Hello there my dear friends! It has been a while indeed! 2 month! And trust me it has been so busy at home!
I first arrived and took time to stitch so many sailcloth bags to send before Christmas. Then I went to Brest for the Navy for two weeks, then Christmas and New Year with friends and family visit; another week in Brest, painting rooms in the house and all of a sudden it was time to fly to the ship again!
My view from the plane up in the air!
Of course, I was looking forward but you know how it is… I get busy at home and saying goodbye is always hard… I somehow always have the feeling that I have never finished what I needed to do. So I tidy everything up and start again when I come back home. Is it the same when you go back to the ship or leave your home for a while?
So there I am flying to Schiphol airport where the consigning captain (H.) will pick me up and we will drive to Delfzijl where the ship is waiting for us.
They have been loading plasterboards and I learned in the car that the plans had changed to sail out directly upon arrival and not the next day. Indeed they had completed the loading as they came with two cranes in the afternoon to load the ship so… no quiet first night for us to get used to the ship again and unpack nicely. I guess it is the ship’s life right? We were sailing to Inkoo in Finland and it was a good 12 hours sailing before we would reach Brunsbüttel and the Kiel Channel. As you know I have the midnight to 4 watch so after my handover, I went to bed to try and get some rest before I would be on the bridge during the night. Luckily the weather was not too bad as the strong winds were from our stern so basically surfing the waves. Besides, that area of the German Bight is easy: vessels mainly sail in the same direction and very few come in and out from German rivers and through the islands….
Chief officer Sophie smiling on the foredeck with mooring lines ready
I was a bit sad to not be there for the loading because plasterboards are an easy cargo: only a few hatches open and with one or two forklifts in the hold, the stevedores manage everything; as long as you keep the vessel trimmed well and that when discharging double bottoms water ballast you make sure the ship will not roll because it could become dangerous.
View of the ship from the bridge while sailing in strong winds
It was really good to be back onboard: new cook, new AB, and of course two crew members I know already. Our trainee S. Would only join a couple of weeks later.
Whenever I join the ship, I like to look in depth at all the things that have -or not have- been done. I like to see with my eyes the state of things and to refamiliarise myself on deck. Well, when leaving directly the harbor upon arrival makes it more difficult so I have to make time for it while getting back into the ship routine. I must say it did take me a couple of days to sort out my mess in the cabin: a suitcase and working clothes I leave onboard. We were sailing to the ice area so I needed to get my warm clothes out….
Lovely sunny weather at sea, view from the aft window in the bridge
Last year it was -17°C in Hamina, this year it was only averaging the 0°C…. So not soo bad, but you know. When you are not covered enough, you get cold way faster too. In my cabin, I have assigned myself two benches in which I store my belongings when I am not on board. Working gear. So it is very easy for me to open that bench and grab my overall boots, and helmet. In this case winter overall and woollen jumpers… I am always a bit nervous about not being on time or ready for such things but I do not know why as I am never late for work. It does not always seem so with the suitcase «explosion » haha but everything is packed by items so I am always fast in finding what I need. 😉 I guess those are the perks of living on sailing vessels for so long with other crew mates sharing your same cabin and not being in the same watches as you! You learn how to be silent and efficient!
Captain H. and chief officer Sophie standing on the bow of the vessel after having had an ice swimChief Officer Sophie smiling on her Sunday walk by -17°C
The sailing in the Baltic Sea was actually nice too! We had beautiful sunny weather and blue skies. We arrived on Sunday morning in Inkoo after a short sail in Ice. I would have expected way more ice underway but at least the harbour was still full! And of course, because there was no cargo operation on Sunday we made it a great relaxing day: an ice swim in the morning where I managed to stay for 3 minutes! And then a nice long 2 hours walk in the countryside. It is very nice that some countries have taken out the Covid restrictions so we are allowed to go ashore. As you know I very much enjoy long walks, especially in the snow. We dive a bit more than 10km and almost made it to the city of Inkoo from the harbour but decided to turn around before it got too dark.
