In full body armour, hull cleaners hovering 20 metres aloft on a dawn raid upon Collaroy's superstructure. 
A small fish in a big pond. Collaroy currently shares the spacious forward end of the dock with a naval vessel, but there is still plenty of dock floor room to spare on the forward end. 
Collaroy's propulsion and steering systems are vastly different to the other three vessels in her class. The full disassembly will be interesting, to say the least. In order to safely detach, dismount and remove the various components of these systems, riggers require suspension points of exactly the right load rating in exactly the right spot. At every docking, these lifting eyes must be welded on, load tested, put into use and subsequently decommissioned and cut off at docking's end. Here, you can see the chief rigger's specific demands - lifting eyes load rated in tonnes - etched upon the hull in pink spray paint. 
Telescopic Boom Lifts. These diesel powered workhorses, also known as cherry pickers, have nearly completely taken over the modern dock floor in terms of from-below hullworks and left staging and scaffolding nearly for dead. To drive them smoothly requires years of practice. These units can extend up to about 30 metres in height in just over a minute.
When fitters removed the hull grate from Collaroy's main sea chest, they found enough shellfish growth to feed a family. 
Every docking is different. Things are slow to unfold on the dock floor in terms of mechanical works. The hull blasting and preservation work is still underway, which pretty much halts most of everything else. Thankfully, the chains are finally detached from the ship and the anchor windlass is headed for the operating table. Here sits Collaroy, stabilisers deployed, on a rainy day four of her 2018 docking. 
With both anchors and chains now offloaded onto the dock floor, Collaroy's anchor pen area is ready to be invaded by the preservation crew. 
Meanwhile, up on the superstructure, crews working on the funnel have been busy unearthing a bit of vessel history. This painted-on band of super-sized and improperly centred lettering (who remembers it?) was thought to have been permanently removed years ago, but it made such an impression on the funnel that it's clearly too much work to get it completely off. 
Inside the ship, Collaroy's ceiling panels have been badly etched by years of sea air, so they are being removed and replaced with these wider, flatter units which are easier to keep clean and provide a fresh new look. Here, crews are nearly finished fitting out the area around what remains of the old Harold Gibson Bar, a classic feature of the old ocean cruising days which, sadly, was removed in the pre-Olympic refit. For those who remember.
The sky has fallen. Every ceiling panel from Collaroy's main passenger deck has been removed and new panels are ready to be installed. 
The sum of its parts. In exploded view, Collaroy's anchor windlass is laid out on the floor of the cavernous fitter's shop. Shortly, some of the more corroded components will be frogmarched to the blasting shed for a bit of work. 
The port brake drum of Collaroy's anchor windlass is found to be quite thinned even before the imminent punishment of the blast shed. As this is a cast part, the brave machinists who dare to take this one on will surely be having secret discussions with their metallurgist mates. 
The opposite face of Collaroy's port brake drum ensures an express ticket to the blast shed 
While the noise and chaos of the docking prevail outside, painters are quietly working their way around Collaroy's interior, laying on coats of fresh colour and slowly but systematically bringing tired areas back to life 
Collaroy's monkey islands and funnel are fully shrouded in scaffolding. 
Collaroy's aft steering compartment is nearly completely disassembled. It's three associated steering motors are off ship, oil supply piping galleries and cover plates removed and oil drained out. The 60kg locking nut, at centre here, holds the rudder stock onto its taper and will be the last domino to fall once the gigantic, purpose-built wrench (here shown dangling and at-the-ready) is eased down onto it and cracked from its grip with a handsledge chaser. 
The early stages of the disassembly of Collaroy's aft steering provide an instant insight as to why the riggers need so many lifting eyes installed on the hull to safely remove her Becker Rudders 
Collaroy's aft end. The Becker Rudder is dropped from its taper, which occurs within the rudder itself, and lowered down to the dock floor, leaving only the protruding stub of the stock to defend. 
