Update before the crossing

Saturday 21. October 2017

Welcome to the world of maritime logistics.

Scenario: There'll be a storm in the Atlantic off the coast of France within the next day or two.

Plan 1: Already obsolete, was to get into Le Havre arount 5 a.m. and leave port the latest around 4 p.m. This way we'd be able to avoid the storm before it would reach our assigned course. A "Load and Run", get into port, load as much as you can before your defined departure time. When your departure time is there, you leave no matter what. What got loaded got loaded, the rest remains behind for another ship.

Reality: The French are on strike, we don't get into the port until 2 p.m. It's too late for a "Load and Run", it wouldn't make any sense.

Plan 2: Load until Saturday 8 a.m. and then leave port.

Reality: The storm developed quicker than anticipated. The captain doesn't want to head into a full blown storm for safety reasons, thanks for that :-)

Plan 3: A new slot, one day later as planned, is booked for Algeciras and we leave port around 4 p.m. This way the storm has time to move north out of our way.
So we cruise with a leasurely 10-11 knots through the North Sea the allow the storm to move out of our way. Still, the waves are pretty big.
Depending on the waves the pilots are brought and picked-up by helicopter.

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Sunday 22. October 2017

It was an uneasy night. Even though the waves weren't that high I still had problems sleeping. It is an unusual feeling.
After breakfast I went onto the bridge. The waves are about 5m high. Some of them hit the bow quite hard but all in all it's not so bad. Next to us is a smaller vessel, about 100-120m long. Now an again waves are washing over its bow. I wouldn't want to trade places with them right now.
After that I decide to sit on the training cycle for a while. How can I best describe the feeling? Sitting on a bike with training wheels, going through a forest with your eyes closed... At least that's what it felt like to me. The training cycle is mounted at a 90 degree angle to ships middle axis and the room has no windows. So your sitting on your cycle and it tilts, for no apparent reason, to the left, then again to the right, forward and back. It's going up and down and now and again your breakfast is starting a half hearted attempt at saying "Hallo" to you... This way I spend some time on the cycle because I'm too stubborn to stop.

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Monday 23. October 2017

So this change of course to south west... Now the wave are comming in from starboard aft and they are slightly faster than us. This way we get the full deal with each wave. The ship is rolling nice and slow with each wave, great...
I wouldn't have thought that the day would come but today was it. I went to the cook and told him that I would have no meat today... I think that only got one cooking book titled "Who needs vegetables if you have meat?" Only one or two meals a week are fish the rest is meats. Along with that is usually rice or any form of potatoes. Sometime you can choose between rice and potatoes... Don't get me wrong, he's doing a good job with what he has. It's just the limited variety.
Now towards early afternoon the waves have receeded and I'm outside on deck. And you know what, it's unbelievable. I've been at the bow and it was great. There was only a slight breeze and thanks to a huge wall protecting the containers you couldn't even hear their whining. The only thing I could hear were the wind and the waves!!! Awesome!!! Sure, die engine is almost 300m away, 300m!!! The newest container ships even are more than 400m!!!  Here at the bow I also enjoyed the sunset.

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Tuesday 24. October 2017

Once more reality gets the better of us. After our alternative plan to arrive in Algeciras around 8 a.m. today we'll now arrive around 2 p.m. tomorrow. Because we didn't want to get into the storm we only made about 10 knots in the North Sea as all the other vesels. Due to that we were't able to make our 8 a.m. slot. Even if we went full spead ahead we would have only been in Algeciras around 2 p.m. But that didn't go down well with Algeciras so they assigned us our new 2 a.m. slot tomorrow. Because our loading time is about 12h there'll be little time to go ashore, if any. Also our trip accross to Santos will shortened to about 10 days so we can make up for the lost time, about 2 full days.
Unfortunately I still don't have access to the ships WiFi so I'm unable to send you daily updates.

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Wednesday 25. October 2017

Algeciras, let's see if we can squeeze a shore leave in and visit a barber shop? When we'll be leaving in the afternoon I'll finally see Gibraltar.