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Wednesday 4th Jan
Phew, what a day! Maybe there's an object lesson here in the sheer uselessness of worrying about things you can't control. I spent almost the whole journey from Ottawa to Los Angeles in an agony of suspense - and all for nothing.
I left Ottawa early in the morning and of course, the plane was late for the connection in Toronto. Then since I had to clear US customs and immigration there, my bags had to be the last ones off the carousel! By this time my connection to LA was already boarding. Fortunately, a nice lady from Air Canada rushed me to the front of the line at US customs and immigration, where the official had the courtesy to hurry me through the formalities, even to the point of wishing me a pleasant trip! Then I dumped my bags back onto the belt and half-ran to what seemed like the other end of the terminal. I got on the plane with only minutes to spare and we were taxiing to the runway when it suddenly dawned on me that there was no way my bags could've made it to the plane. Damn! Of all the times for the airline to lose my bags, this had to be the worst. It looked as if I would have to spend my two weeks on the ship with no other stuff than what I stood up in! And then they'd most likely disappear altogether if I tried to get them sent on to Auckland. But instead of doing as I should've done and dismissing the thing from my mind as being one of those things I could do nothing about for the moment, I spent the whole trip to LA worrying about it. And all for nothing as it turned out because, after an agonizing wait at the carousel in LA, there were my bags – the last off again. How my bags came to be last on the plane and last off is a mystery to me. But no matter, I'd got them, and that was what counted.
The driver from the shipping agent met me at the airport and drove me straight to the ship, where I met the captain, first officer, the steward and my fellow passengers. The first thing I noticed was how friendly everyone was. I'd been led to believe that this was a working ship and mainly interested in their container cargo. Passengers were there on sufferance and should try to stay out the way as much as possible. Nothing could be further from the case. They were actually pleased to welcome us aboard.
It seems they'd had a wretched trip up and down from the coast from Seattle with the recent storms in Northern California. The ship had been in ballast and had been rolling to and fro about 45 degrees. It's hard to function in those conditions and the crew hadn't had much food or sleep for several days. Even so, they all seemed quite cheerful about it, but it made me a little bit apprehensive about our voyage across the Pacific. But they assured not to worry, with a full load of containers aboard the ship would behave much better. We shall see!
My fellow passengers are Jim and Cathy, who have the spacious, well-appointed owners cabin on F deck. They are snowbirds who spend 6 months in Welland, Ontario and 6 months in Florida. They are old hands at freighter travel. Then there is Ron from Sacramento who, like me, is on his first trip by freighter. He has the single cabin on E deck and I have the single cabin on D deck. My cabin is smaller than the others but plenty big enough for me. Like all the cabins it has a bathroom en-suite. All my fellow passengers seem very friendly and I don't think we'll have any trouble getting along. The officers are all Romanian, apart from the Captain who is Polish, and the crew are all from the Philippines
We don't leave until tomorrow, so I settled in to enjoy the first night's sleep nice and calm tied up at the dock. They were loading containers most of the night, which kept me up a bit, not because it was that noisy, but because I'd never seen it up close before and I didn't want to miss anything.
Thursday 5th Jan
Spent the day in port just getting used to shipboard life. Nothing much happened; I spent a long time chatting to the other passengers and the captain gave us a safety briefing. Very kindly he is allowing us the run of the bridge, as long as we stay out of the way when they are manoeuvring or if conditions are tricky.
It was very interesting watching the containers being loaded, and I was somewhat surprised to see that only the first two layers are fully secured to the ship. After that, the next two or three layers are secured to the layer beneath them by automatically locking pins. I hoped my cabin on D deck would have a view and up to late in the day, it did. But right at the end, they put a fourth layer there and now I can only see the sky or a glimpse of the sea off to the starboard side.
We got underway at about 19:12 using just one tug and the bow thruster and, after some manoeuvring off Catalina Island for compass adjustment, were under full power and on our way at around 23:30.
Friday 6th Jan
First full day at sea. Position at 07:22 -8 31°21.8'N 119°46.3'W Distance from the start 300km, distance to go 10170km
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Sailing into the sunset |
I did 10 loops around the deck this morning, Up the one side to the fo'c'stle, round the bow, back the other side, round the stern, then and up to E deck and across to the other side. It took me about an hour, (6 minutes per lap), and what with the climbing up the fo'c'stle and down and five decks up to E deck and down it was pretty good exercise.
During my loops of the deck I noticed the main locking pins were undone on one of the big cargo hatches on the starboard side. This struck me as pretty dangerous and I reported it to the third officer Daniel, who is also the safety officer. He told me not to worry, they knew about it. They were doing some chipping work there.
