Month: April 2016

(Saturday, April 23rd, 2016)

… if I can take liberties and claim that riding as a passenger on a freighter ship constitutes “action”.

I am sitting at a kitchen counter at my parents’ house in The Villages, Florida. With a pretty good WiFi arrangement, I hope to make some blog posts and see that photos in “Raw Photos” are updated.

So you don’t have to go searching for the link to “Raw Photos”, here it is again:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/48tdqxoywtjkj6g/AACY-cCt-BHG92T3xtKwzUTwa?dl=0

There are “Raw” (no editing, only a few deletions), and “Cooked” (edited, many captioned) pictures under “Raw Photos” now. “Raw Photos” is now the wrong name for the highest level folder, but I didn’t want to change anything and break the link.

Thursday, I disembarked at Port Manatee, Florida, on the southwest coast of Tampa Bay. My sister and brother-in-law were very kind to come pick me up and deliver me to central Florida. I’ll be visiting for a week, and getting some errands done. Then I’ll drive up to Morehead City, North Carolina, and reboard as the ship heads out to Montoir, France.

During the time I have good internet here I’ll post a little more about the US ports and edit a few sets of pictures. For a few days there’ll be stuff trickling onto the blog or into “Raw Photos”.

(Saturday, April 16th, 2016)

(With apologies to Terry for whom the Who is a boo.)

Our Captain had “one of those long days” from Tuesday night until Wednesday night. By “long day” I mean he worked all those hours. Some of it was expected and some not.

We approached Houston on Tuesday night, took on a harbor pilot at about 10pm, and went up the Houston Ship Channel, past a dozen or more refineries and all sorts of docks, until berthing at around 4:30am on Wednesday morning. I was on deck for a little while up the channel but went back to sleep for a bit when no pictures were going to be good. Also, refineries don’t interest me that much – I have seen my share.

We all had to get up early to meet the customs and immigration officials, especially those of us wanting to go ashore later. I also needed to confirm the laws applicable to my upcoming dis- and re-embarking.

So far so good. Then we learned that, instead of one expected inspection, we were lucky enough to get three!

Inspection #1: Coast Guard. We learned about this because they were waiting for us. No big deal, and in fact we were overdue for such an inspection. The Coast Guard is supposed to inspect us once a year and it had been more than that. The last time that we were available they were busy. So this time for sure. Everything went fine. (More on the Coast Guard later.)

The Coast Guard checks environmental compliance, quarantine compliance, dangerous cargo, general crew conditions, and general ship safety conditions.

Inspection #2: Inspectors representing our flag country, Marshall Islands, paid a visit. These inspections also happen once a year, but not with as much enforced regularity as the Coast Guard.

The flag country is where our ship is registered, and to whom we pay fees and taxes. Their inspection is just to see that the ship that is here is the same ship that has been registered, and is in good operating condition, and that we are using it the way that we promised to use it – for example, for a commercial shipping vessel.

Inspection #3: This one was the inspection that we had anticipated, and was from an inspection agency representing the Merchant Marine (all commercial ships in the world), checking on our compliance with various world-wide safety and operational measures. There are several applicable acronyms of regulations they enforce.

All three of these inspections are valid. But the coincidence of all three happening in the same morning, and that morning being one in which many of the officers were up all night already, was a burden. You know how hard it can be to be polite when you are totally void of sleep. And some of the inspectors, from what I heard, had that sort of “positional power” personality.

I got off the ship as soon as I could (I’ll write about that in another post) so I missed the crowd on board. Except for the Coast Guard. Serious looking folks. And the first woman to be on board since I got on in Singapore.

Along with all that was the usual business of why we came in the first place – to work with the stevedores, our supercargo people, our on-site agent, and various shipping companies, to get started with the work of discharging cargo from our ship. Get those cranes moving.

So Wednesday was a super-busy day. All inspections went well.

Then on Friday late afternoon, 24 hours before we were due to depart, we got a surprise. The New Orleans Coast Guard (the Houston Coast Guard folks warned us about them) decided that since we didn’t have a working bow thruster, we were not allowed to enter New Orleans. What!? The Captain was livid.

Our German offices are long since closed, and it is a weekend. We are due to arrive in New Orleans late on Sunday, or maybe sometime Monday.

This is both serious and misguided. A bow thruster, while convenient, is not necessary, and is not listed as a device that needs inspected, and is not on any inspection checklist. The only way that the New Orleans Coast Guard learned about it was that we filed a report listing equipment under repair. We are receiving spare parts in Savannah and will fix the bow thruster then.

Basically, if we had a bow thruster, and if a docking maneuver was relatively easy and in calm water and with calm wind, we could skip the forward tugboat and get by with only an aft tug. Without the bow thruster we use two tugs. That is completely normal. Many ships our size don’t have bow thrusters at all – it is a convenience.

So we had to wake up executives in Germany to craft a suitably polite but firm response. Today (Saturday) at noon we got the reply from a high-ish person in the Coast Guard (notably, not from the New Orleans Coast Guard) – “bow thruster not required – approved for New Orleans”. Nothing but that. So, off we go, in a few hours.

(Wednesday, April 13th, 2016)

That’s a great Bowie song. If I have you humming that for the rest of the day, I won’t apologize.

Well, I am learning about the US laws concerning US citizens traveling on foreign vessels. I learn and obey. (I am saluting as I type, which is difficult.)

I had been making plans to take a little time off the ship, for two excursions. The first plan was to disembark in Houston, and re-embark in New Orleans. I planned to drive to New Orleans and spend more time there than in Houston, and to enjoy a hotel and some Cajun food.

The second plan was to visit my family in central Florida. I planned to disembark in Port Manatee, then re-embark in Savannah. It’s a piece of cake to get to Savannah.

Those plans are shown on the map labeled “Map 2016-04-06” in “Raw Photos>Cooked>Progress Maps”.

There are two laws that thwarted those plans.

The “Jones Act”: A US citizen cannot be transported from a US port to another US port on a foreign vessel. This is to help tilt the table in favor of US carriers, so foreign-flagged vessels, paying fewer taxes, cannot take ferry business away from the US carriers. Okay, I get that.

We were hoping that I could claim that I was being transported from Xingang to Genoa, really, and who cared what happened in between. That was our argument. We lost that argument. So, the land trip from Houston to New Orleans was squashed, because the ship trip from New Orleans to Port Manatee puts myself and Rickmers in violation of the Jones Act.

Okay. So I am in Houston for a bit, quite all right. I might go visit NASA. Or go watch the Royals beat up on the Astros.

