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Leaving Singapore

April 15

New blog https://patdrake.tumblr.com

Don’t know how this has happened but you can get to the new blog by clicking on the arrow by the above previous blog.

More anon!

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Until the next time

Friday 6 April

View of a concrete building, free toiletries and a swanky breakfast just aren’t the same as soggy French Toast and make-your-own Nescafe, served with a beaming smile by messman Imesh. I’m dreaming of the next ship, Zheng He and the horizon.  Depart agin 14th April I think and until then am hanging out here in Singapore, seeing friends and taking a mini trip to Malacca in Malaysia for three days next week. I probably won’t blog every day until the next voyage.  Thank you for reading and sending encouraging comments, have a great time yourselves, and make each day count.  xox 🌏🙃

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Becoming cargo

Thursday 4 April

Couldn’t sleep so got up at 0400 to fetch an early morning cuppa and go to the bridge to watch as we came into port.  There was a lot of activity in the dark as we slid slowly past the hundreds of vessels moored in Singapore Strait that you can see from the plane. Puccini is unloading here as much as it can before going full speed to Port Klang to empty everything.  On 6th April she goes to dry dock in Singapore for three weeks for maintenance and a new screw. The stars were visible and, looking at the Plough, I had a bit of a moment by myself outside in the warm early morning pre-dawn air.  It was very beautiful, becoming even more so as the sun came up. Then we engaged with the actual business of lining 277 metres of ship against what looked like 277 metres of available dock. The bow pusher was on full belt and we made it sideways, pushed  from the beam by two tugs. (There’s a label on the hull showing where the tugs tug).

This single dock, I think one of nine in Singapore, has 45 postpanamaxes.  Melbourne has six, Adelaide three, and I learned Vancouver has four. I am so glad I studied hard at Adelaide because unloading the containers began here on a multiplicatively large scale the workings of which I’d never have grasped cold.

People processing is a slower matter. As I’m always ‘randomly selected’ for searching when going through airport security  I wasn’t surprised when my bag was picked for inspection at Singapore immigration.  The problem was a large plastic box of medicaments, toenail clippers, plasters etc., and to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t have minded at all if it had been confiscated because it weighs a lot.  After that I was last of us four  Puccini Passengers to have my ID checked, so the others had gone through into the open air when my thumbprints failed to register on the glass plate … and failed again and again, as did my index fingers and then all my fingers.  Being in Singapore I wasn’t offended when to start with the officials thought it was because I had dirty hands & after two attacks with sanitiser they then considered the possibility of a sweaty glass plate. After about half an hour, during which they blamed my skin  for being too flat, I began to worry that I wouldn’t be allowed in and started to invent excuses … I’ve worked hard all my life and worn my fingers to the bone sort of stuff…

To the Swissotel where there is loads of internet.

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Studies in Engines 2

Wednesday 3 April

Last full day on Puccini! 

Ron has asked CO if we can explore more aspects of the engine workings and so this afternoon Roberto took us to see the steering gear.  This is down more steep stairs and in a secure cast iron room. There’s a well-lubricated steel protractor about the size of a mill wheel calibrated against a 360 degree  scale set out linearly that captures the circular direction measure and translates it into a sideways rudder movement. The protractor rotates according to instructions from the helmsman way up high on the bridge or autopilot as was the case today.  Attached vertically underneath is the rudder in a perfect mechanical process like lego only loads bigger. Here at the bottom of the ship Roberto also showed us the coffin that’s kept on board in case someone dies and they have to be buried at sea; and also the emergency supplies in case of pirates because the crew can lock themselves in this citadel, and keep control of the ship manually, or at least that’s the theory.   It is extremely hot and unpleasant in this area as well as noisy. 

Ron was keen to go even lower and see the actual cam shaft so Roberto took him on his own because Steph and I didn’t want to go. On return he reported even more heat and noise and clear sight of the shaft that drives the ship.  Turns out there are byproducts of this motion in the shape of some electrical power, and also a supply of home-made distilled water that is an outcome of cooling the engine with sea water and which condenses. This water forms the ships water supply, though cooking and drinking water are bottled (not sure why). 

Breakfast was pancakes.

Lunch also included pancakes; chicken parmigiana, peas, carrots and sweetcorn. Grapefruit on request. 

Supper: pork and cabbage in a mixture; sort of flat bread (not quite pancakes), orange.  

Sweets and chocolates at both lunch and dinner provided by Steph & Ron and me to say thank you. 

