Month: February 2016

(Thursday, February 11th, 2016) – and see postscript

I took a trip forward, to the bow. I’d not been there yet. I’m not allowed forward if we are in dock – there are a lot of people scrambling around and cranes are lifting heavy things. I’m also not allowed forward if we are in heavy weather – they don’t want me leaning over as if I am Kate in the “Titanic”, only to get hit by a surprise wave. But today, smooth sailing, sunny skies for the most part, I am allowed forward. I checked in at the bridge (that’s the authority – that’s where I get permission) and went on down.

The upper deck is just below the poop deck. Yep, I find that amusing too. The poop deck is, by definition (I looked it up in Encyclopedia Britannica’s dictionary I have on my laptop), “a partial deck above a ship’s main afterdeck”. The upper deck, on our ship, is the same as the main afterdeck. It is the deck upon which are the winches for all the lines. There is an upper deck in the aft of the ship as well as the fore. And I think that the level of the deck that I see from the Pilot Deck, a few stories up, is at the level of the upper decks. That’s the deck, in the center of the ship, where we find the hatch covers and other heavy stuff.

On the side of the upper deck, on both sides of the ship and extending the length of the ship, one level down, protected from wind by the hull, is a fairly wide walkway extending the length of the ship. So from the aft upper deck I went down some stairs to the walkway and on up to the fore. I took some pictures on my counter-clockwise trip, hope they make sense. Things that looked big from my view way up on the Pilot Deck are in fact huge. Hatch covers, the two middle cranes, all the cleats and lines and winches, even the assorted turnbuckles and other hardware. All super-sized.

I walked on up to the fore, went to the very front where there is a railing, and hung out there for awhile. It is much quieter up there, hardly any engine noise, and the sea noise is also behind you. Just water in front. No land, no ships, some clouds off to starboard with rain coming down from them, but sunny where I was. A nice breeze. Gulls hovering overhead, wondering if I have food or if I am food, a couple of them dive-bombing me for a better look. We were cruising at about 12 or 15 knots but it felt rather serene. You can see the swells but can’t feel them as we consume the distance.

—– Postscript, written after Feb. 11th —–

I’ve been up to the fore a few times now. I’m trying my best to imprint the sense of it, so that later, when I look at a map, I can remember.

(Wednesday, February 9th, 2016)

The simple view: We show up at port, dock, unload, load, undock, and exit. Of course it’s not that simple. Our experience at Ho Chi Minh City is a good example of complications that add time.

One result of this experience is that I did not visit Ho Chi Minh City, just looked at it for a night, docked nearby. Hence the title. More on that later.

After a blustery day and night we arrived at the mouth of the Mekong Delta sometime late in the morning of February 7th, maybe 11am. We were due to head up into the delta, connecting with the Saigon River on up to Ho Chi Minh City, which used to be called Saigon as well.

But wait. There was no room at the docks for us. Just like an airline organizing gates for its flights, shipping companies vie for dock space, and we had to wait. So we anchored, and waited. We thought we were going to wait for a few hours, and pick up a pilot, and make our way up to the city in the late afternoon. It is about a 4 hour trip up the river.

Nothing all day. We gently rocked at anchor in the South China Sea, changing our heading with the tide and wind, with a couple of oil platforms visible nearby. The weather improved, we were in sight of land, and we were going nowhere. It turns out that we now had dock space, but no pilot. We waited on the pilot. Preparing for evening, the crew did some special locking. They closed various doorways and put grates over some ladderways, so that someone crawling onto our ship while we were at anchor could not get into our main cabin area, even if they boarded the cargo part of the vessel. I guess they’ve had some experience with robbers coming on board a ship at anchor at night, within sight of land.

8am the next day, February 8th. Still at anchor. Finally, about 2:30pm, a pilot boarded and we started up the delta.

Scenic. Too many photo ops! Lots of trees right up to the waterline, dense green far into the distance, waterways going every which way. Having a pilot made perfect sense for this trip.

We passed some outlying structures, probably some river traffic control stations, something like that. We passed some villages. One riverside village in particular had some strange structures, slots instead of windows in multi-story buildings that looked like small apartments. From the village came a loud sound of birds screeching. It had to be really loud in the village if we could clearly hear it on board, in the middle of the river. I took a video to see if I could capture the sounds. I am not sure it turned out – the engine and sea noise compete. My first thought was simply to Google it. Whoops, that’s a luxury we take for granted.

It was fun to continue to approach Ho Chi Minh City. We could see it in the distance, many tall apartment buildings and then tall downtown buildings. It is 3.5 million people, and looks it. The way there was full of 180 degree turns in the winding waterway. We could see approaching vessels because their towers giraffed over the foliage. It was as if we were all in a maze, but cheating by looking over the top.

We went under a bridge, pretty cool, looked tight to me. The pilot took us right down the middle. A day or so later I asked the Captain how close we came. Well, we are, with our current load, 39+ meters above waterline to the radar and antennae, call it 40. The bridge, on our charts, shows as having a clearance, dead center, of 43 meters. So hey, maybe 10 feet to spare, what’s the problem? Tee hee.  The Captain said that there are bridges near Houston and near Philadelphia that are much closer. He said he thinks that we get under the Houston bridge with only a meter to spare. Duck.

So we docked, which took a little while. It was now 7:30pm, and we were organizing to go onshore. I needed to get a Vietnam visa, which our port agent was to arrange. I understood that we’d go through the process when I arrived, and that he would lead me through it. $120, kind of expensive for a short visit, but okay, whatever. I casually asked the captain how long we were staying, assuming I had a day, maybe. He said 5am. I said “day after tomorrow, right?” He said “nope, we only have unloading mostly, and this agent says we’ll be done tonight”. And, the agent said that since it was Chinese New Year being celebrated, I had better make sure of my taxi, and that there was a midnight curfew that the police were enforcing.

