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Home again, home again jiggety jog.

Published September 24, 2008 in Airports, passengers, pinch of salt required and At home. 7 Comments

The port wing of my second and final flight yesterday, the aircraft was a Fokker 70. The first plane was also a Fokker, a 50 though, and it felt like being on a Honda 50. According to my schedule I had an hour between planes, which is grand if you are on time and you only have carry on baggage. My first plane was late leaving. Subsequently I had only 40 minutes to get to my other flight, which of course was on the other side of Schipol Airport. So I had to do the walk-trot-half run across the long corridors and through the shopping area. Anyway I got to my plane, but the suitcase had to take a later flight, it not having legs and relying on the throwers to get it on the right wagon. But I got it in the end, safe and unmolested. On my way I met

Airport phenomenon#1 Aimless wandering. If you happen to be in a rush between two flights you will often encounter these types. Sightseeing tourists, marveling and the grandeur of the airport concourses and escalators. There should be shepherds to move these out of the way of

Airport phenomenon#2 People in a hurry. If you happen to be aimlessly wandering around the inside of an airport you will be undoubtedly knocked over by one of these people. They are often in symbiosis with

Airport phenomenon#3 Public Corporate bullshitters. If you happen to be aimlessly wandering, in a hurry, taking a leak, waiting for a plane, you will hear these types long before you see them. They most likely have a blue tooth headset and look like they are talking to themselves but are actually on the phone taking a kind of gibberish designed to confuse and annoy the normal members of the public. Phrases like “downsizing” “mission statement” “business paradigm” & other corporate bullshit can be heard among the other words in the loudest possible voice known to mankind. Of course corporate bullshit was invented to give these types something to say, because they don’t appear to have normal lives where they might have recourse to using English. As you protect your ears from being damaged you will probably see

Airport phenomenon#4 Cleaners. People dressed up as cleaners with utility trolleys filled with ALL the chemicals known on Earth in spray bottles. They don’t actually do any cleaning when anybody is looking, unless they see

Airport phenomenon#5 Supervisors. People wearing lots of mobile phones and radios which are usually switched on to the “white noise” channel with full squelch, they are weighted down with security passes and keys on extendable key fobs, and have a shiny white pale palour as they have never seen the light of day.These are dismissively ignored by the

Airport phenomenon#6 Air crew. The women are tall and skinny and look important, the men are all shapes and sizes but have the uniforms that have the gold or silver stripes around the arms and the hats of course. The women walk tall too, because they are probably too tall to stand upright in the plane while looking important and serving tea and coffee and the rest (my ticket said “meal unspecified” yum yum) so they need to stretch out while parading the concourse.

There are tons more phenomena associated with airports, not least the security and the check in desks or small kids driving their parents to distraction. They should have 2 queues going in, one saying “have you ever been at an airport before or flown on a commercial flight?” the other saying”is this your first time here? or are you completely insane and intend to wander aimlessly around getting in everybody else’s way?” Ah well at least I wasn’t heading for Casablanca yesterday.

Casablanca

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. 8 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.

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.

Ship swindler

Published July 3, 2008 in Seafood, milk, pinch of salt required, From the ship and On the ship. 1 Comment

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!

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