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This has been a fun week… most of it. Exciting, and all, anyway. We had a damage control drill, in which the fire attack team had a chance to play with our big emergency submersible pump (big blue thing, about the size of a child and the weight of a man) which had to be carried down to the engine room, and dropped into a tank of water, and then they had the fun of emptying a few tons out of the porthole, and then the rest we transferred into another tank. Great fun for them, very good that they finally get a chance to work with that pump (it’s a monster!). And the tanks, of course, mean work for the watermen! 🙂

We had two tanks which were on schedule for being worked in (we emptied out one of them a month or so ago, and had deck teams in there scraping off the old dead cement, and we last week got the new cement on all the walls.

So we had to open up this empty tank again, and open up the other tank, and get everything ready for that. This meant the usual sitting for a few hours in a bilge/tanktop covered in slime and grease and oil with various sizes of wrenches/spanners getting the manhole open.. This one also created a few more problems though, as some of the nuts were really old and totally seized up.

I had to find out how to get them off. I tried everything I knew how to do (various lubricants, hammers, spanners with extensions, and so on). My next and final option was to grind the thing off. As this is in a bilge, with oil and all about, it’s quite dangerous to do grinding, as you have sparks all over the place. So you need “Hot Work permits” which are paperwork to make sure you follow all safety procedures, have another guy on firewatch while you work, have fire extinguishers ready, etc… The chief mate suggested I try using just a oil burner/torch and heating up the nut around the edges, to try and expand it and so free it up. This would also require Hot Work permits, but would be safer, and also a lot easier, if it worked.

As I was getting ready for this (with the deadline being the drill the day after), the chief engineer suggested just using a “Nut splitter”, a really cool tool I’d never seen before. Basically it’s a chisel with a threaded end, a bolt on the end, and a case to drive it through the nut, as you tighten the bolt. Very cool indeed. So I found this device, and amazingly, it worked! Very nice indeed. I was chatting with the Engine Foreman afterwards, and he suggested a few other ideas involving chisels (and hitting the bolt in the right places to expand the right parts). So I have lots of new stuff learned. Cool. I’ll put it all in the “Waterman’s Bible.”

Have I mentioned the “Waterman’s Bible“?

It’s our source of all knowledge and wisdom, concerning the job. When I joined, it was about 4 pages long, very hastily put togeather, and with confusing notes, and about as comprehensive as “Spot the Dog” is as a guide to the English language.

So myself and the former watermen began to add to it, and since I took over as head waterman, I’ve added diagrams of valves, information about the “Free Surface Effect” and other important things we really need to know, but were always handed on (getting more and more incorrect over time) by word of mouth, or just totally ignored, and other interesting information (such as “Where to find people to hang out with on the ship at 2 in the morning when you’re waiting for the final water truck to arrive” and “Where can I get new hose-clips?” and “Where can I find good coffee?” or even “How can I get these wretched rusted nuts off the manhole-cover!?” for instance.

Currently the “Waterman’s Bible: Nearly Accurate Simplified Version (NASV) April 2007 Edition” is around 50 pages long.

So, back to my week. Three days ago we had to move the ship a few hundred meters down the quayside, so a container ship could come in… the next morning we moved her back again. Then we have have 3 containers of food/books/supplies/chemicals arrive in (including 2 new waterhoses I ordered 3 months ago!).


And most recently, yesterday.

Yesterday was International Night (I-night). Our big festival of songs and dances and dramas from around the world! We’re having two this port, for different audiences, and I am on the “I-night Crew” now, doing the multimedia (videos, cameras, projectors, etc). Yesterday was my first time doing that, always before I’ve been on stage performing. It was so much fun! So good to do theatrey work again. I love the energy and excitement of it. I was sitting on my own with a laptop, projector and camera (and camera person for a while) with a headset on listening to the stage director and back stage crew, and most things went pretty well.

At the beginning of this I-night we had a local Christian band playing, and then we went into 2 movies/video clips, and then the show proper. 5 minutes before the local band started their sound check, the singer came up to me with a USB stick and said “Hey, can you show this powerpoint, it’s the lyrics of our 3 songs, while we sing…”

Yeah, no worries… Except, it’s all in Mandarin! And I don’t really speak any Mandarin at all!