So I didn’t go. I figured that I wouldn’t get a taxi ’till after 8:30 at best (it was already after 8), would spend another $40 or so in cab fare, only to stand in Saigon for an hour or so and then go back. Not worth it. The agent was mad at me because he’d done some preliminary work that we hadn’t asked for, and now was wasted. The Captain felt bad but there was nothing he could do. So No Chi Minh City for me. I was disappointed, but this is what I knowingly signed up for. A motto that seemed to fit: “Keep Small Things Small.” In the context of this trip, this was surely small.

It also meant that I could not get connected to some good-enough wifi, so blog posts and Dropbox uploads and Googling “birds on the Mekong” must wait until Shanghai, in a week or so.

The unloading schedule was basically held. The next morning we were done by around 6am with nothing left to do but to park the cranes, close the hatch doors, lash some things to the top of the hatch doors, that sort of thing. We were ready to pull up the gangway by 7:30 or so, and I could see that the crew weren’t hurrying. And then we waited. I thought we were waiting on the pilot again, but this time was a little different. The Captain said that today the low tide was especially low, and there wasn’t sufficient depth for us to leave quite yet. We are just about the biggest ship that fits up this river. It is important to keep the keel out of the mud. So we waited until a little after noon.

Where we were docked, the width of the river is about 700 feet. Our ship is about 200 meters long, so well over 600 feet, eh? When we docked, we pulled up alongside the dock and had the tugboats push us sideways into the dock. But now we needed to turn around. So, according to the Third Mate, the Pilot had to check to make sure of traffic heading our way, as we were about to block the whole river for that time (maybe 10-15 minutes) that we were turning around. From my vantage point it looked pretty tight against some small docks off our bow. You can’t see the front of the ship from the Pilot Deck. It looked tight. And our arc put our aft close to a neighbor ship. But no worries, and we got going. And it was correct that we needed to check for traffic. Seems that many ships, including a couple of cruise ships along with other freighters, had to wait for the tide. Now the waterway was busy.

Out we went, under the bridge with no worries, down the delta, about 24 hours after we had just been there. The birds were still noisy.

We dropped the pilot onto his little boat at about 5pm on February 9th and headed back into the South China Sea on our way to Shanghai. So – we spent much of February 7th, 8th, and 9th here, much of it waiting, and did all our “dock work” from about 9pm to 6am in one night. I am starting to understand freighter schedules better.

These pilots were on board for 4 or 5 hours for each trip. The pilot at Laem Chabang in Thailand was on board for about 15 minutes, just time enough to see us clear of the dock, then he got off. Singapore was about the same as Laem Chabang, maybe 30 minutes. I asked the Captain if this was an especially long piloting. He said yes but – the Houston ship channel takes more than 6 hours of piloting, the Mississippi delta channel to New Orleans takes 12 hours, and the channel to Philadelphia takes 9. Wow. And we have a cabin here, for 2 people, called the Pilot Cabin. It is used during the Panama Canal stretch and the Suez canal stretch, during which we have 2 pilots tag-teaming for us on those really long ones.

(Sunday, February 7th, 2016) – plus see addendum

I have no reference point yet, so I can’t report on whether this was “unusually bad”, or “a little bad”, or “what are you talking about, this is normal”. And since I thought it was “reasonably bad”, I was too shy to ask. Maybe later.

At the junction of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, directly south of the southernmost part of Vietnam, we turned from southbound to eastbound. The Gulf of Thailand is relatively shallow, and the South China Sea is relatively deep. That may have been a factor. There have been some monsoons in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, all in the north part of the South China Sea. That may also have been a factor. There was recently a small earthquake in Taiwan. Anyway, we hit a full day and full night worth of heavy seas, high winds, choppy and unpatterned swells, that sort of thing.

A few days later, looking at some swells, I had no clue as to their size. I was looking at them from the Pilot Deck, about 30 meters up, so it is hard to tell. The Captain said that what we were looking at were about 3 meter swells. Using that as a reference, the swells and high seas that we hit at the southern tip of Vietnam were much larger, so I estimate 4 or 5 meters. I do not trust that estimate.

By the way, the Captain said that it takes deep water and open seas to create really big swells. So, the South China Sea makes bigger swells than the Gulf of Thailand, and the Pacific Ocean makes some huge swells. He said he hopes I get to see some days at which there is no wind, lots of sun, and huge swells, out in the Pacific. Could be good! I declined to ask what size he considers “huge”.

We rolled a lot, that’s side to side. Maybe a 3 second frequency, maybe 30 degrees total, 15 each side of vertical, it’s hard to tell precisely. We pitched a lot, that’s fore-to-aft. Maybe an 8 second frequency, maybe a little faster. And every so often, like maybe once each five minutes, we got surprised by a larger than usual swell, that hit the front of the ship with force, sending a shudder down the length of the ship, and upending anything not tied down. A wallop.

It was extremely windy, so much so that the door to get onto the Pilot Deck was almost impossible to open. I poked my head outside while straining to keep it open, and decided to forego my usual stroll.

And I went back to my cabin and put on real shoes, replacing flip-flops. What was I thinking?

It was actually fun up on the bridge, because, except for those surprise shudders, you could see the roll and the pitch and the bow diving in and sending up spray. And you could hold on to rails and of course not worry about the wind. Many items on deck shook with each of those shudders. You tend to appreciate good lashing.

Back in the cabin, it was a little difficult to walk about. Better to stay seated. I thought that I had got used to the ship’s normal roll, but this was enough so that you had to hold on to something as you walked across the room to make sure that you didn’t find yourself thrown up against a wall. It wasn’t scary. It was just an effort. There was too much vibration and bouncing on the desk to feel good about spinning a laptop hard drive, and anyway aiming fingers at the keyboard was a challenge, so writing was out. Reading was okay, seated, but had that feel of reading in a jostling moving car – sometimes not the best thing to do. Playing music from my phone was good. I amused myself by attempting to pee standing up. One time only.