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It’s a noisy business

2 April

Last night my desk phone rang and it was Hisham the Engine Cadet asking me to go to the Officers Recreation room to watch a movie. Eventually he, me and Roberto, 4th Engineer (Refrigeration) decided on Shaun the Sheep.

Puccini consists of a hull that is at least five storeys high, maybe six, and holds in its cavernous interior the heaviest containers and the most valuable ones (decided by the port authority). At the top of the hull running around is Upper Deck and at the prow there is a further raised deck called the Foredeck, which is where the barbecue was and where the mooring ropes and anchor housing sit. At right angles to the hull is the vertical accommodation block seven storey high, previously described, at the top of which is the Bridge. The accommodation block is not in the middle, it is nearer the back, or aft, of the ship. Weighting to the bottom of the hull from the base of the accommodation block is the mighty engine room and its subterranean components.

It is now possible to walk around the UpperDeck because there is almost no swell and not a lot of wind.. Twice round is 1.4 Km. It is also possible to walk around the first deck below upper deck as well, but this is under the surface in the top level basement. Strolling around Upperdeck takes you along the edge of the vessel along a path that’s about 1 metre wide, in places a bit more, because there are connectors attached to it that the crew use when they’re welding or hosing things down. The sounds are spookily ethereal. There’s the throb of the engine against the sounds of the sea that is always present. The throb of the engine, if you listen carefully, sounds as if drumming fingers, ta da da da dum, make up each throb. The sea groans, swishing relentlessly against the side of the ship, on top of which is a loud but inconsistent rattle of the containers. Each container is securely in place, but there’s an overtone according to what the wind is doing. Fore and aft of the walk are completely different, as is walking in the direction of the ship and walking against it. Walking aft the noise becomes even louder and the rattling more clamorous to a crescendo as you reach an unobserved pathway across the stern, behind every last box, where the wash is created by the turning of the screw. I am reluctant to stand here and stare over the edge at the water below because being cocooned in the noise without any voice of my own makes me feel light-headed and nervous, as if visual cues to gravity and horizontal and vertical might also become fluid and surreal and overtake my choice to stand upright.

Signs of life on the ocean today as we approach Sunda Strait. To start with, seven hours away, there were a couple of fishing vessels, some birds, and also buoys that Captain thinks are tsunami warning markers. Water was 3.5 kilometres deep; the bottom of the ocean is the nearest land and even that’s a long way away. We passed the archipelago Krakatoa and through Sunda Strait with Sumatra to our portside and Java to the starboard to suddenly be in a very busy shipping lane. Indonesia and Jakarta are to the starboard, and in the far northwest we can see lights of Malaysia (we think). The place is packed with oil rigs and tankers, fishing boats, other container ships like ours, each criss-crossing as Jakarta is the destination for some and others like us are aiming for Gelasa Strait and then west into Singapore Strait. Then there are all the same in the opposite direction. The two days when we saw nothing and no-one have become a huge privilege as it is obvious now that we are part of the biggest industry in the world, seafaring, yet curiously one that few people know much about. Certainly I didn’t.

Have started Rose George’s 2013 book Deep Sea Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, The Invisible Industry That Brings You 90% of Everything. Thanks Beth!

Prawn curry, rice and melon today, the Sri Lankan option.

Baked beef, mash potato and a funny brown crumbly dessert.

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Screw loose?

April 1

What’s it really like on this self-contained floating village with the population of a hamlet, the infrastructure of a city and a massive engine-heart? Certainly passengers are supernumerary and our only assets to the crew are our stories and our questions that facilitate the crew telling us the parts of their stories that they’re happy to share. Anja, being young and shiny bright, also brings intrigue and charisma. There’s a structure to the day provided by mealtimes and so it’s a bit like being at school only better run, without lessons and it goes on for a rolling 24 hour day. Days are not always 24 hours long because we adjust for time differences. There’s an announcement and then all the clicks ping back at exactly the same time, 1900 hours. In between meals it’s easier to structure activities and so I’m finding I don’t have time to do everything!

