I made it out ALIVE!

Well, I survived a sinking ship — and life on the third bunk aboard a British Royal Navy ship for two nights. Not to mention a weekend with 32 type-A MBA’s 🙂

The best part is that I’m the better for it.

We left school on Friday at 2:15 for a 2-2.5 hr. drive to Portsmouth aboard a hired bus (coach in London-speak). 4 hours later we arrived in Portsmouth to find a very worried school representative and course instructor… apparently the bus driver didn’t know the way and took us on the scenic route. BUT, the rest of the weekend was very well organized and we (as half our the MBA class) got a lot out of it.

Upon arrival, the course instructors took us immediately to board the vessel– an all-metal battleship named the “Bristol”. The Flagship (the name of the program aboard the ship) instructor immediately took us to our quarters below deck… I was wearing a skirt and heels as we were encouraged to wear our business casual attire straight from class… I was surprised to find TWO very steep ladders to greet us as we made our way downstairs. I did my best to navigate the tall, steep ladders gracefully despite my girly attire. Below deck, we found camp-style bunks — 3 up! — without ladders for climbing. 2 showers for 12 girls (5 separate showers for the 21 guys) 5 mirrors and 3 spare outlets for our various appliances. Needless to say, beauty was not to be a focus of our weekend’s activities.

After a few minutes, we made our way to the “mess” for a curry dinner… surprisingly good food, in fact. And we had a bit of a “pub night” there, in the mess, before making our way back to the ship for the night.

On Saturday, we had the typical English breakfast (sausage, bacon — ham by American standards, toast, stewed tomatoes, baked beans, poached eggs, cereal, and something they call squash juice — it’s a lot like watered-down Tang. And then we were off for the day’s team building activities. The folks in my group were from France, Kazakhstan, Korea, Turkey (but lived in Iraq for the last 1-2 years), America (x2), and India. I’m quite impressed by how well my group members speak and understand English despite their backgrounds. All speak very clearly and we encountered few language barriers.

The activities were good — all focused on team-building and communication. Emphasizing the importance of being a strong, communicative leader on group tasks.

We had dinner in the officer’s club on base late Saturday and had a great time getting to know one another… we even crashed someone’s 50th birthday party. Fun!

Then, Sunday we woke early and went straight for ship repair training after breakfast. First, we were assigned to a room aboard the ship — my team was assigned to the generator room — a small space about the size of the smallest bedroom in our house in Cary for those who visited us… very small. After a briefing on how to fix the various holes we would encounter (buns, wedges, wedges and beams constructed with clips and other padding to ensure minimum leakage, etc.), we ventured onto the ship. The lights shut off, the ship began to rock about 20 degrees, and the space began to fill with cold water (18 degrees Celsius). We gathered in a room upstairs as things began to churn–awaiting “go” to make our way into the generator room.

“Surprisingly”, a water vein broke overhead as we tried to make our way down the very steep ladder stairs situated just below a port hole in the upper deck. We had to angle our hard hats to keep the water off our faces as we attempted to lean and kick in order to avoid tripping.

My task was to sure up loosened hatch bolts and insert wedges to ensure they were secure. The room filled with water–I had to go with the rocking and use the opposite high points to my advantage. I didn’t want to dive underwater…after securing the bolts, we constructed a beam/board support structure to support the bolts and wedges against the water pressure coming from below.

During this first phase, there were also 4 small/medium holes in the wall–all were spouting water. We split wedges and inserted them into the wall to close off the water. With phase I complete, we made our way upstairs and situated ourselves in a little room while they transitioned to Phase II. One of our group members became sea sick–he left the ship leaving us one man down for this second phase.

Upon making our way downstairs, we found ~10 large to medium irregular and round holes in the ship’s wall. Our task was to close off the holes with buns (large, cork-shaped, wooden bits), or by splitting wedges. Short of time and men, we took turns bracing each other against the water pressure in order to patch the holes. With this complete, we then began to install clips that attached to the boat’s wall. These clips would hold a mattress to provide further support to the materials used to sure-up the holes, and would also allow us to insert board supports and wedges in order to further support the fix.

So. Overall, this was a great experience…Portsmouth was a new place and was very hospitable. And you’ll be happy to know that you now have a friend who can “save” the ship should we hit an iceberg or wayward submarine…anyone want to go on a cruise?