Wendy’s
Sea Log – Matson's ITB, the M/V Moku Pahu, 12-16-11 to 2-5-12
12-19-11, Monday
Tied up at Richland
in San
Francisco Bay Far East , for a period of not
more than six months." A little over a month is what it sounds like. We’re
headed for China and Korea , most likely Shanghai
and Pusan
We loaded a bunch of tons of finely
macerated scrap, each piece about the size of a cell phone, until it rose in
one or two steep heaps in the hold. Then we hooked up a caterpillar bulldozer
to one of our three big cargo cranes, hoisted it up and lowered it onto the
heap. The driver was strapped in for the ride, and just as the dozer was
brushing the top of the heap, he started her up and began pushing the heap
down, still hooked to the crane and using it to swing him this way and that,
kind of like "The Pit and the Pendulum." Then we set him down on as
level a place as there was, he unhooked the crane straps, and started pushing
the scrap around to level it off so we’ll be balanced, on an even keel and not
listing from being too heavy on one side or the other. But consider this: the
guy is literally teetering on this steep hill of rusty metal, making small
avalanches as he works, inches from either being buried alive or flipped over,
and capsizing a caterpillar rig is not something I want to think about.
When the scrap was all leveled, we
hoisted him out and into the next hold, for four holds. He did this for a day
and a night, without many breaks, then we hoisted him back up and onto the
dock. If the cat had been red, it would have looked like Santa’s sleigh up
there.
Whatever they pay that
guy, it ain’t enough. Or maybe he’s just mental.
The Moku Pahu is an ITB,
an Integrated Tug Barge, the first one I’ve sailed on. The stern of the barge
is cut out so the bow of the tug fits into it, and they’re held together with
hydraulic link arms. From a distance she looks like a regular ship. We were
down where they join today, greasing the gear that holds her together. The
hydraulic link arms can lift straight up or back and forth.
The nice part about this
ship is that it takes longer to fill her holds than it does to load container
ships, so maybe we’ll get some time ashore.
12/23/11, Friday
Off the coast of southern California
Scraping the sugar gunk
from the hatch seals was a new one for me; this boat’s last cargo was cane
sugar, and she’s 660 feet long with six holds, so that’s a lot of sugar. Some
sugar spills during loading and unloading, and it looks like dirty corn snow
when it clumps up around the hatches. Underneath, it’s super gooey. Got covered
with the stuff all over and felt like the Sugar Plum Fairy. Or a candy cane. Or
a popsicle. Or the time I picked pie cherries on Vashon
Island . Pie cherries are thin skinned and break easily, so by the
end of the day I was a walking, sticky piece of cherry pie.
Beautiful day. 2nd
Mate Liam came up to the bridge for noon watch looking like a pooch somebody’d
just dragged out of the water. Nice guy, easy to talk to, and a musician too,
who likes some of the same stuff I do, so watch should go well. Saw a whale
blow, and its back slightly surfaced off of Pt. Sur. Probably a gray whale;
didn’t see a dorsal fin. Don’t want to hit any whales. It’s illegal, and no fun
for the ship or the whale.
We were to bunker (fuel)
in San Francisco Bay but they didn’t the right kind of ignitable propulsive
hydrocarbon we needed, so we’re on our way down to LA to bunker there. It’ll be
at anchor, so no shore leave. I think it’ll take about 12 hours, so we’ll have
another one am departure. My watch again.
By the way, the guys on
this boat are the best looking bunch I’ve seen yet, mostly 20 and
30-somethings. Pity I’m not a little younger.
In Richmond ,
north of Oakland in San Francisco Bay Iowa Iowa
12-24-11, Saturday
We dropped anchor in Long Beach
Harbor Wilmington
Merry Christmas.
Peace on Earth.
12-25-11, Sunday
Found a Christmas stocking
on my door in the morning, with a bottle of Pilsner and assorted candy inside.
Pity I don’t like beer, but it was one of those “aw, how nice” moments.
Everyone on the ship got a stocking. Steered the ship out of Long Beach Harbor
12/28/11, Wednesday
Now it looks like we’ll be
going straight to the dock/shipyard in Nantong Shanghai
We have a pool going for
the International Date Line. $10 a guess, and whoever gets the right minute we
cross the Line wins.
