u/qlh454

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Following on from my previous tale about installing servers on cargo ships, there was another vessel from that period that deserves its own story.

The Iron Chieftain.

She was a bulk ore carrier running the Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong and Whyalla route, and by this stage I had become something of an unwilling specialist in installing IT infrastructure on large lumps of steel that stubbornly refused to remain in one place.

The first ship install had involved frantic planning, missing equipment, improvised engineering, international waters, customs officials and the threat of an unscheduled voyage to Venezuela.

By the time I got to the Iron Chieftain, though, I had the process down to a fine art.

Server. Check.

UPS. Check.

Switch. Check.

Communications gear. Check.

Workstations. Check.

Test.

Synchronise.

Sign-off.

Get off the ship.

Four hours, maybe five if something went wrong.

I had spare cables. I had spare powerboards. I had spare adapters. I had tools. I had documentation. I had learned and remembered the most important lesson from the earlier deployments:

Assume everything you have been told about the ship is wrong until you physically see it yourself.

But...there was one thing I still hadn't learned.

Never underestimate a Ukrainian captain at lunchtime.

The Iron Chieftain's senior crew were Ukrainian, including the Captain and CHENG, and the CHENG immediately demonstrated that he belonged to the same school of maritime engineering as the Chief Engineer from my previous adventure.

For those unfamiliar with the term, CHENG means Chief Engineer.

In my experience, the Chief Engineer aboard a ship is the person responsible for keeping several thousand tonnes of complicated machinery alive while surrounded by salt water, vibration and people asking why things aren't working.

They are, therefore, remarkably practical individuals. Sometimes aggressively practical.

Need power somewhere?

Run cable.

Something in the way?

Move it.

Can't move it?

Cut it.

Need a hole through a steel bulkhead?

There are probably many formally approved maritime engineering methods for creating one.

This CHENG had a preferred method and it was also the fire sword, or, as other people insist on calling it, an oxy-acetylene cutting torch.

I would point at the place where I needed to route a cable.

He would look at the wall.

Then at me.

Then back at the wall.

There would be a brief pause while some internal engineering calculation occurred.

Then: FWOOM.

Problem solved.

Hole.

I had reached the point where this barely concerned me anymore.

My original reaction to seeing someone attack part of a ship with an oxy torch had been something along the lines of:

“Should you be doing that?”

By the Iron Chieftain installation, my response had evolved into:

“Can you make it about five centimetres further to the left?”

Experience changes a man.

The install itself was almost disappointingly uneventful.

Everything arrived on schedule. The server powered up. The network behaved. The workstations connected. The communications link worked. No computers required emergency resurrection. Nobody had forgotten to mention that a critical workstation had been broken for six months. There were no nearby engine-room fires and, most importantly, nobody threatened to take me to South America.

For once, I was actually ahead of schedule.......and this should have concerned me.

Around lunchtime, the Captain appeared and invited me to eat with him and the senior crew.

Now, there are certain invitations in life that are technically optional but, in reality, are not optional at all.

When the Ukrainian captain of a bulk carrier invites the visiting IT engineer to lunch aboard his ship, you do not say:

“No thanks, I brought a sandwich.”

You go to lunch.

So I went to lunch.

And lunch was excellent.

Proper cooked food, generous portions and the sort of hospitality you tend to remember years later.

Then THE bottle appeared.

Vodka.....proper Ukrainian Vodka. The kind with a capital "V".

I was offered a glass.

This presented a minor professional dilemma. On one hand, I was technically still working.

On the other hand, I was sitting at the Captain's table, surrounded by Ukrainian officers, and the Captain was holding a bottle of vodka.

I considered the options.

There was really only one.

I accepted the vodka.

One glass.

Perfectly reasonable.

A toast was made.

We drank.

Then another toast was made.

Apparently, Ukrainian maritime tradition contains significantly more things worth toasting than I had previously realised.

Second vodka.

Still fine.

Lunch continued.

Conversation continued.

Third vodka.

At some point, I became aware that the bottle was spending an unreasonable amount of time near my glass.

Fourth vodka....or was that the fifth?

Now, I should clarify something.

These were not what an Australian publican would politely call a “standard drink”.

There was no carefully measured 30 ml nip being poured from a bottle fitted with one of those little plastic spouts.

The Captain's approach to alcohol measurement appeared to be based primarily on direct eye contact and optimism.