While my agent was discussing my case with the immigration officials, I said “well that’s okay, the one land trip from Port Manatee to Savannah was the one I really wanted, so as to see my family”.

The immigration folk said “Wait a minute, that trip is in violation of the PVSA.”

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? But also, of course, “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” I’m glad they caught it.

The PVSA is the Passenger Vessel Services Act. It has the concept of an “intact” voyage and a “broken” voyage.

For the voyage to remain “intact”, the passenger must depart on the same vessel on which he/she arrived, at each port. The passenger can do all sorts of things in port, even stay in hotels, etc., but must get back on board in that same port.

If the passenger does not depart on the vessel upon which he/she arrived, this “breaks” the voyage. Once the voyage is “broken”, the passenger cannot rejoin the vessel until the vessel is at its last US port, such that now the vessel is sailing to a foreign port. If the passenger does this, there is no PVSA violation.

Whew. I guess this is also protection for US interests somehow, although I don’t quite understand how much more it does than the Jones Act. No sense to dwell, though, ’tis wha’ ’tis.

Oh. We also changed our routes slightly. We go to Philadelphia earlier, and leave US from Morehead City. We also changed the order of stops in Europe slightly.

So, I am going to disembark in Port Manatee, and catch up to the Rickmers Antwerp in Morehead City. I will skip the visits to Savannah and Philadelphia. Not too bad – I had wanted to visit Savannah, had never been there, but I have been to Philadelphia many times. I need to figure out the “how and when” of travel to Morehead City, but it is not difficult.

These new plans are shown on the map labeled “Map 2016-04-13”, also in “Raw Photos>Cooked>Progress Maps”.

This voyage has been all about change. That fact is interesting on its own.

(Saturday, April 9th, 2016)

Thursday we anchored in Panama Harbor, bunkered, and had delivered to us some provisions and some spare parts. Off in the distance we could see the skyscrapers of Panama City. An excellent sunset capped our trip across the Pacific.

Yesterday, Friday, we transited (that’s the term they use) the Panama Canal. It was quite fun. I was on deck basically from 4:30am until 2pm with only a few minutes of other activities. I took a few photos. Captioned versions are in the “Cooked” section of “Raw Photos”.

Our “ticket” cost about a quarter million dollars. I hope Disney doesn’t hear about this.

If you look at a map, you can see that during Creation, God was doodling a yin-yang symbol in between North and South America. When He/She went on to other things, Panama was left as a result. Which for us, several years later, means that in order to go from the Pacific to the Atlantic (well, eventually the Atlantic), we never go West to East in the Canal. We go South to North, basically, and a little West. Ha.

For Canal purposes, Panama had this big lake as a natural advantage, the other natural advantage of course being Panama’s basic thinness. The lake is 26 meters above sea level. I’m not sure that the Atlantic and the Pacific are exactly the same level at Panama, but I’ll say that they are for simplicity’s sake. That means that ships must be raised 26 meters and then lowered 26 meters, after they’ve crossed Gatun Lake.

The locks are not that complicated to understand, but the scale is massive, especially for something designed and constructed 100 years ago.

When a lock must be emptied, that’s fairly easy to understand. Valves are opened to allow that water to run downward – if there is a lower lock in need of water the water is sent there, otherwise the water exits eventually to the sea.

When a lock must be filled and there is no nearby high water (from a higher, emptying lock), water from Gatun Lake is used, gravity being the power used to move the water.

So it works. It is a constant-loss system, as lake water is constantly used to fill some locks. But Panama gets plenty enough rain to replenish the lake water. Construction activities subsequent to the Canal’s creation included some dams, and created a new lake, Madden Lake. This all helps. If I understand correctly, there is no water pumped “up”, which would take a lot of energy.

I am sure that this explanation is simplistic, but I didn’t want to overwrite about the mechanics of a lock system.

We entered from the South. There are three Miraflores locks, which raised us to the level of Miraflores Lake. That’s only a kilometer or so long, then we came to the one Pedro Miguel lock, which raised us to the level of Gatun Lake. We cruised down a narrow channel called Gaillard Cut. That channel is probably something that the new construction, which is all over the place, will need to improve. The channel is only wide enough to support single-lane (and so, obviously, single-direction) traffic. The channel, not the locks (which are all pairs, thus able to handle two-way traffic), is one reason (there are others) why some ships must wait at anchor at Gatun Lake.

After Gaillard Cut we came to Gatun Lake. The whole trip up the Cut and across the lake was scenic. Panama is more hilly than I had imagined, of course quite tropical, and could be fun to visit. It was hot, though, in early April.

At the other side of Gatun Lake are the Gatun locks. We had been following an auto carrier so far, and continued to follow it right into the Gatun locks. We didn’t expect this – we were anticipating an anchorage at Gatun Lake. There were many ships anchored, and we cruised past them. I asked the Captain about that this morning and he had no clue, but wasn’t going to argue with the Canal Pilot: “Nah, we’d rather stick around here a while, why don’t you let those other blokes go through.” <– NOT our Captain’s style.

On the North side the Gatun locks are the only locks, but there are four of them, symmetrical with the four locks we transited to get to the elevation of the lake. I don’t know that all of the locks move ships in equal amounts of elevation.

Once through the Gatun locks, we were at sea level again, and sailed past some working docks at Colon, and then on into the Caribbean Sea.

Done! Open sea again, and in an hour or so, no land in sight. Houston next.

Here are some random observations.

Everything was slow. When we moved from one lock to another, it was slow. When the locks filled or emptied, it was slow. I had time for a quick breakfast while a lock was filling, for example. Even out of the locks, we kept our speed down, especially in the Cut. In the Cut, we had tugs assisting us, because at times our speed was too slow for us to have full rudder control. I think our speed in the Cut had two factors contributing to the slowness – the need to stay in a narrow channel, and the attempt to avoid shore damage from our wake. In the locks, of course, the amount of mass being moved for each ship meant that carefulness was of the essence.

Not that many people were out and about. I am sure that we were being observed from various control rooms and on various cameras. Outside, with the exception of people riding on the cable cars, and those helping with the lines for the cables, there weren’t as many people as I would have guessed.

There were few visitors in the visitor centers. I don’t know about the season or about the visitor centers – whether, for instance, they are even open to the public.

When in a lock, and with the exception of those huge slab-sided auto carriers, it would seem to me to be relatively easy for someone to leave one ship and get on another. I assume that the whole area itself is administered as some sort of “controlled access” area. I did not see any pleasure boats on Gatun Lake, but I know that the lake extends well beyond our view from the ship. I wonder how large the “controlled access” area is, compared to the overall size of Panama, for example, and how well it is guarded.