Down comes Collaroy's three-tonne aft rudder stock. The off-coloured middle section, which exists free of bearing and lives within a watertight tube, is shown here covered in preservatory grease of varying age and type. Fitters will initially shear off the grease with a waterblaster to further inspect the stock and prepare it for wear testing. 
Yard boilermakers at work late into the day under huge docking floodlights. Here, surrounded by patches of recently applied hull primer, they weld in lifting eyes at the ship's forward end.
The electric drive motor has been detached from Collaroy's anchor windlass, but it's journey to the electrician's workbench runs via the blast shed first. Here, the blastmaster has carried out the careful task of etching off surface corrosion from the fins of the motor casing. Why blast the fins? The corrugation of the fins is an essential design component as the increased surface area it provides helps to carry away heat from the motor during operation. The cleaner the fins, the more efficient their function. 
Fresh new lettering has already been applied to Collaroy's funnel on day eight of the docking. This must be a record. 
Collaroy's Starboard anchor chain undergoing survey. Yard boilermakers work their way down the chain, taking spot thickness samples of the links using digital calipers. 
Renewed ceiling panels are in place around the Harold Gibson Bar Section. Along with fresh new colour on the adjacent bulkheads, they will kick start a badly needed reboot to the aesthetics of the inner passenger areas. 
If you are a crane operator, nothing impedes your view. Here, riggers prepare Collaroy's Starboard upper gangway for liftoff.
Each weighing exactly 367kg, Collaroy's four aft propellor blades have been lifted off the hub and are all resting dockside, waiting to be polished and fatigue tested. Of particular interest to the testers will be the areas around and beneath the seven bolts which secure each blade to the hub. 
All is revealed. A privileged underside view of Collaroy's pillaged aft end. The only step remaining in the dismantlement of this end is the extraction of the shaft. The hub will not be pulled apart. 
Ahhhh. Precision. The hub plate for each propellor takes seven 157mm long bronze aluminium bolts, which act to evenly secure the blade to the hub. The crank pin, shown here still in situe, is the actual locating feature which ensures the blade is in proper mated position to be acted upon by the shaft's sliding internal piston, causing rotation, and thus pitch, in either direction. And we haven't even brought shaft rotation into the discussion yet. 
Safe within scaffolded confines, painters are hitting the heights of Collaroy's aft navigation decks. Main masts have been lowered down into their cradles for painting. 
Bringing a nearly-30-year-old Harbour icon into refit involves routine renewal and refreshment for some components and, at times, abrupt change for others. 
Carefully masked off against the damaging effects of airborne garnet dust, a blasting carryover which continues to whirl around the dock floor in the chilling gusty southerlies, Collaroy's aft propellor hub is rigged as a major lifting eye and ready to lead the way out for the lengthy shaft still housed within the ship. Fitters are still carrying out the very complicated task of uncoupling the shaft from its inboard connection. 
In Collaroy's internal void spaces, the fitters are working on the systematic disconnection of not only the drive shaft itself, but also the gigantic piston that lives inside it. All the while, the shaft and its associated mechanisms must remain on level, supported by two and five-tonne chain blocks at every stage of its journey out .... and in. 
A 32-tonne forklift is lowered into the dock. It's pulling power will be vital in the extraction of Collaroy's aft propellor shaft. 
Seals and O-Rings, directly from the source. Over 230 of them are required just for the rebuild of Collaroy's amazing Kamome Controllable Pitch Propellor System. 
Rust never sleeps. It looks like these condemned sounding pipes, one for each of Collaroy's fuel oil tanks, arrived onto the ship in sequential order. They will go down together.
The dawn colour of Collaroy's 11th day on the blocks 
Collaroy's number 1 aft propellor blade has been machined and is ready for fatigue testing. 
Original blade data stamped onto Collaroy's number 1 aft propellor blade. -->> Go to Collaroy 2018 Dry Docking Part 2
-->> Go to Narrabeen 2017 Dry Docking Part 1
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