ONE HELL OF A MESS

Finally here in Germany after only a day's travel (22 hours to be specific). For the moment weather is getting worse and rough as ever, and temperatures are dropping like sales prices on local electronic stores.

On December 10, 2014 was probably the most physically demanding day I had on my entire stay in conti greenland and it all started on a screw up on early 4am in the morning. Was called on the cabin phone and order to heave up anchor, pretty much thinking that this will be just another routine forget me work, I got outside the weather was terribly bitchy. High winds, nasty ocean swell and terrible cold temperature enough to be describe in "sea" related movie on Hollywood.

3:45pm winter time , already sunset 

To why our soviet captain decided to heave up anchor on such a terrible weather ? I had no idea , but it's obvious that captain is at it again doing his old cheap tricks of notify people late. It may work on mooring / unmooring situations but doesn’t work well on heaving anchors especially on terrible weather. Believe me this is the kind of person that will literary get you killed on his poor decisions.

We were heaving the anchor and got to the part where there was only 4 shackles was left on the water , when suddenly a huge swell pulled up the anchor chain from  hawser and all hell broke loose, I think a shackle or two was plucked out and slid off. Looking on the scène was frightening and seeing first hand a few tons of anchor chain terror crushing everything on its path in its way down to the sea is scary enough for me to run and duck for cover.  A second ago when that happened I thought the anchor chain would snap or the whole winch machinery would be ripped out from the deck , I didn’t saw which direction Bosun Payopay went and the same goes as well on O.S. tan.

I ducked for cover on the entrance of the bosun store, but I think it was a stupid place for me to get cover there as a few millimetres thick of iron wall is not enough to stop a 25 ton (to the least) anchor chain from dismembering a human. It was 20 to 30 seconds when the anchor chain finally stopped on its tracks, I didn’t snap but the machinery inside the winch was in bad shape, basically the whole starboard winch was inoperable and unresponsive after that.

BOSUN Payopay went to us and told us to conceal what actually happened , He told us to mention only the part that the anchors got stuck and the winch was unresponsive, we should omit the part that the anchor chain slacked violently as it may jeopardize us being blamed for it, Logically he's right and it's best we keep our mouth shut to exempt us from being blamed

Bosun Payopay Radioed in to the bridge that something was wrong on the anchor motors and Captain Kolev immediately sent in 2nd engineer maksym and Chief engineer to the scene, when they arrived they could figure out what was exactly wrong the anchor motor and had to get some time to think about the problem. After the engine personnel couldn't resolve the problem, I was ordered by the captain to wake up everyone to help us. A few minute after the call, the whole forward part area of the ship was swarming with crew members , despite the numbers no immediate action was taken until 2 hours later, we had to wait and sit tight until the weather clears up. Weather was really bad that the whole ship was rolling at a very sharp angle , so sharp that we wonder perhaps the whole accommodation area now is a mess.

No surprise when I got back to the crew mess to eat breakfast, everything turned out to be a disaster there. Some china wears were broken along with a few glasses and coffee mugs, as if like a typhoon hit the place and went back with a vengeance.

Another hour passed when I return to the forward area , I saw BOSUN Payopay and Captain Kolev taking to each other about the plan to recover the anchor and heave it back up to the deck. According to Captain Kolev's plan he plans to use the other remaining winch to help pull the stuck up anchor using mooring wires like a some sort of wind up machine. Most of the crew disagree on his idea given that its "Unsafe" that mooring wire are pulling such heavy weight objects.

Despite objections his plan went ahead and we went on the tiresome task of replacing and mooring wires and winding them up on the starboard mooring winch. After the "Recovery" was finished , it was shown that the anchor was badly twisted from the bad weather so twisted and bent. From my watch it was already 2:45 pm when the task was completed

15 minutes after the competition, all of us were badly tired when captain kolev ordered that berthing will resume immediately and we have to rig the pilot ladder on the starboard side. ( Damn bastard even forgot to say thank you on our hard efforts in pulling the anchor up again, ) So for the record I had been doing work all day long starting from 4am all the up to 8:30pm , If it weren't for bosun payopay taking pity and saying I should take a load off , I would have gone working straight till the following morning of 6am - 26 hours non-stop !!!! Damn !!!!

The rest was short lived and was only for two hours but enough to refresh me to take a light quick nap before being called back on the deck at 10:30pm for the mooring operations.

Mooring operations was easy , well at least for the aft mooring team - not so much on the forward though since one of the winches was badly broken.

On the loading operation, loading cargo in Hamburg was very long and took 6 long days to finish (for tanker ship standards). There was plenty of time to go on a shore leave and see the surroundings, I took the opportunity there in going out and seeing the nearby seaman's club, bought there some souvenirs and an internet sim card. Seaman's club was basically average here in Hamburg but definitely more better than the rest. Basically it's just a club house with a souvenir shop, a library and nothing more, We stayed there for a few hours (to be specific only 2 and a half hours) .  me, A.B. Joseph Dinglasa, A.B. Marlon Layos, Chief cook and chief engineer, then head back to our ship.

To mention there are two internet sim brands available for sailors in Germany. One is "ORTEL" which I'm not familiar with and the other is "LEBARA". I'm already familiar with lebara internet since this company operates also in Netherlands, Unfortunately Lebara Netherlands is different from Lebara Germany, I can't use my internet dutch  sim here and have to buy a Lebara Germany internet instead.  Basically internet top ups here are not convertible even though both if these countries us "Euro" as their money. Anyway believe it or not Lebara Germany is much customer friendly than its Dutch counterpart and they gave away a 3Gb flat rate credit here ( in Netherlands they only give 1GB for the same price). For everybody's information the cost of internet in LEBARA Germany in the Seaman's club is 15 Euro's (or about 20 U.S. Dollars) as of circa december 2014.

All the six days stay in Hamburg was basically just trapped on this ship, doing always a six hour work shift on the gangway being the "guard dog" at the entrance. During my off hours , I spent much of my time inside the cabin doing internet stuff mostly social networking thing. To make full use of the 3GB credit on lebara , I had to download one of the news games in the civilization video game franchise titled "Civilization : Beyond Earth" .

It was a new game and the latest, but definitely not well known. To give you a sneak peak on the story, the game is set in the far future and earth has undergone a cataclysmic unmentioned apocalypse only referred to as "The great mistake" . World's remaining surviving population managed to build stellar ships in hopes of finding a new world beyond the stars , and it's up to the player as a colonial governor to lead the people of earth to the "Promise Land"  and that’s about it. Game starts off in a strange alien world and you either terraform the place to be more earth like or just simply evolve (or adapt) on this new world and go beyond human. Of course you're not the only civilization around and there's a lot of "Neighbours" who made it to the stellar trip from earth and you either co-exist with them or start a new world order on an alien world.

Factions are on this game is ARC (formerly north American countries), Franco-Liberia ( former western Europe states), Brasilia (former central and south American states) , African union (formerly African states) , Pan Pacific cooperation (formerly north Asian and pacific states), Polystrailan (formerly Australia and Micronesian states ) , Slavic Federation (formerly eastern Europe and USSR states) and Klavenine Commonwealth (formerly south asian states and middle east) .