Afternoon walk in the snow on Sunday in FinlandRuyter moored in the Port of Hamina, Finland
Do you know what the best was? That Sunday was the nicest day of our stay in that Harbour: the following days were a bit more grey and snowy.
Anyways. My first week was not too bad on board and I was very happy to be back. I have the feeling that this term will also go very fast!
Sunday, in the middle of the night we arrived at our berthing place in Szczecin. It was quite dark where we were and there was just a quayside with enough space for two vessels our size to be moored. I had never been. In this part of the harbour yet. A small bridge was ahead of us where only smaller river ships could pass beneath. Clearly, this was the end of the end and the city could not be seen from where we were. I could only distinguish some cranes behind the shed where the wood pulp would be stored.
What a view on the vessel dischargingin Stettin!
We were far from the city centre, that was quite clear. Anyways We would not have time to go there this time as they were discharging 24h here and there was no rain forecasted.
Chief officer making sure all is going according to planClimbing up high in the aft mast to check the condition of the equipment
The discharging went quite smoothly. We were planning to start on Monday after lunch which gave us time in the morning to take away the lashings and the airbags without pressure or hurry. The crane was a small crane that could take only three packages at the same time but it went quite fast nonetheless. The thing is that with smaller cranes, they are often faster and more agile than bigger ones. It is really a matter of perception: less cargo but more times, or more cargo but fewer times… In the end, it took us less than a day to discharge it all and I ended up waking up captain H. two hours after he had gone to bed; so that he could call the agent and get a pilot organized. We had still 4 hours on the channel to go and then not even a day to sail to Kaliningrad and if we were lucky with this time, we could have the early morning convey in Russia and at least be at the waiting Berth if the winds were to increase too much – as expected later in the week… And for once, for once, the Gods were with us till we arrived at our loading berth in Kaliningrad! Can you imagine? Arrived spot on time at the pilot boarding station, clearance with immigration went very smoothly, draft survey and cargo hold accepted without any problem and we started loading very easily and the weather was so far grey, but not rainy…..
The last cargo till completion
Normally arriving in Russia is always a hassle because Immigration comes on board with 2 to 3 officers and they are never so kind to you. This time he was a normal human! 😉 They did not do any cabin check, but the compulsory face check did happen and all the crew had to be awake for that. Because we knew that in advance we also mixed around the watched so that everyone could benefit from a good rest. The ABs and the trainee would be doing constant gangway watch in Russia. They were prepared to be cold too. They took a small heater out and a bucket to sit on by the gangway but luckily they were also out of the wind so it was not as cold as one month ago when we were loading here; or even as two years ago during my internship where we were already reaching the 0° Celsius…
In this loading port, It always takes a bit of time for them to prepare the belt and the cargo and have the scale ready for loading. They say 45 minutes but I believe the tendency is slightly less than the double…. We are always ready and we need to wait quite some time before they move the crane and position it above the hatch we want them to start, and then again quite sometime before the actual first cargo is in the hold. It is a pity because we lose quite some time like that and Sometimes I wonder how they do not make it more efficient. They know we are there, and ready so why not prepare ahead if the weather is clear? I am sure they have their reasons I am not aware of of course.
Loading took really long due to the weather conditions: rain
This time I do not think it would have made a big difference though, but as we are depending on conveys to sail in and out of the harbour, we have to shots a day and if we are delayed 12 hours because we started loading one hour later well it can sometimes be a bit frustrating…. This harbour is not the best place to be for the crew: we are not allowed to go ashore really, we need to do constant 24-hour gangway watch, it is often quite cold weather and windy, there is no network and 4g (I mean there is but it is extremely expensive so we are all on flight mode!) and the buildings and silos act slightly as an opaque screen on our satellite internet which lowers the quality of our connection…. Of course, we can survive a few days without a good internet connection, right? I mean, on the sailing vessels, we would not have any internet for weeks during our long crossings and it was fine. We would socialize and read books (ok watch movies too… 😉 but not Netflix as it was not available of course!)