Sent 12/29/11
12/31/11, Saturday
New Year’s Eve. Barbecue
on the aft deck. We landed two mahi mahi this morning, so I wrote it up for the
ship’s paper:
Mariners Battle
Sailors on board the M/V
Moku Pahu fought of a massive assault by an army of invading mahi mahi
today. The attack was apparently in retaliation for the deaths of two
outstanding members of the local mahi mahi school, at the hands of the Moku
Pahu crew.
Singled out for heroic
conduct were Wiper Abdul, Chief Mate Rob, and Chief Steward Marcus, who fought
bravely at the aft lines, and alert 3rd Mate Beau, who warned of the
fishy armada’s approach.
There were no crew
casualties. The number of fish casualties will be made available as soon as the
Chief Steward and Chief Cook finish counting and freezing them.
1/1/12, Sunday
Big blow and rollers began
early am; sun out though, air fresh, and I LOVE MY JOB! No one allowed on the
aft deck as we’re pitching and taking water over the rails there.
1/2/12, Monday
28°16.859’ N.
151°24.964’ W.
Wind brisk and plenty of
whitecaps, but lots of deep blue too. We have no anemometer on this ship—why is
an unanswered question—but it looks to be blowing 25-30 kt., over the port bow.
Lots of arcing white spray over the forward #1 hold. Was working with the Bosun
up there earlier; another deckie there now, helping secure the huge steel cable
bridle for lifting containers, inside the #1 crane tower. Hard work.
The Moku Pahu’s
stern is cut away in the center, so her hull there extends out on both sides,
like catamaran pontoons. From one side you can watch the propeller working
beneath the other side, making light blue sliced curves under water. Unique
view.
Gone south from 30°
latitude to 28°; amazing what a difference in temperature a couple of degrees
makes. 76° now, at 1330, from the 50’s a few days ago. My watch partner Liam
tried yet another paper airplane from the bridge, this one made from a
cardboard box. So-so flight. The random sized pieces of cardboard he tossed
over next flew just as well.
Our oxygen measuring gizmo
decided to go Beep Beep all night long, so it ended up in the Mate’s office
where it wouldn’t bother anybody. If we’d kept it on the bridge, the scenario
would have gone like this:
Mate. Bring her over to
270° (BEEP BEEP)
AB. What was that? (BEEP
BEEP) Say again? (BEEP BEEP)
Mate. 2-7-0 (BEEP BEEP)
AB. 2-7-3?
Mate. No, 2-7 (BEEP BEEP)
zero.
AB. 2-7-0. Right. She’s
(BEEP BEEP) drifting to port (BEEP BEEP).
Mate. No, not (BEEP BEEP)
2-3-4!
AB. Roger that, (BEEP
BEEP) bringing her to 2-3-4.
Mate. No, (BEEP BEEP) no!
Beeper ends up in the
drink.
1/3/12, Tuesday
27°58.60’ N.
154°22.02 W.
Course: 270°, due west
Speed: 6 kt.
Just over the Big Island
of Hawaii about 100 miles to the south. Only sign of land is a seabird or two
sighted. No traffic for quite a while. Rising and falling on 40’ swells, coming
at us from about 330°, NW by N. We were heading more straight on to them but
that means that when there’s a swell under the bow and one under the stern,
there might be nothing but air beneath us midships. With no water supporting us
there, and with tons of scrap metal in our holds just above, the hull and keel
could literally break in two. The Captain said, “I don’t like breaking,” and
ordered a course change so we’d be taking the swells more diagonally and riding
along their sides more, rather than just hitting the tops.
A three foot high wood
statue of Kanaloa, Hawaiian god of the sea, stands on the bridge. I’ve
abstained from rubbing his head for luck. No way, my Judeo-Christian and Muslim
friends, is this good Jewish Catholic girl going to be accused of idol worship.
To the pagans out there, my regrets.
Fire drill today. Helped
squad partner Cody get attired in his firefighting gear, and tended the hose.
Went well. Fires at sea are not nice so we drill once a week.
Sent 1/5/12
1/8/12, Sunday
Been spending the last
four mornings doing overtime in the three big cargo cranes on deck. They’re
hydraulic, which means they leak a lot as the hydraulic fluid is under a lot of
pressure when they lift tons of cargo. So somebody has to go up and clean up
the stuff that leaks under the winches. Who do you send to scrounge around in a
very small space, hitting your head a given thing, getting drenched with very
slippery stuff, and swabbing out all that gooey goo? A big tough guy sailor
dude with shoulders the size of a Suburban? Nope.
They send scrawny little
me.
