As soon as cargo operations began, I still have a few hours left to prepare for my shift. I immediately went to the showers to change my dirty grease stained coveralls, and as soon as finished I heard the ship's PA system announcing that a random drug and alcohol test will be conducted by the shore doctors and everyone must proceed immediately to the ships hospital room. Unfortunately for me I already took a piss on the toilet and there's nothing left inside my bladder for the moment. Good thing the test wasn't a rush-rush and I drank a litre of water and waited about an hour and a half before going to the hospital room. Random drug and alcohol test isn't really a big deal, just piss on the small container (60ml to be specific), sign a piece of paper and voila.
When I took
over and went to my work shift as gangway watchman , I was seriously feeling
the effect of fatigue and sleep deprivation. Had difficult time of
concentrating nor even staying upright and awake, and had to endure the 6 hour
long shift before crashing to my bed. During my shift , I had a chit chat with
O.S. Dinglasa and found out that there's no internet provider here and the
agent doesn’t sell internet sim card or even top up cards - well I guess this
port sucks was hoping that I'd update my blog here or check my face book and do
all sorts of social media stuff, Anyway turns out that this is just another
boring port.
At about
9am in the morning I was awaken by the sound of my alarm clock and quickly went
to my laptop and write. At about 12 noon I was back again on my working shift
and was just basically guarding the gangway and was told that the vetting
inspector will be visiting this ship to conduct inspection, So I had to keep my
eyes peeled and notify them immediately if I see the inspector. As what was
agreed I had to wear a different coveralls and gear , one that is totally
unaltered (No headlights, No belts, No Zippers and extra pockets on coveralls)
to avoid any misunderstandings on our incredibly skittish Soviets ship officers
and very long discussions with the vetting inspector just in case. I keep my
word anyway , after all its just only for a day.
It was
about 5pm when the vetting inspector arrived, not much to tell about him. Just
some friendly old guy with a helmet. After my shift I went back to my cabin and
didn’t sleep and just killed the time playing videogames on my laptop (fallout
3). At about midnight I went back in again for my shift and everything was
already on the finishing phase and after an hour , Me and A.B. Layos started
cleaning the place up. Putting all the SOPEP equipment to its locker and
waiting for the ship pilot to arrive. Unfortunately for both me and A.B. Layos
, Chiefmate Bayev dumped us a lot of work , ordered us to do this and that -
even rig both the pilot ladder and gangway ladder and rig both the fire wires
on the forward and aft side of the ship. He dumped us in so much work that he
even had me ignore being a gangway watchman and leave my post. Hmpf talk about
ISPS compliancy eh !! - worst part of the job was that during that time the
rain was quite heavy.
After that
, I was put up again on another task, this time to put on the canvas of the
rescue boat and I had to literary crawl done on the wet floor to get those damn
lashing. So after securing the rescue my coveralls was damn wet and to make it
bad , unmooring will start within 10 minutes.
Unmooring
wasn't really that bad , even if I'm
doing my job with a totally wet coveralls and being covered yet again on
wire grease - just part of the work I guess on always being in a difficult
situation.
After
Unmooring a small boat came alone and delivered two long steel pipes , and we
had to haul them off using a provision crane. Apparently these pipes will be
installed in the latter on the engine room in preparation for some
modifications that will be made. (from what I heard this ship will switching to
diesel kind of some sort of fuel and will be always in low sulphur thing)
By Sunday I
just spent my whole day sleeping, I was so worn out that I didn’t even bother
to get up on my bed, the only thing that got me out if was only during meal
time and after that I directly went straight ahead to sleep.
The
following day, I was back on regular maintenance work of chipping , polishing
and painting primer paint - this time it was the winch machine on the forward
area that were doing maintenance work. At night time this ship , stopped going
adrift and went on its next destination - Sardinia , an island west of italy
In the next
few days….
Basically
after the discharge port of Algeciras, we were back again doing the usual
maintenance work. This time the usual chipping, polishing and painting stuff on
the forward winches - pretty basic stuff and that’s the reason why O.S. and
deck personnel are here for anyway.
On November
11, 2014. All of us deck people are surprised to see that, all of the
accommodation doors have been set to closed intentionally, we took a look on
the doors and all of them have the hooks removed. All of us are figuring it out
what's the motive behind these sudden shutting of doors, Usually we only shut
accommodation door's when were just expecting a vetting inspector and such. Now
that the vetting inspection is now over , we don't see any reason why these
door had to be shut.
In other
news…
Since its
now confirmed that O.S. Ronnie Macalawa, A.B. Ruben Ganub and 3rd Mate Vergel
Abalos will be disembarking (finished contract) on next port and O.S. Joseph
Dinglasa will be moving up on the promotion ladder as A.B. , a big question now
stands who will replace the position left behind Joseph as O.S. - O.T. ?
Certainly the next most logical to the line is me since im the next senior O.S.
around for the time being , however I'm not exactly sure if I could perform
well as an O.S. - O.T. , Well I could certainly drive a ship or even do the
usual deck watch keeping thing , but the problem is I haven't been exactly been
on the bridge as main stream for some time now. Last I had been on the bridge
for watch keeping was way back 2011 and it's been almost five long years now -
My skills probably have gone "rusty" on the time lapse and will
definitely need some refreshing (which I failed to do so). I still have up to
now a lot of self-doubt about myself on staying in the bridge as part of my work,
somehow I'm not comfortable and uneasy that I'm the one to be selected as O.S.-
O.T. , Honestly I'm very much content in being an O.S. (like the name of the
position implies "ordinary seaman")
rather than being an O.S. - O.T. , I think things will be more
complicated for me If I'd be that.
Anyway
being an O.S. - O.T. is still being decided and Chief Officer Bayev will have
the final say on it and will find out on the latter. Aside from the
"promotion" , I had already accepted that I'd be taking over Ronnie's
work on the bond store thing (thought relunctant) , I had no problem taking
care of it given that I'd had already have experience in handling (and
delivering) the bond store items way before and on my previous ship. The
general rule on that is that make sure that nothing is missing and everything
is in check and accountable.
I think
handling the bond store will be much easier, and I needed the extra 100 euro's
per month anyway in buying extra presents for the folks back home.
In other
matters ….
So much for
the unloading operation of this ship at Algeciras Spain, only took one and a
half day in finishing all the work and not enough time to go on shore leave and
see the surroundings. Speaking of which I had been holed up here for 5 months
now and haven't even set foot on any land that this ship has visited, I'm just
simply trapped here on this rust bucket till I finish my contract.
Sometimes I
wonder if the management here has some issues regarding shore leave - I mean
come on !! , way back when I was still in a chemical tanker. I went on shore
leave a lot of times even if the schedule was a bit tight .Now I'm in a product
tanker (more like an oil tanker) which has a much lighter workload, the shore
leave here
I guess a
lot of people might think that being a sailor meant to visit other countries
like a tourist or so, but in reality sailors are nothing more than a
construction workers stuck in a floating rust bucket in the middle of nowhere -
and totally stuck. The time I'm living at is very awful for a Filipino sailor
(the least to say) , This isn't you're grandfathers happy-time-in-la-la-land
when he was a sailor, things have changed a lot since then and for the worst.
Anyway
there's so much propaganda and bullshit going on that it clouds the harsh
reality of this job. Hard to believe that a lot kids are still being fed with
that kind of bullshit that being a sailor is like saving the human race ! Ugh
!!!
