A quick update

Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 12:24 | by Alistair Baillie

Well hello all, quite a lot has happened since the last entry I made so I’ll try and be quick;

Around 2 weeks ago we have changed our training onboard with myself and the other cadet (Marc) rotating each week. One of us does 4 hours starting 3 hours before ‘standby’ for arrival and working through to 1 hour after alongside on the bridge plotting positions, steering, taking charge of mooring and some other things. The other works from 1 hour before departure until 3 hours after departure doing the same things. We also both spend 4 hours during the day doing ‘day work’ or tasks from our TRB as required – the officers are quite happy to leave us to decide what we want to do.

Steering wise I have completed the minimum 10 hours required to be issued the steering certificate, but plan to continue practicing in and out of port as much as possible. For arrival it generally means I steer up until the point that the captain is turning the ship to come alongside, I then have to run from the bridge on deck 10, down to the aft mooring station on deck 6 aft to take charge of mooring under the supervision of the 1st officer – the fastest I have managed to run it is just over a minute.

I now have 7 more cruises (weeks) to go, if I don’t include the current one, so I am now very tired and wanting to go home so I can sleep for a while. COLREG’s are progressing now that I have finally started memorising them, with numbers 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 memorised (not bad I think for 2 weeks) – admittedly I should have probably started learning them earlier, but hindsight’s a great thing.

The past 2 weeks have also seen me down in another potable water tank that was being cleaned, taking soundings of tanks prior to departure & bunkering fresh water – something I am now proficient at. I have also visited the bow thrusters and stern thruster rooms for the first time, there huge and not exactly easy to get to – a vertical ladder from deck 3 and some climbing through hatches!

The chief engineer has also invited to down to the engine room to see what they are doing when we go to standby for departure so I will be down there at some point this week for departure.

What else really to say, weather has been reasonably ok, mainly sunny, the odd rainy day. My dancing skills have improved slightly and I am still enjoying it onboard.

The 3 have become 2 onboard here, for anyone at college wondering, but that’s all I am going to say on the matter.

There are some video’s uploaded onto Facebook – I can’t upload video to youtube from the ship for some reason. There are also a few more pictures.

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