Alistair Baillie

Well I flew out to my first ship on the 1st of October as a qualified officer, I am now onboard the small cruise ship MV Minerva sailing the Eastern Mediterranean and over the next few weeks making our way across the Atlantic to Brazil and Argentina before heading south, down to Antarctica for the UK ‘winter months’.

Minerva is a considerably smaller ship than what I am used too, she’s only around 12,000 GT and carries a very small 350 passengers (less than 200 when in Antarctica) and only 150 officers, staff and crew.

There isn’t much else to say, I had a 3 day handover period in Istanbul, before she sailed for the Greek & Turkish Islands. I am on the 8-12 watch and this cruise have a small number of the arrivals and departures, but mainly she is either already in port, or at sea when I come onto the bridge.

Coming from far larger ships, I was at first surprised to find that you can actually adjust the speed without the engines throwing a fit and de-clutching if you so much as looked at the CPP controls. You can also do reasonably large turns without the fear of listing the ship over and knocking everything flying.

Anyway, that is all there really is to say, I will at some point take some pictures, though I probably wont upload anything until I am home as the internet on this ship is not particularly good!