Eventually, lunch finished and I politely thanked the Captain and officers, returned to the equipment and completed my last checks.

The server was operational.

Communications were working.

Data synchronisation was successful.

Documentation was signed.

Job done.

Four hours, exactly as planned.

I packed my equipment and headed towards the gangway.

When I had arrived, yhe Iron Chieftain was tied securely to the wharf in Sydney Harbour. Sydney Harbour was calm. The weather was fine. There was absolutely no meteorological reason whatsoever for what happened next because somewhere between the Captain's dining room and the gangway, the sea state had apparently deteriorated dramatically.

The deck seemed to be moving. Not a lot, mind you. Just enough.

I adjusted.

The deck adjusted back.

.......Interesting.

I reached the gangway.

My legs, which had performed adequately when I boarded several hours earlier, had apparently suffered some kind of simultaneous mechanical failure.

Left leg requested movement.

Request timed out.

Right leg attempted to compensate.

Unexpected response from device.

Retry?

I grabbed the railing.

Clearly the ship was moving.

That had to be it.

It was a large bulk carrier.

Ships move.

This is basic physics.

Admittedly, it was tied to Sydney but perhaps Sydney was moving.

I began descending the gangway with enormous concentration.

One foot.

Step.

Other foot.

Step.

Hold railing.

Do not look like you have forgotten how legs work.

I would like to believe I maintained a dignified and professional appearance during this process. I have absolutely no evidence supporting that belief.

Eventually, I reached the wharf.

Solid ground.

Wonderful, dependable, non-moving ground.

Except it was also moving.

This was becoming concerning.

Obviously there must have been unusually heavy seas affecting the Port of Sydney that afternoon.

Extremely localised heavy seas.

Possibly restricted entirely to a radius of approximately one metre around me.

I made my way slowly towards the exit carrying my backpack and tools while concentrating very carefully on walking in what I believed was a straight line.

Behind me, several members of the crew seemed extremely amused and entertained by something but I never discovered what.

The server installation was a complete success and the ship returned to its normal Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong and Whyalla run.

The CHENG got another opportunity to use his beloved fire sword.

The Captain provided excellent hospitality.

And I learned another important lesson to add to my growing list of rules for maritime IT work:

If the Chief Engineer says he can make you a hole, stand back.

If the Captain invites you to lunch, accept.

If the Captain offers you vodka, also accept.

But when the Captain offers you the fourth vodka or maybe a fifth?...

...remember that Sydney Harbour is apparently prone to sudden and extremely localised heavy seas.

Especially around the gangway.

---

I should probably say something about the Captain himself, though, because after all these years he is one of the people from that period I remember most fondly.

He looked exactly like the sort of man central casting would send you if you asked for an old sea captain.

Grizzled, weathered, white-bearded and carrying the unmistakable air of someone who had spent most of his life at sea.

It sounds like a cliché, but in his case the cliché existed for a reason.

He was dignified and friendly, but there was never any question about who commanded the vessel.

He carried his authority quietly and solemnly.

He didn't need to raise his voice or remind anyone that he was the Captain.

The way the crew treated him told you everything you needed to know.

And yet, to some random IT engineer who had turned up to install a server on his ship, he was warm, welcoming and generous.

He invited me to his table, fed me, talked with me and, admittedly, attempted to determine whether an Australian IT technician could survive Ukrainian quantities of vodka.

That lunch could easily have become nothing more than a funny story about me trying to walk down a gangway with malfunctioning legs.

Instead, it became one of those small memories from my career that has stayed with me.

I learned years later that he died of a heart attack in 2018 while bringing the Iron Chieftain into Wollongong and I was genuinely saddened when I heard.

Over the years I've worked with thousands of people, many of whose names and faces have inevitably faded yet I can still picture him sitting at that table aboard the Iron Chieftain.

White beard.

Quiet authority.

A meal in front of us.

And a bottle of vodka that seemed to possess an infinite number of servings.

I only knew him briefly, during a handful of visits to his ship, but I remember him with enormous fondness.

So wherever old sea captains end up when their final watch is over, I hope the seas are calm, the engines are running well, the crew knows what they're doing...

...and there is always another bottle on the table.

Fair winds, Captain.

Back again, again. Finally got to finishing this post from MANY years ago. I have reposted Part 1 because it's been so long. Just never got around to finishing it until now.