I spent some time in wheelhouse and Daniel explained all the instrumentation. Everything in the wheelhouse is highly automated and she steers herself almost entirely on autopilot. There is normally only one on watch during the day, but at night there are normally two for extra surveillance. I found out a little more about the ship. She is 642 ft long and 100 ft wide
In the afternoon I worked on a jigsaw puzzle with Jim and Cathy, and in the evening I worked on my journal. I'm settling into a relaxing unhurried shipboard routine. The motion of the ship so far has been very gentle; a long slow roll of about 5 to 10 degrees and very little pitching. Mind you the weather has been gorgeous and I've yet to see how she'll behave in any kind of sea. The chief officer told me something that surprised me because it seems anti-intuitive, and that is that a ship will roll much more, and more violently when she is too stable. This is one of the main reasons why they had such a wretched time of it coming down from Seattle. They had bunkered there and had a full load of fuel oil and ballast aboard, but all the weight is low down. Also, she was only half loaded with containers, so most of this weight was low down too. Coincidentally (not that I doubted the chief officer) I confirmed this in a book by Joseph Conrad that I just happened to be reading at the same time. In "The Mirror of the Sea" - a sort of autobiography - he describes a terrible three-month trip they had from Amsterdam to Java because, as chief officer himself responsible for the loading, he had only put one-third of the weight "above the beams". This meant the centre of gravity was too low down, the ship was too stable and it rolled violently during the whole voyage.
Saturday 7th Jan
Day 2 Position at 07:24 -8 25°30'N 125°56'W Distance from the start 1176km, distance to go 9283km
Did my 10 loops again
I washed my clothes today. The washing days for passengers are Saturdays and Wednesdays.
Got a tour of the engine room in the afternoon with the second engineer. The main engine is a monstrous 25,000HP 7cylinder direct connected 2-stroke diesel four decks high running on heavy (bunker C) fuel. At sea speed, it runs at about 80 RPM. It is made by Hyundai under license from B&W MAN. There is such a long delivery time on these engines that the owner, Rickmers, is having to switch to a different system for their new ships, even though they are well satisfied with this one.
Incidentally, I found out something about the history of this ship which I didn't understand before. She's had so many names that I'd always assumed she been bought and sold many times. In fact, she has always been owned by Rickmers of Germany, and all her crew have always been Rickmers employees. She was christened the Albert Rickmers, but very soon put out to long term charter to Contship and renamed the Contship Washington. Apparently, when one of these ships is out on long term charter, the charterer gets to name the ship, which strikes me as rather strange; I always thought it was bad luck to rename a ship. She was afterwards then put out to long term charter to the Direct Line and became the Direct Tui (the Tui being a small bird unique to New Zealand). After that, she was chartered by CP ships and became the CP Tui. Then quite coincidentally, last December CP ships was bought up by TUI AG (a very large tour operator based in Germany, where TUI stands for Touristik Union International). So I suppose our ship will soon be renamed the "TUI Tui"!
Worked on journal
Spent a lot of time in the wheelhouse chatting to the second officer (Remy), then the first officer (Liviu) and then the third officer Daniel. Liviu offered to give me a USB drive filled with nice sunsets he has photographed up in the wheelhouse.
Sunday 8th Jan
Position at 07:18 -8 19°39'N 131°48'W Distance from the start 2058km, distance to go 8399km
Liviu gave me some magnificent photos of sunsets at breakfast, did my 10 loops and worked on Jim and Cathy's jigsaw.
Fire and lifeboat drill at 15:20
Monday 9th Jan
Position at 07:17 -9 13°34'N 137°40'W Distance from start 2953km, distance to go 7484km
The clocks went back one hour during the night. We are now on Alaska time GMT –9 hrs
There was a birthday party for the second engineer last night. I missed it but it seems that everyone had a very good time. Ron said he had a bit too much to drink and wasn't feeling too good this morning.
It was pretty hot on deck this morning, so I went up and down the starboard side instead of doing loops this morning. This way I could stay in the shade. It's starting to get pretty hot on deck, although the cabins are nice and cool with the air conditioning.
Worked on jigsaw with Cathy again.
I started working on my web site today and got very frustrated with the idiosyncrasies of Microsoft FrontPage. When you insert a picture, it seems to go everywhere but where you want it; and even if you do get it somewhere you want it, the moment you change the text it seems to jump around the page in a random fashion. The text also seems to do very strange things. Sometimes it wraps around the picture, sometimes it doesn't and disappears completely underneath it. I suppose there's a reason for all of this, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Tuesday 10th Jan
Position at 07:14 -9 07°45'N 143°08'W Distance from the start 3831km, distance to go 6605km
It was noticeably warmer and a bit humid today, and to go easy on myself I did my laps around the main deck instead of going up to “E” deck as before.
