Close On The Bow

Pakistan Fishing Boat

Up, Down, and Rolling Seas

The best part of Karachi, Pakistan was, indeed, “getting the fuck out of Karachi,” as so eloquently stated by the 3rd Engineer.  The smell of the city, the pollution in the waterways, the open dislike for Americans by the Paki longshoremen, and the slow extortion of the ship by a port that does business the same way a kidnapper does- holding the ship hostage until it has extracted as much as is possible- makes for a tedious stay.

The seas have been on our beam since leaving the coast and the roll, roll, rolling of the ship has taken its toll on my sleep- not so much for the motion (which is lulling) but for the odd banging door, the rolling of things in drawers, and the falling over of non-permanently affixed things… my sleep has been interrupted!

I have also started to run out of steam.  When motivation erodes you must rely on habit and doing-by-rote, and that’s where I am today.  Perhaps with a good night’s sleep I’ll be recharged, but today ain’t that day (a good night’s sleep fixed me up, after all).

We have been advancing clocks.  One hour last night, one hour today during the day, and tomorrow during the day- soon I will return to 15 hours later than Seattle time.  The only people aboard who dislike advancing clocks during the day are the steward’s department- their shorter day means they have to work much harder to be ready for mealtimes.

The flies we picked up in Pakistan are still with us.

I trained a man on the crane who was, by all accounts, unable to operate that kind of equipment.  He does fine… better than some, even.  Since he went ashore last time we were in Singapore, this next time he will remain aboard to do what I did last time - operate the crane.  Give a man a fish/ Teach a man to fish, and all that… but I’m gonna shore-hound my happy ass this next visit, come hell or come high water.  

The elevator was on the kaputz since I came aboard.  A day out of Karachi the electrician and reefer requested I build them staging on C deck (4th deck above the “ground floor” of the Upper Deck, 6.5 floors above the lowest stop down on one of the decks in the engine room) in the elevator shaft.  I had to have them request it of my head of department (chain of command, and all that) but soon I was requisitioned to build them staging.

As with all projects, I started by combing the ship for the best - usually only - available materials… which means digging in the forecastle and steering room, rummaging in the tunnels, and even going so far as to dismantle other non-vital, forgotten stuff if necessary.  Walk a mile in my shoes (in a moving convection oven) and you’ll feel me.

I found three old boards and two stamped walk-boards (certified to a maximum weights for staging).  Instead of cutting the expensive, regulated and stamped walk-boards, I figured I’d cut one of the old paint-covered planks.  Yeah.  It was teak.  I could have cried.  The last board of teak I bought was 100 dollars a board foot (my 1.25” x 10” x 10 foot board cost a thousand dollars)... it felt like burning money.

The four foot section of 2 inch by 12 inch iron-wood was also a good score.  I don’t know what I am gonna do with it… but I haven’t lost my wood hoarding skills while at sea, apparently.

Anyway- they spent a few days repairing the elevator and finally- after over a month aboard- I didn’t have to climb the 13 story ladder 200 times a day anymore.  My first ride up to the bridge was a luxury unlike anything I’ve experienced since the Polk- it seems the elevator on every ship I’ve been on since has been broken!  And then like That!  We had elevator.

Until we started rolling- which has been every single day since they repaired it.  Now, before I start the climb, I check to see if the light is back on, yet…

And that is how it is.

NOTE:  It is easier to climb the ladder when it’s rolling if you wait for the ship to roll in the “helping” direction.  You can also climb against the roll if you really want to suffer the additional G’s working against you.  Often times I’ll go into the ladder well and there will be someone standing at the landing, frozen, waiting until the ship rolls back around before they start their climb up.  I do it all the time, but it’s quite funny to witness.  An 8 second period between swells is the perfect amount of time to casually walk up the ship’s switch-backing ladder with the least amount of effort.  That is how sailors do.

Port of Karachi

Empty Holds

Karachi Cargo Ops

Favorite Recent Quote

"I can't wait to get to Karachi... so I can hurry up and get the fuck out of Karachi."  ~2nd A/E

This is how we do...

Chinese Engineer removing the existing gangway sheaves. 

Pakistani fishing boat

Similar to the fishing boats I described in an earlier post this week, but with a drastically different stern.  I hung a bag of soap and cigarettes from a line off the rail for them (complementary of the C/M)... The watch on deck said he had to move it to the lee side of the ship, but that they did eventually take possession of the American contraband.

Trash, Inequality, and the Chain of Command

I had an easy morning making lanyards connecting all the trash lids to their corresponding cans.  How did this come about?  Well let me tell you!

Our illustrious delegate had been getting annoyed that the sanitary guys kept taking out the trash in the bridge head, putting in a new bag, and then replacing the trash can lid- apparently, it was an unacceptable amount of work for the delegate to wash his hands while on watch and then lift the lid to throw away his paper towels.  I get it.  Small things at sea can chafe like ill-fitting underwear and soon grow intolerable.  It's happened to me on more than one occasion.

And I really shouldn't laugh.

