Immediately after Cape Tallin Departed, the whole deck crew was put in securing all mooring ropes in the BOSUN Store area and Steering Gear Room. It took us the whole day for the ropes to be finally secured. Aside from that we also lashed the Anchors and secured a few remaining safety equipments like life rings, scupper plugs and such. My thumb was also badly injured during the lashings put up in the anchor chains, it was only minor though.
On Saturday, I was busy cleaning the whole upper deck level of the accommodation area. Apparently the new chief mate noticed that the whole level was littered with dirt marks of shoes and told the BOSUN , The BOSUN of course ordered me to clean the whole floor area. Late afternoon I heard from A.B. Patrick Dondonilla that the loading operations in Rotterdam will be ship to ship and that there will be five to six barge that will be loading crude oil to this ship. Unfortunately for me I don't really have much experience in ship to ship operations as mostly (and a majority)of my previous ships berth at port.
Sunday was pretty much quiet since there is no work at all , spent much time repairing and scavenging for supplies. I did visit A.B. "Patrick" on his cabin given the fact that satellite email hasn't transmitted / downloaded emails yet, just to keep him company and see how's he's doing. On my chat with him on his cabin , I found out that working supplies here on this ship hasn't been issued yet (or not issued at all) for months now. He said that even some of our co - workers are begging for supplies to the engine department or even from dock workers just to get a clean set of gloves. I have no idea why this is happening on Cape Tallin, but A.B. "Patrick" suggested that it maybe due to poor management of CSM Cyprus on its crew and ships or Poor Management from Career Philippines, mine on the other hand surmise that it maybe the Russian Chief mate or The Russian Captain that's hoarding off the money for supplies. My backer here Captain Betts suggested on the email that if we don't have supplies , it might be the Chief Mates fault that were not receiving any supplies at all. Anyway the trails leads to different paths why were not receiving supplies here, I may find out on the latter. For now I might be busy doing the triple S work tactic , that is SCAVENGE, SALVAGE and STOCKPILE.
On Monday I was busy degreasing stains marks on winches left and there were a lot did finished it though in at least half a day. I did found out one thing about career that cash advance is not exactly cash advance at all, it only simply means that "I-WANT-MY-HARD-EARNED-MONEY-CAUSE-IM-GOING-TO-BUY-SOMETHING" . Honestly I'm not happy about this knowing that this was the way on the monetary system, Its more like working for points rather than cold hard cash and if I'm planning to buy something say like an electronic goods whenever I'm in Holland or in America I have to plan in advance for it , plus it all depends if there will be a "CASH ADVANCE" available onboard. I think my previous company is much better in a lot of aspects and this also includes the money part since they let us handle the hard earned USD.
On Tuesday in preparation of the upcoming berthing operations in Amsterdam Holland, The deck crew including me pulled out mooring ropes from the BOSUN'S store and Steering Gear room , if I recalled correct we pulled out at least three loose ropes and 2 small other loose ropes probably for the ship to ship berth. On the aft side if I recall we pulled at least 3 loose ropes also. Aside from the preparations we made this ship also anchored on the nearby anchorage area , from what I heard its at least 8 shackles of anchor chain were paid off on the water.
For the rest of the day I was busy scavenging and repairing working supplies, namely leather gauntlet gloves and cotton gloves , did also some work on repairing my safety helmet and inserted a garter to keep the goggles in place.
On Wednesday. Me and O.S. Hall manage to paint the kentel shackle of the anchor chain despite poor weather and light rain, We just put a plastic canvass over it just to make sure that the rain doesn't mess up the paint plus the painted we used was for inside cargo so I guess the paint will be tough against the weather.
In the afternoon me and BOSUN AMICAN, was busy putting the old cargo valves to the deck store, to be specific its was cargo valve yellow (a.k.a cargo valve no.02) and Blue Cargo Valve (a.k.a cargo valve no.03) was a very heavy valve and we had to use a chain block to move it only on a few feet , later since me and the BOSUN could not move the said valves , some of the crew came in to help us out namely and arranged the valves.