Part 1 (Part 2 is below. Don't worry)

 Many MANY years ago, I worked for an MSP that negotiated a contract with an Australian based management firm to upgrade and replace their servers in their remote locations…..very remote locations……very remote locations that moved. ……Constantly.

These servers where used to keep track of things like maintenance, how much of something was moved from one point to another, employee rosters, time sheets, time tables etc and they had to send this information back to head office in as close to real time as possible due to some Government regulations specific to the industry.

 Basically, they kept track of everything that was needed to be recorded on a day to day basis in order to effectively run ….. a bulk cargo ship.

 Yup. A cargo ship.

 After consulting with the client and the salesbot in charge of the account, I developed a solution to their problem that used Windows 2008 Server Advanced, an IBM X3400 server, a small unmanaged switch to connect all the onboard PCs (6 in total) all connected to a Sony Ericsson W25 modem that it self was connected to a signal booster and mast attached to the top of the ship’s bridge. The effective range was between 35 to 90 kilometres off-shore (because of cell tower placements along the coast line, height and Helstra)…. when it HAD coverage. When out of 3G coverage (no such thing as 4G back then), it fell back to Inmarsat-B for data transfer but they wanted to use that as little as possible.

 Why as little as possible? Anyone that has used satellite comms can tell you how much fun it is trying to use the thing for data transfer because of little things like cloud cover, bird poop (not kidding), etc. and not to mention HOW FREAKING EXPENSIVE IT IS!

 Medium speed fax/data services are at about 9.6kbit/s and it’s charged at AU$0.53/256bit

 No, that is not a spelling mistake. 9.6kbit/s and 53 cents PER 256bit!

To put it another way, normally there is about 32 letters for every 256 bits. If you send or receive letters at 5 bits per letter on a vessel side, then it is possible to have 51 letters for every 256 bits. Do the maths and pick your jaw up off the desk.

 Back to the story.

Understandably, I was quite proud that I developed a solution that worked in the lab but now came time to actually field test the set-up in the real world. This involved various state and federal police checks in order to get the security clearances dockside and on board a cargo ship, etc. (It’s the same process you need to go through in order to get airside at an airport and yes, I have gone through THAT pooshower as well in an earlier job working with the IT department of my national carrier and a place called Jet Base. A tale for another day).

I had organised and scheduled an install date with the Shipping management firm to perform a test install on board a ship that was docked in a local port for a week and, after enduring the affectionate attention of the state and federal police (they never even called me back the next morning like they promised. I feel so used) and in possession of said security clearances, I was ready to head to the port to swap out the existing infrastructure on board.

Little did I know, this was going to be that start of something……interesting?

…..fast forward 36 frantic hours later, in the middle of Singapore Strait……..

>“You need to finish in the next 2 hours. I have to leave port by then and if you’re not done, you’re with us until Caracas”

 

Part 2

There are moments in your career when time seems to stop.

Your mind becomes crystal clear. Every risk, every decision and every poor life choice that brought you to that exact point flashes before your eyes.

This was not one of those moments.

My first thought was:

“Where the hell is Caracas?”

My second thought was:

“Do I need a visa?”

My third, slightly more useful thought, was:

“I am going to murder the salesbot.”

Let us rewind about 36 hours while I was still in Australia.

Apparently, ships have schedules and apparently, these schedules change.

Also apparently, nobody had thought this was information the person installing the ship’s entire new server and communications infrastructure might need.

By the time all the equipment had arrived, the security clearances had been completed and everyone had finally agreed on what day the install was, the ship had already sailed.

Not far, mind you. Just to Singapore. Because that was obviously convenient.

The shipping company still wanted the installation completed before the vessel began its next major voyage, so I was hurriedly booked onto the next flight and sent to Singapore with enough computer equipment to make airport security deeply interested in my life choices.

The server itself had been shipped separately, along with the UPS, modem, switch, signal booster and the assorted bits and pieces that had worked perfectly in the lab.

This is an important distinction. They had worked perfectly in the lab. The lab did not move.

The lab did not smell. The lab did not require me to climb a rope ladder while carrying a backpack full of tools above several metres of moving ocean.

The lab also did not contain racehorses.

Yes, racehorses.

The “bulk cargo” being transported by this particular vessel was alive, extremely valuable and apparently capable of producing its own body weight in manure every fifteen minutes.

The smell hit me before I reached the ship.