I can get into the little
places where the big guys don’t fit. The winches are about halfway up the 60
foot crane towers, on platforms with a two inch coaming around them. The
platform under Winch #1 had a lot of filthy sludge. Winch #2 had clear
hydraulic fluid, and not much of it. Winch #3’s platform was nearly full with
mostly clear fluid. Noah’s ark would have floated in it. It’s the consistency
of corn syrup, or the oil you put in your car. The area of each platform is
roughly 7x7 feet, and I filled two five gallon buckets with fluid and four
trash bags with sopping diapers from the three cranes, scooping up the goo with
a scooper made from the bottom of a plastic gallon jug. Not the fastest
cleaning technique.
These diapers, by the way,
are not the kind you put on babies; they are made of soft adherent material
that makes grease stick to it. Gets pretty goopy. Oh, and the winches with
their wound up cables are themselves tarry with grime, which sticks to you if
you brush up against it. We can’t send photo attachments with this ship email,
so when I get home I’ll email pix of me after four days of this little job.
This will be to quash any notions that working at sea is glamorous or romantic.
Well it is in a way, but it’s pretty filthy too. You’ll see.
I gave up on the idea of
washing my winch cleaning clothes and threw them in the HazMat (Hazardous
Material) barrel.
On noon to 1600 watch:
28°35.3’ N.
172°54.7’ W.
Course: Steering 275° to
make good a true course of 283°, countering the wind and seas, which are trying
to throw us off course.
Speed: 7.3 kt.
Wind: 27 kt., Beaufort
Force 6
Waves: 10’, coming from
330°, off the port bow.
Temp: 75° F.
Choppy swell; magnificent
white horses off the port bow. Bumpy ride. Our twin sterns have dipped under a
few times.
My Moku Pahu t-shirt
boasts that she’s delivered over 8 million tons of C&H Sugar since 1983,
but the Chief Steward still has to buy our bags of C&H, the same as he does the
other stores.
1/9/12, Monday
“SKIP TUESDAY”
The International Date
Line looms ahead. Today the notice board in the mess read, “Retard clocks one
hour tonight, and go from Monday to Wednesday. Skip Tuesday.”
1/11/12, Wednesday
We won’t actually cross
the Date Line till around 1930 (7:30 pm) tonight. So if we haven’t crossed the
Line yet, is it still Tuesday? Nope. The Captain said it’s Wednesday, so
Wednesday it is. Our daily enews printout says it’s Tuesday, however. This
means that from now till the end of the voyage, we’ll be getting yesterday’s
news.
Sent 1/11/12
1/14/12, Saturday
30°00.1 N.
169°00.7 E.
Sloooooow boat to China
Got a notice that the
Russians’ Phobos Grunt satellite (I didn’t name it) will be re-entering the
atmosphere off of Japan
1/17/12, Tuesday
A weather system began
right over us today. Sprung out of nowhere; nothing in the weather report about
it. Supposed to be clear and smooth, with the wind and waves out of the
northwest. Well this morning the chop picked up, wind and waves out of the
southwest, and the barometer did a swan dive into a flat tire, a bungee jump
that didn’t come back up, wheeeeeeeeee-oomph.
The gyro steering couldn’t
hold our course on just the starboard engine at 4.5 kts, so we went to hand
steering. It was like trying to drive a steam roller uphill and backwards
through an avalanche. But I did better than the gyro, human being better than
the machine once again, yes! Hard over and she took a good five minutes to
begin to turn. Wind was blowing over 40 kt, bumpy ride, and the Captain came up
to the bridge and took the con till the engineers got the second engine, port
side, up and running to give us ten kts. OK now but still bumpy, and no one
knows what this storm’s going to do. It wasn’t on the chart.
1/18/12, Wednesday
Midnight to 0400
Still rough. Times like
this make you think about not knowing if, when you go to bed, it’ll be your
last night on earth. No fear among the crew and nothing spoken, but with our
load of tons of iron and steel, one flooded hold could drop us under the water
like a stone before the alarms got going. Said a Hail Mary as I came off watch.
0700. Thank you Mother of
God. We’re still chugging. And without help from our pagan idol on the bridge,
Hawaiian sea god Kanaloa. The Captain told the story of a deckie who always brought
a McDonald’s Happy Meal aboard to lay at Kanaloa’s feet, everything except the
Coke, which the deckie drank. For the three months the guy was here, they had
perfect weather. Then the guy left, no one brought Kanaloa Happy Meals any more,
and the weather turned nasty. Real nasty.