He told me. “OK, these are my hand signals I use with the band, ‘this’ means ‘Chorus’ and ‘this’ means ‘from the top’. We have 3 songs in this powerpoint, the first one is slides 1-3, slide 3 is the chorus…”

Woah! Cool! Bring it on! In the end, we did find one of our translators who could run the lyrics with me, which helped, rather.

After the local band, we had those two video clips. The first one for some reason was not on the laptop (someone else had set up the laptop and files on the ship before the day), and it only arrived 10 minutes before the performance! Still, I had them ready. Then, just as I started the clips, the sound came on, but no video on the projector! This was crazy! I’d just been showing lyrics on them! We’d managed to get a flatscreen monitor from the venue to use as a second monitor display by me, so I could set up the videos on the screen before switching the video-switch to display the computer, and the video was playing fine on my monitor.

So I switched off the video and began checking cables, while the whole audience was sitting there… and I found the projector had switched itself off! So I turned it on again, and reset my videos and got it going again. The whole time (probably only 15-20 seconds at the most, from when the sound came on without visuals to when it started working properly) with the stage director and everyone worried in the headset, and me on my first time with multimedia i-night. It was great! I love theatre.

Everything else went pretty smoothly. It was a long day, we started at 6.30am (after getting to bed around midnight the night before because of the container arrivals, that was a 14 hour work day), and then finished de-briefing after the I-night around half past midnight, and then eating dinner til past 1am, (So about 18 work hours…) Then I was up again this morning at 6.30 to get ready for a study group. I don’t think I’ll work too hard today, except I have my normal work to do, after church, then 2 Irish dance performances later in the afternoon, I need to do my work appraisal with the chief mate, and also a sermon review with the study group coordinator about 5pm…

[Ding Dong, Ding Dong…]

OK, just to add to the fun, the fire alarm just went off. Some kind of electrical fault in one of the wires, they guess. I was at the firestation with the others for about 10 minutes, they couldn’t find anything in the whole zone where the alarm went off, so they’ve isolated the alarm, and check again in an hour.

Yeah. Fun week.

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Just a quick photo, me as coxswain of lifeboat 1.

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This is Sabbath week, we’re supposed to have rest from most of our work.

Unfortunately there are only two watermen.

I did some maths. The water at this port is REALLY slow to load: like 10 tons an hour. If we use 40 tons a day, then in Sabbath week we must load roughly 300 tons of water, which is 30 hours of loading.

It’s not too hard work, really, as most of the time we can rest while it is loading. But there are also about four hours of sounding to do (over the whole week), plus another five or six hours moving water ready for the voyage, and so on.

It’s quite OK – not too bad, really. If it were a normal port, then no worries. But it’s still roughly 20 hours work each – kind of annoying when we’re supposed to rest. Normally it’s no problem – like last year, there was virtually no work for the watermen, because it was the beginning of a port. So they just loaded the ship totally full – so full she could not sail – and then basically did nothing the whole week.

But we arrived here after a two-hour voyage from the last berth (which still counts as a voyage, so we cannot load above the limit). The water connection only arrived during Sabbath week. It’s a slow connection… AND, we sail right at the end of the week so we have to have all the tanks in order for sailing (some full, some empty, etc).

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We slightly overloaded the ship with water last week, because of the sheer relief of a quayside connection again. The ship was totally low in fuel, so we loaded her to the max of water, with little effect on the trim. Ok, huge effect on the trim, on the draft, little effect. All the water tanks are at the back, so we ended up with a 2.5 meter trim then they bunkered fuel 4 days ago, and we haven’t loaded since.

When they loaded the fuel, the ship was below her loadline. Its quite colder weather, so all the doors are acting a bit odd. The c/m told me that he knew we must be light on water, since his door was not shutting as normal. I told him we had enough, but he said “load her up! The ship must be almost flat right now!” So I loaded her up. It was quite fun. My bathroom was almost diagonal, and the toilet outside the engine room was tilted both ways, and very weird to use.