This is how soya bean is loaded
This time it was all going fine and we were hoping to be out on time before the storm and have a nice weekend in Uusikaupunki before discharge would start the week after. It was only 2 days sailing to Finland, but Russian surveyors can be very very difficult on the weather during loading. To avoid any difficulties and discussions, with the finest drizzle hatches are closed immediately. A drop is a drop and in this case, there is no discussion on how big or how wet the drop is. no risk is taken ship side. And…. On our first night, we had a very fine drizzle almost the whole night which meant we almost did not load. A few times on my watch I hesitated to open. I did for half an hour but no one could be found on the shoreside, or by the crane. Also, the surveyor was not there (he usually stays all day in his car in front of our gangway). I was waving whistling ( loud, with two fingers in my mouth right? Not the birds while you do in a forest on a walk… 😉 ), shouting. But decided to close again. As it started raining slightly again. I am sure they were checking me out with binoculars thinking I was just a crazy woman on deck… Or maybe they were just sitting behind their radar screens and deciding they were not going to load anyways because of what was still to come ahead… At least I tried, and it was noted in the logbook; not that it would make a big difference in the end!
Intermittent loading: hatches open and closed according to the rain…. finally one hatch open! so we can proceed with loading!
For almost two days we sat there counting drops while only half the cargo was in the hold. And then of course the wind was picking up. The same wind we were hoping to avoid while sailing out and to be in time out at sea. In Westerly winds, the harbour closes for vessels like us as soon as the speed hits 16 m/s which is a 7 Beaufort. It was 7 already and it would keep increasing to 10 even later. There was not much we could then wait for the rain to pass and the wind to die – in case we completed the loading. Sailor’s life. Sometimes it is also about waiting and being patient right?
Well, let’s say that to complete the waiting, they decided that there was too much wind to load even. It was dry. But too much wind. Oh well. Captain H. Said I just needed to wait for them to come to the ship and decide that we could open. It feels a bit strange. Usually, I would say that it is the opposite. That we ( the vessel) decide if we can load or not. But of course, there is more involved to that too. They have their inspectors and they want to make sure that the cargo is good. And we do not want to mess with Russians either. The good thing is that it makes easy watches…. But it feels a bit like a loss of energy to be just awake and waiting during the watches at night. You can do a few small jobs but not like during the daytime. Luckily they came during my night watch for me to open up! I was glad – although the wind had not decreased in my opinion…. Haha And finally finally we continued the loading process. We still had 900t to go so with a bit of luck it would be completed by the morning and with even more luck we would be able to sail out with the morning convey! For sure the wind would have decreased by then just enough to open the harbour again.
This is how soya bean looks like: crushed nutsLoading selfie!
And Yes! We were lucky; it is how it happened. Completion at 6:30 am then draft survey and then waiting again. For papers, for the agent, for immigration to come onboard. I think in this country only the pilots are there on time, or even early… hahaha they must be paid for the time they spend on board haha. I mean, of course, I do not know and I hope they would not get offended reading this; the past Russian pilots we had onboard were pretty ok and nice people.
Big ships and small ships, this is Leonie, on the left, a sister ship from Ruyter, waiting for our berth
Saturday afternoon we were finally sailing out of Kaliningrad, wind in the nose – of course, for a change!- and heading to Uusikaupunki in Finland. It was a 2-day sail normally; but with strong wind, we do not manage to reach the double digits in speed. And this time we were slightly below average but still made it on time to the pilot station in Finland.
Sunset in Svettly (Kaliningrad, Russia)
The crossing went well; not so much heavy weather as expected, a bit of a nervous ship when sailing out on my watch but then it because easier. It seems like a good thing in the Baltic: when the wind drops, the horrible swell also decreases almost immediately. Because the swell in that area can be terrible really. The other thing I do not really like when sailing up North like that is that the heading of the ship is not so nice to catch the satellite for good internet onboard…. Oh no, do not judge me! After years without internet and after 5 days in Russia when you do not want to have any 4g network and a very bad internet connection, trust me, you are really looking forward to having some speed internet on your night watches too!! Or just for the ship of course ;-). Ok I might be slightly exaggerating, but it is true; on that course, it is not as stable because our mast is in the way. It is the way it is. It is not a long trip anyways and I pick up drawing a bit more instead. I have a tablet with a pen and I am trying to get more drawing skills. It has been so long since I have not really done « art » and I really like it and wish I’d be better at it. I believe the only way is to practice then and because I am always travelling, having a tablet on which I can draw is really awesome!