At night it was actually comical, trying to get some sleep. My bed is aligned fore-and-aft. If you are the type who sleeps with straight legs, like me, you are not in luck. You roll this way and that and you think you are going to roll off the bed. Then you get your legs situated to prevent rolling in one direction, but they lift up and don’t prevent you rolling in the other. Then we get hit with another shudder and nothing helps for that. A night with sleep measured in minutes at a time, and only a few sessions of that. Oh well.

Also, you learn fairly quickly how well you stowed things. “Not well at all” was the answer I got. Ha.  I heard bottles rolling from one side to another in various drawers. Water bottles fell over. Luckily they were capped. The soap bar decided to slide around the bathroom floor. “What the hell is that banging in the clothes closet?” ‘Twas my jump rope, hanging up, nice heavy wood handles doing their thing. I understood now why the TV was lashed to the desk. So I had a half hour or so of “stowage education and maintenance” to quiet things down. “Quiet” is of course relative.

The seas calmed midway through the next morning. At lunch the Third Mate described the technique he uses to keep from rolling over in bed, and I think I know how to try it, next time. I napped for two hours in the afternoon, and found that many others had done the same, so I felt a little better – that I wasn’t the only one affected. Also, overnight, one of the windshields in the bridge shattered. Those windshields are way high, so I don’t think anything hit it. I think it was over-flexed in its frame during one of those shudder incidents. The windshield shattering gave me the notion that this wasn’t a totally normal situation, but I haven’t asked yet.

—– Addendum, a few days later —–

After some smooth sailing leaving Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of days in the fog, we hit another bad patch. This time we got reports. We had 7 to 8 meter swells. The wind was at about 40 knots gusting to 50. Nobody allowed on open decks. Makes you appreciate “smooth sailing”.

I’m not going to report each piece of smooth or rough water from here on out, too much is too much, unless something truly unusual warrants a separate post. There will be some photos that all look alike. Like in the Grand Canyon, the photos don’t seem to properly reflect the feeling. I have some videos that I am not putting on Dropbox for now, due to their size and my limited time uploading. They are a little better than the pics at showing the wave size and power, but still don’t have that sense of size. If I get one that captures what I want, I’ll post that one. Nothing yet.

(Friday, February 5th, 2016)

We were in the Port of Laem Chabang from about 2pm Wednesday (a few hours early) to 5pm Thursday. The Captain said that some things went more smoothly than expected, and that we were able to leave earlier than what we had anticipated. Leaving early is good, even if we can’t adjust our arrival at the next port. It gives us leeway to cruise slowly if we want, saving fuel, or to cruise around bad weather. And, usually, arrangements can be made at the destination so that we can be received early. Not always, though. At this port, there was space for three big ships, and most of the time there were three big ships docked. Some ports have the same challenge as airports – where to park.

Well, there was one other ship docked there. A Thai navy vessel, huge, gray. In the water around it were some lines and floats, like those marking a swimming area at a beach. I am pretty sure that the purpose of these particular lines and floats was a clear “come no nearer to us than this” indicator. I also have a sense that their place at the dock was reserved. For sure.

For passengers and seamen not involved in port duties: When we reach a port, we get our passports back, after an officer clears everybody with the port authorities and registers our declarations. Before we leave the ship we acknowledge that we know the official time that shore leave ends, and ensure a method of communicating with us. It is clearly our responsibility. This time, shore leave was set to end at 1800 (6pm) on Thursday, but the rate of progress caused the Captain and Mates to change the end of shore leave to 1pm, and to make some phone calls to rein in seamen and officers who were out and about.

Just after we docked a woman came on board and set up a mini-office in the gym, to negotiate taxi services with us. In this port taxis were required – there was no way to just walk off the ship and get anywhere. I rode to Sriracha in a taxi driven by her husband, so that he could get her on his phone if he didn’t understand my English.

I had visited Sriracha the first day and evening we were docked (Wednesday), and on Thursday morning opted not to try to go to Pattaya for the day. I’m glad I made that choice – I would have had no time in Pattaya, given the change in shore leave. As it was, I spent much of the day on the Pilot Deck watching discharge (the official name for unloading) and loading operations. I’ll write a tiny bit about Sriracha in a separate post.

Enough prelude – here’s what we do when at port:

The gist of it: We sail near to the port. We pick up a pilot. We get met by tugboats. The tugboats ease us into our place alongside the dock. We get tied up at the dock. The gangway goes down. Agents from the port come on board, and those of us who are getting out and about get off the ship. We lift the cranes from their locked down “at sea” positions, and start the discharging. Often some items need to be lifted and put aside to get at items that need discharging. At the same time we are discharging, we are loading, if a particular hold is available and the load fits the overall plan. Many cranes are simultaneously active. Trucks carrying cargo and empty trucks ready to receive cargo coordinate their movements on the dock alongside. Once all loading is complete, and the “put aside” items are put somewhere proper, the hatch covers are closed, the spare wood (used for shims and protection) is lashed down, the cranes are returned to lock-down, and we are ready to sail. Port agents leave the ship. Tugboats arrive. A pilot comes on board and the gangway is raised. We drop lines, the tugboats tug, and we separate from the dock. We come under our own power and the tugboats leave. A pilot boat comes alongside, the pilot climbs down a rope ladder and drops onto the pilot boat. We let the pilot boat get away and then we are sailing again.

In Raw Photos I made another captioned set of pics showing docking, discharging, loading, leaving. Kind of nerdy but I found it fascinating. Again, things are more complicated than they seem at first.

There are different kinds of holds on this ship. The one that is nearest (just in front of) the tower is the hold for unusually-shaped items – items too tall or wide to fit normally. “Normal”, though, is relative. We put things into “normal” holds that would not fit in a container. This special hold right in front of us can hold about 66 containers (and has the infrastructure to hold them), but it doesn’t go any deeper than the top of the main deck. Under it are still some offices, and then fuel storage, and part of the engine.

