An old inspector in Galveston corrected my lift bag math

I was running a salvage job off the Bolivar jetty and had my lift bag sizing dialed in the way I always did, roughly half the weight. This inspector, must be 60 years old, watches me rig up and says 'son, you're leaving 30 percent on the table for water drag.' He made me factor the object's surface area into the equation, not just the dry weight. First lift after that was night and day smoother, and I've never gone back to my old method. Anyone else get corrected on something they'd been doing for years and it turned out the old timers were right?

2 comments

2 Comments

alex_johnson12d ago

Swapped out a prop shaft seal on a 40-year-old trawler using the same grease fitting trick my grandpa showed me, then this dockmaster walks over and says I had the torque pattern backwards. He was right, and the seal stopped weeping after two years of me fighting it. Now I shut up and watch the old guys on any job they've touched before.

gracewebb12d ago

Grandpa's tricks are great till they ain't.