Going through the Canal was hugely interesting for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would like to do it again. But after two times, well, it would then lose its mystique for me. The Captain was “happy that I was happy” (his words). He said that he’s been through the Canal enough times that he’s only interested in getting through it as quickly and as cleanly as possible, with perhaps a hope that the Pilot who comes on board is fun to talk with, since they are going to be together for a long day.

Can a person who works on the locks be called a locksmith?

(Monday, April 4th, 2016)

I just remembered that tonight is the NCAA Men’s Finals for basketball. I saw none of it this year. I missed the Superbowl as well. I did not miss either one. That’s a lesson for me – a calibration of interest for sports watching on TV. Interesting if convenient, but only that.

That’s not what I wanted to write about. And the title might lead you to believe that I am going to write about how to turn the other cheek, and other pacifist techniques. Nope.

I’m going to write about daily habits while crossing the Pacific. I fear that this might not be that interesting, and I apologize if I bore you to tears. I wanted to write it down as a jog for myself at some future time.

Across the Pacific, we had about 3+ weeks or more of basically going more eastward every day. So I fell into a pattern. Here it is.

Wake up, take a shower if I am not planning to exercise that day, otherwise just wash my face to wake up. If I am up early, read or write a little bit while waiting for breakfast time to arrive. Maybe write in my journal. Pen and paper writing, that is – no computers yet.

Breakfast at 8am. Usually a couple eggs, scrambled, and toast. On Sundays, we get pancakes (the style would be called “crepes” in the US). I could have sausage with the eggs but I cut that out a few weeks ago. The cook makes absolutely perfect scrambled eggs, every day. I’m impressed.

In the morning I carry around a coffee thermos, refilling it once in a while. It is important (at least for me) to have a “leak-proof” top!

After breakfast, up to the bridge to chat with the helmsman, look at our position and speed, and look at the weather forecast. From 10 minutes to an hour, depending on mood.

After visiting the bridge, exercise every other day. Spin on the bike or jump rope, then some non-aerobic stuff, then some stretches. Then a shower. That usually takes me to 11 or 11:30am. Then I read until noon.

If a non-exercise day, sit in front of the computer in front of a novel. Most times that converts to some writing. Sometimes a lot of writing. Sometimes, just thinking. I have achieved that ability (with the help of Gail Sher’s wonderful book “One Continuous Mistake – Four Noble Truths for Writers”) to not judge myself as long as I commit to the sitting and the starting.

Lunch at noon. They serve their big meal at lunch. Salad, soup, main course which is usually meat, potatoes, and vegetable. That’s too much for me. I have the soup and salad and skip the rest, unless the soup is tripe. That triggers me to have the main course. I tried the tripe twice (say that fast). That was fair enough.

Afternoon. If I have been writing all morning, I read for an hour then get back to the writing. If I had exercised in the morning, I write (or sit in front of a novel and think).

Somewhere in the afternoon I take a break and either go up on the pilot deck, or out to the afterdeck if it is too windy or cold for the pilot deck, or to the bridge if no outside trip is any fun. I stay for a half-hour or so, look at radar, at the charts, that sort of thing, if on the bridge. If outside, I just enjoy being out in the wind and looking at water all around. It is an interesting feeling. And if you combine that with knowing a bit about the depth (usually around 5000 meters), you really feel separate from almost everything.

I come back to my cabin and write, either on the novel or a blog post or something else. I try to avoid reading because I save that for after dinner.

Before dinner I back up the computer, especially if I feel good about what I’ve written, then shut it off.

Dinner is at 5:45 or thereabouts. Salad is available, but no soup. The main course is usually lighter than lunch’s main course, often fish. I vary what I have for dinner, based on what seems good. There aren’t alternatives, but I can tell them not to make something for me. And with all the Filipinos on the crew, rice is always an option if I am not thrilled by what they offer for potatoes. I have tried all the fish offered, and certainly have preferences, but I’ve not had any that I absolutely could not eat. We have had some great flounder on this trip – congrats to the cook on a good bulk buy and good flounder cooking.

After dinner I go up on deck or to the bridge until sunset. Sunset varies as to time, because we have been shifting through time zones, moving forward every other or every third day.

Then I read. Maybe write in my journal. I have a glass of box wine (rarely two glasses), and one piece of chocolate (often two pieces unless I’ve run out, which is often, given that I am blowing a fixed chocolate budget when I choose to have two).

Thence to bed.

Kind of boring when I write it down, but part of this, remember, was to free up time to write. That part has been successful. The pattern feels pretty good to me.

This pattern collapses totally when we are in port. So far, there is no pattern at port. Each port visit has been different.

I have extremely limited satellite access. Sometimes I check email. Sometimes I check a couple of web sites. Not much. It is not a significant part of my day. Minutes at most.

I brought more than 100 books along, on my Kindle. There are also an equal number of books on board. Many are the usual thrillers, but there are also a few Pulitzer Prize winners, and some by writers such as Cormac McCarthy, so I am getting a balance.

Sometimes I play music all day long, and sometimes not at all.

The Captain has many TV shows, movies, documentaries as mpegs, but up to now I haven’t been that interested, and I have been avoiding a too-passive habit. Reading is not 100% passive, and I think that’s good for me.

Rough seas cause adjustments, depending on severity. In the extreme cases, all you can do is look out the porthole and react to rolls and pounding. At those times the computer is best left turned off, and placed so that it won’t fall from a height onto the floor. Less rough seas, and reading becomes possible. This is the usual case, that I can at least read. It is still difficult to type on the computer, and difficult to focus deeply on something. Then, there are moderate seas, and typing on the computer, and thinking about what I’m typing, is not difficult. I am just rocking back and forth while doing so (my desk chair faces starboard). Then, with smooth seas, or at port, it is more like a hotel room, with engine or crane noise in the background.

Sometimes, what I try to do in any particular day depends on how much I slept the night before. This is totally predictable by the magnitude of the rolls, and the severity of the pounding. At a certain point, sleep just doesn’t happen. At least not in my experience. And I notice that on rough nights the crew hasn’t slept well either, so I don’t think it is my lack of experience in this case.

I have been on a ship for a couple months now, give or take. I am much more comfortable walking around with fairly big rolls happening. This is different than how I was for the first few days. I’ll label it “semi sea legs”. But at some acute roll angles you have to work at it to stay standing, and that’s the same for everybody. I learned right away that dry bare feet on industrial style carpet have no sticking power. You get to glide across the room, which is quite fun until you reach the end of the room. It’s great confirmation of gravity acting on a body resting on an inclined plane, and also of one of those basic laws of physics, but in this case the “body in motion” that is tending to “stay in motion” is, well, my body. Bam! Anything for science.

