For Nicole, fuel is an issue, and economic benefits are also an issue that cannot be ignored.

As early as a plenary meeting at the end of November, Captain Gu warned that although the Nicole is an artifact of the times, from an economic point of view, such a large loading capacity, even if half a cabin goes to sea, is three or four thousand tons of materials.

With our current production capacity, when will we be able to load so many goods? If the goods are loaded, the maintenance, labor, and coal burning of a trip out are a lot of costs, so if a stable and large enough trade route is not opened up in advance, the Nicole will venture to go to sea, and from the perspective of economic benefits, it will definitely lose money!

Looking at the thoughtful expressions on everyone's faces, Gu Jin emphasized again, of course, the Nicole does not go to sea, but only goes to sea when necessary, because the cost is there, so it must be considered in advance, and those who are worth going to sea must of course go to sea resolutely.

As everyone here said, if we want to go to a certain port to pretend and shock the world, as long as we expect that the input and output are cost-effective, of course, we can drive the Nicole to show our strength.

For example, the plan we have been planning for a long time to go to the port of Sulu Horo in the first half of next year.

Gu Jin strongly suggested that the Pride should go with the Nicole, so as to achieve the purpose of training the team and deter the locals, at this time Zhu Beiguo's speech corroborated Captain Gu's statement, he said:

"That's right, those local indigenous kingdoms really need to be deterred and deterred, otherwise they will go to heaven.

For example, Sulu, a small country with arrogance and arrogance, is so keen that the powerful people are keen to go to sea to rob! Well, loot and rob, you especially like to covet the galleons of the Spaniards.

It eventually angered the leading seafaring empire of the era, and decades later, it was defeated by others in retaliation, and finally became part of the Spanish colony in Luzon. ”

When everyone heard this, they immediately became interested, and they all said that we should also go and rob the privateer pirates in Sulu, anyway, those people are all unkind and unrighteous guys, so why take the ill-gotten gains, right?

At this time, Ren Ke said that he had also checked historical information, and the Sulu pirates in the Nanyang region were quite famous in history, and that island kingdom had a trading fleet on the sea, from kings to nobles to gangsters.

Their gigantic schooners were famous and powerful, and for this reason they clashed with the neighbors of the Kingdom of Sulu, the Spaniards, who sought to control all of Luzon.

Therefore, even if it is a normal trade at sea, the agents of these nobles' maritime interests are both merchants and thieves.

Most of them are under the banner of caravans, driving pulp boats between the islands, and they have to do business with capital, and of course they have to do business without capital.

Therefore, in dealing with such a sea power, the role of the Nicole is very great, and the strength must be at least equal in strength to do business, otherwise, why would people be willing to do business with you instead of robbing your goods?

After listening to Ren Ke's speech, Captain Gu also nodded in response:

"Therefore, the Nicole still has to be opened, the sailors also have to practice, and the machine will rust if it is not used, everyone must also experience how to work on the 10,000-ton wheel, as for the follow-up training fuel, please work harder, try to dig a little more coal, anyway, there is still half a year before going to sea, right......"

When everyone in the venue heard Captain Gu say this, they could only nod, it seems that it will take everyone's hard work to make our sea killer go to sea......

Later it turned out that driving the Nicole to sea was not only a cost problem, but also a physical problem. The reason is the engine room.

At that time, the training on the Nicole was divided into batches, each batch had a total of twenty people, and each training team was divided into three teams: engine, deck and driving lookout, Gu Jin tentatively scheduled that each detachment would work on the Nicole for two hours, so that everyone could learn more in a short time.

Undoubtedly, the hardest thing is the engine detachment in the bilge, although before the crossing everyone heard Anna say that he improved the power system, added a coal-fired conveyor and improved the working environment of the engine room, etc., but when everyone really began to practice in the engine room, they immediately understood that they underestimated the hard work of this work.

Sure enough, as many people say, all the work of burning boilers is never easy.

The stuffiness, noise, smoke, fire, and dust in the engine room are not to mention it, the place is originally located in the bilge, the environment is closed, and the ventilation conditions are naturally very poor, but this is nothing, the key is that the word "burning" of the boiler is too hard, not only to add fuel almost all the time, but also to always pay attention to various temperatures, air pressure conditions must not be distracted, otherwise there may be a major accident!

Of course, the most tiring work is to shovel the coal to the conveyor belt of the conveyor, which is obviously a heavy physical work that should not be underestimated, and has high requirements for the waist, leg and arm strength of the laborer.

But that's not all, and then two people have to work together, manually turning the semi-mechanized wheeled handle to throw the coal into the boiler little by little, well, this work is not only dirty and tiring, Nima can tire people to death for thirty minutes in a row.

However, what is even worse is that the ship that goes to sea needs continuous power, so once the coal-fired boiler starts to burn, it cannot be stopped halfway, even if it is like now, it is only three hours to go to sea, then it must be burned for three hours in a row.

So everyone began to complain, it's really unimaginable, in the future, the Nicole will sail to sea, and it will be a twenty-four hour continuous rotation! Think about it, when we burn the boiler for eight hours in three shifts every day, what kind of stupid person Nima will be tired!

Obviously, the only solution is to increase the number of people and shorten the working hours of each shift, the question is, how many sailors does the Nicole need?

No wonder in the Old World this kind of free wheel needed at least thirty or forty people, and that's not counting the sailors......

In short, everyone got on the Nicole once, and after coming back from the sea, they all agreed that it is obviously not possible to rely on just a few of our brothers now, and it seems that when Captain Gu told about the restrictions on Nicole's going to sea, there was one less thing to say: We need more sailors, especially the coolies in Nima's engine room!

So everyone sighed again, the labor problem is really a bottleneck that restricts all our careers and dreams......

Sighing and sighing, the problem still has to be solved, and in the end, Boss Luo put forward a plan - use the machine tools and process equipment in the cave to install a fully automatic fuel filling machine for Nicole.

Obviously, this will be all used to bring materials from the old world, but Boss Luo said that good steel is used on the blade, and the current transformation of the engine room labor environment is the blade on the steel knife, otherwise, we are even nervous about the manpower to start the Nicole, how can we take care of the Pride?

Obviously, this renovation project involves the overall situation, and the old world materials in the cave are doing this!

Boss Luo's opinion was quickly recognized by everyone, so under the abbot of Boss Luo, some machine tools in the cave began to be unsealed, and through the computer data room, Boss Luo quickly determined a suitable fuel filling equipment design.

The next step is to produce and manufacture in full swing, and sure enough, as Boss Luo said at the beginning, as long as the consumption of raw materials and process equipment is not taken into account, with the processing power in front of him, the mechanical group can produce any equipment.

In only half a month, this set of automatic loading machine was installed in the engine room of Nicole, and its high degree of automation made the boys in the engine room very happy, because this set of equipment only needs four people to complete all the filling and feeding, although there are still requirements for the physical strength of the operator, but it is indeed much easier than before.

Of course, the so-called ease is also relative, and the work in the engine room is not as easy as the job on the deck.