JOURNAL
ENTRY: August 18, 2016 Thursday
Location:
Johor Straight (border of Singapore and Malaysia)
Following
to what I wrote earlier , it looks like that the meeting about the five riding
crew at the bridge was about asking them if they could make their stay here a
bit longer since their badly needed for
the upcoming ship repairs work. I don’t know the other details on their
discussion that followed.
The
following day, O.S. Marder wasn't happy about being told to stay a bit longer
and insist that he should disembark in Singapore, after all his contract is
already finished and there is no point in staying longer. He submitted another
letter to the Norstar Management and a few hours later, In the afternoon a
reply was made by the management confirming that he will disembark in Singapore
along with the other three "Riding crew" , One riding crew will be
left behind.
Some
of the crew here were not happy about the news that, this ship will be
short-handed when ship repairs on the dry dock will come. (short-handed means having few workers to help out). Me on my personal view, Their contracts are already
finished and it's up to them if they wanted to stay a bit or go home - it's no
longer obligatory.
Latest news
I heard was that their disembarking on the nearest port , which is Sempawang
Malaysia or so it looks like.
At
about 12:10pm this ship arrived in Johor straight near the border of Singapore
and Malaysia. Immediate this ship resumed its unloading operations, This time
it was a ship to ship operations with "CS Zephyr". As expected the
mooring operations was hard because of the weather, definitely a hot and humid
tropical climate - a weather that I really hate most. Although its hot, the
temperature here in manageable compared to the apocalyptic proportions of
Fujairah. To describe during day time, temperatures are as hot as the
Philippines, or a little hotter. While nighttime is very similar to Philippine
temperatures, So similar that you don’t get the feeling of working on
"another country" , to add more on the ambiance of that is that some
cargo Surveyors working here are Filipino,. How I noticed that he was a
Filipino ?! Simple he was wearing a "balaclava" a face mask used by
Filipino's and the design of his "balaclava" is the one used
typically by the transportation /
industrial workers back in the Philippines (like tricycle drivers etc.),
oh and of course he also speaks Filipino (Philippine national dialect - a language heavily
based on the local ethnic language "Tagalog") . By the way despite Singapore's hot climate it does
actually rain here even if this place is at the equator and the movement of
wind here is frequent.
Anyway I
easily can tell the difference of the national borders between Malaysia and
Singapore here since this ships location is smacked in the middle and that the
landmark I had been seeing visually is the bridge - the only way in and out of
Singapore to Malaysia via land.
"CS
Zephyr" , from what I heard is one of those other ship storage tankers of
Singapore. Basically since Singapore doesn’t have much land space to build an
oil depo and factory, it relays heavily on these flotilla for oil processing
needs, for short this ship is fixed and is permanently always here in
Singapore. This ship based on the small talk I made from the SGS surveyor
(which is a Filipino national) is a fully manned Filipino crew , Their agency
officer is from jebsen (located near CF sharp shipping office). The crew on the
other ship doesn’t talk much about meeting their fellow Filipino's nor at least
giving any small chat. NO big deal anyway.
In other
news.
On Cargo
watch, I took the opportunities in testing out my new innovations for myself.
Such as new outfits for the hot / warm climate of the pacific, as well as new
tools , and a new "cooling" tool I worked out which is just basically
a very miniaturized version of an air hose - good for keeping myself cool and
comfortable despite the tropical weather. Unfortunately despite the innovation
a minor problem had occurred , which is basically the rusty metallic stench of
the pneumatic pipe's here stick on my clothes , smelling like a metallic
version of body odor. Anyway having a nasty smell is the least of my problems
Another
thing I had been testing is new methods of washing clothes which apparently for
some reason the laundry room of this ship was closed without further notice and
left all the crew including myself, finding out a way on how to wash clothes.
As for the
work
There had
been a few challenges, like recently "A.B. Alvin" broke the last
functioning sounding tape here in this pathetic ship. Can't imagine that this
ship is an "aframax" type of ship and yet it has only one accurate
sounding tape around - talk about cheap management ! , Good thing that there
was still some spare parts from other broken sounding tapes and they
cannibalized the parts. Its repaired , but the sounding tape is 11cm inaccurate
of the actual measure.
Another
thing, that happened is that I actually learned something new here.
Specifically about hydraulic lines and pumps and how to operate a manual
hydraulic pump. Apparently turns out that some of the hydraulic switches on the
CCR (specifically water ballast switches) do not work there and we have to
literary carry a heavy hydraulic pump (around 15 kilograms) around to switch it
on / off , then later check for the ballast vents if its opened or not. Air
coming out means that there's an activity going on inside the vents (for short
its open) and no Air coming out means most likely the ballast pump are switched
off. Although it's very educational, its laughingly pathetic that we have to
carry around the heavy pump for just doing a simple task (and a push of a
switch in CCR), and this is how backward and pathetic this ship is.
