sagacious.us

(17 October 07) Voyage 284 from Redwood City and Richmond to Inchon South Korea carrying scrap steel

(21 July 07) We are discharging mountains of sugar, over 34,000 tons, I said mountains. Discharging sugar is about the messiest job I have ever seen. Using purpose made cranes the sugar is scooped up in buckets on a belt transferred to a belt and whisked off over the ship to the silos ashore but not before sprinkling a light dust of sugar all over the ship.

(15 April 03) We had already discharged half of our cargo in Haifa Israel before heading south to Ashdod. After watching the discharge in Haifa I believed that all discharges were clean, smooth operations. The excavators used in Haifa drew the grain from the hold and carried it cleanly and efficiently to the elevators ashore.

(21 November 02) I was standing on deck watching the grain being loaded and was struck by what the dust was doing. Little pellets of dust were blowing off the conveyor belt. they would fall to deck but on the way they would begin to fall apart leaving a trail of dust that would abruptly end in mid air when the clod was expended. Each of these would explode at a different point filling the air with little streamers like tiny comets...

(20 November 02) In Louisiana we loaded soybeans at the Zen-Noh grain elevators about 150 statute miles up the Mississippi river. The soy beans look just like black eyed peas or white beans, they are round, cream and very hard. When you step on them on deck when they are scattered thinly they act as ball bearings.