(Monday, April 4th, 2016)

As I write this we are once again in choppy seas, with large swells causing serious rolls, sleeping at night not at all assured, that sort of thing. And only yesterday we were cruising fast through glassy seas, and I was able to spot some seals and some sea turtles in the water. Birds were out and about because we are semi-close to shore (we are off Guatemala’s western border).

Across the Pacific for a few weeks, we saw all sorts of weather, so I cannot report “mostly calm” or “mostly stormy”. I am also not sure if there is an “average” condition to report, because that also wasn’t the case.

Each day, for me, I decided what kind of exercise was possible. Sometimes I can jump rope on the pilot deck, but usually, even if we are not rolling, the wind is too strong up there to manage a jump rope. Sometimes I jump rope on the afterdeck, shielded from the wind by our superstructure, but still subject to rolls, and since I cannot see upcoming swells, the magnitude of the rolls is not as predictable as when I am on the pilot deck. I often get caught in the rope – the combination gusty winds, and rolls, and my limited jump rope skill, is enough. No worries, I am not trying for any records, just trying to keep my legs in shape, and my heart rate elevated for a little while.

Finally, there is the stationary bike, which is in an enclosed room on the pilot deck with a view forward. That technique is available in cold weather, and when there are moderate rolls. The bike is not secured to the floor, so there is an additional skill necessary. One must see (or feel, but seeing is more sure) the start of a roll, then lean (quite a bit) to keep the bike upright as one pedals. At first I fell off (well, had to skitter off and grab the bike and something stationary, not that bad) a few times, but I got the hang of it, and I am getting better at bigger rolls. Unlike in the gym or at home, one cannot remove one’s hands from the handlebars with impunity.

And some days, like today, are not for exercise. The pounding, in addition to surprise rolls, make something even as simple as pushups threatening to one’s nose.

Okay. Well, for a few days mid-Pacific we had some really bad weather. We had high winds, big swells, and we were getting pounded for quite a while. Everybody was working with little sleep. It was rather tiring just trying to do anything. We were sending up giant plumes of spray from the bow every so often, as tall as the forward crane.

We took in some water in the forecastle. That’s the set of rooms under the main deck at the bow of the ship, mostly used to contain dangerous substances, like paint, but also where some of the bow equipment is located. The water we took on did damage to both of our anchor winches, and disabled our bow thruster. The bow thruster is an electric-driven (1200 horsepower – even the small things are big) propeller that can be turned 180 degrees, to help maneuver the ship in tight spaces when tugs are not available. It is not essential, but it is not something we take lightly, as it can also be used in emergencies to help steer.

The anchor winches are another story. Without at least one anchor winch we have no ability to anchor. Well, that’s not precise. We can let the anchor out. We just cannot bring it back. You can see that this is not optimum for continued progress.

The ability to anchor is required for Panama Canal passage. They won’t allow us to make a reservation without it. We still had 2+ weeks at least before arriving at Panama, but the Canal requires a 10-day (or something close to that) lead reservation for passage, so they can do their planning.

So I got to see some on-board administration. The 3rd Engineer and the Electrician had all of their duties reassigned to others, so that they could dedicate themselves to getting us some anchor winch capability. The Captain also planned ahead in case they were unsuccessful – what parts and what other technicians might we need, and where and when could they be delivered to us.

There were a couple of the early “let’s see if just drying everything out will work” kind of attempts, but it became obvious that things were broken and needed to be repaired. The short of it: We now have one operating anchor winch, which has been tested. The same duo has been assigned to look into the bow thruster, and then, thirdly, to see if the 2nd anchor winch can be made to work. The fact that some parts were cannibalized from the 2nd anchor winch to make the 1st one work lead to the notion that fixing the 2nd anchor winch will be more of a problem than fixing the first.

The fix took a little more than a week, which was just a day or so early enough to make a “no worries” prediction to the Canal folk. Our schedule had already been adjusted by a day or so due to the slow progress we had made through the bad weather, but wasn’t further affected by winch work.

The Captain told me later that this was unusually bad weather. On a previous contract a couple years ago, he crossed the Pacific 10 times in 6 months. His contract was a Yokohama-Houston back and forth, and was even in winter when they expect conditions to be worse. He said that none of those 10 trips were anything like what we’d seen on this one.

We also sustained damage to three pieces of cargo. The Captain was especially frustrated by this – if I understand correctly, and he wasn’t that talkative about this, it was his first “damaged cargo” report in more than 20 years at sea, 9 as Captain. So, again, this is an indication to me.

Am I bad luck? On the Rickmers Shanghai, we had bad weather enough to break a windshield. On this ship we took on a bit too much water at the fore during some heavy seas. Nah, I am not a believer in that sort of thing. Nope. Nope. But. This year we will likely be at sea on my birthday. On a 13th. A Friday. Maybe I’ll wear my life jacket all day – call it a fashion statement. All positive voodoo accepted.

I got to see how much it is necessary to be self-reliant. Having to get help delivered, had we been forced to use that option, would surely have cost us significant time and money, and might have resulted in not being able to deliver some cargo within contracted time frames. Also, as it is for other disciplines, you don’t realize how many things (people, equipment, tools, spare parts) are “Achilles Heels”, in that they are single points of failure. We lost two anchor winches, that’s true, but via one event, and in one area of the ship. I call that a single point.

Also, you realize that many events seem, at first, more dangerous than they really are. The anchor winch is an example. Seems that you can’t do without an anchor. But in an emergency, we could have used the anchor – knowing that it would be a bitch to get it back. And, if it weren’t for the Canal passage, we might have been able to get along without an anchor for a bit more time. So, it wasn’t a dramatic catastrophe, just a serious problem that immediately achieved top priority, and got worked as such. I was impressed with the calmness, perspective, and decision crispness on board.

And, like for most modern organizations, the aftermath. The Captain, the Chief Engineer, and the Chief Mate have a ton of paperwork to produce for the “home office”, and they say that they will get second-guessed by folks who have less real experience on a freighter than me. Ha. That part of corporate life is similar everywhere.

(Monday, March 21st, 2016)

Below are our coordinates a little after breakfast each day, and snapshots (not running averages or anything like that) of engine RPM and observed speed. Thought I’d track across the Pacific. I call our track the “weather modified great circle route”, as we try to stay away from bad weather while still making progress.