The “normal” holds, those in front of the hold for unusually-shaped items, are several stories deep, at least as deep as the tower is high, to help you visualize just how much cargo is not visible when we are underway. Those holds are covered with “hatch covers”. Think of a hatch cover as a huge bi-fold door, 30 or 40 feet on a side, each door weighing 20 to 30 tons itself. Hatch covers aren’t just covers – items can be stacked on top of the hatch covers and lashed down, and those items can weigh hundreds of tons.

Containers can be put into all the holds, but we don’t carry many containers. So far I have seen many unusually-shaped pieces of industrial equipment, some obviously heavy pieces, and some almost-put-together finished pieces. For example, we are carrying two cranes with us. The “control room” base of each of them is two stories high and much wider than what would fit in a container. The “arm” parts are very long, and are lashed to hatch covers at the front of the ship. They are exiting in Shanghai, a couple of visits away.

Each hold has a system in which “shelving” can be put into place. The bottom of the hold is loaded. Then the crane picks up some shelving (pieces that weigh several tons on their own, and are about the size of a floor of a regular container), and puts it in place over that cargo, resulting in a new floor. Repeat until either full or no more cargo.

I hung out with the Captain a bit as we watched some progress. He said that their definition of light lifting was anything less than 200 tons, that all of the four main cranes could handle that weight. Often they had heavier items, still able to be handled by a single on-board crane. Truly heavier lifts involve multiple cranes or a dock-side crane. One of the bigger lifts in his memory was a generator, headed from Kobe to Philadelphia, $30M worth, 420 tons. That one took some planning. Cargo that he’s also carried include big ship engines (like the one powering this ship), yachts of various sizes and shapes, and parts of turbines for hydro plants. So far, at Singapore and at Laem Chabang, we have not used dock-side cranes, relying on our own on-board cranes.

There are different types of cargo and of course different ships for them. Nearby were some examples of ships with a single purpose. Just aft of us was an oil (or some other liquid) tanker, not tied to a dock but to a set of tie-downs connecting to a long pipeline to the shore. Just fore of us was a ship being loaded by hundreds (all night long) of dump trucks carrying what looked to me like grain, but which a crew member said was more like sawdust, not edible, but used in some sort of construction activity elsewhere. Those trucks emptied their loads onto a conveyor that then lifted the material, dumping it into a hold. Both of those ships were in port when we came and in port when we left.

(Thursday, February 4th, 2016)

Yesterday, we docked at the Laem Chabang port in Thailand, and I wanted to get out and about. I also wanted to find a good wifi connection for a couple of hours, for some Dropbox uploads, some email, and some blog posting.

Laem Chabang itself is just a port. The town itself is only maybe a thousand people, and reminded me of a small Mexican border town. If we were staying for a few days I would probably have gone up to Bangkok, maybe a couple hours by public transit.

The realistic choices were Sriracha or Pattaya. Sriracha is a small city, or a big town, not sure what the Thai consider “big”. Pattaya is a resort town, beach, bars, girls. For the young seamen, Pattaya wins in a landslide. “Girls!” “Bars!” Well, I grew up in a resort town. And I am not a 20-year-old seaman. As you can tell by this post’s title, I decided on Sriracha. All I wanted to do was some online work and some walking around. I wasn’t worried about food. I just wanted to get a feel for the place. I thought I could visit Pattaya the next day, if things worked out. As it turned out, we completed our loading earlier than expected and left early. No Pattaya. No problem.

In the middle of the afternoon my taxi driver dropped me off in front of a major mall. We agreed that he would pick me up at the same place later that evening. I took photos in all directions, in case I needed to show them to somebody to help me get back there in case I got lost. Not that I have ever gotten lost.

The place at which I got dropped off was a huge mall, in the middle of a very busy downtown area. The mall was nothing special to a Westerner. It had a major retailer, many small stores, all familiar except that the exact brands weren’t familiar, and there wasn’t much English. The major retailer’s entrance was the usual perfume counters, all that stuff, so it was especially uninteresting to me. But they had an air-conditioned Starbucks, which had wifi, and so I camped myself there for a bit.

After getting my online stuff out of the way, I packed up and went for a walk around outside. The sun had gone down and so the temperature was more reasonable. The streets were very busy, crowded enough so that generally the cars were moving slow, just poking their way around. There were a lot of motorcycles, and a lot of scooters, especially those scooters with motorcycle-sized tires. Two schoolgirls on a scooter was a familiar sight. Scooters with sidecars (carrying three people total) were common. The reincarnation (maybe it never died!) of the old Honda 90 lives in Sriracha. Left-side driving. Look both ways!

There were tons of street vendors selling everything. Clothes, shoes, phones, bags of all types, food of all types, watches, jewelry, hats, you name it. It was very crowded. I am not that big and I felt huge and in the way, and more than a bit claustrophobic. But it was also fun. I priced a bag, an old Swedish schoolbag design, one that I know the price of in Phoenix and in San Francisco. It wasn’t cheaper in Sriracha. That was a surprise. And since the currency, baht, are about 35 to the dollar, it seemed more expensive. “Only 2000!” Ha.

The street vendors completely consumed the street space all the way around the mall on three sides. I am sure that a lot more buying and selling went on outside the mall than inside, but it wasn’t empty inside, either. Just much more interesting outside.

I noticed colors. Inside the mall it was glass and metal and black and white, and careful colors that were part of various stores’ identities – their logos formed the basis of their color schemes. That’s just like in the US. Outside, however, it was so much more chaotically colorful. Bright colors. I wish I could describe it better, but the difference was noticeable. And all over. Billboards. Painted dump trucks. Storefronts. The whole street vending scene. Much fun. It was night, and my photos weren’t working well, a regret. I mostly gave up on photos for the night.

The people all seemed intent on their shopping, busy going places. It was a mid-weekday afternoon and evening at the center of a shopping district, so this is expected behavior. I didn’t get a chance to visit beaches or parks or temples, that sort of place, where the people might seem more relaxed. Everybody who I dealt with was friendly, and I had quite a few language challenges – English is known, but not universally, and not that well, at least not in this town. But no one showed animosity or frustration at me. Got lots of smiles and lots of help. People were patient with me, which tells me a lot about them. I sure hope I am that way with strangers to our town when I have the chance.

