sagacious.us

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

(15 September 07) We are now steaming south in the Sea of Japan. Yesterday at noon we took one engine off line and reduced the load on the other so we are moving at the glacial pace of 9kts (10mph) to allow typhoon Nari to get ahead of us before we make our turn around the southern end of the Korean peninsula. For two weeks we rolled along across the gray north Pacific...

(13 August 07) I am the Second Mate, and this is a tramp. For the uninitiated: the Second Mate (2/M) is the navigation officer, it is my job to make sure the charts and pubs (again for the uninitiated: maps at sea are called charts, reference books are called pubs short for publications) all corrected for the parts of the world that we will be sailing.

(05 August 07) We have been steaming along on one engine for the past week and a half on our way to Nawiliwili (Kaua'i) to make a timed arrival at our birth. We steamed as slow as we could given that the evaporators need a minimum amount of waste heat from the engines to make water, but still we are two days early to port. To kill time and because anchoring is nearly impossible since the sea floor is as steep as the sides of the mountainous islands we are drifting south of Kaua'i and west of Ni'ihao.

(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.

(20 June 06) This trip carried its share of adventures, we nearly lost two anchors, careened a dock, a tug line parted, minor fire in the forecastle...

(01 April 06) While in Kenya on the Moku Pahu, the First Assistant engineer arranged photo safaris for the crew in East Tsavo national park.