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Fatigue & The Knock on Effect

Published September 20, 2008 in bridges, Antwerp, cigarettes, Pilot, coffee, pinch of salt required, Belgium, Pilotage and On the ship. 6 Comments

Lack of sleep, one of the disadvantages of the job. Of course we have lots of rules about hours of rest that ~~should~~ be are obeyed, I don’t know if I get tired of the rules or just from being awake in the middle of the night, when I should be tucked up in bed. Even with “strict” compliance to rest hours regulations it’s a bad job doing night time operations, for a start it’s dark, you can’t see anything so everything takes a bit longer, and because of the “knock on effect” you get even further delays, so you have to stay up even longer which leads to frustration, lethargy and generally puts everyone in a foul humour. My sarcasm is directly proportional to my level of fatigue, the longer I’m awake when I’d rather not be awake the more dyspeptic I become, fortunately the sarcasm is lost completely on everyone here them having not been brought up in Ireland. Anyway you get the picture, crabby captain and tired crew, no one happy exactly.

The “knock on effect” is like this, if you say you will be at the Pilot station at 2am, the pilot will arrive 30 minutes afterwards. During the day time he would have been awake so he would normally arrive on time, but at night he has to be put on the shake, and he takes his time getting ready because he is also knackered and doesn’t want to get out of his bed. So you have to wait 30 minutes more.

If you are going to a port with no locks, then you only have to wait the extra 30 minutes for linesmen, who are a surly, arrogant crowd of bastards in the daytime, but they turn up the ignorance factor to full during the night, because they are blaming you for having gotten them out of bed. The banter is usually quite blue between the AB’s and the linesmen, imagine a crew of British AB’s and you are docking in an Australian port….I had one Aussie lines man cut the Monkeys fist off the heaving line once and he fired it into the water, whilst hurling abuse up at us, plucky bastard, there were 5 of us and only one of him. But he was safe enough on the quay wall.

If you are going to a port with locks, then the Dock master has to disentangle himself from his blankets, have a piss, get dressed, get the lock gates ready and call lines men, there’s another 60 minutes.

You can see the pattern. There are variations, once upon a night off Port Said , the shouting and screaming and arm waving, smell of burning cigarette butts, sweat and the humidity…. all I’ll say is Divine Comedy 9th circle of Hell. And then theres Murphy’s Law, or Sod’s Law, the night time version is even worse, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong especially at night and usually in Belgium because…….and then theres Antwerp. 2 pilot changes, 2 sovereign territiories, 8 hour river transit, locks, docks, tugs, cuts, swing bridges, lift bridges, linesmen and at night.

Put more coffee on.

Pirates get caught

Published September 19, 2008 in Security, Pirates, Dodgy ships, Denmark, Shipping and On the ship. 0 Comments

Absalon by Hebster. Click on the photo to get to Hebsters Photo stream in Flickr

From the Scandinavian Shipping Gazette I read about the Danish frigate Absalon capturing boats and pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The Absalon’s helicopter spotted the boats and a navy seal detachment boarded and found equipment and weapons. Read the full story on Shipgaz.com.

The piracy in the gulf of Aden is on the almost out of control level. It used to be enough to keep away from the coast but now the pirates have powerful speedboats with long range and are equipped with sophisticated weapons and boarding equipment. Not bad coming from a country that has had no effective government since 1992. Where are all the weapons and gear coming from? Where does one shop for ship boarding equipment and sundry items, useful to the pirate trade? Unless there is some tacit official backing, which is understandable enough I suppose for a country with no industry or infrastructure, they need money too. This could be part of a toll system ? I also read that some shipping companies are employing private “security” firms when transiting these pirate infested areas. Someone pointed out that it might not be so good to have armed guards shooting at pirates who could retaliate with rocket propelled grenades, which tend to have a negative effect on ships like chemical tankers or oil product tankers, the resultant explosion produced by an RPG could destroy the whole ship, not really that great for the cargo, or the owners, or not least the poor unfortunate crew!

