No...I'm not talking about people's legs. I'm talking about the legs on a jack-up rig. Today I went on my first leg inspection. This is where the shipyard has blasted away all the barnacles and you go along each horizontal and diagonal brace and check for corrosion. Then the shipyard will replace or repair as you have noted, actually marked on each piece. This is how high up we were:
We took an elevator up and climbed down level by level using the vertical ladders installed in all the scaffolding by the shipyard. I must have whacked my shin half a dozen times on the ladders. This is an annode. They are attached to the legs so that they corrode and not the leg. This one looks like it's been doing it's job:
On the way down we noticed that some of the teeth on the leg chords have been deformed. Can you imagine the pressure it takes to do this to a solid piece of steel? If you look close you can see the edge had been curled back like you were sharpening a crayon:
Well, I'm all grimy and dirty now. In bad need of a shower. Too bad it's only like 12:30, 5 or so hours until quitting time. Ok, one last photo. Look closely at this one. This is one of the jacking legs with scaffolding all the way up and around. Where it pokes through the covering doesn't it look like razor stubble? I thought it looked like "a leg that needs a shave".
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1 comment:
Sounds like fascinating work. I hate heights though. You're braver than me.
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