7th-13th of June 2021

So… here we are again, a new week and a new little blurb on what I have learnt this week…. I ended last Sunday at see between Heroya and Uusikaupunki with a beautiful sail: sunny, no wind, relaxed, all up to date, perfect. Just like it should be. I very much enjoy those times on the bridge when I can just enjoy the navigation part and looking outside at the sea and even enjoying a cup of coffee in the sun. A little bit of vitamin D always makes my day!

Sometimes days in harbour are tough and very demanding. I know that and I accept that even though my lack of sleep can make me (bit) lazy and probably a bit grumpy too. I often think of how mental strength makes things easier and have-ing a good mindset or the kind of one that « just gets it done » make all the difference. But to be honest, I sometimes also need a pull or push to stay in that mind set too…When I was on the sail training ships one of my motos were:

« If you sit they lay down, if you stand they sit, if you walk they stand, if you run they walk »

The idea was that you always had to be one step ahead of the people you were training, or those you were leading…. It feel the same here. Not that I am ahead or leading anybody but as we are only 6 onboard, if we do not get the good dynamic for working – and happily working- well the jobs suddenly get more heavy to do.

Sometimes I wonder if I still have that strength in me but then I think: wait Sophie these are totally two different jobs! Indeed, what I now find the most disruptive is my lack of sleep; but because it can sometimes be so random and over a week never have the same pattern: sleeping at times when I would normally be fully away and vice versa and also not having a same day following the other. And I found that that was my weakness. So as soon as I can I try to get my rest to keep it up. But of course the body doesn’t really understand what is going on: has to sleep, doesn’t have to sleep? How long? Two hours? Six hours? Well to be honest it happened that I sometimes had the chance to have a 2 hours nap or a 6 hour sleep and couldn’t close my eyes even though I was exhausted…. There was absolutely nothing I could do but toss and turn in bed. The body just doesn’t always follow…. But then surprisingly, when things need to happen, there is no problem anymore.

Luckily I had now a few days where I could rest and catch up. And that was great!

Another nice thing about sailing up north was that days became longer of course so at the end of my watch I could really enjoy the sun rising again and I simply love those moments. They are magical and peaceful. I feel that I do not have enough of those moments anymore: no sun sets, no sunrises…. Like if the job of the chief officer onboard cargo vessels was the « filling in position ». The captain having the watches that are the most « normal » ones (besides when we need to come in the harbour or leave in the afternoons… of course that is tough. And the other officer has also mostly a « day job » starting at 4 am in the bridge and the afternoon in the engine room, with a long 10hour rest at night. Well. On the other hand, if you do not sleep well one night you are ruined for the rest of the day, in my watch hours, I know I can eventually go back to bed at a maximum of 6 hours later…. That is also nice.

Oh well, I am of course not complaining! I like my watch, it is fine for me, but explained sometimes that I get quite disorientated when I normally go to bed at 4 am and sometimes I have to get up at that very same time!

When we arrived in Uusikaupunki a few days later, we found the Leonie again. Actually we never really lost her: she had to bunker so we catch up on her until dropping anchor close by in Uusikaupunki only 1,5 hours after her! Funny! There was « congestion » in the harbour, so we had to wait…. Of course. So again, had time to put all my administration in order and up to date and enjoy a very nice, calm and beautiful time at anchor.

Luckily we did not have to wait long before we could sail into the harbour and start discharging, moored ahead of Leonie. We finished discharging very early in the morning and off we were to our next harbour in Finland: Kotka.

In Kotka, we would load fertilizer and sail to Delfzijl. We know that trip, we have done it a few times already. It was the famous trip where our engine « exploded* » (* did not really explode but you get the idea!) in Brunsbüttel 1,5 years ago when I was trainee onboard.

In Delfzijl there is a draft restriction, we have to be even keel and not over 5,00m otherwise we hit the ground…. And we do not really want that. I like training for even keel because it makes the loading a bit more interesting – not that it is not interesting- but more that you have to be in control of how much and where you load. Of course, although it is always the Captain’s plan – and it is always the same way we are loading almost every cargo… -… I applied it well – or as best as I could- because I pretty much was the only one up during loading….

Indeed, you remember how I said that all our schedules were blown away when we had short trips and fast loadings? Well this is exactly one of those situations….

We arrived in the end of the afternoon in Kotka. They load quite fast here, so we know that we will be out again in 6-8 hours. As we need a pilot, and of course need to maneuver the ship, the captain has to be on watch then. So he is the one finishing with the loading plan and starting up the engine; then he wakes up the ABs and an officer. In this case the other officer. Because the loading is my department (deck officer), the engine officer comes on deck for cargo operations usually only if we are loading 24hours. So there we were: basically the captain and I swopped watches so that he could get some sleep before departing again, which he did.

In Kotka, the loading goes really fast, usually around 600-700t per hour. I like it when it is fast. I had per instructions to wake up the captain when we were at average draft 4,5m. Remember, we could only load up to 5,00m, so we still had 50cm to go. On our ship, it is approximatly 1cm= 10tons midships, and closer to 1ton per cm fore and aft while loading in those areas.