I ended up at an outdoor area close to the mall, with a guitar/guitar/bongo trio playing and singing, cold beer (Chang) on sale, and a projection screen showing highlights of last week’s English Premier League soccer matches. I understood none of the lyrics, none of the comments on the TV (it was in an Asian language), but totally understood the beer and had a nice mellow time. I ended up having a snack from a street vendor, meat on a stick. I have no clue what. I bought based mostly on smell. It tasted good. I also had watermelon and yogurt, also nice because the meat was very spicy and I needed an extinguisher on my tongue. Then back for another set from the trio, and another beer.

There were little (well, ten feet tall) Buddha shrines in various places. In my increasing-radius spiral away from the mall, I saw four or five. One of them was in the middle of the street vending area. They were ornate, clean, lit by both artificial light and candlelight, and noticeable to me because of their juxtaposition with ordinary commercial enterprises.

That’s about it, a short little visit, but fun. The ship looked huge, bathed in floodlights as loading was in progress, as we approached it up a long causeway to the dock. I had forgot that it was large, and that my cabin was only a tiny part of it. The “busy” dockside seemed almost serene compared to the street scenes I had just left.

(Sunday, January 31st, 2016)

For most of the day we have been bunkering.

As a golfer I have spent an excessive amount of time bunkering. Several strokes at each bunker visit.

But that’s not what we are talking about here. In the dictionary, the golf term is the second usage. The first usage is that a bunker is a storage, mostly used when referring to a ship, and mostly used when referring to the storage of fuel in the ship. So bunkering is taking on fuel.

What happens is this: A smallish (well, compared to us) tanker ship comes up alongside while we are anchored in the middle of a bay, and a fuel line is connected to us, and we fuel up. That’s the simple explanation.

What happens is this: In semi-protected but not necessarily calm waters (we had some wind and rain along with sun), with the target ship at anchor, the fueler ship slowly approaches. Lines are thrown, then stronger lines are pulled, and very carefully the ships are aligned. Then the fueler workers prepare the hose (I am sure there is a better name for it, not “hose”) by draining any fuel already in it, and getting things organized for the crane on board the fueler to pick up the hose and get it near to the target. By “crane” I mean a pump/crane combination, like what you see when concrete is pumped at some construction sites. In the meanwhile the target workers are preparing the input junction. I saw the two sets of workers hold up various devices – I think they were agreeing on exactly what type of adapter would be used. Or maybe not agreeing, based on what happened later. I imagine that there is a level of standardization but that there are still variances. Then the fueler crane lifts the hose, and the target workers attach the hose to the input junction, and fueling (bunkering) begins.

There was some concern this morning. Folks on the fueler were demanding something, and folks on the target were saying “no” in hand gestures. Finally one of our superior officers came out, and a gangplank was laid between the ships, and a couple of the fueler workers came on board. They supervised the fitting of the hose to the input junction. There must have been something confusing or special going on.

They were alongside at about 11am, took until a little after noon to get connected, and are still pumping now at 7pm. I asked the Master, at dinner, how long it takes, and he said “far too long this time, we were supposed to be leaving Singapore at 3:30”. He said that the fuelers did not have the equipment necessary to heat the fuel, and so the viscosity is not what it should be to enable the pump to do its best, and so it is going to take awhile. Like industries with which I am familiar, some “ordinary to laypeople” events are usually much more complicated than they seem to be from the outside looking in. Both the fueler and target workers are somewhat frustrated.

At lunch I asked the Chief how much fuel we were taking on. “Oh we’re just topping off. We’re only taking 800.” So I thought hard about what units he was using, and couldn’t come up with it on my own. So I asked “800 what?” “Tons.” So they are just topping off with 800 tons of fuel. Oh my. The Chief said “Yep, when we are sailing we use about 35 tons a day, so that 800 gives us 20 or so more days, give or take. Of course if we hit bad weather we go through fuel more rapidly than that.”

In my head, rounding everything for easy math, 10 pounds per gallon, so 200 gallons per ton, so 160,000 gallons. I think I have that right. Topping off. I did not ask the Chief how much fuel we were carrying in total. I’ll save that for another day. We are next bunkering in South Korea, and then in Houston. The price for fuel, and the places we bunker, are negotiated by the carrier (Rickmers Shipping) and the fuel vendors globally.

(Sunday, January 31st, 2016)

It is Sunday, January 31st. I have been on board for a couple of days now.

I am getting to know my way around those places I am allowed to go so far. Since we are bunkering (read the next post!), and the port pilot is still on board, it is best that I not go up to the bridge yet. I have plenty of time, and don’t want to get in the way. So this little post is just an introduction to my cabin and the feel of the ship so far.

Just like immigration at Changi airport, getting into Jurong Port Gate was special. The Rickmers agent sent a driver for me who picked me up at the hotel. I had thought that that was nice but unnecessary. It turns out to have been totally necessary – I hadn’t a chance on my own.

The driver, and I had also received this advice from the port agent, said that I was to use the invitation from the Master (the Master of the Rickmers Shanghai, a.k.a. the Captain), which authorized me for a visit to the Rickmers Shanghai. I was not to tell the people at the gate that I was leaving on the ship, only that I was visiting. He said that I would go through the reverse immigration (emigration?) once we were underway. At this point I had to trust them, what options did I have, really? It turns out that they knew that people staffing the gate were clueless as to how to handle me, since I was not a seaman checking in. I still had to have my bags searched, and my passport checked, but luckily (or maybe the driver knew), the person checking my bags and the person checking my invitation would not be the same person. So the natural question “a roller, and two carry-ons, for a visit?” didn’t come up.

