Drydock Memories

[Ken Elvy]

1974 I flew out to the gulf to join the BP tanker British Scientist, a VLCC of just under 220,000 dwt,
She had been built in Japan and was now due her first survey. Having loaded a cargo of crude oil in Mina Al Ahmedi, we proceeded to Chiba in Tokyo Bay to offload before making our way round to the Kawasaki shipyard in Sakaidi on the southern island of Shikoku. Having manoeuvred into the drydock the sea water was soon being removed and the first interesting thing to see was a number of shore workers waiting with spears in their hands ready to catch any fish that appeared as the water drained out. Settled now on blocks the ship was soon inundated with shore staff as a lot of maintenance work needed to be carried out. Everything onboard shut down so all washing, toilet facilities etc were now on shore.
Memory fades but it was something in the order of three and a half weeks now of time off work. Each morning before commencing work the whole shipyard staff lined up on the dock, music was played and for ten minutes or so they did physical exercises. Kawasaki were very good to us, they arranged coach trips into the surrounding countryside, visiting Shinto Temples and into the town of Takamatsu for shopping sprees. We were also shown around various new builds in the yard, had saki parties arranged and a couple of football matches, our rag tag team not quite being up to their expertise although because the Japanese at the time liked to "save face", they never humiliated us by scoring too many goals!
Everyone was very friendly, a part of Japan where it seemed there were not too many Westerners, being tall I was everlasting having my photo taken with small, polite Japanese people.
In all it was a very interesting experience.

[Steve Taylor]

Two memories of Japan (Chiba) stick with me from the late 70's when I was on British Beech. One demonstrates best practice while the other is a real forehead slapper. I'd broken a tooth and needed dental treatment which I was anticipating being even worse that what was on offer in the UK at the time. Not a bit of it, my broken tooth was first prepared by some form of dental sand-blasting and then "invisibly" repaired with such care that it's still in place today. It cost a fortune compared to UK dental prices but thankfully BP picked up the tab. On the flip side, we needed some setting up work on the main TA excitation system. A specialist engineering team arrived, all spotlessly clean and armed with immaculate tool kits and efficiently got on with the work. Some way into the job their senior engineer was called in and climbed aboard the unit. After much discussion he, very impressively, took a vernier from his top pocket opened it to around 20mm and then proceeded to check the tighteness of the rotating rectifier bolts with it - my illusions were shattered!