Anyway. we will load another 50 tons or so the day we sail. (Tuesday)

So today, we started work after lunch (its Sunday) and then did basic soundings, made a few keys and I went up to the mates office. I found a really really dirty tarnished old brass ship’s wheel (with wood outer spokes) in the office. The deck secretary told me that the 2nd officer had found it in an antique store, and that it was going to be attached to the bridge of Doulos.

There were Brasso tubs around the floor, and so i asked “surely you weren’t trying to Brasso this?”

And she said no, but some others were trying to no avail. They had also tried toothpaste, and were going to try paint remover. I laughed, and said how silly. I then stole the wheel,

I phoned the store keeper, and he came to the keyshop. I borrowed some de-liming liquid from accomotation, and some wire wool and leather gloves. In half an hour of our work, it was shiny and brassy, so then then we Brasso’d it for another half hour or so, called the mates, and told them to come, and bring some Coke with them. On the way they told me on the phone that Coke has had it’s recepe changed, and probably wouldnt work. I just told him to bring it. They turned up, saw the wheel and were VERY impressed.


Today was a very good day work wise.

I did my PR thing: I told them all, “if you need to know anything, or if you need something difficult done, just ask the Watermen how! they know everything!

They kept chuckling and saying well done boys, and how happy the captain will be and we will (hopefully) get a *real* wheel on Doulos again!

The Coke actually tasted quite nice….

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Warning: this post contains a word which may under certain circumstances be considered less than 100% socially acceptable in the context of the readers current culture and/or position. If this is the case, the blog author accepts no responsibility whatsoever.

Dealing with the baggage locker isn’t one of the most complex jobs, but it’s kind of annoying and adds stress to the work: having request forms to do every day, extra responsibility and all. It only takes a few minutes a day, normally(up to half an hour or so) but it’s just another thing to worry about.

Anyway. The firemen don’t have so much work, unless they really want it (ie, go and look for things in a not-ideal state, and then fix them). But they don’t do that (at least, not the current firemen).

So one day, I was carrying boxes up from the locker with the boatswain, who is Dutch, and mentioned to him an idea I’d had. Maybe the firemen should take over the baggage locker… ?

He stopped, put down the box he was holding and stared at me.

“That,” he said, “is a bloody brilliant idea!”

So now the firemen do the baggage locker.

Delegation is so much fun when it works!!!

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Yesterday the trucks started coming at 6am, and I was finished by 5pm. Prayer night was the night before, and ended late (11.30pm) so I was really tired. I went to bed last night at 7, and got up at 7 today (even though I only slept about 7 hours, as usual… *sigh*). Tonight is i-night. So I have until lunch time to get ready. I’m in 3 items in this i-night, and it was going to be 4, but I didn’t have time for all those extra practices this week.

The waterman job is so tiring for me at the moment. I enjoy it, it’s interesting and fun, but so tiring, and such long, unpredictable hours. I don’t even know the day before what hours I will be working on the tomorrow. I guess that’s mostly because of the trucks, and once they are done, it may go back to normal again, I dunno.

The new group is settling in well… Even less guys than with ours. The ship is really short of guys! We have more girls in the deck dept, which I quite like, it kind of smoothes off the rougher edges of some of the guys.

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The February group of people just joined, like I did last year. Feels very strange. Anyway, the new deck crew have just completed their deck department orientation and basic fire fighting training, so I took the opportunity to steal some of their photos for the purpose of writing a new entry. Applause is not mandatory, as I am too far away from you to hear it anyway. So, without further ado, the photos:


This is the fire-escape ladder from the propellor shaft tunnel in the Engine Room. All of our Fresh water valves are situated in the tunnel, and our workshop is quite near the top of the escape, thus I climb up and down this ladder anything up to 30 or more times a day when very busy (when we have water trucks arriving, for instance). I think this could be one of the only things which keeps me slightly fit on board…


This second photo is incredibly unclear, and shows the new recruits crawling down the main corridor of the ship, in full Breathing Apparatus and fire suits. Fun. As I said, the photo is unclear, and there are much more clear understandable photos available, nevertheless I decided to post this one as I find it almost artistic, it has a certain visual interest, which most of the others don’t. I mean, how interesting can a picture of a bunch of lemon suited unidentifiable personages with compressed air bottles on their backs crawling down a corridor be?

