DCdt’s Log 262210 August 2017 GMT +7

When I joined this vessel, we were sailing on a relatively short circular route, from Singapore, to three ports in the Philippines and then back to Singapore in around two weeks. We have now just changed our route to a one-week shuttle run between Singapore and Surabaya, Indonesia. This breaks down to less than 24 hours in Singapore, 2 days sailing, a day or so in Surabaya and then 2 days back to Singapore. An upside to this though is the longish port stay in Surabaya, so I’m hoping to gradually work my way through the sights each visit and have myself a free holiday, courtesy of the Merchant Navy…

The change of route also comes with it a change of command, with our original captain signing off, and the captain from my first trip signing back on in his place! It’s great to be back with him, as he’s good laugh and pretty easy going and all about cadet learning and training. I now have the watch myself, and only inform the duty OOW about anything major I plan on doing. Another positive that comes out of being in and out of port so frequently is that I will be getting a lot of chances to be in charge of the mooring stations forward and aft, as well as acting as the OOW on the bridge for lots of pilotage waters, a great experience for my training!

Having now done a few of trips on the Surabaya service, I can say that I’m very quickly losing the idea of where I am in the world and whether I’m heading North West or South East. The constant changing between watch schedules, advancing or reducing the ship’s clock by an hour each voyage and just generally not having a set weekly routine is quite odd and mentally disorienting, but it is indeed all a part of the job.

In other news, however, I have made a couple of small alterations to my cabin which I believe has improved it tenfold – the addition of the huge spinny office chair, and a fridge (complete with beer). Certainly, they make the days a bit easier, if I can finish my deck work and retreat to a cold water or soft drink, and then rounding off the day after watch with a cold beer, it’s hard to beat really. The fridge, I “liberated” from the pilot cabin, seeing as it is unused around 99% of the time, and the office chair I managed to pilfer as the Chief Officer thought the ship’s office had too many chairs to begin with, and that this big on creaked too much and reclined too far. So I selflessly offered to take it away for him, applied a bit of WD-40, and presto, a quiet, reclining, spinny chair. Gleaming.

I have also just found out that once I sign off in October, I’ll only be getting a short break at home of less than a month before I am back out to join ship to finish my final three months of sea time required for my cadetship. That in itself should be an interesting journey as it will be my first – of what I’m sure will be many – Christmas and New Year at sea!

As a final note, I’m currently working on [the very long and arduous task of] completely digitising the Merchant Navy Training Board Training Record Book 3rd Edition July 2017 in a Microsoft Office Excel book. I think that it could just be an easy way of keeping track of progress through the TRB, sea time, watchkeeping days etc. Not particularly much use to my current cohort of Deckies, but if newer cadets feel it might be of use to them, then I might look at sending it out to those interested.

Until next time,

Yours Aye,

-The Scouse Deckie