And the rain continued still at sea!
Oh! A great thing when sailing up north is the water temperature! We are getting close to Finnish winter temperatures here! During my night watch at sea, it was -2°C and I had hazel, snow, and drizzle. I had it all! Soon we will have to take care to ballast -5 minutes the tanks to avoid any damage. The air is getting colder and ice is slowly making its way on deck. But ok that is one thing. What I wanted to say is that the water temperature is really cold! Outside of course but also the ship’s wanter! The tank is of course located very low in the aft of the ship and is directly against the hull so it is cold – very cold- when it goes through the piping system to my shower! But wow it is so powerful in the morning. I must say it wakes you up! Brrahh! 😉 I try to train myself again to stay a little longer like count till 60 on each side of the body and breathe slowly. It is really great! I hope it will help me not get too cold on deck and not get sick either ( just the sniffy nose you know…); we shall see!
Anyways, We are arriving Monday after much time so I wish you a good Sunday at sea and oh! Saturday was A. Our engineer’s birthday! We had chocolate cake. And a very nice meal. It was nice 🙂
Portbury. We sailed on Sunday night: picked up the pilot at the pilot boarding station and sailed in later in the night. I was sleeping when all this happened because I needed to wake up early early to open the hatches, so I missed the fun of entering the Royal Docks of Portbury: small locks but a large dock behind with quite a few big vessels alongside. Luckily the weather was very good and quite warm and sunny for the first of November!
Ruyter alongside in Portbury, UKAlongside in Portbury, UK, ready to discharge the sugar beet pellets
The discharging of the sugar beet pulp pellets went fast and smoothly. As a precaution, I did only open a few hatches by a few hatches. Indeed: although the sun was constantly above our head, not so far away the front was passing above Bristol and I did not want to take the risk of having wet and damaged cargo. They had rain for sure. When I looked at those dark clouds… it could only confirm that it was wise to keep an eye on the surroundings.
At the end of the day, the bobcat was in and the last cargo was coming out at 20h. It was fun, I usually like to make a small game with the crew to estimate either the number of grabs left in the hold or the time it will take us to complete the discharging. I started doing this when I was a trainee. I would challenge captain H. on this. He likes to be challenged like that. And I like to win. But he would change his mind in the middle and change his answer so that he could win. That was not how it should be played…. 😉 Now with the ABs and whoever is there in the hold at the time of the game, I give a start time and ask how long each and one of us think it will be finished and the one closest to the completion time ( usually when the bobcat is out) wins. I won already a couple of times, A. Our engineer won too. The ABs still need to work on their skills. Captain H. Is not allowed to play till further notice haha. No rule changing in the middle of the game and he knows that. I will probably let him play again. Next time he is in the hold with us. It was not the case this time so no worries… I am not an excluder….. all are welcome to play. 😉
Making some magnetic compass checks, the view is always amazing from the monkey deck!
We had a lot of cargo stuck behind our bulkheads. I knew that from the loading in Liepaja. I had prepared my afternoon watch the tarpaulin for on top of the bulkhead to avoid the problem, but during my sleep, I got woken up by sounds against the wall of my cabin and knew directly what was going on. When I came on my night watch at that time I saw the tarpaulins that were taken off « because of the wind ». I remember at that time it made me really upset because there were small lines that were on the tarpaulins for making it fast and avoid having them fall in the hold. And when you know how long it takes for the whole crew to move the two bulkheads and sweep the leftover cargo from behind; well you make sure the tarpaulins are in place. We would all agree that even though it is not nice at the moment, it avoids so much more work to wake up one or two crew members to fix a tarpaulin if we cannot do it alone…. But that was not how it happened.
After completion, we moved the bulkheads and swept the remaining cargo out. Because we were not sailing out before the next day, we postponed the cleaning of the hold to the next morning. We had a chance still to have a good night’s sleep. The cleaning of the hold would be done the next morning thoroughly. We were going to Bird port, close to Newport, only a couple of hours out sailing. We would be loading steel slabs so the hold also needed to be washed with fresh water because there would be a salinity test too during the hold inspection.