It was not merely a smell. It was a physical presence. It climbed inside your nose, unpacked its bags and began redecorating.

Even after returning home, washing everything I owned and showering several times, I could still smell that ship. For several days I would occasionally stop, sniff the air and wonder whether a horse had somehow followed me home.

Getting aboard was also an adventure.

The vessel was sitting in international waters in the Singapore Strait, so I could not simply walk up a gangway carrying my equipment like a normal person.

I had to pass through Singapore Customs, board a small launch, travel out to the ship and transfer from the launch onto the vessel.

The transfer involved pulling alongside a moving wall of steel and climbing a ladder hanging down the side.

While wearing a backpack full of equipment.

In ocean swell.

The launch would rise with a wave, I would grab the ladder, and then the boat would drop away beneath me.

Nobody mentioned this during the project planning meeting.

There had been diagrams. There had been timelines. There had been spreadsheets.

There had NOT been a single box labelled:

>Engineer may need to leap from small boat onto moving cargo vessel and climb for his life while carrying several thousand dollars’ worth of equipment.

Once on board, I was shown to the server location and I use the word “location” generously.

The space on the Bridge had been selected because it was reasonably central, accessible to the existing PCs and, most importantly, not currently occupied by a horse.

The new IBM X3400 was not a small machine. It was a proper tower server built like a filing cabinet and with roughly the same portability.

The UPS was also substantial because graceful shutdowns are generally preferable to having a server abruptly lose power every time a ship’s electrical system coughs.

Unfortunately, the nearest suitable power source was on the other side of a steel bulkhead.

I raised this issue with the CHENG, the Chief Engineer.

He inspected the server.

He inspected the UPS.

He inspected the bulkhead.

Then he disappeared.

A few minutes later, he returned carrying a gas axe.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a gas axe is not a precision IT tool. It is an oxy-acetylene cutting torch.

There are carefully planned cable penetrations involving engineers, approved drawings, fire seals and proper conduits.

Then there is a ship’s Chief Engineer looking at a steel wall and saying, essentially:

“I can make hole.”

I briefly considered explaining concepts such as cable management, electrical compliance and fire-rated penetrations and then he lit the torch.

A short time later, we had power.

We ALSO had a newly created opening in the back wall of the Bridge that was still warm around the edges.

The CHENG looked extremely pleased with himself.....I chose not to argue with the man holding the fire sword.

With power available, I began installing the server, switch, UPS, modem and communications equipment. Cabling had to be routed to six onboard workstations spread across areas that had clearly never been designed with Ethernet in mind.

Naturally, several of the cables and power accessories that were supposed to be waiting for me were either missing, unsuitable or had vanished into whatever dimension collects socks, ten-millimetre sockets and project documentation.

This began a long sequence of phone calls to computer stores around Singapore.

“Hello. Do you have filtered powerboards?”

“No, not surge boards. Filtered.”

“Yes, Australian-style plugs.”

“No, not British.”

“Yes, today.”

“No, I cannot come to the store. I am on a ship.”

“No, the ship is not at the dock.”

“Yes, I am serious.”

Network cables were another problem.

The ones supplied were either too short, the wrong type or nowhere near the ship at all. More phone calls followed, along with arrangements involving couriers, port security, Customs and another trip out on the launch.

Every time I left the vessel and returned, I had to go through Singapore Customs again because the ship was sitting in international waters.

I became very familiar with the process.

Passport.

Documentation.

Explanation.

Bag inspection.

Questions about why I was carrying network cables.

Launch.

Ladder.

Try not to fall into one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

Repeat.

At some point during this circus, another vessel nearby reported an engine-room fire.

This was not a small fishing boat producing a bit of smoke. This was a significant incident involving alarms, emergency traffic and nearby vessels paying very close attention to what was happening.

From the deck, we could see smoke rising from the other ship while emergency responses were coordinated across the Strait.

It was fascinating in the same way that watching a building burn down is fascinating when you are standing close enough to feel the heat.

The crew on our vessel remained remarkably calm.

I suppose when your workplace is a floating steel city carrying hundreds of horses through one of the world’s busiest waterways, your threshold for an “interesting day” is somewhat higher than mine.

While all this was happening, another engineering team was replacing the ship’s helm.

Not the steering wheel.

The actual control system used to steer the vessel.