Regularly I check the drafts marks to have an average draft so that I am able to calculate how much cargo is already in the hold. The first time, after approximately one hour, I had already 900 tons in! I had to recalculate thinking like « wow this is going fast! ». Then I reminded myself that the stevedore said they would put two big tractors to load the belt so it indeed goes way faster. I did a quick calculation… if in 1 hour we had 900t, how long would it take to reach the target of 3000 t? Well 3×900 = 2700… I think captain would only have a short rest before I’d have to wake him up again!

So there I was, an hour later: 1800t. I like it when it goes fast. It was also nice because I was then very busy deballasting all the tanks and striping them via the ejector to make sure there was no water left inside. It is easy to do, but it takes time because you have to do one tank at a time and the ejector is quite a slow system – even though very efficient. It was a busy watch, and I am glad the weather was good and no rain was forecasted otherwise I would have really been busy. The only thing was that the wind was picking up so I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to take the drafts later for the draft survey.

We did a draft survey before starting loading and we had to do another one after loading so that we knew how much cargo we had. The idea is to take the drafts fore and aft but also midships on the Portside and starboard side. Then with trim corrections, ships various weights and the amount of ballast before and after, we can calculate how much cargo we have in our hold. For school of course, you would have to do this by hand, but we have a excel sheet program that a previous captain sailing onboard Ruyter did very nicely by locking the fields we couldn’t touch and enabling only the cells where we had to enter information. Perfect tool!

I finally checked the drafts marks and we were getting closer to the average of 4,50m -where I had to wake Captain H. up. Only 5 cm to go, which meant 50 tons. I was loading in the stern of the ship and as you recall, we had to be even keel for Delfzijl. I had the instruction to not go over 5,10m on the stern draft. And it was getting really closer so I decided to wake up captain because it would not be long before we were done with loading! 50cm is 500t, which is a big half hour! I think we were not really expecting to be as quick in this harbour, but perfect!

The only thing that made me a bit nervous was that by the time I got back out on the stern, we were already at 5,00m! Oh no! I ran to the stevedore controlling the belt and told him to move forward – which he acknowledged. But it was going too slow to me taste and I could see the water coming to 5,15m! I shouted at him to stop which still took too long to my eyes…. But eventually it happened…. And I was at 5,20m!!! Ahhh 😨 my heart was beating quite fast…had I just ruined the whole loading plan?

I asked the stevedore to load as far forward as possible to get back even keel as quick as possible. And there it happened. Yes! IT happened! You might be thinking right now: what? What Sophie tell us! What happened?

Well….. we had just 20 minutes of loading to be done till completion and there was a fault on the last belt. So they had to stop to fix it. That did not take long. What took long was that the previous belts did not stop during the last belt’s fault and… the cargo accumulated on them so the mechanics couldn’t restart them because there was too much cargo on them! Yes I know…. Silly right?

It literally took them over two hours to get that fixed…. In the mean time the Captain was wake – of course, I called him because we were supposed to be almost at the end of our loading process!- I felt sorry for him because he was missing out of two night good hours of sleep, but yeah. I didn’t really plan that, and honestly, he didn’t say anything either about it. He was just happy and ok to be there! We just laughed at how we thought we were so unlucky these past few trips with losing time on events that were not our fault: loss of time waiting for bunkering, loss of time at anchor because of moving sandbanks on the Humber river, now this….

Oh well, there was nothing we could do about it so we took a cup of coffee. I think the cup of coffee is for seamen what the cup of tea is for British people… haha

Once the belts were running again we could load forward again. The ship came up right perfectly! We even added slowly slowly till we were perfectly on the draft marks. For that we had to stop the loading process to empty what was left on the belt: approximately 30 tons of cargo and then they could in the shed add grab per grab. 1 grab is approximately 6,4tons. So captain decided to add 2 grabs forward and three aft and see again what our drafts were. This way he could really control and choose where to position these last bits of cargo: more or less aft to be even keel.

I was standing on the hatch crane and checking if he was not heeling on one side or the other. Indeed you want a balanced ship because if you heel 1-2 degrees, for example, the bottom side of our hull is approximately 6 meters more outboard so for sure you are not on 5,00m anymore, and you may touch the ground in Delfzijl. Does that make sense to you? 😉

So. Finally loaded, draft survey done, waiting for the pilot I closed the hatches and made as ready as possible before I was sent to bed. Yep, I realized as exciting this day had been, I was quite tired and needed so rest, that was sure! The ABs and another officer would come half an hour later to take the lines in and sail home to The Netherlands. I was glad I could finally close my eyes! We were heading for a nice 4 day sail to The Netherlands and we could get back into a normal rhythm again: perfect: Saturday and Sunday at sea, no bad weather in the baltic but maybe some stronger winds in the north sea… we are not there yet. First things first: sleep, the rest will come next week!

Oh wait!

Did I mention we had a special birthday onboard this week? No? Yes? Well it was Captain’s H. Birthday!!! Of course, I prepared a nice deco for the bridge and managed to get a picture of him in it, and of course, we had a delicious chocolate cake! He is « 39+ » but I am sure he feel like he is still in his 20’s! I always like birthdays on board…. Or maybe I like cakes. Or just both, could be. Anyways! Happy Birthday again Capatin H.!

Take care and big hugs!

Sophie