Bunkering

(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.