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Ship swindler

Published July 3, 2008 in Seafood, milk, pinch of salt required, From the ship and On the ship. 0 Comments

AKA the Shipchandler. (The definition is not definitive)

Traders come in all shapes and sizes, colours and smells. There are good ones and bad ones, in between too. Some are honest and some are crooks. Then you have the shipchandler.

Markup. Thats the first thing that happens, everything costs more and even if you get a discount which is only a feelgood psychological trick you are getting done.

Stale. That is the second thing. You get to pay more for out of date stuff, stuff that has been taken off the supermarket shelf because of a short date gets repackaged as fresh goods for the poor bastards on the ship. I just had a bowl of cornflakes with milk (fresh so I thought), the first spoon went into my gob and out again rapidly followed by milk wet cornflakes spluttering from my face thanks to the acid sour taste. It is the 3rd of July, the milk had 2nd of July on the package, bought the day before in a former communist state now part of the EU. There is only one thing to say, get used to long life milk.

Brand replicas. You ask for Kellogg’s corn flakes and you get something in a similar sized box and nearly the same colour flake, but tastes like crap.

For Marine use only. You get products that the EU won’t allow on the shelves because of banned additives and colourants.

Frozen. Or refrozen, I joined a ship in the Persian gulf once it was so hot that my shoe police liquefied. The chandler had frozen meat covered in canvas, no container………you don’t want to think about this too much, or just eat vegetarian.

Careless. We had one guy deliver bags of rice, big 50kg bags the classic hessian sack. He left them on the jetty in the pouring rain. Hello, rice water??

Of course the majority of them are OK, the few give a bad rep to the rest of the trade and hence the term Ship swindler.
Bad cornflakes and sour milk. Life can be tough!

Where do the days disappear?

Published July 3, 2008 in By the way. 0 Comments

Back on the waves again. Have not been attentive to my poor misfortunate blog, a combination of holidays apathy and microblogging on twitter and facebooking and flickr. No good excuse really. New stories on the way starting with the Ships true friend, the chandler.

Welsh

Published June 7, 2008 in Americans and Wales. 1 Comment

Been off the air for a while, busy at work and all….anyway still here, and heres a tale from a recent Master-Pilot briefing.

You get to chat with quite a few Pilots on these coastal hops, and you generally ask the same shite, ” Cup of coffee, Mr. Pilot? sugar, milk? or would you prefer Tea, soft drink, water?”
Yes Mr. Pilot she acts like a right handed prop, even though shes left handed variable pitch, and the bow thruster is 900 horse power, we can start to single up, engines are ready….and off you go again.
Some Pilots give all the instructions known to man, others ask if you are happy to manouvre the ship by yourself, I normally operate the controls anyway, and the pilot says what he feels is right.

You get to be a sort of Pilot story exchange, you tell each new Pilot the stories the last one was telling you. The Liverpool pilot said this and the Cork Pilot said that, anyway the Pembroke Pilot was telling me about an American family that had moved to Wales for a few years with a big corporation. We were talking about languages and Welsh, Irish and Swedish, anyway this American family had two young children going to school in the locality and the Welsh language is compulsory as a subject, so the young Americans were coming home speaking Welsh and the parents hadn’t a clue what they were saying. So the parents have taken up learning Welsh too. I can count to 5 in Welsh and can say one or two phrases thanks to having S4C and BBC Wales broadcast across the Irish Sea for years, the language is spoken by about 750,000 people world wide so these people are going to have a great secret weapon and a great laugh when they move back to the States, nobody will understand a word!

Cymru am byth!

Sir Tristram

Published May 21, 2008 in Warships, ship spotting, England and Grey Funnel. 0 Comments

Black & White photo of the LSL Sir Tristram which is permanently moored in Portland Harbour, and used for training purposes for the Royal Navy and other branches of the UK military apparatus. The name is painted out these days but it can be clearly seen on the bow and stern.

Front end view and below a rib passes ahead with 3 of the aforementioned military types on board.

Wikipedia has plenty more, about the Falklands and the Gulf and other stuff. I think if you asked the veterans of the Falklands about the Anglo/French carrier proposals, they wouldn’t be very positive after being on the receiving end of French military hardware, even if it wasn’t the French that they were fighting.

New carriers, old enemies.

Published May 20, 2008 in naval heroes, Warships, Americans, English, French, Grey Funnel, Admirals and pinch of salt required. 1 Comment

Carrier

Or you play with a toy one?

