April 20, 2015
Out
of nowhere , Sundays off work was cancelled and this ship finally went to berth
in Netherlands and nobody saw it coming even the Bosun Diosana was surprised as
well to be informed on the last minute that this ship will be berthing. On my
perception I was sleeping at that hour when suddenly I received a call from my
cabin phone to hurry up and that we are heaving anchor in a few minutes.
Honestly
I suspect that Captain Sorin knew that we will be berthing on Sundays and kept
the information secretly from us, to purposely give us a hard time and cancel
off our rest days - in other words to intentionally annoy us. Jeez what a total
bastard !! Anyway it's not surprising given that being a sailor this is the
environment that it was supposed to be , there are a lot of bad people out here
on this job - as in really bad people, Filipino's and Foreign nationals alike.
Expect that chances are there will always be assholes out here who are willing
to do everything they can just make other people's lives as miserable as humanly possible.
Anyway
going back , I hurried dressed up as usual and got into my coveralls and went
to the forward area to heave anchor. Heaving anchor wasn't a big deal and
finished the work within 20 minutes or so. Next thing that went was preparing
the pilot ladder on starboard side after that it was basically just wait and
see.
Arrived
on the pilot station at around 8 am and fetched the pilot via small boat and at
around 9am , The whole ship was put on P.A. by the captain telling that the
whole crew should be put on standby for the temporary mooring on the water
locks. For some reason the captain loves using the P.A. system as much as
possible probably makes him feel like some sort of sky god , anyway arrogance
is a typical behaviour amongst sailors.
Filipino and Foreign nationals alike !
During
the wait for this ship to enter the water locks, There was rumours spreading
all across NSB about my former ship CONTI Greenland and apparently I heard from
BOSUN Diosana that the Bulgarian Captain there was booted out of NSB after a
fiasco in heaving up the anchor. Its plausible that he was referring to Captain
Kolev and the incident were the anchor machine nearly got ripped off in Germany
(see my entry on December 2014 titled "ONE HELL OF A MESS" ). I kept
my mouth shut on the chatter and just listened because I too was involve on the
incident and was the O.S. at that time when it happened , more incidentally is
that I was the one who personally saw what happened. Poor Captain Kolev assuming that it was true
that he was kicked out, I admit He was a Captain that made poor decisions but
certainly not as bad or worse as Captain Sorin.
Anyway
other news aside from mentioning the apparent fate on what happened on that
captain, It was also mention that this ship might not go after all in the
America's from what 3rd mate Corales mentioned. According to him CONTI BENGUELA
is headed off in New York area while Conti Equator is busy and doing business
in los Angeles ( the other side of the American seaboard ). From the looks of
it , it seems that two CONTI's have beaten this ship in getting to America.
Honestly it's not bad at all that those CONTI's took over the trading route
that CONTI Ginuea has , Personally because I never liked going to America
during this time of year. The scorching heat of an American summer is way too
hot for Philippine standards , The height of summer heat temperature in the
Philippines during may is nothing compared to the summer heat in Houston
texas. I had been into the America's
previously so I know very well the situation and incidentally its during summer
season's and boy it was hellishly hot !.
Mooring
operation went along with no problems whatsoever. The mooring arrangement is
2-2-2 and was over by noon time, After the mooring I went ahead on the crew
mess to grab some grub. On the crew mess I took the opportunity in getting an
internet sim card, which the agent sells for a price of 20 U.S. Dollars. Some
of my co-workers says its pricy for an internet connection - but I don’t really
have a problem with it. The end justifies the means and I need an internet
connection to update some stuff on my laptop.
Given
that its Sunday, Sunny Euro is apparently closed and I had to wait for 24 hours
for them to visit our ship. What's worse is that I haven't got yet my salary
yet. Anyway I did get my salary , but
on the last minute when sunny euro visited our store and was taking orders.
