TREASURE HUNT

Even though it gives me comfort to know that Senegalese people are not cannibals, it doesn't necessarily mean that they won't steal our stuff. As a precaution to these scenario, Captain Ivaylo Dimitriv Kolev told us that our job work currently is part hiding good from the bond store to somewhere else. He ordered us to hid the stuff on the bond store to three separate locations. One location was inside the one of the cofferdams in inside the Emergency steering gear, the other is placed inside the "cable trunk" space at the back of the kitchen, and the rest that remains is sealed off on the bond store at the bottom of the galley.

Captains Kolev's intention why he had to conceal most of this stuff is based on the incident on what happened last year where Senegalese authorities ransack almost everything on the ship's supplies. Anyway it's not a big surprise that this always typical happens on any commercial ship going into Africa as authorities there have a bad habit of making each ship their own personal shopping store.

On my end it's not exactly my concern, the only thing I had was that it's another extra work for us hiding all those stuff on the cofferdam and after Africa putting all these merchandise back to the bond store.

Aside from that, some of the folks here think that hiding most of the bond store to  the cofferdams is a bad idea and might even bring trouble and get the attention of port authorities on why the hell is our bond store almost empty. They suspect that port authorities might conduct a quasi-random drug search (or cabin search of some kind) on this ship to bring out the said merchandise. Anyway this won't be exactly known until we arrived in Senegal water territories on September 29th 2014 and docked on a Senegal port.

In the meantime , Captain Kolev conducted a safety meeting last Saturday September 27th and debriefed us on the Do's and Don'ts as well as the "what to do" while were in Africa. Meeting just basically told us some common problems that plague Africa like malaria, stowaways, rude and violent people, and most recently the Ebola outbreak. Right after the safety meeting, barbecue party started. Had a lot of drinks there and had me waking up in the morning with a nasty hangover, Good thing that this Sundays was a rest day and a breather from all the hard work going on around.

Monday, September 29, 2014 …..

This is the day where this ship arrived in Senegal waters, first off weather here isn't really that great and comfortable like in Europe. Climate is much similar to a tropical country with temperatures of 29 degrees Celsius in the morning and roughly about 30 plus something on mid-day. As usual same tactics apply on a tropical hot climate, always keep hydrated (bring water canteen) , dress light or if the heat is unbearable make my coveralls moist (not wet) and stay out of the sun as much as possible, and change to dry clothes often if there's time.

PICTURED HERE ARE ACTUAL HEAVING AND DROPPING ANCHOR OPERATIONS