Over the last few days,
Kanaloa actually came a little loose from his pretty secure mount by the
Captain’s chair. But he’s been bolted there so long, stuck in one place, maybe
he just wanted to stretch his legs a bit, you know?
We have all filled out our
declarations for Chinese Customs. If you forget to include one of your CD’s or
DVD’s in your declaration, they can confiscate it. They can search your room
when they come aboard (oh police states!) and they must make juicy hauls from
forgetful people. Only cigarettes are listed to declare under tobacco products.
Apparently no one in China
Our weather system
yesterday never did show up in NOAA’s official weather report.
Sent 1/18/12
1/21/12, Saturday
29°50.8 N.
140°20.2 E.
Permit me to introduce
Honorable Sofu Gan. “Gan” means “rock” in Japanese, and I don’t know what
“Sofu” means. Black and stark, it sticks straight up 300 feet out of the water,
and looks like a tower out of Tolkien’s Lord
of the Rings, maybe Barad Dûr. Nothing else around for hundreds of miles. Japan Japan
Things get crazy if you’re
too long at sea. Our Bosun did a dance on the bridge today, after washing down
the bridge wings—the open-to-the-weather parts of the bridge that stick out to
port and starboard—pretending he was the Scrubbing Bubbles bubblehead guy. 2nd
Mate Liam and I stepped back a little.
I finally got one of my
paper airplanes to fly well off the bridge wing, and so made a new business
card:
1/25/12, Wednesday
Today was a bit blustery,
everyone in foul weather gear on deck, and we did port prep, laying out the
mooring lines where they’ll be needed for tie-up. Got splashed a bit in the bow
wash. Force 8 conditions, ship pitching, lots of spray, wind about 38 kt. Looks
like we’ll be anchoring out, then picking up the pilot tomorrow morning, then
anchoring again upriver for the night, and so into port on Friday.
2nd Mate Liam
wore his white faced ski mask on deck, and it did look a little like ceramic,
like the Phantom of the Opera’s mask. Great. So I’m sailing around with the
Phantom of the Opera and the Scrubbing Bubbles guy.
What do you get if you
have an eye splice with many good tucks in the splice, and throw it into a hot
skillet? Friar Tucks!
1700
The Chief just started up
the starboard engine! We have both engines going now! No more 6 kts! Steering
that actually responds! Yippee!
1/26/12, Thursday
Nearing the anchorage
outside Shanghai Mideast ,
though it’s only supposed to be used for emergencies. Had a couple of guys who
thought they were singers. Ouch. They like rap here. Sounded like one guy was
saying Mao tse Dung/ Mao you suck. Maybe not. It was all in Mandarin. The Captain
was giving his interpretations. He speaks no Mandarin. I actually spent the
last watch either on the helm or spotting boats and calling positions, as a
good helmsperson and lookout does, instead of doing the crossword puzzle
because of no traffic for a hundred miles.
1/27/12, Friday
Moku Pahu Blues
Woke
up this morning
Too
early for light
Woke
up this morning
Didn’t
hardly sleep last night
On
the Moku Pahu
My
heart’s delight
On
the Moku Pahu
Can’t
believe that girl
On
the Moku Pahu
All
around the world
She’ll
give you a ride
At
six knots, for the rest of your life
We
got mud on the anchor
Trying
to spray it down
Got
mud on the anchor
Every
link, all around
On
the Moku Pahu
She’s
a muddy machine
She’s
a slow boat to China
Halfway
round the world
Stuff
ain’t there and don’t work
But
we gotta come through
She’ll
eat up your insides
She’s
a real mean girl
Lower
the lifeboat
Can’t
get it back
You
lower that lifeboat
She’ll
put you on the rack
She’ll
take off your fingers
Bring
your brains home in a sack
We
run out of taters
No
rice in the pot
We
got no more milk now
Just
keeping the pasta hot
If
we run out of coffee
Someone’s
gonna get shot
Hey
reservation lady
Get
me a ticket today
I’d
give all my money
If
I could fly away
But
on the Moku Pahu
I’m
gonna stay
Made port in Jiangyin
at 2 pm, about 40 miles up the Yangtze from Nantong
Last night we came
upriver to a continual fireworks show, on both sides. Unbelievable. They
celebrate Chinese New Year for two weeks here. Tomorrow is the last day.