From my observation , Captain Sorin hates giving salaries to crew and as much
as possible and he doesn't want the crew to handle our own money - as much as
possible.
Monday
came by and it was the usual 4 hour long gangway watch for me, The morning was
very cold for me and supposedly my working winter gloves isn't really working
well as I thought , probably I'd be replacing this glove for good as it already
served me for 5 years now, I guess it's about time I retire this equipment. At
noon time I had a sudden instinct that somehow sunny euro has arrived , and
that nobody here would even bother to give us a signal. Given with that hunch I
went down on the crew mess and indeed saw a sunny euro sales man now taking
sales orders from the crew. Good thing my instincts were good and immediately
ran upstairs to my cabin to get the list of the items I'm supposedly to buy,
after that I went downstairs to the crew mess to give the list of items I'm
going to bought. From my list I immediately I already prepared few months ago I
ended up with this.
1
acer tablet/ laptop
(
I needed a support gadget to my HP PC)
1
samsung galaxy young 2 cellphone.
(Aside
from cellphone this will serve as a pocket modem Wifi for internet)
1
Seagate external Hard disk drive 2 tera bytes.
(
needed an extra space for my multi-media files, 2 TB is enough for storage)
All
in all I ended up spending 445 Euro's on this shopping spree. I guess that all
for now given with the budget limitations involve., but regardless this new
equipment will serve me well on this ship.
Waiting
for these equipment took me all night waiting for it to arrive, for some reason
Sunny Euro never arrived which bothered me a lot. This is the first time
that Orders from Sunny Euro ( Europeans
call it sunny radio for some reason) came in very late. I checked on the crew
mess at midnight and still there was no sign on it.
On
Tuesday morning at around 4:30, I was already about to give up hope that , it
may not arrived but fortunately on the last five minutes when this ship is
about to depart a small boat came and said it was from sunny euro. About time they showed up and I was beginning
to think that we might get these stuff on the next port, surely took them their
sweet time in delivering. After getting the stuff from sunny euro, the ship
immediately started unmooring and after closed to an hour the ship was already
on the water locks, an hour more the ship dropped anchor.
There's
a rumour going on that captain sorin was jealous about the crew stuff's bought
on shopping and a rumour that says that he delayed sunny euro's boat for a
couple of hours until it was already almost late, apparently a rumour of
sabotage. Aside from that he dropped anchor on the far side of the anchorage
area. A lot of crew have been thinking of this rumour given that they have
mistrust issues with the captain. Whether or not this is true, there's
obviously friction going on - and it's pretty obvious that most of the crew
doesn't like the captain because of his odd behaviour and "mental
instabilities" (that's what the closest the crew can describe about
him). From the latest news I heard ,
he's not giving any cash advance for two months - or simply saying till the
next captain.
Most
of the crew think that we might have the rest of the day off given that the
engine crew (as well as deck) was exhausted from work, but to our dismay it was
ordered that we will be put back on work at late noon - good thing it was only
a light work and just basically arranging some provisions back on chief cooks
ref chamber.
The
rest of the day the crew was busy fiddling the stuff they bought on sunny euro
duty free.
Laundry
has been closed again on a few days (or more like a week), and as a result
don’t expect that coveralls will cleaned anytime soon. On three days after anchoring , The crew
spent of most of the time doing maintenance work as usual . Like chipping,
polishing and painting rusted areas with primer paint and greasing some gears
etc. nothing new. After work I spent most of my time fiddling with my new toys
and testing it, analysing and thinking on how this new gadget can be put on
practical use. For the moment my conclusion on the "Acer tablet " I
just bought with is that this primarily based (or heavily relies ) on internet
capability (given with low HDD memory of 26 GB ) and not for offline usage like
my HP laptop- although programs that are installed here can be installed there
as well on my Acer Tablet.
At
late time on Thursday at about 7pm to 8pm this ship heaved off anchor and next
destination will be Taragona Spain to load cargo.