Anyway, the driver guided me both physically (“go through that yellow door and I will wait for you on the other side”) and mentally (“don’t offer information, say what the invite says, that you are on official business authorized by the Master”). The Master of a ship has a lot of power around the port – or at least it seemed so to me. As as his invitee, I had some power as well. I got to go to the front of the line in front of real seamen checking in. And then the serious young woman handling my request said “okay” after taking my picture and stamping things on forms. I said “that’s it?” She smiled, gave me a thumbs up, and said “yep – go find your driver” and I scooted out the door. In five minutes we were carrying my bags up a gangplank and onto an industrial smelling ship on which many people were moving many things around, and were very aware of the guy in blue jeans coming on board.

Today we are bunkering out in the Singapore Harbor, and we are expecting immigration officials to come on board once we are done with that. In addition to me, a new Chief Engineer is joining the crew at this stop, so both of us have some passport work in front of us I think.

So here I am. I am in my cabin, which is about twice as big as the Hotel Kai hotel room. I have a twin bed, an L-shaped sofa, a desk with a good desk lamp, and a bathroom with a shower. It is actually larger than I need.

The Master came by to say hi, and also to say that while at port everybody was busy, I was not allowed on the main deck for my own safety, and there was likely nobody on the bridge so it might be good to stay away from there as well. I expected that, so no worries. Later, the Third Mate showed me around, to places I could go on my own even while we are in port. It is all going to be okay.

I have portholes facing aft and port. They aren’t the best to look out of because it is practically impossible to clean them on the outside – they are up the side of a multi-story building. But they still allow an indication of where we are and the general conditions outside. Not bad.

I am on D deck, where other passengers will go, as well as where the Master and the Chief Engineer have their rooms/offices. Here is a layout of decks and what I see so far as their purpose, after my introduction from the Third Mate:

Highest first:
Bridge – obvious – where the big windows are, where all the ship’s movements are controlled from
Pilot Deck – below the Bridge, open area, open to passengers, and one large cabin for port pilots
D Deck – passengers’ and superior officers’ cabins
C Deck – other officers’ cabins
B Deck – non-officers’ (seamen!) cabins
A Deck – the mess, galley, conference room, shipping business offices, hospital
Poop Deck – entrance from gangway (when in port), laundry, bonded store (when at sea), gym
Upper Deck – I think this means the uppermost deck of the cargo area of the ship, not quite sure

If we had a full set of passengers there would be 36 of us on board. I am the only passenger of seven possible, so there are 30 of us on board at this point. Remember that the ship is a 24-hour operation so there are multiple shifts of workers on board. I get the sense that it is much busier during port operations than while at sea. We are not quite at sea yet, so everyone still seems pretty busy.

I don’t know if there is an elevator. Nobody mentioned it and I don’t need it. I bet my legs stay in good shape, as already I am up and down a lot.

Early this morning, about 6am, we shoved off from the dock, and sailed out of part of Singapore Harbor. I went up on the Pilot Deck and took some pictures, hope they make sense. We passed tons of refineries. We settled in between many other ships, dropped anchor, and waited for bunkering.

We get fed well. A full breakfast, eggs and meat and toast and yogurt. Lunch is the largest meal, with soup, meat, potato or rice, vegetable, good bread. Dinner is like lunch only without soup and with slightly smaller portions. A good salad, chopped lettuce, tomato, cucumber, at lunch and dinner. Today at lunch we also got ice cream. Dinner tonight was stuffed pepper. I already know that I need to cut down on amount. I am starting a conversation with the cook. Tomorrow I am limiting myself to yogurt for breakfast. The food isn’t creative but it is good and so far has been varied. No complaints. It is my challenge to find a balance with the cook on amount. Coffee is available anytime. No alcohol yet, we are in port. I expect to be able to buy wine and beer once we are underway. I don’t have definite plans in that area, haven’t really missed the alcohol at this point. No alcohol above 15% is allowed, so no Scotch.

The cook’s mate delivered about 10 liters of bottled water to my room. I have a refrigerator in the room, so I can keep yogurt, beer, and cold water, that sort of thing, in my room.

Everybody speaks English to me, in several different accents. The officers are speaking Romanian. I don’t know what language the others are speaking yet, Filipino maybe but I am not sure. English is the official language on board, so any general announcements on the PA system are in English.

The whole ship has a purposeful, industrial feel, and that carries forward to the attitudes as well. Especially since we are in port everybody seems bent on a schedule, eating quickly, changing back into orange work coveralls (no work clothes in the mess areas) as soon as mealtime is over. This kind of work is dirty so the coveralls are dirty. It is hot so folks are sweating. There is a definite sense of hierarchy on board. It feels like places I am familiar with – some factories, some refineries. That makes sense.

Okay, enough for now. I am establishing the beginnings of a pattern, adjusted of course by anything interesting happening on board. I am getting some writing and reading done, and some exercise, both aerobic and non.

I was just thinking of my “L-shaped sofa”. I remember a Dimitri Martin joke: “I have an L-shaped sofa. lower case.”

(Friday, January 29th, 2016)

It is Friday afternoon. I had to think hard to come up with that. The 29th of January. I had to look that one up.

I am writing this in my cabin aboard the “Rickmers Shanghai”, docked at Jurong Port (one of six main ports) in Singapore, Singapore, on Singapore Island. Hey, we say “New York, New York” and don’t giggle. Singapore is a city, a country, and an island. The country is mainly the island, although there are many smaller islands that are also a part of the country. The whole thing is not that big. The city started in the southeast part of the island, but has expanded enough to consume quite a bit of the island in urban-ness. More than five million people live here.

Four cranes are all currently active on board. The crew is busy so my role while in port is to not get into trouble, and wait until they can spare the time to give me an orientation. They are pleasant, and treat me matter of factly, which feels good already. I am their only passenger, and probably will be until we reach the US.