The old controls were being replaced with an upgraded automated system at the same time I was replacing the onboard IT infrastructure. So, on one side of the bridge, technicians were dismantling the systems that controlled the direction of the ship. On the other side, I was trying to work out why one of the captain’s computers would not join the domain.

The captain’s PC had not been mentioned as a problem.

I had been told all six computers were operational and simply needed to be connected to the new server and the Captain watched me troubleshoot it for some time before casually mentioning:

“Oh, that computer has not worked properly for months.”

Of course it had not.

Why would anyone mention that before the engineer flew to another country?

The machine was in poor condition, unstable and filled with the accumulated digital sediment that gathers on any important computer nobody is willing to replace.

It needed to be rebuilt.

There was no spare machine, no prepared image and no convenient high-speed connection to download everything I might need.

So, alongside the server installation, communications testing, network cabling and frantic procurement of missing accessories, I rebuilt the captain’s PC.

The captain’s computer naturally contained several applications that were essential to the vessel’s operation.

Naturally, nobody had installation media.

Naturally, nobody had written down the configuration.

Naturally, the person who knew the passwords was asleep, ashore or possibly fictional.

Bit by bit, everything came together.

The local network worked.

The onboard PCs connected.

The server was operational.

The management applications were restored.

The Sony Ericsson W25 connected through the booster and mast antenna.

When the ship was within range of the coastal network, data flowed over 3G.

When it moved beyond coverage, the connection could fall back to Inmarsat-B without accidentally transmitting the GDP of a small country in unnecessary Windows updates.

I had disabled, restricted or scheduled anything that might consume bandwidth without permission.

Antivirus updates, Windows updates, synchronisation jobs and remote-management traffic all had to be carefully controlled.

On an ordinary network, an unexpected 100 MB transfer is annoying.

On that satellite service, an unexpected 100 MB transfer was a meeting with senior management.....possibly also a meeting with their bank.

After approximately 34 hours of travel, climbing, cutting, cabling, rebuilding, configuring and inhaling Eau de Racehorse, the captain delivered the news.

The ship had to leave.

I had two hours.

If I was not finished, I would be sailing with them to Caracas.

I still did not know exactly where Caracas was, but I was reasonably certain it was not near my hotel.

At that point, failure stopped being an option and became a travel itinerary and the final two hours were a blur.

I completed the remaining workstation tests, forced a final data synchronisation, confirmed the application records had reached head office and tested both primary and fallback communications.

The captain’s rebuilt PC worked.

The server restarted cleanly.

The UPS held the load.

The switch survived.

The modem connected.

The application opened on all six computers.

Most importantly, the system did not attempt to download several gigabytes of Windows patches over satellite.

I packed my tools, gathered the leftover cables and completed the documentation with the level of detail possible when every clock around you is counting down to involuntary international travel and with very little time remaining, I was escorted back to the side of the ship....where I had to climb down the same ladder onto the launch.....again.

Climbing up had been unpleasant.

Climbing down while exhausted, with the ship preparing to depart and the ocean moving beneath you, was worse.

The launch rose.

I stepped off the ladder.

The launch dropped

For one brief and VERY exciting moment, I was connected to neither vessel before, finally, gravity, momentum and sheer blind luck deposited me unceremoniously onto the bow of the launch rather than into the Singapore Strait and we pulled away as the crew prepared the ship for departure.

From the launch, I watched the vessel begin moving, carrying its horses, its newly automated helm and my freshly installed server towards its next destination.

I had finished with minutes to spare.

I had also been awake for most of 36 hours, smelled like the lower deck of a floating stable and had developed an entirely new appreciation for office-based server installations.

The system remained in service and the concept was later rolled out to other vessels.

Future installations included better preparation, more spare equipment and significantly more detailed questions about where the ship would actually be when the engineer arrived.

I also added several items to my personal project checklist:

1. Confirm that “docked” means physically attached to land.
2. Never trust a statement that all existing computers are working.
3. Bring twice as many cables as the project requires.
4. A Chief Engineer with a gas axe will solve the problem, although perhaps not in the way anticipated by the design document.
5. Always know where the vessel is going next.
6. Look up Caracas before boarding.

And that is how I earned my sea legs, installed a Windows domain on a floating horse transporter and narrowly avoided becoming the world’s least-prepared passenger to Venezuela.

The salesbot, incidentally, described the installation as:

“A successful overseas deployment with minor logistical challenges.”

Clue-by-four applications were considered.....repeatedly.