While I was on the
helm today, the Chinese pilot said, “Right ten tee,” which I thought was “Right
ten degrees,” but he meant “Right twenty.” I said, “Right twenty,” stressing
the “w” so he’d get it, but his pronunciation stayed the same.
1/28/12, Saturday
Went into town today,
past unsmiling Customs guys at the dock entrance. Thought the car that came was
the shuttle to the Seaman’s Club but it went to a place called Fang Fang, a
Seaman’s store with jackets, cell phones, Chinese souvenirs, and a bar
upstairs. The coats were name brand but may have been pirated. No computers for
Internet access. The 30-ish proprietress pulled me into a section with watches
and electrical toys. I changed some dollars to yuan and bought some ceramic
chopsticks. The Fang Fang lady was very forward and pushy, a real hustler.
She’d fit in in New York
Then the Fang Fang
lady said she was going into the city, downtown, where the shopping was and
where I thought the actual Seaman’s Center was. Passed a big Sheraton on the
way. Went to two dept stores, which had pretty good Western style girl power
stuff, and lots of people were out shopping though it was cold and rainy. The
economy is good when girls are buying frou frou stuff.
Straight black hair
is the norm here, and most of the kids stared at my curly brown hair in
wonderment. Might have been the first time these kids had seen a real live
Westerner with hair like mine.
Finally made it to
the Seaman’s Club after dinner, upstatirs in a sleazy old warehouse with a bar
and small store, plus a massage room. Only the bar and massage room were
heated. The 20-ish proprietress here was a competitor to the Fang Fang lady and
said her stuff was no good. Both spoke good English. There were two bar girls,
“We both virgins!” Five of us from the ship waited while one bought a phone
card and another got a massage, fully clothed, with the door open. We left
about 8:30 pm. Understand the place gets going around midnight.
The Chief Engineer
once spent two months here and had to go to the hospital with breathing
problems. It’s like trying to breathe through a stuffy blanket here. Good thing
we’re leaving in a few days. Think I’ll get a chest x-ray when I get back just
to make sure I haven’t got brought back some of the atmosphere inside. Anybody
out there looking to adopt, adopt a Chinese girl. Baby girls aren’t wanted here
and it will get them out of this poison.
2/2/12, Thursday
BLOWOUT ON THE
STARBOARD QUARTER
Never thought I’d
prefer Jiangyin air to an alternative. Just after 9 am today, a rusty old fuel
pipeline on deck cracked and dumped 25 gallons of goo on the starboard quarter
of the barge. None went over the side into the water, so it wasn’t officially a
spill, just a mess. A real mess. The fuel oil we use is about the consistency
of molasses in the fridge, and the stuff on deck was about an inch thick. All
the deckies were out in force, just when I thought I was going to have a nice
morning inside, sweeping and swabbing the main deck passageways. Outside, it
was 30-something degrees with a wind blowing.
We scraped and wiped
and cursed and wiped and cursed and got that awful stuff off our deck. Used
diesel and paint thinner to loosen it up and make it more wipe-able. Took a
couple of hours, and they had to rotate people inside to warm their hands up
when frostbite threatened. But the worst was the fumes. Everyone was coughing,
and at the end I felt like throwing up. I know what a bird in an oil spill
feels like.
We get an extra $16
an hour for helping to clean up oil messes, but I never heard of anyone causing
a spill for a lousy 32 bucks. We also saved the ship thousands of dollars in
oil spill fines.
The air in Jiangyin,
by the way, was actually pretty nice today. A high pressure area had moved in,
there was blue sky, and it only looked like a moderately smoggy LA day.
This job still beats
working at McDonald’s, but not by much.
Sent 2/2/12
2/7/12, Tuesday
In home port now and
no doubt have TB, lung cancer, bronchial pneumonia, emphysema, and one of those
little creatures from Aliens growing
inside. Found out that the Fang Fang lady actually owns her store and pays a
business tax to the state. Bigger businesses are apparently state run and
owned. Saw numerous employees at the bigger stores standing around without much
to do, but this way everyone in China
On the cab ride to
the airport, AB Cody had us in stitches with his “conversation” with the
driver. Cody would say something to him in English, he’d respond with something
in Chinese, and neither one knew the other’s language but both acted like they
did.
Remember about
adopting a girl from a toxic town like Jiangyin, Nantong ,
or Shanghai in China
The official log
entry for the end of the voyage is “Finished with engines.” So, this is AB
Wendy, logging off: Finished with writing.
Sent 2/7/12
No comments:
Post a Comment