I have my computer set up. I have no internet and don’t expect it until we get to Thailand. Weird: I will be in “airplane mode” for a few days. No ads from Costco or Cox, but also no notes from friends and family, hmmm. While writing I am listening to Muddy Waters on Chess, from 65 years ago, not bad. It is gently raining outside. That is not news to Singaporeans. Their least rainy month, at 7 inches, equals Phoenix’s annual rainfall.

Instead of describing the ship, and because I am barely onboard as yet, I’ll write about my first week away, and close this post there. The likely case is that both this Singapore post and the introduction to the ship post will publish near to each other.

A blog admin note: I intend to augment these posts with photos, but my current (WordPress) technique assumes that I am almost always online. I am almost never online, and when I am online I am in a port and I want to go visiting. So my compromise: While offline, I write in Notepad (.txt) and I copy photos to “Raw Photos” in Dropbox. When online, Dropbox will automatically sync the photos so folks can see them. And when online, I’ll copy my Notepad stuff into WordPress posts and publish. Saves time. What I don’t get: Posts with photos interspersed. What I do get: Posts published, and the photos available for folks to sift through. I might caption some of the photos (another thing I can do offline), because I will send a few to my parents’ digital frames when I get a chance. I might improve on this technique, but that’s what it is for now.

Okay, on to Singapore…

A freighter ship does not schedule its port visits around passengers, so I needed to be in Singapore a bit early to provide the necessary time buffer. Wonderful! I had a few days in Singapore, with nothing specific to do except check in with the port agent for Rickmers Shipping once in a while. As it turns out, the ship came in a day earlier than expected, but I still had a nice amount of time to myself.

I flew to LA from Phoenix, everybody knows that trip. Then I boarded Singapore Airlines from LA to Singapore with a stop at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The string-on-globe route took us up the US coast all the way to where we were even with Eugene, Oregon, before allowing the sunset to catch us somewhere over the Aleutian Islands. Due to the Aleutians, Alaska is in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Cool. “From here you can see…” — no, no, I won’t go there.

I am going to gush a bit about Singapore Airlines, then I will try to edit my gushing so that people who I care about don’t gag while reading. Summary: This was the best long flight I have taken. It was my first with Singapore Airlines, and now I see why people I trust will spend extra to fly with them. Even in Economy Class I was treated so perfectly well – not over-served, just attended to, competently, gracefully, with a smile. Beauty, elegance – I have never used those words to describe air flight, but they fit here. The food was good, which translates to great for airline food. We had choices. I cannot say that after about 22 hours of travel I arrived “refreshed”, that’d be a lie, but it did not feel bad at all. Again: The best I’ve had.

We landed at Changi Airport at around 3:30am. Empty. There were no lines at immigration, nice. But I stayed a little longer and got to know some of the immigration folk. It seems that my mode of leaving Singapore, as a passenger on a freighter ship, was unusual enough so that the immigration “midnight shift” didn’t know what to do with me. It would be so convenient if I were “just” leaving on a named/numbered air flight or cruise ship. There’s a space on the form, and, well, it could not be left blank. Also, I could not give a definite departure date. Hmm. I could understand their suspicion. In the end the senior-most officer there had to wake up his boss to ask what to do. I felt bad for him – for both of them really – but he stayed friendly to me throughout, and never did I feel that I was a “problem”, just an interesting odd challenge that would get solved, and we had plenty of time. His boss called Rickmers agents in New York (a lucky time zone hit!), and we got it settled.

Singapore’s mass transit is great. It was easy to get everywhere I wanted. From the airport I popped up above ground about a ten-minute walk from my hotel. I made it there in only an hour due to a tendency I have to make the occassional 180-degree-wrong decision, and to stick with it (persistence or stupidity, you be the judge). I got help from some older Arab men having some strong coffee at a street-side cafe (I had a cup with them, that’s how I know), and after chuckling to themselves in a different language they gave me good directions. I like walking around a city, just not with full luggage. I did, however, get some advice on where to get good lamb for dinner. It turned out later to be excellent advice and lamb.

I dropped my luggage at Hotel Kai and spent the morning walking about. I wasn’t sure to where I was walking – mostly I was using up a few hours until the hotel room was available for a nap.

I lucked into just the right choice of direction this time (well, I admit to having some help from the hotel staff), walking past a cathedral, the Supreme Court building, Parliament, finding myself along the Singapore River in downtown. There were sculptures, riverboats, low bridges, lots of public space. One means of commute in this area is electric scooter – whoosh! I tried to photograph one but missed it. Singapore is left-side driving (and left-side walking, tee hee), but with many one-way streets downtown. Look both ways.

This part of town is historical, with many colonial-era buildings in the foreground on the river. In the background are tall skyscraper office buildings with the logos of global companies at the top. An impressive juxtaposition.

A friend told me that his favorite part of Singapore was the architecture, and I agree with him that it is special. I have been to many big cities in the US, Europe, and China, but Singapore does skyscraper better than any I have seen so far. I used to think “how inventive can you get with something tall and skinny?” but I realize that I had no idea. You’ll see quite a few photos of buildings, and, like photos of the Grand Canyon, the photos don’t do justice to the reality of the experience. (Especially photos from this amateur.) The skyscraper-builders here seem to be willing to take more design chances than those in the US. It pays off.

While walking around that first morning, I kept getting glimpses of what looked like a ship, sailing in the sky. I could only barely make it out through the clouds and haze, and at first I couldn’t see the bottom directly. Eerie! I kept seeing it from all angles. The sun was behind it, making it especially mystical-looking. I took a few too many photos of it. More on this later, but for now I was thinking that whoever designed it, and whoever placed it in that place, couldn’t have had a bigger effect on folks seeing it from downtown.

I got back to the Hotel Kai. Super-small rooms. That wasn’t a surprise – I wanted to experiment. It was so nice. It works perfectly. The staff there was friendly and very helpful. It is a very small hotel, not just the rooms, and I think there are only 40 or so rooms total. So I got treated well – as an individual, which feels pretty good when you are traveling. I hadn’t slept on the plane, so I was ready for a nap. Well, the nap lasted ’till dinner, and that was about it for the day.

