November
19,2018 Monday
Drifting
somewhere near Sri Langka Area
There
has been sudden updates on where this ship is going, earlier it was thought
that this ship might go directly to saudi arabia then after that to Fujirah UAE
for bunkering (refueling) . Now the updated news says that it will go first to
UAE , then saudi arabia for loading cargo then go directly go back to Perth,
Australia.
For
the moment this ship will be drifting back to somewhere near sri langka. The
tropical weather at the moment there is horribly hot especially in the morning
till noon time., then slightly cools down late in the afternoon. It was so hot
that I had to take anti dehydration packs that I brought along for this trip
together with anti-oxidant tablets , and to ease the discomfort I had to do my
usual tactics in cooling myself by wetting my coveralls with water. I was painting some areas on the deck and I
could really felt the "hot" weather, especially when I climbed on the
pipes to paint those "2nd coat" patches., Heck the pipes itself was
hot because of the direct sunlight and if it were not for my knee pads which I
wore for work ., I would have ended up with some skin burn marks on my knees.
On
top of that aside from the weather related problems , Water problems have not
yet been solved by the engine room and the laundry room is still only usable
for two days in a week. ( can't really figure out why there is restrictions on
using water when this ship is at open sea , I surmise that this has nothing to
do with the technical stuff and that our "Uwak" chief engineer is
just simply being stingy on us using water).
For
the short time., I had been washing my clothes inside the bathroom area. There
is no other option for now than wash it there. The tactics I had been using is
wash it there and then later hang it in the "Drying room" near the
laundry room of this ship, for it to air dry. Sadly even drying of clothes
seems to take a while here as well because the dryer machine is also switch off
like the rest of the washing machines here.
Damn
those "Uwak's" , they always make life difficult here - if I didn’t
have plenty of practice on survival skills back in "Eagle Boston"
ship back then, I would have surely have serious set of problems right now.
Good thing the survivalist tactics I learned there was really helpful here.
On
work related news …..
Currently
we already rigged up razor wires all over the side of the ship in preparation
when this ship will be entering HRA (high risk area), apparently the western
part of the Indian ocean all the way up to the gulf of Aden has some pirate
presence and to avoid this ship being hijack (and us sailor being held hostage)
, Every ship has have to put up some sort of deterrent devices to ward off
would be pirates. Some ships even hire armed guards for security whenever this
ship will be transiting in that area.
Luckily
on this principal, the rigging for razor wires (barbed wire) has an extra
pay, from what I heard , its about 200
U.S. Dollars per crew member who participated. Good for me because I might be
needing it to buy something for Christmas.
In
other news
Past
couple of days was very uncomfortable - as in really roasting temperature.
Based on the room thermometer I bought along for the trip, temperatures rise as
high as 38 degrees Celsius in the shade - but maybe based on what I had been
experiencing in direct sunlight and totally exposed condition , I could bet its
about roughly as high as 40's something degrees Celsius
I
was still painting the "final coat" on some spot left over from the
spray painted work done on the past couple of days in the manifold area and I
could really feel the heat stress from all that exposure ., I was soaking wet
with my perspiration and had to douse my coveralls with water all the time just
to cool myself.
Occasionally
from all hot temperature, there would be a rain just to relieve the problem of
hot temperature but only for a few hours and during the night time only, Once
Morning arrives another cycle of hot weather arrives. Probably I could guess
that this is the weather in the sri langka area, and until this ship gets to
finish its drifting there , I will still continue to experience this kind of
Ultra hot summer temperature in this area.
From
what I heard this ship will continue to drift , until November 22nd. And
weather will not improve unless this ship gets moving.
In
other news …
As
of the moment , the Chinese deck cadet (seaman trainee) we have onboard is currently isolated on his cabin due to
being sick. Some say that he might have chicken pox, based on blisters
appearing on his face - of course I haven't seen it (and haven't seen our deck
cadet in a couple of days now) and can never know what is the exact cause ,and
I'm no doctor to tell. For now he is quarantined in his cabin until he gets
well.
Maybe
some bad case of allergic dermatitis from all that exposure to paints and
stuff.