According to leaks and reports here and there, the French and British Admiralties are in discussion about the possibility of sharing an aircraft carrier, more like the impossibility, French and British crew together on the same warship? It could be propelled by Nelsons revolving coffin , his own quote“You must hate a Frenchman as you do the devil”
However it certainly is an example of thinking outside the box, even if they appear to be completely out of their boxes, a few too many glasses of sherry perhaps? You could go further and forget about this sharing business altogether and build the carriers in China, everyone else is building their ships there why not warships too? Then they can have 2 or 3 for the price of one, they could even crew them from China too, just disband( or downsize) the military apparatus in Europe and outsource it.

Another alternative would be to buy a few from the cash strapped Yanks, it wouldn’t be too far away from buying from China seeing as how much China is owed from the US, but anyway the dollar at it’s current weak state must make an offer from the Brits of the Frogs for a few ships feasible, unless someone starts shouting about Freedom Fries again.

Or a completely different tack would be to think environment (and not build any at all !) and think recycling, and get out the spy satellite pictures of the ports around Murmansk or Google Earth there are a few disused ships lying around idle waiting for better weather that could be had for a gas pipeline deal or other, I’m sure they could be persuaded to help their old friends France and Britain.

At the end of the day when 2 old enemies start talking about sharing military equipment anything can happen.

17th May

Published May 17, 2008 in Rum, Norway and On the ship. 4 Comments

Today is Norway’s national day. As the skipper on a Norwegian ship I am expecting a phone call any minute from the King in Oslo ( Ah jaysus is it yourself Tim? It is begob and the blessings of God on you now and regards to herself and the family on the day thats in it,….or something like that) to tell us all to keep up the good work, I hope he speaks English I doubt he can speak Tagalog, the Filipino crew won’t be too disappointed though as long as he orders us to “Splice the mainbrace” or whatever they do up in the castle in Oslo.

More waiting

Published May 16, 2008 in Airports and On the ship. 3 Comments

More waiting.

You get used to it when you work at sea, waiting for the pilot, waiting for orders, waiting for a free berth, waiting for the agent, waiting for provisions. In fact the whole job is waiting until the relevant object being waited for turns up, then its a helter skelter mad panic the world is ending tomorrow freak out for a short time until you get back to waiting again.

My first portion of waiting was at the airport at Schipol, Amsterdam, I sailed through the arrivals expecting one of those people holding a sign with my name or the ships name or something that will make me understand that they are waiting for me. Nothing. No sign. Not for me anyway, plenty other signs and people waiting for other people. So I sat on my suitcase and decided to give them 10 minutes before I rang the agents number.

Still nothing. So I phoned, ah yes are you at the airport we are sending your taxi right away…..

Little did I know that there was a public transport strike in the Netherlands today, so sending the taxi right away meant a long wait.

I got asked a lot of questions at my wait at the meeting point,

Are you Mr. J Brown?,
Are you from CBS?
Are you from San Francisco?
Are you from the Order of St. John?
Are you from Riga?
Are you from Unilever?
Are you from Vestas?

I must have looked like an American/Latvian TV producing windmill salesman with a hint of religious order thrown in, I did have black jeans on and a bit of a suspect “father Dougal” V-neck sweater in wine colour on.

Others didn’t ask they just stared, hoping to find some clue in my face, looking for the name tatooed across my forehead in invisible ink.

An hour later I called again, are you still waiting, oh I’ll give the taxi driver your number…

As if that was going to evaporate the traffic jam stretching from Rotterdam to Amsterdam.

I will have to get somebody that I can call on the phone and talk loudly in English to with a Scottish accent about football and say words like “pish” and “shite”, there seemed to be a few of them around today, and all the other lost souls that gather at airports , the bewildered, bored, screaming children, tired parents, lost, confused, determined, condesending air hostesses, tanned and gold wearing 50+ year old men, and everybody else…
Finally the taxi driver arrived, a slightly balding man in his late 40’s to early 60’s with a paunch slightly sweating and middle eastern origin. It’s never a mid 20’s blonde, but then it’s just as well I know how to talk to the former about cars, the price of petrol and football and other kinds of bullshit to fill up a taxi journey like GW Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.

Now I’m on my ship, time for bed. More later.

Normal Service

Published May 11, 2008 in blog. 2 Comments

Normal service has been interrupted by a heavy dose of studying for my Norwegian endorsement, I will be working on Norwegian ships for the next couple of years all going well (agw as they say in ship speak). Now the studying is over, applications are sent and I possess a piece of paper that allows me to sail as skipper in Norway or at least NIS. Probably not the first Wexford man to sail on Norwegian ships and there will be more about all this in the next few posts.
Cheers Tim.