Engine room today was fascinating. 10 pistons each staggered at one-tenth of an engine cycle, ie every 36 degrees, and 90 RPM which means pistons are going pdq. (900 piston-strokes pm for the statistically inclined). The screw is colossal, more than 8 m diameter and with 5 fins. Heavy fuel is in six tanks which, if full, could keep Puccini in motion for two months. As it is four tanks are empty and the other two only 20% full because Puccini is going into dry dock after this trip and the tanks will be cleaned. The screw will be replaced by a smaller one, 7.8m diameter with four fins. This is all to do with governing engine speed and cutting emissions costs and is company policy. I haven’t quite got the capitalist politics of this yet in terms of the relationships between competitive shipping and air freight. But as mentioned, material exports from Australia are decreasing and instead intangibles like education related travel is now 2nd largest export and mainly goes by plane (save for yours truly) which must have something to do with it.

Anyway the old screw is bronze and the Chief Engineer thinks may be smelted down and reused for something.

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Hangover from hangovers

31 March

Overslept this morning to wake with a heavy head that in other circumstances I’d have put down to too much wine. R&S report similar. Indian Ocean very calm, swell 0.3m, and it’s getting a bit hotter & more humid. There’s an aircon system on board which keeps inside temperature more or less constant.

Achieved a bit of writing this morning and half an hour’s yoga & then a lazy afternoon reading Normal People by Sally Rooney which - well the clue’s in the title really - is a bit dull. The swimming pool was filled today and it was lovely to splash about for a bit, and walk round the deck. The most interesting part of the day was the Captain’s BBQ on the foredeck attended by all the crew except the man on

watch. There was enough food for a small army & the music was danceable and pounding. The young men were waiting for the Captain & ancients to depart before letting serious rip but they’d already begun to dance a bit as I left at 1930.

Separating from Australia now having travelled parallel to the coast, but 200km away, at 1800 we reached North West Cape from where Australian coastline turns north-east and we continue north-west across the Indian Ocean to pass Christmas Island at about 0200 on April 2 and Sunda Strait 1200 same day.

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Leaving on a jetski

Saturday 30 March

0600 and we’re off.  Puccini did an elegant spin on her axis to turn around in the dock and face out to sea, the Indian Ocean. Who cares how I feel?  Numb, with a lump in my throat? No, the dread is further in, having been offered belonging but rejected it for outsiderness yet again. Out of Fremantle harbour past the line of elegant ships poised to take our place. Six ships there are, too far apart to capture in a photo, sentinels saluting us as we make our way to the borders of Australian waters now less than 12 nautical miles away. 

It would have been good to have learned how to use the panorama feature. 

Incidentally all intrusive questions by customs explained as it was reported yesterday by the BBC  that a British man aged 57 was caught making a break from Australia on a jet ski.  He was wanted on drugs charges and was arrested on an island called Saibai Island in the Torres Strait 150km north of Queensland and only a tiny few km away from PNG.

Last email to arrive in Australia before switching off was from Priceline.  Shan’t miss those!

Did some writing & walked a bit in the gym. A new passenger has joined Puccini, a young woman, and the crew has cheered up. Not that crew have been anything other than friendly, inclusive and very courteous, but there is a different energy when young men and women get together.

French toast; steak & carrots & beans, melon; chicken corden (sic) bleu, peaches.

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Last whole day in Australia for a while

Friday 29 March

We needed to wait this morning until  customs came on board to check passports and give us permission to go ashore once they’d been checked. Apparently  they aren’t obliged to give permission and if they don’t like the look of you they tell you to stay onboard.  Chief Officer told us that in some countries (he mentioned Russia and the Ukraine) that it is quite normal for people to be pretty much held hostage on their own ships. Customs also explained that there was a $60 cash fee to leave Australia, normally included in ticket price for  planes and cruises but collected at exit port for cargo vessels.   It’s hard to argue with six uniformed folks in high visibility jackets and in due course an email receipt arrived from the ATO.  After that I went ashore.  This means down the terrifying gangway again, 54 steps, to stand at the bottom near a postpanamax and various straddle carriers in the surreal sunlight waiting for the shuttle bus to drive over to the security exit. Formalities there too as you need photo ID and to sign out, and then away to the University of Western Australia to meet my friend Inge who has moved from Choose Maths in Melbourne to become Professor of Statistics. The UWA campus is beautiful and walking through it almost made me want another job. 

A few hours later the reverse trip back through security at the depot and then up the gangway back on board for my last night in Australia and what was to have been Britain’s last day in Europe. I’d forgotten to say that I wouldn’t be back for dinner so found my plate (spare ribs and potato) covered in clingfilm at my place in the mess.  