The first entry is Shanghai, and is my estimate of Shanghai’s coordinates, not a bridge reading. Thus also the zero speed at the dock. The last entry is while at anchor awaiting to transit the Panama Canal.

There are two March 20ths in this list, not a typo. Our Captain is considerate of the workers. When we reach a new time zone, we move the clocks ahead one hour during the day, so that we lose work time (we – okay, they – work enough extra as it is) instead of sleep time. And when we moved the day back (we are approaching the International Date Line), we did it so that we repeated a weekend day (Sunday) rather than a work-week day. Ah, the power of the Captain! Our “Time Lord”, with apologies to the Doctor. This is a good case of “benevolent dictatorship” in the small.

The speed at RPM is not constant due to wind and current conditions, in case you were about to ask. And, from what I understand from the Chief Engineer, even with no wind and no current, RPM does not predict speed linearly.

Leaving Shanghai, a chilly hazy day. Many ships moving about, but no real vision into the distance.

03-13 31.00 n lat, 122.00 e long, 00 RPM, 00.0 knots
03-14 31.00 n lat, 126.50 e long, 90 RPM, 17.0 knots
03-15 33.00 n lat, 133.10 e long, 90 RPM, 17.0 knots
03-16 34.50 n lat, 140.50 e long, 90 RPM, 17.0 knots
03-17 34.27 n lat, 149.00 e long, 90 RPM, 17.0 knots
03-18 33.50 n lat, 154.51 e long, 70 RPM, 10.5 knots
03-19 34.15 n lat, 158.38 e long, 55 RPM, 05.0 knots
03-20 32.00 n lat, 162.01 e long, 75 RPM, 13.0 knots
03-20 34.25 n lat, 166.00 e long, 70 RPM, 11.0 knots
03-21 34.39 n lat, 171.19 e long, 70 RPM, 11.0 knots
03-22 34.25 n lat, 177.47 e long, 75 RPM, 13.0 knots
(we crossed from east to west longitude, 180, at ~5pm!)
03-23 33.30 n lat, 174.43 w long, 90 RPM, 16.2 knots
03-24 32.30 n lat, 167.55 w long, 90 RPM, 16.2 knots
03-25 31.52 n lat, 160.42 w long, 87 RPM, 15.6 knots
03-26 31.23 n lat, 153.57 w long, 87 RPM, 15.6 knots
03-27 30.51 n lat, 146.18 w long, 89 RPM, 17.1 knots
03-28 29.55 n lat, 139.11 w long, 90 RPM, 17.2 knots
03-29 28.20 n lat, 131.58 w long, 90 RPM, 16.3 knots
03-30 26.13 n lat, 125.17 w long, 90 RPM, 16.6 knots
03-31 23.28 n lat, 118.45 w long, 90 RPM, 17.0 knots
04-01 21.02 n lat, 112.36 w long, 90 RPM, 17.9 knots
04-02 18.14 n lat, 106.01 w long, 90 RPM, 17.3 knots
04-03 15.44 n lat, 099.34 w long, 90 RPM, 17.6 knots
04-04 14.01 n lat, 094.28 w long, 80 RPM, 15.0 knots
04-05 10.55 n lat, 089.06 w long, 90 RPM, 15.6 knots
04-06 07.44 n lat, 083.41 w long, 90 RPM, 17.7 knots
04-07 08.50 n lat, 079.50 w long, 00 RPM, 00.0 knots

27th day. Almost a month on the Pacific, with all sorts of weather. Hills, ships, and the skyline of downtown Panama City are in view as we anchor in the harbor at around 7:30am local time. It is already warm outside. Far below me, birds are flying in V-formation, maybe 50 in a group, maybe a foot above the water. “Welcome to Panama” says Verizon in a text. And that does it for the tracking. Tomorrow, Canal transit!

(Saturday, March 19th, 2016)

I took a tour of the engine room today with our Chief Engineer. The Chief Engineer was very patient with me and answered all my questions. I put on gloves and ear protection. Ear protection for the obvious, gloves in case I accidentally touched something hot.

I asked him if he were second in command to the Captain. It’s not that direct. The engineering officers are separate from the line officers (Chief Mate, 2nd Mate, …), so, no, he is not a part of the command chain. However, the Chief Engineer is considered the second most important officer on board, after the Captain, and so gets that kind of respect, gets a sweet cabin, that sort of thing. Later, I learned some more about freighter management, but that’s for a different post.

I was not allowed to take pictures – company rules, rats. I am writing this as soon as we’ve finished the tour, so that the least amount of brain cells die in the interim.

The “engine room” is really an entire area of the ship, with about 20 rooms, three or four stories. It is totally industrial, mostly cream-colored paint on metal with various things painted yellow and red – there isn’t any fake wood on the doors or anything like that. There is more room to move around than I would have thought, but it is pretty well filled with active equipment. It is very noisy throughout, with the exception of a control room that is somewhat isolated. It is also hot throughout, and it is still chilly outside. I was warned not to visit the engine room while in Singapore, and now I appreciate that advice.

The first area we stepped into contained the generators. There are three generators. Each of the generators has several cylinders and is fueled by fuel oil. Each is about 6 feet tall and maybe 10 or 15 feet long. One generator is sufficient to power the ship, two are required when the cranes are in use, so there are three in order to have a backup. At the time of my visit, at sea, daytime, nothing special going on, one generator was at about half capacity, the others off. The Chief Engineer said that when all cranes were active two generators would be at almost peak capacity. I forget what the generator capacities are – 1000 something (but I forget the units, so the number is not that useful).

Near the generators are several large electric motors connected to ductwork. They are used to provide pressurized air. I assumed that this is for starting the engine, but I am not sure. I do not think they were operating when we walked by.

Above us was exhaust ducting. The ducts are about 12 feet in diameter, and in one section were about 20 feet in diameter, silvery, and you could feel the heat coming off them as you walked under them.

In the next room are two boilers. One was conventional, about like what you would see in a medium apartment building except more stoutly attached to the floor and to piping, heated with burners underneath, running on fuel oil. This is the boiler that is used when the engine is not running, when we are in port. The other boiler’s shape I couldn’t really discern, as it disappeared behind another wall. Into the center of that boiler ran some auxiliary ducting from the exhaust ducting. That boiler is heated with engine exhaust only, and is the boiler in use when the engine is running.

