SNOWFLAKES

Ship is currently proceeding eastward on the north sea and just passed by on Denmark. During the transit a two ship pilots came in for the 24 hour long channelling (they boarded sometime near midnight and disembarked at around 1pm the following day), I'm not exactly sure on which direction in Denmark this ship went to but I heard that this ship is passing thru some sort of "short cut" trip . I looked on the geographical map on my installed encyclopaedia program (Encarta Microsoft) and saw that there is indeed some sort of river or canal running all across Denmark. I assume this ship went there.

It’s a good thing that these pilots has a side business in selling sim cards (both internet and call cards) and I was able to buy some of those stuff for personal updating of this blog and as a plus they were polite enough to give me a change for the U.S. dollar bills I had on my wallet. Seriously this Danish pilots are a life saver - I badly needed the internet connection cause I need to check out my sister and see what's mom situation on the hospital. Anyway I'm very happy they're selling these as a side business and not Danish cookies :D

By the way it’s a good thing that Danish people speak clear English and I had no problem with them transacting sim cards. I sure hope that I could get to use fully the internet sim card on the way back to Rotterdam Netherlands

In other news  , temperatures here are pleasant and somewhat a bit chilly cold for Filipino standards. Based on the thermometer I had brought along on the trip, it registers at about 15 degrees Celsius and possibly might get even lower when this ship reaches St. Petersburg Russia.

On October 20th this ship finally reached that place at about 5pm and as early as that I along with O.S. Macalawa and BOSUN Payopay are already station on the forward part of the ship waiting for any orders to drop off the anchor via gravity. Weather temperature already dropped at that time to somewhere between 8 degrees Celsius and according to what I heard from the radio , chief mate Anatoliy Bayev wants us to drain the fire water line and fresh water lines as soon as after we finished anchoring, Evidently to prevent those lines from being blocked by ice. (no water inside means no ice blockage) . To add he said that temperature outside will go as low as negative 1 degrees Celsius at around mid night.

Took us at least 30 minutes to finish and secure the anchor and a couple of more  minutes to drain the water lines.

The following morning , this ship proceeded to berth in the morning at around 10am and the pilot came in at around 7am.  No problem for us given that we were already awake as early as 5am in the morning. During the mooring operation , the weather was getting bad - snowflakes were falling off the sky and the temperatures have already dropped to negative one degree's Celsius , worst part of the work was that this ship has no proper supply of winter gloves nor winter boots and I had to run around on the aft area using only standard gear (which is not suitable for winter). Fortunately for me I'm more resistant to cold weather than a hot climate - but of course that doesn’t necessarily mean I'm immune to it, my hand was so cold that it felt numb as well as my two feet during the mooring work.  I kept in mind as a tip that if a person charges  into work ill equip during winter time , just keep moving to make the blood flow and lessen the chances of my feet and hands from getting frozen. Good thing for me that there was plenty of work around to keep me moving as there are no mooring boats around in St. Petersburg Russia, no mooring boats means that mooring wire had to be moored in the dolphin on the wharf via heaving line (usually throwing the "monkey piece" end to the wharf and the other end of it tied up to the "eye" of the mooring wire)

Before we got to finish the mooring , I had to take from the tug boat some piece of paper which happened to be a receipt for the tug boat services. I recovered that piece of paper using only a heaving line and the tug man eventually tied it around with a piece of string. I immediately took it to the bridge for the captain to sign it up and stamp it then afterwards take it bringing it back to the tugboats the same thing I mentioned earlier.

F.Y.I. --> Tugboats and mooring boats work alongside during mooring operation, function of tugboats is to either push (or pull away) the ship in getting near the berth. While mooring boats role during mooring operation is simply deliver the ships mooring line (or mooring wire in our case) to the dolphin wharfs - nothing more. Aside from that Tugboats are larger than mooring boats. PICTURED HERE ON THIS VIDEO

At the night of October 21st , temperatures have reached an all-time low of negative 4 degrees Celsius . It was so cold that my co-workers here have already donned their winter coveralls , me on the other hand didn’t don the standard NSB issue winter coverall as it was ineffective and do not provide proper insulation against cold - I was better off in a parka since it has a thick layer of foam which is a good advantage in cold weather.

Winter Gloves that was tested, got it from a sports store

Aside from the parka , I had my modified red NSB cover and underneath it two layers of sweat shirts to keep me totally warm in the body area also on my clothing underneath the coverall is two sweat pants and three layers of sock to Keep my feet warm plus a winter boots (standard NSB issue) that I found under my locker.  Did also have an opportunity to test some of my equipment which were winter glove and an attachment device for the Motorola radio walkie talkie used on board.

The test drive on the winter gloves was ok , but for the headset attachment I think it was a failure in testing it out on actual working conditions namely for the fact that the headset was only designed for use by ship officers inside a cozy CCR and not entirely for use by any ship rating. It is totally incompatible and cannot be used by a person with a safety helmet on, plus the volume sound coming from the headset is too weak to be heard if it is just only worn on the neck.

The following day …

This ship was boarded by some sort of flag state authority to conduct some sort of inspection. It was my work shift when both of them arrived and I was at the gangway watch, of course I did the usual procedure of checking peoples identification cards with pictures before letting them in and escorting them to the CCR.

snow on the stairways , temperatures are falling rapidly

Everything seemed fine until half an hour later, I was called in over by the radio by Chief mate Anatoliy Bayev and was asked if I could bring the "Visitor's log" on the gangway to the Ship captains office (just right beside CCR). Before I brought it along I was told to check thoroughly the entries made there and if every box options there were ticked, I checked it thoroughly before giving it to the ship masters office. After 5 minutes or so I was told to go back again and get the visitors log , thinking that everything was in order, I went out then inside Chief mate bayez told me that the first four entries of the visitors log didn't had a name written on the visitor's. The chief mate asked me if I was the one on the gangway watch when this was written, I said I wasn’t. (my gangway watch was 6am till 12 noon and 6pm to 12 midnight).

At about sometime on 2pm to 3pm , it was announced that there will be only a single watch and O.S. personnel are on standby and await further announcements for the unmooring ops. The information was relayed to me by O.S. Ronnie Macalawa when I was in the mess room at about 4:42pm.

7:30pm when I was ringed by the phone being informed that the pilot had arrived and we had to assemble on our respective unmooring stations. Unmooring went out without any problems and after that I was told by my co-workers to go to the forward mooring station and assist bosun in putting back the "loose rope" (also called soft rope) back inside the bosun's store. After finishing the said ropes , when we got back we found out that , the rope on the aft part were not secured and they didn’t even bother to put it back - resulting to the fact that the soft ropes got frozen and would be now difficult to put back on the steering gear room .

In other matters,

There's a rumour here going on board going around that captain Ivaylo dimitrov kolev will be taking over the bond store after 3rd mate Vergel Abalos disembarks (finished contract) in Rotterdam on the way back. I'm not exactly sure on what's the overall motive why captain Kolev is so interested will taking over the bond store, but one can easily perceived it to be just plain greed. Apparently several weeks ago Captain Kolev saw the report on how much a bond store earns from crew purchases and probably figure that it’s a lot of money going thru it.

Honestly a ship captain taking over a bond store and cashing out the profits ??? hmm were did I heard that before ? Kind of reminds me of a greedy bastard Filipino ship Captain named Alfredo Pascual of Sea Cap Shipping company. Anyway it only proves one thing, - there is no small or larger amount of money for greedy people.