DCdt’s Log 041500 May LMT

It seems about high time to post an update, and I have a couple of things to talk about too – so that’s handy!

First thing I’m going to talk about is the weather. Because let’s face it, if I didn’t talk about the weather at least once while I’m away then it just wouldn’t be cricket, would it?

In my defence, the weather I experienced actually was somewhat noteworthy and bringing up, rather than just talking about the weather for the sake of it. For once as well, I’m not making you Brits jealous by talking about all my sun I’m getting out here.. We encountered what I am quite confident in calling ‘rough weather’. For reference, roughly 8m swell, wind speeds reaching 51 kts and our angle of heeling at it’s furthest point reaching 35° to starboard and 30° to port. We were also stacked 5 containers high, and so had a much higher than normal (and preferable) GM. If I had to put it in one word it would simply be scary. I was scared. Not the jumpy kind of scared, but genuinely feeling sick to my stomach and not knowing what was going to happen. The worst part about the feeling though, wasn’t the feeling itself (although that was pretty horrible), it was the sheer length of time it lasts, because obviously in a ship in rough weather, you can’t just magic yourself out of it quickly. It’s something that builds up over time, moves and stays for a long time. Even trying to escape from it, that can take its sweet time as we’re in a vessel that was moving through the water at about 8kts. We were in the rough ‘patch’ for about 11 hours in total.. We did eventually divert from our course, to try and head into the swell as much as we could so we weren’t getting these huge swells on our beam (the most dangerous place to be hit by swell), but even this was proving to only have a limited effect on us.

After we were eventually out of the woods though, the Captain decided to tell us that the ship we are on was originally designed as a river ship, taking boxes from large container ports further inland to the narrower ports. So on a vessel that wasn’t even designed for ocean passage, in a bloody huge storm. Fantastic.

But, eventually we got out of it, got to our port, I managed to actually sleep after running for 60-something hours on about 3 hours sleep and it was glorious.

At [original] time of writing we’re anchored off of Beira, our final port before arriving at Singapore and I get to go home! I really can’t wait now, I’m properly in the mind-set to be home at this stage. Being anchored quite close to Beira, it’s actually very frustrating, as we’re so close that I ALMOST get signal. I mean sometimes I will have signal, but most of the time I don’t, and I often miss my notifications, so I’ll get messages through that I then can’t reply to because said signal has gone.. Oh well, hopefully we’ll be alongside in my *cough* favourite *cough* port of all time soon, where I’ll get to use and abuse my local sim card before my final voyage for this sea phase.

I think I’ll start packing soon. So then I’m only living out of the bag of my everyday clothes and day-t0-day books, pens etc.

NOW I’m typing this from Beira itself. So in my earlier comment about using and abuse my local sim card, turns out I can’t do that, as the sim card I was sold, was in fact stolen! So it has been blocked by the network, oh joy. But I have now acquired a NEW sim card, albeit a different network, so my top ups I’d already bought are now useless to me… Oh well, should have guessed it wasn’t legit when I looked at it and was clearly very worn already.

I did in fact start packing, and I’ve already filled a substantial amount of space in one of my two hold bags, and I still haven’t put in any clothes, gifts or souvenirs. How did I do this before I came away? With any luck my Tetris mind frame will kick in an I’ll be able to stow everything and give myself a hernia as I depart the vessel.

See you all soon,

-The Scouse Deckie