The Pacific Pintail has 3 x 30mm cannons onboard, but then again she is carrying plutonium waste, not the sort of shit you want pirates to be getting hold of. But this piracy lark seems to be a growth industry, ships are captured brought to the coast of Somalia and the owners pay ransoms, which they later deny and the pirates release the ships stripped usually and the crew mostly unharmed. How does that work I wonder, brokerage for ransom paying, how does one get into that line of business. Ex CIA with contacts with unscrupulous Swiss bankers trying to launder Nazi money? Who knows, I am just amazed that these pirates have turned piracy into an international business.

Back in my deep sea days we had no guns. On the LNG ships going up and down the Malacca straits and the South China Sea we just had a few fire hoses rigged over the sides and the anchor washers full on, not extremely effective but something to do, wet the pirates before they board you. If they were fired up and aggressive beforehand a good soaking will be sure to improve their mood. We used to joke about painting large dollar signs with direction arrows towards the old mans safe. Real thigh slapping stuff.

Now I’m the old man……

Suez Spam Bonus

Published September 16, 2008 in pinch of salt required, From the ship and On the ship. 5 Comments

Bonus the Jack Russell

I made the near fatal error of replying to an Egyptian Ship Chandler’s e-mail this evening. I should have just binned it, pressed the delete button and carried on with whatever else I was doing, but no. For some reason I sat down and read the e-mail offering best quality produce fresh and locally produced with 25% cash discount bonus. All very well and good Mr Egyptian Chandler but we are never in Egypt, we are only in the Mediterranean occasionally, you could be offering free beer and camels but we don’t go there.

So I replied please don’t send us any more offers we are never in Egypt. Thanks very much all the same.

Within minutes the mail box was full of e-mail again, the first one being an apology from yer man the chandler “Please Captain accept my most sincere apologies, and be sure to call us on your next call to Suez and get special bonus”

“NEXT????” the last time was never so what “next”, and what bonus? Then he must have passed the e-mail address to his spare parts friends who were offering top quality lifeboats only used once……

Delete

Do not reply ever again, I told myself. The only real bonus was that I remembered a story about an old man back in the auld times who had a dog with him on the ship. A little Jack Russell, and it used to sleep in a basket in his office and follow him around the deck every day cocking his small leg on the mates nice paintwork.

The ship had a visit from one of the senior superintendents, and he immediately asked “what do you call the dog?”

“Bonus” says our friend the old man.

“Bonus?” thats a quare sort of a name for a dog, and pray tell why did you call the dog bonus?

Because he is so small.

Be nice to the spanners

Published September 5, 2008 in practical jokes, Cadets, oil and water, deck and engine room, From the ship, pinch of salt required and On the ship. 3 Comments

Have lost contact with the muse recently and got entangled in the Wire. All 5 series seen now, and I feel like Jimmy Mc Nulty after a wake at Kavanagh’s bar. Still it’s a great show.

Anyway back to blogging. I heard one about a cadet who thought he was very clever playing pranks on the spanners, a deck cadet needless to say who got great pleasure one day leaning over the skylight to the engine room and tapping a chipping hammer off the coaming to the rhythm of the engine. The engineers thought that one of the pistons had a knock and a general panic ensued with spanners running around like headless chickens trying to find the source of the knocking sound on the main engine. The cadet nearly lost the run of himself with laughter and dropped the chipping hammer into the engine room, nearly braining the first engineer. Well on a ship, you can hide but you can’t run, and you can’t hide for too long. He got away lightly with a few digs and a severe warning on pain of death if he ever wanted to pull a stunt like that again.