Saw a myriad of flying fishes flying around the ship this morning. Where else but in mid-Pacific can you see wonders like this, and how can you get an idea of the immensity of this ocean without sailing it. We've been going flat out for five days now and we're still only a third of the way!
The crew are going to repaint the No 2 self-unloading crane and they spent all day setting up ladders and safety ropes
Did some more work on my web site, I think I'm gradually starting to get the hang of FrontPage.
Wednesday 11th Jan
Position at 07:19 -9 02°04'N 148°25'W Distance from the start 4688km, distance to go 5750km
During lunch, the first officer very kindly called down from the bridge to tell us there were dolphins swimming around the ship. We ran outside to take a look. What an amazing sight. They seemed to be almost playing - swimming and jumping out of the water to keep up with us. A pity I didn't have my camera handy, but on the other hand, without a telephoto lens, it probably wouldn't have looked like much.
We crossed the Equator at 15:44 at position 00°00'N 150°18.9'W
Liviu called down to me and told me he expected a spectacular sunset. I went up to the bridge and took some beautiful pictures. He told me we were sailing through an area which required special vigilance because sailboats making the passage from Tahiti to Hawaii would be crossing our path. He also told me sailboats were the bane of a bridge officer's life, which I thought was ironic because when I had my sailboat, big cargo ships were the bane of our lives!.
Thursday 12th Jan
Position at 07:14 -10 4°06'S 154°6'W Distance from the start 5616km, distance to go 4823km, well over halfway now.
The clocks went back another hour last night and we're now on Hawaii time, GMT –10 hrs
I had a bit of a sore throat this morning and I applied my patent remedy, gargling with salty water, which seemed to improve it a lot.
We stopped at around 10:45 for engine maintenance. It seems the Bunker C fuel they took on board in Seattle was unusually dirty and they're having trouble with fuel filters and injectors. I didn't see it but last night we were apparently showering sparks out of the stack, and this morning the decks were covered in soot.
We're still dead in the water at 14:00. They are taking the opportunity to replace a fuel pipe that has been leaking slightly from a flange. Stopping now will also give a chance for a storm they have been tracking to pass ahead of us. Good thinking! I didn't realize before that these ships have a certain amount of slack built into their schedules to allow them to stick to them more rigidly. We would've stopped anyway and may well stop again before the voyage is over.
It's strange how being dead in the water changes the feel of the ship. When she's thrusting through the waves on full power the motion is so gentle and regular that I hardly noticed it any more. Now that she's dead in the water she feels cranky, she's wallowing in the waves and shuddering every time a wave slaps into her square stern. The very heart goes out of a motor ship when there's no motor!
We were underway again around 15:45, having drifted over five miles to the west while we were "dead in the water". This was apparently caused mainly by ocean currents and not by the wind.
I caught a very faint glimpse of Starbuck Island on the horizon to starboard. It was only about 14 miles away according to the radar but surprisingly faint, even using the chief officer's binoculars. This is the only land we've seen and are likely to see until we approach New Zealand. Even though the whole South Pacific is dotted with islands, our route keeps us well clear of them. How those early Polynesian navigators ever found these little islands in the old days is completely beyond me - worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.
Friday 13th Jan
Position at 07:12 -10 8°40'S 158°21'W Distance from the start 6319km Distance to go 4137km
I got up early this morning to take pictures of the sunrise, which turned out to be quite spectacular.
I guess sailors are still superstitious. The captain told us at breakfast he'd warned everyone to take special care today - it's Friday 13th!
My sore throat has turned into a head cold, which is a good sign because that usually means it's getting better.
I had an interesting discussion with the captain about the loading of these ships. It's much more complicated than you'd think. The weight of each individual container has to be considered, not only for the final stability of the ship (not too stiff, not too soft) but also for the stresses on the ship during loading and keeping her on an even keel. Also, they have to consider such mundane matters as where the container is to be unloaded (last on, first off). The planning and the calculations involved are so complex that it is done nowadays by on-line computer-based models. It used to take two days to do the calculations, which obviously wouldn't work nowadays because they usually stay in port for less than twenty-four hours!
Saturday 14th Jan
Position at 07:12 -10 14°25'S 163°46'W Distance from the start 7187km Distance to go 3272km
There was a barbecue on the poop deck this evening which was tremendous fun. We played Bingo and believe it or not I won the grand prize! I must be a fast learner - the first time I play Bingo and I win! The crew played an ice cream eating contest, which was pure slapstick - one of the funniest things I've seen for a long time. The guys were blindfolded in pairs and then they race trying to feed each other ice cream with a spoon. Needless to say most of the ice cream ends up all over their faces, their shirts and the deck! Then they had an apple eating contest, with apples dangling from a string and the guys trying to eat it with their hands behind their backs. After that, there was Karaoke and drinking and general merry-making.