Following the exhaust ducting along, we came to what the Chief Engineer called a turbine, what I would call a turbocharger. It was a hint as to the size of the main engine. The turbocharger was a cylinder whose diameter was about 6 feet (at least as tall as me, hard to remember exactly), and whose width (or length, if you please) was about 3 or 4 feet. I could see where exhaust gas went into and out of the turbo, with maybe 3 foot diameter ducting, and pressurized air left the turbo in a steel pipe, headed downstairs.

We then went down one story, to the top of the main engine. Up in this area we also went by another container, about the same size as the boilers, and also fed by some exhaust ducting. It is a water purification system. The ship takes in sea water, applies a vacuum to it so that its boiling point is coincidentally the temperature of the engine exhaust gases (about 85C), and then heats it with exhaust gas. This evaporates the salt, and does other things. The result is distillate – pure fresh water. This is water we use as potable water on board, but we don’t recommend it for drinking. We drink bottled water. But in a pinch we could drink it, there’s no health hazard, it’s just not great. Every so often, if the engine has been off for a while, like a long stay in port, we have to buy some water. And we take on bottled water at each port. But the water we shower with started out as sea water that we purified while underway.

The main engine is 7 cylinders. It is a two-stroke turbo diesel, where “diesel” in this case refers to the fact that it is a compression ignition engine rather than a spark ignition engine, not the fuel type. It is a bit amusing to me that the tachometers for this engine are not representing hundreds or thousands. When the meter says 90, that means that the engine is doing 90 RPM, period. For the past couple of days we’ve been running at about 90 RPM, which translates to a ship speed of about 17 knots.

This engine is considered a low speed engine (no kidding!), and there are medium speed engines (up to 400 or 500 RPM) and high speed engines (up to 1200+ RPM). There are tradeoffs. In general the advantages of our engine are these: An ability to direct-connect to the propeller. Simple, direct. An ability to use extremely low grades (think cheaper) of fuel. Disadvantages: This engine is very tall, which can be in the way for some other ship configurations. This engine must be placed directly in front of the propeller (the other engines use reduction gears so can be offset), which also limits ship architecture. This engine is heavier per power output than others. But it is economical in both “mileage” and type of fuel usable, which are significant advantages.

The main engine is about three stories tall, with metal stairways going this way and that to access different areas. Each cylinder has a bore and stroke of about 3 x 10 feet. Each cylinder head has two injectors feeding it. Each injector is roughly a 6 inch by 2 foot cylinder, and the fuel lines are 2 inch pipe. The injectors have modes (and I think different nozzles but I am not sure) that can be used so that the engines run efficiently at a set lower speed and a set higher speed. The crankcase is the size of a room. Each cylinder has an access door so that maintenance can be done on the lower end, the crankshaft and rod. Each of those 7 doors looks like an ordinary ship’s door that a person could walk through, except for the type of fittings keeping it closed.

We went to another room, and the Chief Engineer lifted a small (meaning, humans can lift it) hatch cover, and we looked down at the spinning mainshaft, leading away from the engine, and connected to the propeller. The shaft was about 2 feet in diameter. We went to another room, and up some stairs, where there were two electric pumps keeping hydraulics pumped, and there were lines feeding the steering gear. The steering gear looks a bit like a motor, and is maybe 10 feet in diameter and 5 or so feet tall. Below it is the rudder.

There were rooms devoted to maintenance, looking like small machine shops, active. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, we would have been an annoyance to people trying to work.

We went to the control center, a noise-protected control room. It looked a lot like some small industrial control rooms that I’ve been in. There were a couple of engine management screens, control panels for the three generators, and a control panel each for each boiler and the fresh water system. There was also a control screen showing the various fuel tanks and the fuel sanitation system, and the pumping systems between them.

There are many fuel tanks throughout the bottom of the ship. There are a couple of special tanks into which the others feed. The first of these special tanks is one in which about-to-be-used fuel sits for a while, allowing sediment to get to the bottom. From this tank fuel is then pumped into another special tank in which filters of many types remove impurities. From this tank fuel heads to smaller, pressurized tanks feeding the engine.

My description above applies to fuel oil, the primary fuel. But there are at least two other similar but smaller tank systems. One for diesel, and one for lube oil, the oil that goes in the crankcase and eventually throughout the engine. Remember that our engine is a two-stroke, which means a constant-loss oil system for lube oil, at least for a part of it.

I think I wrote about this earlier, but a recap here is apt. We have 2600 tons of fuel oil and 400 tons of diesel on board. We switch to diesel in environmental areas, such as US, Europe, and soon to be Chinese ports. Everywhere else we use fuel oil. Diesel is more expensive. We burn about 30-35 tons a day at sea.

I learned that the engine could be controlled from the bridge (the usual case) or from the engine control room, in an emergency. There are several parameters being measured that can raise alarms in the control room, on the bridge, and in the Captain’s and Chief Engineer’s cabins, and can automatically reduce engine speed or stop the engine if not acknowledged fast enough.

Major engine maintenance occurs on the basis of hours of operation, unless there is an emergency problem like a part failure. Generally, the exhaust valves need to be resurfaced at 16,000 hours, and since so many other items can get accessed if the engine is opened enough to service exhaust valves, many other parts, intake valves, pistons, piston rings, crank bearings, piston liners, all that sort, are serviced as well. We average about 500 hours a month of engine time, so it works out to major maintenance approximately once every 3 years, given the normal (almost constant except at port) usage.

Tour’s over! Up from the depths, into a cool and (relatively) quiet hallway on the poop deck. Quite fun.

(Friday, March 18th, 2016)

I have a few scattered photos from the bridge, specifically of bridge instrumentation rather than just sights from the bridge. I will try to collect them in one place.

I am allowed on the bridge except when we are in port, and when we have a pilot on board. So, especially when we are going a long way, I go up to check on things and chat with whoever is up there, so I’ve learned a bit.

We have three radars, depth indicators, a charting system, a helm (power and steering), wind and current indicators (both speed and direction for each), and all sorts of communication gear. That’s all arrayed in a console that also has a small helm wheel and a traditional sized throttle control – a knob on a big chrome stick. I am sure that “throttle” is the wrong word.

In addition there are panels with warning indicators, switches for various things, and some emergency buttons.

Behind the console is an office area with racks of manuals and regulations and charts. When the captain of the Rickmers Shanghai found that they were diverted to West Africa, he and the 2nd Mate had some of those books spread out on a table in the office for a while.

In another nook, next to the office, are a couple of computers, and a couple of printers. Just outside the office, in sturdy metal cages, are several server computers. One of the cages has rope all around it, lashing it to the floor. It is obviously the “secure server”, eh?

