(Friday, February 19th, 2016)
Our Shanghai visit (late Tuesday, all day Wednesday, half-day Thursday) was an important unloading – whoops, discharging. Two huge gangways and control platforms were lifted, as well as the contents of two large holds that were under the gangways. I didn’t stay to watch – I went into Shanghai for a visit.
I’ll make a separate post about visiting Shanghai. This post, long enough on its own, is more about coming and going, both the ship logistics and the paperwork with immigration.
The approach to Shanghai seems wide but the available channel is narrow. We took on a pilot fairly early. This pilot had to cooperate with other pilots to manage the traffic jam up and down the channel, and to, of course, keep us in the channel.
One of the most visible readouts on the bridge is the distance under the keel. Leaving Ho Chi Minh City, even at high tide, we sometimes only had about 5 meters under the keel. I don’t know our depth when loaded. I’ll find out sometime later. Approaching Shanghai, we had maybe 30 meters. But I didn’t stay long on bridge after the pilot came on board. Once they get busy, I am not really welcome. Understood. I am familiar with that notion, having worked in control rooms in refineries. When anything delicate is happening, anybody who doesn’t have a reason to be there is asked politely to leave. It’s the same way on the bridge of a ship.
Docking and undocking were not that different from previous experiences except for the congestion and amount of activity. For example, when we were leaving port these things all happened pretty much at once, at the dock where we and 4 or 5 other ships were berthed:
a) Gangway up, pilot on board, ready to go, no tugboats available, and other ships were moving.
b) A ship two south of us was being pulled away from the dock by two tugboats, turned 180 degrees, sent on its way.
c) Each tugboat finished their duty on that ship, approached ours, tied on, and began tugging us away from the dock.
d) One ship across from us was pulled by one tugboat, moved to another part of the same dock, just in time to get out of the way of…
e) A larger ship that was being pushed into place (directly in our way, so we waited, our tugs at idle) at that part of the dock recently vacated, literally minutes ago, by the ship that was moved.
f) As that large ship cleared our bow our tugs finished spinning us 180 degrees and sent us on our way.
g) Both tugs scurried toward another large ship coming into view.
All in all, 4 of 5 ships were moving via tugboats at the same time, and about 6 or 8 tugboats were all active, in a fairly limited space, considering the size of the ships. In about 20 minutes 3 of us were in single file headed away, one of us was relocated, one newcomer was berthed, and another newcomer was under control of tugs. Wow. I took pictures. I will have to caption them to make sense.
Okay, that was the exquisite choreography of ships, pilots, and tugs. Actually the tugs are pretty impressive. They don’t seem to waste time or energy, getting the exact job done.
Now we come to the human part, immigration. It wasn’t that bad. It was just long. For those of us on board who had cleared Chinese immigration recently (I don’t know what “recently” meant), it was easy. They didn’t need to do anything, from what I could see. Our officer in charge of immigration paperwork worked with our agent, necessary for translating Chinese to English for the Romanian officer, and with the newly arrived on board Chinese immigration officer and Chinese quarantine officer. They went through some lists, and looked at each passport, and wrote down something on the list, and that was that.
There were maybe 10 of us in a different situation, not having cleared Chinese customs recently. We first went through a visual check, with the Chinese immigration officer. The crew had to sign on a piece of paper that was compared to their signature on their passport. That was about it for crew members.
I think that “crew” is understood, so their reason for coming to China is not suspect. “Passenger” is a little different, so I got some special treatment. I talked to two immigration officers. One was a quarantine officer. We talked a lot about where I’d recently been, for how long, how did I get there (means of travel), rural or urban, and was I a farmer. This took awhile. The quarantine officer was not great at English, and I was totally zero on Chinese, so our agent, sitting next to us working with the captain on cargo issues, had to accept our interruptions requesting help. In the end I had to write and sign a declaration that I had not recently been to South America. This was about the new Zika virus in that area. It makes sense that they are concerned. The quarantine officer had to call someone to ask about my recent small trip to northern Mexico. Luckily, all okay.
It was getting late, maybe 10pm. I was the only one leaving the ship that night, headed to a hotel in downtown Shanghai. The agent, his driver, and I got in the car and headed towards the front gate of the docks, where there was a small immigration office. The agent had a file box with all 30+ of our passports in it. The immigration official at that place did another visual check of me. Some translation difficulties… the agent said “he wants you to not smile so he can compare your passport picture.” So I not smiled, and all was okay. To be fair to the immigration guy, my passport picture doesn’t have me in a mustache and beard like now. And the agent said to me later “all you Caucasians look alike” and we had a giggle over that. An aside on the agent – totally casual, so much different than the Vietnam agent. Different personalities. He was in pretty good shape, but was wearing a sweater that said “No Abs, Still Fab”.
Then the agent said to go sit down and wait. For 45 minutes the immigration official did what I think was the same thing as was done on board, for each passport. I was asked to sign something that was written totally in Chinese, which of course I did. I wonder what it was.
Then we were free to go. I got my passport, yippee!
The agent and his driver, saying that it was sort of on their way home, took me all the way to the hotel. About 30 miles, maybe 45 minutes of driving. Major cool.
I stayed at a downtown Shanghai hotel that night, walked around Shanghai all the next day, and then headed back, after dinner, in a cab. My agent had written a note in Chinese for me to give to the cab driver. Essential!
At the gate, I started to walk through. The cab driver waited to see that all was okay. I wonder if he regretted that decision. Afterward, I tipped him well.
Anyway, I got stopped, as expected. There were three guards. There was my taxi driver. There was me. There was nobody who spoke Chinese and English in the same body. So I showed the guards many pieces of paper, including my passport with a stamp. When I finally SAID “Rickmers Shanghai” they got excited – I think it was an important clue, and I realize now that they couldn’t READ “Rickmers Shanghai” on my English (duh) paperwork.
They called the immigration office nearby, and found someone who spoke English. While I was talking with him, one of the guards kept saying “Master!”. I think either he thought I was a Master of a ship (a captain – after all, I am old and I have a grey beard), or he thought that if I told them I was the Master they’d let me through.
After one call, a 10 minute break, and another call, the guy on the phone asked me to read my passport number to him, and then said “OK!” I handed the phone to the guy saying “Master!”, and while he was talking he was giving me the thumbs up. I paid the taxi driver and walked on in.
The three guards were always friendly, and I got the sense that they really wanted to help me get going. It was all actually kind of funny, like a slapstick comedy. I had expected it to be tougher, frankly.