This could have ended the tale, but one of the engineers wanted some proper retribution. No better night than when the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see past midships, and everyman and his dog was on the bridge keeping lookout and stretching ears to hear the sound of a fog horn. The old man was pacing up and down nervously as he had a bit of a nerve problem and was jumpy at the best of times, the radars were manned and the ship was on reduced speed in the English channel. Suddenly there was the sound of a fog horn on the port side, all hand on the bridge went into action mode, but with binoculars pressed hard against eye sockets and nothing on the scope, it was a mystery. Then all of a sudden the fog horn was heard again but this time on the starboard side,all hell breaks loose in the wheelhouse, the old man nearly shit himself with fear.

Then the second engineer walks onto the bridge with a clarinet in hand, grinning broadly. He said I think this belongs to the deck cadet and walked off.

Be nice to the spanners or they can make life nasty.

Keeping the peace

Published July 30, 2008 in milk, deck and engine room, oil and water, About, Deckies, From the ship, Engineers and On the ship. 3 Comments

Sacred Heart

Note to self…don’t order fresh milk for the ship again in the hot summer months.

There were a few sour tempers between the deck and engine room departments today so I had to use all my skills as a mediator even though I knew that the spanners were to blame. I can’t take sides as I did before, even if I’d like to. It was a bit of a storm in the preverbial tea cup, but it had it’s lead up, minor words here and there and then an all out shouting match that would have the security guards charging in with riot gear.But we don’t have any security guards only me. I waited for the heckles to lie down a bit and then called a meeting between the warring parties. I asked for silence and said that I would speak having spoken to both sides individually. I could see in the eyes of the two factions that it would not be easy and for some reason I was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

The milk was probably standing on the back of a truck somewhere with the rest of the stores overnight, growing cultures of bacteria. The frozen stuff was Ok, and the fruit and veg, but the milk was off, again.

Thinking about the milk stopped me from laughing, I gave some bullshit about peace and harmony and threw in a few lines I’d heard on “The Wire” TV show about “showing me the love” and in the end they agreed to act in a more harmonious way. A compromise was reached and mutual respect was agreed on. Later the two individuals came up to me at separate intervals and said that the other guy was “mentally ill” and “a stupid f..cker” respectively….so much for showing me the love. Ah well as long as they don’t kill each other.

Now years earlier when I was a second mate, there was an incident on a ship that started off with an engineer slagging off a radio officer. Seemingly harmless gibes about being a “half deckie, half engineer” and “useless at both”. Now yer man the engineer was a Scouser and yer other man the R/O was from Limerick. If you know anything about Limerick people you don’t want to start picking on the wrong one, it ended up with the Scouser calling out to the R/O in front of the other engineers “hey Paddy I think the skipper needs you to wipe his arse” there was dead silence. And Paddy (not his real name by the way) went off quietly and said nothing.
Now as far as I knew this Paddy guy was an angel, in his cabin he had a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the bulkhead, and he had a photo of his mother beside the bible on his locker. He didn’t smoke and only had an occasional beer, always on time for work and did his job well….model citizen?
That evening at the dinner table in the saloon, there were steaks on the menu and just when everyone was busy scoffing down their prime beef, Paddy jumps up from his place with steak knife in hand and places it firmly up against the neck of the bould Scouser.
The place died. The silence was murderous. Then Paddy pipes up in a quiet voice…” you ya f..cker, if you ever look at me again I’ll f..cking well open you up” with that he went back to his place and continued to eat his meat. Our friend the engineer, didn’t have anything clever to say then and there, and he walked out of the room , very pale and with his tail between his legs.
The old man who had witnessed the entire proceedings said nothing, and neither did anyone else, there was a collective holding of breaths until Paddy left the room.
Now the gas thing was, we were weeks away from port, so the two of them had to work onboard until Paddy went home on “sick leave”. I don’t know what the old man did or said to either of them but the steak knife brandishing was the high point of the affair. (no pun intended), but it was amusing watching them meet in the alleyways and around the saloon. There was a magnetic effect, of opposition!

I’m glad I only have to worry about sour milk and a bit of shouting.

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