Should be at the first waypoint TURN PT during the night
Sunday 15th Jan
Position at 07:29 -11 20°23'S 169°36'W Distance from the start 8090km Distance to go 2374km
The clocks went back another hour during the night, we're now on Midway Island and Samoa time GMT -11
We went past the waypoint TURN PT and we're now on a new course 227° for N RAOUL IS. We had previously been on a steady course of 223° all the way from Los Angeles.
I did my loops around the deck again today after short two day hiatus to get over this cold and sore throat. I feel much better now.
We had another drill this afternoon. This time it was a fire drill and abandon ship drill.
We'll cross the dateline tonight so we'll skip Monday 16th. Nobody seems to mind this, as nobody likes Mondays much anyway! The clocks don't change so that means we go from GMT –11 to GMT +13.
Tuesday 17th Jan
Position at 07:14 +13 25°36'S 175°39'W Distance from the start 8936km Distance to go 1542km
We crossed the International Date Line yesterday and jumped straight to Tuesday 17th. We are now on GMT +13, which is Auckland daylight saving time – no more time changes between now and Auckland.
It wasn't so hot and humid today and I'm back to doing the full laps with the climb up to E deck again. In fact, it was very pleasant outside today.
Wednesday 18th Jan
Position at 07:22 +13 31°26'S 178°49'E Distance from the start 9774km Distance to go 708km.
The sea is very calm this morning. I found out this morning that in the wheelhouse they had been tracking a very severe storm the day before yesterday and were ready to take a detour to the north to avoid it if necessary. Fortunately, it moved out of our path.
Past N RAOUL IS and now on course 216° for BURGESS IS.
We were dead in the water again at about 09:30. This time it's because we can't get into our berth in Auckland until tomorrow afternoon – the ship that has to vacate the berth is late. Hardly any drift this time – about 0.5 miles/hour in direction 239°. We will apparently be underway again at 15:00
The sun is warm and the sea is very calm and with the ship stopped I was just thinking how pleasant it might be to have a swim. But at lunchtime, Ron and Jim reported having seen a shark swimming off the starboard side of the ship this morning. Maybe a swim wasn't such a good idea after all!
We were underway again at about 16:00. Now our ETA at the Auckland pilot station is about 14:00 tomorrow. I like this because the delay means that we will arrive in daylight and see much more. We will sail down from Burgess Island through the Jellicoe Channel, past Little Barrier Island and we should have some good views.
Thursday 19th Jan
Position at 07:18 +13 35°23'S 175°24'E Distance from start 10305km Distance to go 173km.
I caught my first glimpse of New Zealand at about 08:30 - Burgess Island just visible off the port bow. Then at about 09:30, we did a slow sweeping turn heading towards SHAG ROCK. This course takes us very close to Little Barrier Island, and as we passed it the Great Barrier Island, the Coromandel Peninsula and Cape Rodney were all clearly visible.
We picked up the pilot at about 14:23. At this point, it was blowing so hard his cap blew off as he went up the ladder. He seemed pretty good-humoured about it though, he just laughed and shrugged.
The New Zealand America's Cup challenger sailed right past us - what a magnificent sight to see right up close.
We came right into the busy Auckland harbour, but there didn't seem to be anywhere for us to go. It turned out the ship we'd been waiting for still hadn't left and we had to wait there right in the middle of the harbour for another twenty minutes or so until it finally cast off. The wind was gusting to 35 knots all this time, but even so, we touched the wharf very gently. But then had to wait another ten minutes or so with the ship nudged up to the wharf with the tug and the bow thruster before somebody showed up to take our lines! My, but they're laid back here!
I had declared on my customs declaration that I was carrying camping equipment, so the quarantine inspector wanted to see all of it. They take that very seriously here. So I had to unpack my carefully packed backpack and suitcase. Together we scrubbed every trace of Gatineau mud off my boots and cleaned every little bit of Bruce Peninsula pine needle and old bits of leaf out of my tent and put it all in the hazardous waste bin. He told me that kind of thing can cause a real problem and thanked me for declaring it. He told me most people don't bother, which makes his job really hard. By the time I'd repacked everything again it was getting late so I asked the captain if I could spend another night on the ship, but he said he was hoping to leave early tomorrow, so unless I wanted to end up in Australia, I'd better get off now!
I had my last supper on the ship and got a cab to a hotel I'd seen on the internet. I tried to tip the driver and he refused, saying they don't do tipping in New Zealand. Amazing - imagine a North American cab driver doing that! The hotel was booked up solid but they had space at a housekeeping apartment close to downtown. This suited me better so I snapped it up. I dropped off all my stuff and wandered down to the waterfront to take one last picture of the CP Tui before she leaves early tomorrow morning.