Quote for the day:

For no worldly thing, nor for the love of any man, is any evil to be done (Matt 18:8); but yet for the profit of one who stands in need, a good work is sometimes without any scruple to be left undone, or rather changed for a better. For by doing this, a good work is not lost, but changed into a better.

– Thomas à Kempis “The Imitation of Christ” Ch. 15

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Long day yesterday…

I did 4 school visits, as a puppet, interacting with the MC for the whole 45 minute programme. So I had my arm up in the air for 3 whole hours. Very tiring.

Then After dinner I started work with loading water, we had 20 water trucks arrive, and so finished around 1.30am the next morning.

This morning I was up at 7am for music practice before the Sunday service, playing bass again… This is the second time this week I’ve played bass, and the second time ever I’ve performed with it. I feel so bad at it, I have no technique at all, and can “hear” in my head what the bassline should do, riffs, changes, and so on, but lack the practice and skill to play them yet… I need to find a “learn to play bass” book and spend a few hours practicing.

It’s kinda fun though!

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Hallo blog.

Here are some photos of my bathroom. The first is of after the plumbers started their invasion.


The thing on top of the toilet seat is a leather welding glove., in case you wondered.

The reason there is a toilet brush with a red ribbon on is because I helped the accommodation department with a video one time, and they gave me this as a present.

The light is hanging off the wall, yes. And the wooden fitting is all broken too.

This photo shows more clearly (perhaps) the underside of the sink.


lovely, eh?

Happily, now the sink has been repaired… with cement and heavy duty black scupper paint.

It looks like this:


Quite amazing, is it not?

For those observant readers (or photospotters), you may have noticed that the wall behind the sink is now white, not that rather ugly blue. If you noticed this, congratulations, take 10 points. I dont know where you can take them from, but I’m sure there is somewhere.

Anyway. The bathroom is currently being repainted, by yours truly and my new cabin-mate,
colleague, and friend Tomas, from Mexico. We’re going to try and make it look quite appealing, but currently it just looks white.

So. That’s all about the bathroom. Current news? Well…

I’m reading “Slaughterhouse 5” by Kurt Vonnegut. Now that is a strange book. Very interesting, witty, clever, rude in places, but thought-provoking. I have a friend in the Engine Room who recommended it. He loves Vonnegut, and I have another friend who works in AV (Audio-Visual for programmes, etc) who also enjoys his works. I’m still in two minds about it. Very clever… I like some of his ways of working with language, and with stories.

I was just phoned 11 seconds ago and asked to play drums for music tomorrow with some others.

It’s dinner time, I’m going to go get some food…

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Hallo blog.

Here are some photos of my bathroom. The first is of after the plumbers started their invasion.


The thing on top of the toilet seat is a leather welding glove., in case you wondered.

The reason there is a toilet brush with a red ribbon on is because I helped the accommodation department with a video one time, and they gave me this as a present.

The light is hanging off the wall, yes. And the wooden fitting is all broken too.

This photo shows more clearly (perhaps) the underside of the sink.


lovely, eh?

Happily, now the sink has been repaired… with cement and heavy duty black scupper paint.

It looks like this:


Quite amazing, is it not?

For those observant readers (or photospotters), you may have noticed that the wall behind the sink is now white, not that rather ugly blue. If you noticed this, congratulations, take 10 points. I dont know where you can take them from, but I’m sure there is somewhere.

Anyway. The bathroom is currently being repainted, by yours truly and my new cabin-mate,
colleague, and friend Tomas, from Mexico. We’re going to try and make it look quite appealing, but currently it just looks white.

So. That’s all about the bathroom. Current news? Well…

I’m reading “Slaughterhouse 5” by Kurt Vonnegut. Now that is a strange book. Very interesting, witty, clever, rude in places, but thought-provoking. I have a friend in the Engine Room who recommended it. He loves Vonnegut, and I have another friend who works in AV (Audio-Visual for programmes, etc) who also enjoys his works. I’m still in two minds about it. Very clever… I like some of his ways of working with language, and with stories.

I was just phoned 11 seconds ago and asked to play drums for music tomorrow with some others.

It’s dinner time, I’m going to go get some food…