Monday Morning Mariner: Planning For Shipyard

Warning: This post contains salty language.

Labor Day means the end of the summer tourist season and thus the end or near-end of the operating season for a lot of passenger vessels. Tug business slows down too in some areas, and many operators take advantage of the time to plan their annual maintenance and shipyard periods. A couple of tools I have found (from various sources) for making the planning and execution of "yard" easier:

Some definitions

Contractor. A gambler who never gets to shuffle, cut or deal!

Bid opening. A poker game in which the losing hand wins.

Low bidder. A contractor who is wondering what he/she has left out.

Engineer's estimate. The cost of construction in Heaven.

Critical Path Method. A management technique for losing your shirt under perfect control.

OSHA. A protective coating made by half-baking a mixture of fine print, split hairs, red tape and baloney - usually applied at random with a shot gun.

Strike. An effort to increase egg production by strangling the chicken.

Delayed payment. A tourniquet applied at the pockets.

Completion date. The point at which liquidated damages begin.

Liquidated damages. A penalty for failing to achieve the impossible.

Estimates

• To estimate the time any given task will take, double the amount of time it should take then go to the next higher unit of measure. Thus a five minute job will actually take 10 minutes, a two day job will take four weeks, etc.
• To estimate the actual cost of any given tool or material, take the normal cost of the item and add 5 percent for every day that's passed since you should have ordered it. Add another 40 to 150-percent if the item or vendor has the word "Marine" in its name.

Trouble shooting