We’e off across the Indian Ocean tomorrow, no land until 4 April.  It feels serious this does, as if travelling around from Melbourne has just been a practice.  

The bit where it says ‘NO TUG’ is the Pilot’s door that they arrive through suited and booted, even at sea and in the dark. 

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Digital dependence

Thursday 28 March

Email and SMS sprung into life as we found our way back into Australian waters around Cape Leeuwin.  Two days out of contact with the world was unexpectedly unproductive.  I thought that it would be good to be a floating hermit but I wasn’t inspired to do very much, although time passed easily and I wasn’t bored.  I think that I will spend a bit of cash on  a ship’s internet account when we leave Australia. Today I wrote an introduction of sorts to An Awfully Familiar Strange Land … which makes an intro and chapter one, both very draughty but at least with words in them. 

This morning we went around the ship, hooray, all the way around the structure, including the  first deck below stairs off which is the engine room (saved for another guided visit another day).  Randil was our guide.  He is a deck cadet and from Sri Lanka.  The crew members are all from Sri Lanka, Bulgaria or Romania with the Captain and Chief Officer both from Romania. 

Cook is from Sri Lanka and it turns out that it is possible to ask for a Sri Lankan alternative to the main menu. I might do that soon. 

Avocado and Sunblest toast for breakfast. Lunch was fish stew, this time carrots and beans were in the stew sauce. Dinner was chicken winglets and mashed potato.  Somewhere today there was a rock hard pear and a green orange. It sounds much worse than it was.   The food generally turns up cold but there’s a microwave in the officers mess where we eat so it’s possible to adjust the food temperature, and I’ve started to experiment with its other features, so cooking my pear for 30 seconds rendered it hot and possible to cut with a knife.   The portions are well-worked out so there is just the right amount of food for different people.  If you had the soup that is also always available, bacon and eggs for breakfast, chocolate croissants, sausage rolls and the sliced cheese, cold meats and yogurt in the fridge you’d be stuffed.  As it is I’m not hungry between meals and I am enjoying the food. As for wine - well captain says that the company ‘no alcohol on board’ policy is only six months old. Before that passengers were routinely served drinks with meals. Pffff! 

We crept into Fremantle to berth at 2010 opposite Viking Sun. The pilot came on board wearing crisp shirt & trousers and was greeted by Geeshan in dress uniform as per formalities. Captain and CO are very relaxed about formalities and remain clearly in charge and extremely competent in their T-shirts and jeans. 

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We were allowed out today. 

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It’s getting to be about maths

Wednesday 27 March

Today I was asked to fill OH&S forms in again because during the rolling and tumbling water had sloshed and smudged my signatures. 3rd Mate explained that  mine was too messy to file as is required.  The form is a quiz that asks questions such as Where are the Lifeboats? And What do you do when there’s a Man Over Board? It’s amazing how one doesn’t know the precise answers to the questions, i.e. Shout Man Overboard and get help and throw a line and keep an eye on the person can’t all be done at the same time. Anyway it meant that I got a tutorial.  I think it is probably quite dull being on watch on the bridge for four hours.  Steph, one of the other passengers, reported that after I’d returned to my cabin she’d been taught maths for a further hour in response to her question about containers possibly toppling over. This is a very good question that has exercised the three of us, prompting me to draw diagrams, but of course it isn’t as simple as that because it depends not only on the geometry but how the geometry changes mid topple according to the contents of the container.  Anyway they rarely do fall in but when they do there’s usually a lot of connected ones go all at once and they sink. 

Captain dropped by this morning to give me a printout of the weather forecast - wave height - for the next 48 hours. It looks to be calm today but with swell increasing again across Great Australian Bight and another of those red sections, this time encircling New Zealand, so folks cruising round Milford Sound etc. will be getting a rough deal of it.  We should be through and at Fremantle tomorrow evening by the time the worst hits again, but annoyingly us passengers are discouraged from walking around the deck, even wearing our hard hats and the white gloves that are to keep our own hands clean but which remind me of the white gloves you have to wear when handling art or archive material.  It is quite annoying and I would put more pressure on if it were just me because I am a million percent certain that there would be more confidence and less restraint applied to passengers the same age as the crew (22 - 52).  

An Engine Cadet making his first trip aged 22 was seasick yesterday so missed all his meals.  None of the three of us Ancients was ill at all! 

There is a shop called the Slop Chest that sells cigarettes, coke, chocolate, and toiletries including ‘Clogate’. 