We sailed out of the locks of Portbury later in the afternoon on a beautiful sunny day for a change. We were not going into our next port for a few days. They still had a few vessels ahead of us in the planning. The bad weather from the previous week made a little bit of congestion in the harbours. I did not mind. It was also the way it was and we could not change it. This time the anchorage was very easy and smooth: almost no wind and nice weather so we focused on outdoor jobs. A bit of maintenance here and there and some painting on deck.
After a few weeks with so much wind… finally, time to enjoy some stillness at sea!
I am glad that happened. As we are going into the winter period, areas with a bit of open paint and cracks will get even worse during the winter. And when it is cold outside, it is not ideal for the paint to dry either. I mean these are normal maintenance things that every officer knows onboard right? The good preparation of the surface to be painted. If you quickly just paint on top then you are sure you can do it all over again in the spring.
So this is what we did for a few days at anchor: drills, painting, greasing, general maintenance… the usual.
Guy Fawks day on the river!
We heaved up anchor and entered the river to Newport in the late afternoon of the 5th. It was nice because as it was getting darker outside, we could see a lot of fireworks and bomb fires along the coast. It was Guy Fawkes day. I joked saying to the captain that they were making a part for us for finally entering the harbour after so many days!
There were a lot of tides and thus current at that time on the river and Birdport was a small harbour situated behind Newport. It was quite tricky because it only gave us a few minutes to make the turn and enter the small kind of lock where the loading would happen. And…. Surprise surprise, there was still a vessel loading at our berth! The problem was that if he did not make it in time to sail out then we had to cancel coming in and had to sail all the way back to the anchorage to wait for the next tide to sail in…. At the moment, I must admit I thought we were not so lucky with all our trips so far. But 20 minutes before our deadlines we were waiting drifting in a safe area on the river Usk, we hear on the radio that the vessel at our berth was ready and proceeding for departure. Great! We would make it on time.
In Birdport, we entered a tidal lock: short walls at low tide so that we would not run aground
It was a funny place, like a single lock with halfway doors that would close so that the tide did not take away all the water and always 6-7m remained at the berth. The inspectors came in the evening, directly upon arrival to inspect the salinity and cleanliness of the hold and to make the ultrasound test. It was all fine, the next morning we would be able to load directly the steel slabs.
In Birdport, the loading of the steel slabs has just begunThe timber is there to protect the vessel from the steel and to be able to pass the chain slings in between piles
The nice thing about this cargo is that it was not weather-dependent like the steel coils. These were just on the quayside outside. They just needed to be protected from salt water. This meant that I could easily open up all hatches in the morning and let them load patting attention to the trim while deballasting. Each slab was approximately 20t and we were going to make 4 piles of 7 slabs per high, 5 high; which meant 140 slabs to load. It was – normally- going to be pretty fast loading.
Symmetrical pictures in the hold always make my day! I’d almost say that the cargo is beautiful right?
Except that….. wait for it ;-)…. The next morning, I was ready with all the hatches open but by the time the stevedore came and the shore workers…. Well the tide was higher and they couldn’t load the timber in the ship with their crane….. haha They did not want to change the hook either so they had to wait for the tide to lower to start working…. 3 hours later…. Really?! I thought this was ridiculous. They had 1. Started on time and 2. Changed the hook, they could have started slowly. But well in the end we managed and way on time so it was the same for us.
The loading of the steel slabs is here almost over, stevedores just need to lash and make fast the top layerChief officer and captain supervise the loading from the hatches.
In the evening at high tide, we sailed out with the pilot on board and proceeded towards the English Channel for a couple of Days. We were headed to our next port of call in Gent, Belgium, to discharge the slabs. We had 3 days sailing ahead of us. Luckily the weather had changed and we had nice and smooth sailing.
Let’s see next week what Gent would bring us this time! New adventures to be followed! Have a nice Sunday at sea my friends!
S O P H I E. T H E. S A I L O R. 