Wednesday 1st February, 2006

A sleep in was to be the order of the day following last nights arduous session on this blogger. Not to be. I don’t know what it was, but something startled me awake at 5.30am. My mind raced, and the only thought was that the pilot had arrived and we were departing early. Out of bed in a flash, open the curtains and what do I see? Nothing, same place, no tugs, no action.

I tried to go back to sleep, but just dozed for another 1.30 minutes. Really it was a waste of time, as I kept waking to every sound and movement. Turns out the ship had word late last night that the pilot would board at 6am, so the noises I had heard were the poor crew members out on deck getting ready for the early departure. I say poor crew members, because the outside temperature was MINUS 8 ºC!

Well the pilots, yes two of them, one an old hand and one a trainee fresh out of school, boarded about 8am, and we were ready to go in no time. We went for breakfast, and then headed for the bridge to watch the antics of the pilots, and it was quite interesting watching the old fellow impart some of his knowledge on the new pup. It seems their late arrival was due to two factors,
1 - They should be having a holiday.
2 – It was too cold to start work early.
They stayed on board until about 9.30am, then jumped ship and we were on our own and heading for Xingang, the Port of Tianjin. Evidently the river that flows through Tianjin to the sea silted up and large vessels could no longer get upstream to the docks. They built new port at Xingang, and this was where we were headed.

Rest of the day was lazy, excepting for the unannounced life boat drill. 3.30pm and the alarm goes off, we decide it is a drill and not the real thing, but are not 100% sure. The only thing to do was don the helmets and life jackets we were issued with, and head for the Muster Station on A Deck. Well it had warmed up by this stage, and was now only minus6°C. We both grabbed our coats, but didn’t think about anything else. Ship was traveling at 18 knots and wind was force 8, so that makes the wind speed about 45knots and bloody freezing! I had thin track suit pants and my boots, but poor Judy only had a thin dress on and sandals. We suffered the drill on deck for about 10 minutes, and then we were invited to go down to the conference room on the Poop Deck, for a talk on survival at sea in cold temperatures. This was quite informative, especially when you managed to understand the Third Officers broken English! We actually managed to make some sense of what he was trying to say, and the most interesting point was that as we were equipped with EPIRB’s so as to be located at sea, it only took 45 minutes for our intending saviors to pin point the position of our beacon if it was activated. All they then had to do was get to our position. The only trouble we could foresee was that with water at this temperature, the best possible length of survival in the water was 45 minutes. You got it, we were stuffed anyway! Oh well, it’s been a good life,

For the rest of the day we just lazed around, particularly as with a 5 meter swell and force 8 winds, walking in a straight line was not an option. I did venture to the bridge about 3.30pm for an hour, and I can report that all was well, and I left the Captain, Second Mate, and Samuel, one of the AB’s who mans the helm in control.

After dinner we both ventured to the Bridge again. It was becoming a regular event, and this time we spent about 1.30 minutes there, observing the procedures used as we dropped anchor at Xingang. After we were anchored, the Captain told us that the pilot was expected at 9am tomorrow, but he thought that if true to form, it would be closer to noon. Back to our cabin, a bit of a read, then lights out. This seamanship is hard work.