Over the next couple of days I visited places, just like a typical tourist. I took long mid-day naps, like a typical tourist from many time zones away. I did some business with the port agent for the Rickmers Shanghai.

I went to the Marina Bay district, a beautiful place surrounded by tall buildings and including an almost separate island containing the Marina Bay Sands resort and casino. That’s the building that is holding that ship up in the sky. Or, as a buddy at a bar said to me, it also looks like a cricket wicket. Ha!  Marina Bay has a nice waterfront for public events, and the Marina Bay Sands has everything you expect (and either like or not) in a high-end casino/resort. I walked by shops in which the norm for a handbag was about $1000. You could get a distorted view of things here. I saw a shop in which the bags were “only” $350. I bought three. No I didn’t. I didn’t go into the casino. It’s not my thing, and it wasn’t easy to just walk in. You had to give up your passport and at least $200 as a starter. So, I did not start. I took a pricey elevator ride up to the “Skypark” – that’s the name of that ship in the sky. Us mortals could walk around an observation deck, the “bow of the ship”, but only hotel guests could visit the gardens, the infinity pool, and the several restaurants up there. It was worth the price – the views were amazing, and the feeling of being on that ship in the sky was interesting. I felt a little like an alien visitor. Both for the spot on the bow of that ship, and my normal reaction to casino/resorts of this type. Time to leave. A nap was waiting for me.

Next day I took the MTA, piece of cake, out to the Botanical Gardens. Good public transit – how wonderful. I spent most of a day there, including quite a bit of time in the National Orchid Garden. It was hot and humid, sometimes rainy, and simply wonderful. I could have taken ten times the pictures I did take. It helps to be situated on the equator, in a tropic zone, with plenty of rainfall. Plants we in Phoenix consider house plants, and maybe bathroom-only plants, are in the wild here, and as huge as houses.

In San Francisco there are some beautiful orchids in a “hot house”. Those are outside, here. And in the Orchid Garden they have a “cool house”, for those orchids from higher-elevation regions, for which the heat is unwanted. Ha. The National Orchid Garden has many programs in sync with other gardens, has a rather large staff, and conducts orchid experiments. They had a list of orchids that only they can grow.

On my last full day in Singapore, I was leg tired from all day in the gardens the day before, so I opted for “things that you ride”. First stop, again an easy MTA ride, was the Singapore Cable Car from Faber Peak. “Peak” is a little strong but hey. Maybe 300-400 feet. The cable car goes through the upper part of a hotel, and connects the main island with another island, Sentosa, in the middle of Singapore harbor. I had lunch at the top of Faber, with a great view. On the terrace above the restaurant, in a private area, a wedding was happening. Nice voyeuristic fun – people dressed up, looking good, in mid-day, pop dance music playing, foreign-language jokes over a loudspeaker. A few of us in the restaurant below were chuckling to one another and having a good time listening. Some of us probably understood what was being said – not me! Sentosa Island is mostly one big amusement park, water slides, other stuff like that, a resort, and a golf course. Probably some other stuff. It didn’t seem like anything unusual, so I skipped it.

A nap, shorter this time (yay, getting over the jet lag), then another walk through that area of town where I was lost in the morning a few days ago. Found the recommended restaurant, had some Turkish espresso that felt intravenous if you know what I mean, and had some very good lamb kabob with peppers and onions.

Eating in Singapore: I ate breakfast at the hotel, which was good – eggs if you want, cereal if you want, that sort of thing. Lunch out was mostly salads. Dinners out were either Chinese or Arabic. All of it good. Beer, also good (cold!).

More “things that you ride”: On a recommendation I waited until after sunset to take the riverboat cruise up and down the snaky Singapore River. That river is a controlled river now, like the River Walk in San Antonio. We had a slight delay due to thundershowers. The rain was not a concern – if it was, nothing would get done in Singapore – but the lightning was cause for pause. Mostly the river cruise went by areas that I had already seen, but from a slow boat, at night with lights and all, it was quite nice. Some of the night photos came out.

Okay, that’s the tour. I have already written too much. What’d I think? Well, everybody I met seemed to be friendly and nice, even those who seemed to be in a hurry getting to their jobs or whatever. There was a sense of industry and progress and striving. Singapore doesn’t have natural resources. They export orchids and aquarium fish, not exactly country-supporting commodities. So Singapore is into value-add. They have many refineries (Indonesian oil). They have a large technological contribution. Many design offices of tech companies famous around the world are housed in Singapore. They are an Asian financial hub.

The people are diverse. Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Arabic, European, African. I’d say (a guess) that’s the order in terms of population percentage. From my probably-naive viewpoint everybody got along well. Many languages were spoken on the MTA, and the announcements were in three languages (English, Chinese, Malay). A sight on the MTA (I wanted to take a photo but that wouldn’t be right): A couple of teen Muslim girls in head scarves along with three Chinese girls, all of them skinny, all giggling at something on a phone, all five of them in different color Converse All-Stars. Too cute.

The government is really strict, from what I understand. I have no real experience, just listening and reading. Although a democracy, the same party has ruled for decades. Kind of a benevolent dictatorship, eh? Depends on what you think of the decisions of those in power. No drugs – possible death penalty, a concise deterrent. I didn’t see any sign of oppression by police or other authority figures, nothing like that. My one dealing with authority, at immigration, was pleasant even if challenging.

Where I was staying was a pretty affluent area, so I am not sure if extrapolation from there is apt. More than a couple Lamborghinis, Ferraris parked in front of coffee shops, plenty of those handbags from casino shops, that sort of thing. What do you do with a Ferrari in Singapore? If I need to ask, I guess I don’t understand.

Looking at photos I’m reminded of a few other things to mention, but this post has gone on long enough. Maybe I’ll add a mini-post along the way, if those things still seem interesting enough to write about. I am now on board, and have been for a couple of nights (I didn’t write this post at one sitting). I’ll introduce the ship in a bit.