Remember 17th May, Norway’s National Day.

New Dredging website

Published April 30, 2008 in By the way. 0 Comments

Here is a link to a new website about dredging, best of luck to you Marc.

http://www.theartofdredging.com/

The Lifeboat Drill

Published April 24, 2008 in training, Cadets, Drills and From the ship. 8 Comments

The Lifeboat Drill
(a true story, only the names have been omitted to protect the innocent from embarrasment)

Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong often known as Sod’s Law.

After 32 hours on the Parana River up to Rosario we anchored just after midnight. After 6 hours deep sleep the old man was awakened by the arrival of many members of the uniformed shore authorities looking for the arrival clearance inwards documents. He shuffled down to his office with the entourage who obviously had eaten raw garlic for breakfast mixed with tobacco. After 90 minutes of paper shuffling and application of the ships stamp on documents here and signatures there, the dark sunglass gang were happy, not because of the paperwork, a necessary evil but because of the quantity of Marlboro and Whiskey they had received, the grease on the axle of commerce. Then they informed the captain that the ship would not go alongside for 2 days.

It was then that the Chief Officer came up with the splendid idea of testing the port lifeboat as it had not been in the water for 2 months, and this was the perfect opportunity to do this. Instructions were given to lower the boat into the water, and NOT to release it but only run the motor for about 10 minutes to get it up to running temperature, and test the water spray, the reason being that the current in the river runs at about 3 to 4 knots, so launching wouldn’t be so clever. Everyone was prepared and briefed, life jackets on and the boat lowered to the waterline. It was now that the young Filipino cadet decided to show off what he had learned at his weekly lifeboat muster since joining the vessel, namely to release the painter, because that was his specific job upon launching the boat, and no better oppurtunity to show he knew his duties with the old man leaning against the ships rails on deck a few meters above. Said and done, before anyone had a chance to react to the actions of the Cadet, as he had done what he had learned let go the painter. This meant that the boat had the same speed as the river, 3-4 knots with a fairly confused crew and bewildered Chief mate, who couldn’t understand how they had a man onboard who did what he had learned in all cases without thinking of the consequences. After 2 minutes contact was made with the boat by VHF radio, where we were informed that the motor was running well but the clutch wasn’t engaging. The advantage of a functioning clutch is that you can transfer power to the propellor shaft and thereby get the boat to go ahead or astern. When the clutch isn’t working it doesn’t matter that the engine sounds good, the boat was all the while drifting with the current downstream without regard to the well sounding motor.
So what does the old man do in such a situation with 4 men disappearing downstream towards Montevideo? You’ve guessed it, a new crew to launch the Starboard lifeboat as a rescue boat, everything went well with lowering, but there was an AB that had learned from the incident with the port boat, had the cadet not let go the painter then none of this mess would have happened, better to let the painter line stay put, because an AB knows better than a Cadet of course. 2 of the crew nearly fall overboard because of the tight line but fortunately all of them are still onboard when they eventually do get underway down the river no thanks to the dimwitted AB.
The port boat by this stage had been met up by a local fishing boat trying to sell fish, not really the most appropriate occasion to discuss the price of fish with the Russian Chief Officer, who was only able to communicate in the International seafarers language, which the fisherman clearly understood as they disappeared quickly away. A report came from the bridge that the port boat was 1,2 miles away doing 4 knots, a really great piece of news at this stage. 1 ½ hours had gone since the beginning of the exercise and it was nearing 12 O’Clock, lunch time, the cook noticing that his lunch guests were missing wandered out onto the deck and noticed that 2 lifeboats were heading downstream, his only comment being that maybe they could bring a cow back from the shore as they were passing as the feeding rates were astronomical the past month, not really a great suggestion to the Chief mate at this stage.

By now the rescue boat had reached the port boat and the towing operation had begun, the bridge reported that both boats were now doing 1.5 knots upstream against the current but in the right direction towards the mother ship. When they were about 100 mteres away came the cheerful news that the Starboard boats engine was overheating and the revs were reducing automatically, so the boat was only doing 4 knots same as the river, so they were making no headway.

New idea send out a mooring line from the stern, they float on the water, 220 meters of one line was sent out, not enough, a new one was connected so 300 metres of line reached the port boat, not the rescue boat, the whole thing was getting complicated even for the old man who threatened that if anyone let go of the mooring rope they would be collected outside Montevideo in 3 days 300 miles downstream. After another hour all boats were secured. Both lifeboats now used in drill, next drill in 3 months time. Will revert with new information and details of that drill.

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