But each day he'd pull the lid off and stow it in increasingly less accessible locations, hoping they'd be "smart enough" to understand it was an unwanted lid and to leave the goddamned thing off, already, but they'd diligently find it and doggedly replace it back on the can where it belonged.  This battle of wills had been escalating for weeks.  It annoyed him so much that when he reached a certain point of frustration, the escalation came to a head, and he took drastic measures to maintain his sanity:  He threw the lid away.

In the CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations), however, it specifies that be in compliance with international treaty- being the law of the land as soon as the US became a ratified signatory- as set forth by the IMO (the International Maritime Organization) that we must have trash cans with lids in specific places on the ship- And that head is one of them (as is the galley, mess hall, laundry, etc.).  When the Old Man couldn't find the lid and he found out that the Delegate threw it away, he ordered him to find it.  Or he was fired.

Being a white dude from San Francisco, oblivious of his privileged American Equality and, therefore, unknowingly holding the entire concept of the chain of command in contempt, he went back to the Captain and asked him to clarify what he meant.  All he'd tell me of this conversation in its aftermath was the Old Man reiterated "Find that lid or you're fired."  Lucky for him he found it.

So today the crew is rolling their eyes and grinning about the kerfuffle (all but one crew member, of course), relishing saying the words "garbage can" as often as possible.  Which is why I spent 4 hours this morning putting lanyards on all trash cans, marrying them forever to their lids.  I would have been whistling, contentedly- but you never whistle on a ship (you'll whistle up a storm).

Observations

The elevator is still out (it hasn’t worked since before I got on).  There are 8.5 floors above the main deck, and another 5 below.  I probably climb the equivalent of a 100 story building every single day.  

The air conditioning hasn’t been able to cool the inside temperature of the house much below that of the air outside of it, thanks to the conjoining of the Reefer’s inexperience and the system’s complexity.  I mistakenly thought the Reefer was in charge of air conditioning when I first went to sea, but he’s actually aboard to handle the power, maintenance, and monitoring of the refrigerated containers.  We joke that the Reefer is only aboard to plug them in when they’re loaded and unplug them when they’re offloaded.

Once I am exhausted by the schedule out here I actually slow down, mellow out, and pace myself… too bad that takes so long in the first place.

The chimney effect created by the height of the ship and the many different ways air can flow from deep in the heart of the ship below to the bridge, many decks above, causes some doors to be vacuumed shut and others to swing wild when opened.  I’ve been chipping, grinding, and painting the tunnels from the sideport aft to the engine room water tight doors, and each time the engine water tight door is opened, the blast of furnace-like air cooks us.  Thank god it’s a dry heat.

There is absolutely no concievable way to use a grease gun without also bathing in grease.  It cannot be done.

I have finally sunk so low as to wear cut-off carhart overalls.  After work, when I kick off my work boots, the toe-socks with flip-flops doesn’t help.

It has rained every day since leaving China.  The heat and humidity are constant.  The gray is constant.  The salt on the decks is a quarter inch thick and has a greasy feel to it.  Everything is damp and salted.

The color of the ocean changes every time I look at it and there is no language, on the sea or off it, that can adequately describe it.  Its luminous nature, surface texture, aeration, biological content, interaction of current, wind, and wave, the inclination of the sun, all affect it with equal degrees of variation, and I can contentedly stare at it for hours.  

Pakistani fishermen are all around us and I find myself envious of their 50 foot fishing boats.  Their sterns look like Chinese san pans, but their bows are unique to these waters (in my experience), where the stem stands about 10 feet perfectly vertical and whose apex is a perfect semi-circle.  There is a horizontal plank bowsprit that is a mirror image of the stem in size and shape.  The bow is remarkably blunt.  I have seen only a few spritsails in the distance- these boats are mostly powered by unenclosed gas engines with straight exhausts, long shafts and props bolted directly to the flywheels, and to get thrust they lift the front of the engine which in turn pivots the prop down into the water.  Each boat has between 8 and 10 men, and they fish with lines directly in their hands- no poles or other gear.  The men who came down our starboard side landed a 4 foot tarpon (according to my Filipino brothers) and tried to sell it to us there on the spot.

Some days you are the hammer.  Some days you are the nail.

A Day In The Life...

We’re anchored in “The Sing” when a launch comes alongside and 20 Chinese, Malaysian, Filipino, and Singaporean laborers and engineers come up the gangway.  Their launch has boxes of tools and one new gangway to replace the one destroyed in Hong Kong when it’s roller got stuck on the dock and the hoist bent it in half.

I stand in the blistering sun giving hand signals to my crane operator and we bring each toolbox aboard, one box at a time, as the motley sound of different incomprehensible languages compete with one another, each voice demanding one thing or another over the ever present roar of the fans in the stack.  

My radio is set on full volume to pierce the din and commotion and cut through the hearing protection in my ears.  It feeds back constantly as crewmen try to communicate with the bridge or the engine room while another radio carrying host is in near proximity, and comprehending anything in the cacophony is an art form.  It is second nature to cover the speaker of your radio when someone else moves to use theirs, and the reflexive, synchronized habit can be amusing when 5 or 6 radio hosts are in one place.

