Why We Can’t Afford Tools: Relamping

There's nothing like a good old career-making inspection to bring out the hypocrite in all of us. ORSE is a great example; the engine room needs to be cleaned and polished up like a '56 Ford in an auto show, but during the inspection we're not allowed to have any cleaning gear back aft, period. Is the ORSE team supposed to think it ALWAYS looks that way? They're all nucs, too - they know you just spent the last five weeks cleaning, drilling, and auditing paperwork. It's all a big act.

One of the dumbest things we did before a big inspection is re-lamping the engine room. The theory was that one burned out (or, god-forbid, blinking) fluorescent bulb could cost the Eng his chance at the big time, so E-div got to go around and change out every single freaking bulb in the engine room before we left on work-ups.

There are lots of problems with this, not the least of which is trying to dispose of thousands of perfectly good, but fragile-as-china fluorescent bulbs. One time we accidentally dropped one over the side when crossing the brow. We knew the first khaki who saw it would throw a fit, so we threw rocks at it until it broke up and sank. When it imploded, it created an impressive geyser of water that caught the topside's eye. He had us leave the rest of the bulbs with him, and he spent the rest of the watch "depth charging" them with coffee cups.

Another problem with changing out bulbs is that the parts that break most often are the parts that only get used when the fixture is first turned on. Since the lights are never off in the engine room (unless we've let a mechanic shift the plant), you don't know there's a problem until you swap out bulbs and the new ones won't turn on. Congratulations; you've just changed a perfectly good light fixture into a broke-dick P.O.S. that will take hours to tag out and fix.

But the best re-lamping incident happened right before ORSE on my first boat. As many of you know, fluorescent bulbs contain a minuscule amount of mercury, which vaporizes when the bulb is on to help support conduction from end to end. Since mercury is very hazardous, and the bulbs it's contained in are as sensitive as a twidget, someone back at NAVSEA got the brilliant idea of covering the bulbs with a thin coat of plastic in a vain attempt to make some sort of half-assed safety glass. And we were ordered to start using them right before the Great Pre-ORSE Re-lamping.

Then we left for the workup and inspection. For the first few weeks, everything was fine. But around the time we pulled in to pers-trans on the inspection team, the plastic coating on the bulbs started to turn yellow. The effect was immediate: not only did the engine room take on a sickly yellow pallor, but it looked like everything in it was covered with oil. If you stayed back there too long, everything being off-color would start to mess with your head.

The Eng was naturally horrified, but there was nothing we could do. The boat didn't carry enough bulbs to re-lamp it a second time, and changing out only part of the bulbs would just make the areas we didn't change look even worse. I'm sure someone explained the problem to the inspection team, but it didn't help; that was the lowest grade on an ORSE we ever got, even though there were no specific issues.

So, of course we got to re-lamp for a second time when we pulled back in, and of course lots more fixtures decided to stop working when we changed out their bulbs, resulting in even more fun. But the worst problem is that the plastic-coated bulbs didn't sink when you beaned them with a coffee cup. But that's why we give the topside watch a boat hook.