The office and the computer nook are behind and close to the main console. Also behind and off to the side, near the stairs, is a small kitchen area. There’s a cupboard, a sink, a coffee maker, a small fridge, and a microwave. There’s also a toilet.

There is a lot of room to walk around on the bridge. It feels open and serene.

There are several pairs of binoculars strategically placed on the console and along the windows. I bring my own, tee hee.

There is a “Morse Code Flashlight” (it probably has a better name), in a rack, being charged, in one corner of the bridge. Could be how to communicate if other methods are thwarted. I remember knowing Morse Code once upon a time. I think for about 30 minutes. Must have been for a test. All of us have part of our brains dedicated to “pass through”, eh? Quadratic formula, anybody? Ha.

The bridge itself is not as wide as the ship, but there are doors to decks, at the same level, that extend to the ship’s edges. Often I’ve seen the Captain or a Mate on those decks, especially when we are docking, bunkering, or dealing with a pilot off the side of the ship. The windows (windshields? we do have a steering wheel, after all) all have sunscreens and wipers and washers available, and all are heated if necessary. You can see more than 180 degrees from the bridge, and can see 360 degrees if you step out onto those side decks. It is quiet on the bridge. We are well above the engine and the water here.

There are handholds all over the place, which is good because there are many things on the bridge for a passenger not to grab. Even though I’ve now been sailing for more than a month, I am not even close to any of the seamen in the ability to casually take on the roll and pitch of the ship when it is choppy, so I appreciate those handholds. I’m not falling down or anything like that, but it has not as yet become “natural”. On the bridge, I have to be careful about not accidentally grabbing the helm when we get surprised by a swell. Oops! They watch me.

Generally, the ship is not constantly actively sailed – that is, there’s not somebody standing with his hand on the helm all the time. But there is somebody always in the vicinity of the console. This morning we are out in the Pacific, away from land, and our 12-mile radar shows nothing, so the helmsman is standing back by the office, looking at the chop, and just keeping an eye on things. The Captain is on one of the computers.

There are two seats facing the control center, and each seat looks at a radar screen. There are three operating radars. There are two radars above the bridge and one on a small tower in the bow. Normally, at sea, the radars are set at either 6NM or 12NM (Nautical Miles) range. With a button push an operator can double or halve the range. A couple of days ago, on a choppy day, we set a radar at either 3 or 1.5NM and the whole screen lit up with hits, as we were detecting wave crests. Ha. Fun but not useful. Overlaid on the radar is our bearing, with a long line, and the bearing of the wind and the current, with shorter lines. The lines used to represent wind and current use their length to indicate, roughly, their magnitude. So you get a lot of information at a glance.

In addition to the radar scan, on the top and side of the radar screen are shown many other items. One example is drift, the difference between the bearing we’ve set with the rudder, and our actual movement, affected by wind and current. Also, in summary (the information is in other places as well) is engine rpm, our speed (which is usually a little different than expected due to drift), the rudder setting (degrees port or starboard from zero), and some information about communication that I don’t understand. The operator can change what shows along the sides. Trackballs and keyboards, secured to the console. No mice – they slide around too much. None of the screens on the console are touch screens.

The radars show dense weather and of course other ships. Connected to the radar is some sort of ship identification system. I assume there is a type of transponder, like for airplanes, but I am not sure. An operator can click on a ship shown on radar and get some additional information about it, so somehow that information is getting to the system supporting the radar screen.

On the charting system, right now, no land is shown. We see our position and bearing, and we see topo lines and numbers indicating depth. When we are near land the towns and cities are identified. We were close to Japan recently so I got a little lesson about the towns on Japan’s southeastern shores.

Our depth indicator shows, in big red letters right in front of the helm, the depth under the keel. I think that’s very important for some channel approaches. The depth indicator is not operating right now, as we have miles beneath us – we are near the Japan Trench, a pretty deep section. The chart says 6000 meters down. That’s a ways, eh?

In good weather I prefer being outside on the pilot deck, but often I enjoy the bridge. We have a long voyage across the Pacific and I intend to keep track of it a little bit. You’ll see that on the post called “Tracking Across the Pacific”. I started from just outside Shanghai and I’ll keep it up until we find ourselves anchored near Panama.

(Saturday, March 12th, 2016)

Today I spent a lot of time on the pilot deck watching some interesting loading operations. I probably caught a cold – it was cold and windy – but it was worth it. At dinner Captain said he saw me taking photos of his men working. I told him that it was extremely interesting. We talked (well, I listened and asked questions) ’till well after dinner. I remembered some tidbits that I hope are interesting to others – they were to me.

Heavy

Our ship is special because we are a heavy-lift cargo ship. The floor (that is not the correct term) in each of our holds is much thicker than usual. Our 2 middle cranes can lift 320 tons each, and our puny little end cranes can lift 100 tons. Our larger middle cranes have 2 hooks each – one of them is the 320 ton hook, and the other is a 65 ton hook (something like that), perhaps suitable for much of the common work. The maximum weight a crane can lift is relative to vertical – when a crane needs to span, its capacity goes down. Our cranes won’t attempt an overweight lift. They give an overload signal.

By the way, those cranes that you see dockside might look massive but in general can only handle 100-125 tons. Containers are limited by law to 40 tons gross weight, so many dockside cranes get by with 100 ton capacity or less. We are carrying a few containers on this voyage, but they aren’t the interesting cargo.

The Captain told a story in which some containers being loaded onto a container ship were mis-advertised as to weight – they were heavier than they should have been. He said that, at sea, it caused the container ship to tip over. I have a feeling that the story is more complicated than that, but it did make me think that the weight of everything being shipped is not exact – it is an estimate, and there’s a sense of “trust, but verify for the really important stuff”.

Our supercargo people (those directing loading), our officers, and our able-bodied seamen are all trained with heavy loads. Under 100 tons? Not heavy.

So, our ship might not look so different from some others, but it is built differently, and some loads demand a ship like ours. Even in an economy downturn that has lowered overall shipping, there are still jobs for these vessels.

Our captain is really into the heavy lifting. He likes taking on the challenges of loading really heavy cargo. The largest he lifted was 720 tons (not with this ship). A surprise for me: You can’t lift that from the dock as it is too heavy, breaks the dock. Oh my. You have to lift from a barge. So the barge and the ship can take the shocks because they are dampened by the fact that they are floating (pun intended). Then, you have to watch because as you lift, your object is still connected, still touching, as you unweight the barge, and the barge will move. Plus you are using two cranes in unison. Those are the lifts that get planned in advance.