The local gang’s foreman is either Singaporean or Chinese, polite and quick to smile, and his number one man is a stocky, take-charge Chinaman who has the same poise and self assured competence as any of the highly-trained Westerners who crew my ship.  He, too, is quick to smile, and I can tell they like doing what they do.  They’re good at it.

Their gang operates as a hive, no one man expected to perform a single role, and I am astounded when I watch one man operate the trigger of a drill while another pushes on it.  The collaboration is wordless and automatic.  One man beats on a frozen nut while another rigs an oxygen and acetylene torch, taking his hammer in mid strike, and replacing it with the torch.  They don’t even look at one another; it just happens.  If someone tried that with any of the Westerners aboard they’d be verbally attacked- but these Asians just don’t roll like we do.

I have forsaken my square, printed bandana in favor of a large shop rag, tied like a bandana, but covering my neck and ears, Filipino style.  My rigger is a Filipino man with no front teeth and large ears who smiles a lot.  I call him “Wonka.”  He is a bit ADD and OCD combined, but if I keep him on a close leash he doesn’t wander off and start doing his own projects.

My crane operator is the only other American white man in my crew and he is up on the C Deck, which doesn’t extend out to the rail as A deck does, where I stand looking down- so he must watch my hands from his blind perch as I signal boom down, cable up, slew left, stop… and we drop the hook down to the launch below where some flavor of Asian rigs each load and we bring them on.

Three more of my men, two Filipinos- one with a bald pate and the other I rely on to do the things that require skills only he and I possess- and the Danish giant I call The Great Dane, take on barge lines, operate the bunker crane, and assist the massive operation in various ways.

During lulls in lifts I am call upon repeatedly to handle other shipboard issues.  The coast guard is aboard performing a certification of inspection (COI), requiring us to drop lifeboats to the embarkation decks, dress out in full firefighting gear, including SCBA’s (self contained breathing apparatuses), running two fire teams and simulating a laundry room fire.

We take 6 of the non-English speaking Asians and collect every firehose from every fire station on the main deck and string them together on the stern deck into one long hose flaked from rail to rail, fore to aft.  The fire mains are charged and the inspectors verify all our seals work.  Then we break it all down, drain the hoses, roll them up, and replace them into their stations.  Then we do the same to the fire stations in the tunnels.

I am asked to make a wire hasp for the voyage data recorder (VDR) cabinet- the “black box” on a ship.  I have to troubleshoot a frozen escape hatch- it turns out it is secured from the inside against intrusion and we send the cadet up the ladder in the non-functioning elevator shaft to open the hatch from the inside. I disable the mechanism with a few wraps of tape.

It is relentless work.  I have pliers in my pocket.  A knife.  A flashlight.  That roll of electrical tape I used to disable hatch locking mechanisms (I normally seize line with it).  A bottle of water.  Earplugs.  And my radio, its handset clipped to my collar as close to my ear as possible.  

The heat is all consuming- radiation from the tropical sun from above, waves of heat from the steel deck plating below, and a level of humidity that soaks through clothing in less than a minute of casual exposure.  We are not casually working, however… so as soon as one bottle of water is gone, we replace it with another.  The empty bottles litter the deck in all directions, bow to stern, as we frenetically push to get as much done as possible.

The ABS inspectors in red coveralls have us take on large, yellow water bags that are used for the weight test certification of the new gangway.  The three large bags are connected by hoses to a manifold and placed on the gangway.  I charge their manifold from the fire main.  After several minutes, when the bright yellow bags are almost full, their manifold fails catastrophically, sending a geyser of salt water in all directions.

The two ABS inspectors are soaked instantly.  They struggle against the failure, comically and without success, while balanced on the raised gangway 50 feet above the water, and everyone - crew and contractor alike - laughs uncontrollably

for the next 5 minutes.

Thunderheads roll by on all sides, teasingly set atop columns of cool, torrential water- but none come near enough to block the sun or blow the stale, heavy wet air away.  

We work from 0800 until 2300 with minimal breaks, and as we make several more lifts to and from launches below, the welding and fabricating crew begins making new pneumatic pipes for the gangway winch and a new manifold for heavy bunker oil.  They work through the the night.  Many of their gang sleep on the deck.  Some string up hammocks, like the Sri Lankan longshoremen do.

I have a gallon tub of fast-orange hand cleaner with a pump that lives in my shower and it’s my routine to scrub the oil and grease off before I even consider an actual shower with soap.  It feels like an extraordinary amount of work after such a day, but it’s mandatory for anyone who likes clean sheets.

I am called out at 0400.  I drop their gear to their launch at 0430.  We raise anchor at 0530.  We get underway by 0600 and I go back to bed and skip breakfast and lunch.  I turn to and work from 1300 to 1700.  

The Skyline of Commerce

Swinging boxes