. Kind Regards Paul de Haan Holland. Hallo Paul, The answer to your question is a little bit complicated. When the Mi Amigo was taken back out to sea, none of us on board knew much about the construction of the ship. We learned the hard way, by discovering things when dealing with problems. The Accommodation Area below deck became flooded on several occasions. During very bad weather, with waves crashing over the poorly fitting cabin hatches, water would enter the cabins, and if enough water came in, the cabin floor would become flooded. That water soon flowed into the corridor down the centre of the ship, and into the Record Library at the Forward end of the accommodation. Later, when the ship developed leaks in the hull plating, and the Generator Room became flooded, this also caused flooding in the Mid-Ships area. An investigation revealed that most of the Mid-Ship's hull had been filled with concrete, to ballast the ship. The area of the hull below the floor level of the cabins and Record Library was almost completely filled with concrete, which had been poured into the hold to ballast the ship. The top of this concrete block was just below the level of the wooden floor in this section of the ship. A small area, at the foot of the stairs, and adjacent to the bulkhead separating the Accommodation from the Generator Room had been left empty of concrete, and this small section had been left to collect any water from this section. At some time in the past, the bulkhead separating the two compartments had been deliberately opened, to allow the water to flow freely between the two compartments. If one area flooded, the other would also flood. That also meant that the oily water from the Generator Room was also present in the bilge area of the accommodation, and when the water level rose above the concrete, it would surge back and forth with the movement of the ship, and oily water would flood out over the floors of the cabins. During several occasions when the ship had taken a lot of water, the water level would rise above the floor level, and as Paul has said, the water would tend to collect at the Forward end of the accommodation, and the Record Library would always be the worst affected. The replacement mast was much heavier than the original lightweight tubular mast, which was made from an aluminium alloy, and probably the ballasting of the ship should have been adjusted to compensate. At the time we lacked the expertise to fully understand the problems, and none of the engineers that we had on board made any suggestions, but with the benefit if hindsight, and more experience, I believe we got a lot of things wrong. There were tanks in the old engine room, and those tanks could have been used for ballast, because the large diesel tanks in the Generator Room made the smaller tanks unnecessary for use with the Main engine. The simple answer to the question is that because most of the hull was filled with concrete in the mid-ship's section, it did not take a large quantity of water to flood that section above the floor level. The pitching of the ship then caused this water to surge back and forth along the length of the corridor, and the effect could be quite frightening. I hope that information answers at least some of your questions. Best Regards, Peter.