Another interesting fact that emerged today is that the containers shipped from Perth to Singapore are many of them empty whereas the containers shipped to Australia are largely full.  Education related travel services are now one of Australia’s two top exports and you can’t put much of that in a container, more likely goes by plane.

Clocks pinged back another 60mins at 1900 hours, which had me in bed by 2030. 

Ron the other passenger had a go at videoing the swell and I thought that a very good idea so tried also.  Here is about a minutes worth: https://vimeo.com/327010962.

Mixed fish risotto and pear. 

Lamb, spinach, egg on top, and grapes.

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Swell

Tuesday 26 March

Overnight there was big swell and between midnight and 1.00am I rolled about quite a lot.  The BOM pictures of the massive weather system bigger than Australia show that it will calm down over the next couple of days and with that in mind I slept fitfully.  So far today both Captain and Chief Officer have dropped past Senior Spare A to check I’m OK and to say it was not as bad as they feared.  I thought it was pretty bad as things not put away rolled about and fell over. We’re back to the first route, straight across the Great Australian Bight. 

Lazy morning today after yesterday’s  painting. I’m reading Not Quite Australian by Peter Mares which is about  temporary migration to Australia via 457 visas, international student visas, New Zealanders and refugees.  Book is arguing that Australia, is shifting from three categories of person:  citizen, permanent resident and visitors to include temporary migrants as a significant group of  usually working people for whom achieving permanent residency status, the only route to citizenship, is  difficult.  

Today we are crossing the Bight towards Western Australia and there’s been an announcement that at 1900 hour tonight all ships clocks will be put back 90 mins to 1730.  The clocks look old fashioned and manual on the walls of each room, but as we saw on 23rd when we went back 30 mins for South Australia, they all jump back at once.  This is except for the clock in Senior Spare A which has stopped. 

This afternoon on the bridge for a couple of hours staring at the water.  Noticed that the horizon is not a smooth curve but slightly jagged as we can see the profile of the swell and the waves. 

Croissant 

Beef stew and rice, watermelon. 

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March 25th, bonus stationary Monday

Departure from Adelaide now set for 6pm, I.e. 22 hours later than scheduled . The wind has been too strong for the tug to get us out of the harbour, and the picture from BOM is pretty scary, viz weather systems larger than Australia itself, purple red orange and yellow this afternoon are too much swell and wind is too strong to go anywhere. Dark green is a threat with palest greens and blues such that ship speed is greater than wind speed.    The picture is from the BOM website and shows that in two days it will be better than today.

Departed 1800 from Outer Harbour in beautiful calm blue sea and sky.

Pork chop, potatoes, carrots, courgettes; followed by grapes. 

Spicy meatballs & spaghetti, pear.

No internet for new few days until bearing down on Fremantle on about 28th.

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Outside Senior Spare A

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24 March

Woke up this morning very stable and with the gentle whirr of cranes nearby.  Out of the cabin window I could see an enormous gantry crane called a postpanamax looming across the ship at right angles. That crane suspends a massive electro-magnet controlled by pulleys and ropes and which shoots out horizontally to exactly the right place to be directly above a specific container, drops vertically to attach magnetically to that container at its four top vertices,  then retreats vertically into the air with the container. The crane pulls back container attached to magnet horizontally to settle it vertically on a container sized pallet briefly until a smaller but still huge straddle carrier on wheels comes to scoop up the container and take it away.  Meanwhile the overhead magnet is working on the next container and the next vehicle is timed to pick that one up before the third arrives.  This systematic rectilinear and rotational process has hypnotic visual power.  Occasionally the magnet cannot quite get a container, if it is between two others perhaps, in which case it moves one out of the way and then comes back to the original target. They must be loaded on the ship in some order and identifiable by number and destination and makers mark somehow, but I don’t yet understand how that’s done. 

Note & edit April 7: When we met for dinner in Singapore, R & S pointed out that Postpanamax refers to the size of the ship and whether the locks on Panama Canal are large enough for her to pass through.

I spent the day in Adelaide first at Penfold’s winery and then Glenelg beach. The winery cost $25 for a quick tour of the winery & cellars that, these days, only make and keep enough wine to attract visitors.  The main event  was a tasting of eight wines and a tawny, all of which created a very warm glow for the rest of the afternoon on the windy and quite chilly beach. 

Weather forecast grim.  Lunch was liquid and dinner was pizza.

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View from my cabin which is called Senior Spare A.