Overlight is also tough. Some items are harder to lift because they require two cranes due to their size but are light and so move differently than expected, and the cranes are built to handle heavier weight. Some crane structures are that way (when we ship a long crane built of triangulated tubular steel), and the large wind generator blades are that way.

Included on our ship today: Many pieces of what looks to me like process control equipment, complete subsections enclosed in cages for the journey. 2 boats, catamarans. 4 mobile cranes – you know, those trucks with huge tires, and the tiny little driver’s cockpit, and a pretty hefty crane above. 4 of them. The 4 crane trucks were put in the middle, deep, and are already covered over with a mid-deck. That’s one of those eye-openers as to how big the ship is – it swallows some stuff that you already thought was big.

Thinking about weight… Today, taking some pictures was tricky because there was a lot of wind, maybe 30 knots, blowing me around a bit, making a steady camera difficult. I asked Captain if wind like that was a problem for the lifts. His answer: “No.” Ha.

Loading

The basic rules of loading should be easy, eh?

Rule #1: Whatever has to come off first, should go in last.
Too bad! Often, almost usual, is that the source location and the target location aren’t aligned so well.

Rule #2: Move the least amount of stuff the least amount of times.
Great idea. But. Quite often you have to wait on transport for just that item you wanted to put in one spot. And you have other transport, with their items, on time, waiting on you. You have to be flexible.

Rule #0: Safety tip: The ship must be balanced or it will rip itself apart when we start to sail.
Aha! Rule #0, above all others. Shoulda’ put it first.

Balancing

Even that is not so simple. Think of the ship as a 200 meter long half-tube. It is flexible, given its length and the amount of weight we put in it. There are at least these balance factors that must be considered:

— Moment
This is what the Captain called it, I might have used a different term but it’s fine. If you put too much weight in the middle of the ship, the long tube will bend like a sleeping parenthesis that can hold water. If you put too much weight in the ends of the ship, the long tube will bend like a parenthesis on its side that thinks it is a bridge over a stream. Either one will cause excessive flex when facing the dynamics of being at sea.

— Torsion
Let’s say you put half of the weight port-side forward (left front), and the other half of the weight starboard-side aft (right rear). You have set up the long tube to twist when at sea. Not a good idea.

— Shear
This one surprised me. The Captain said that the walls between holds are very strong but they can’t do everything. Let’s imagine that in one hold you put a lot of weight. In the hold just behind it you put nothing. Maybe you are saving that hold for the next port, who knows. Tons and tons of gravity are working to move the floor (sorry, I will find the right term sometime) of the heavy hold downward, and carry the connected wall with it. Tons and tons of buoyancy are working to move the floor of the empty hold upward. That poor adjoining wall is stressed. The thick floor helps but can’t do everything.

Given all that, it is a wonder they get started loading at all! Anyway, I was very happy to learn about it. There are some computer simulations and assists that they use, but so often other factors move them away from the “ideal” assumptions with which the simulations start. The mathematician in me wonders if there’s a solvable optimization problem in there, but I decided not to bring that up to Captain just yet. I plan on taking a peek at the simulation some time, but I need to find the right mark, um, er, helper, to get it in front of me.

Deck Arrangement

I think I’ve written about this before, but now I have the terms closer to correct, and I have some sizings.

They don’t use the term “floor” or “shelf”. Pontoons (I will caption some photos) are put into place to form mid-decks. There. We have the terms correct. But the bottom of the hold is not a deck and not a floor. I don’t know that one yet.

The pontoons are 3 meters by 10 meters, and each pontoon weighs about 8 tons by itself. When placed to form a mid-deck, the pontoon can support 40 tons per square meter.

Ballast

To help smooth out the balance, there are at least a couple types of ballast.

Usually there are pontoons left over. Planners tune the balance by arranging the pontoons as ballast, putting them where their weight will do the most good. Once the pontoons are put in place, though, that’s it for the voyage – just like the cargo.

In addition, there are 32 water tanks that are used for ballast. Sea water is pumped into and out of these tanks to change weighting. This can be done while underway.

And even that arrangement, complicated as it sounds, has additional factors to consider. All sea water is not created equal. Some places, US for example, require that the sea water in our ballast tanks must have come either from seas close to the US, or from mid-ocean areas that are at least 400 meters deep. I guess that they don’t want the chance that US waters might become contaminated with organisms that we might have picked up in shallow foreign waters. So, along the way, we must keep track of what we need to do with the ballast tanks in order to comply.

Crane Drivers

That’s what he called them, I think it is appropriate. We had a conversation about crane driver ability. This is my take: Like for programmers (I didn’t tell him that), there’s a huge difference between an excellent crane driver (give him a 10), a crane driver you can trust for the ordinary work but not so much for the special stuff (give him a 2), and the crane driver that seems to make ordinary stuff take longer than necessary, and who can’t help but damage things every so often (give him a -1). An excellent crane driver is also involved in the discussions about the tough lifts. That conversation we had could so have been about programmers. I wonder if there are more professions like that. I bet there are.

The dockside drivers are union, and go through certification. The supercargo people and our agents at each port know them, and know when we’ve got good ones. I did not understand from the Captain if we could request a specific crane driver to support us. I don’t think I asked the question correctly.

We have crane drivers on the ship. A seaman cannot move from O (I think “ordinary”?) to AB (“able bodied”) until they show proficiency in two major areas: driving the ship (helm work, able to take a shift) and driving cranes. Captain said that we have some good crane drivers on board. Almost always, because our on board cranes can lift more weight than the dockside cranes, the special lifting involves our on board cranes, so we get to use our crane drivers.

The Captain said that it is not just special heavy lifting that brings out differences. Often they need to “make a new mid-deck”, which involves moving several pontoons from either their storage location on board or from dockside where they’ve been moved. A routine task, even though there are many steps. Nothing tough. But an inexperienced or inept driver can take up too much time. Like changing a half hour job into a two and a half hour job.

Container vessels, no cranes on board, are so standardized that they align carefully at the dock, and the cranes are “gantry cranes”, with the hooks hanging from wires from a straight runner. All orderly. Boring to Captain.

A Little More on Bunkering

We bunkered yesterday while docked. Tanker on the other side. Multitasking! No smoking anywhere!

We carry 2600 tons of fuel oil and 400 tons of diesel. Diesel is cleaner burning. We use diesel inside of environmental zones, i.e. in ports in US and Europe, and, next trips to China next year, China. At 30-35 tons a day, we have 85-100 days of travel in us right now. I think that we are bunkering next in Houston.