A daily diary - 1st Trip THV Patricia

Apologies in advance for what is probably a rather more dull blog post than you have become accustomed to from me, but on the other hand, life on ship isn't always that fun and interesting and there are often long periods when life is fairly dull and monotonous. Plus, there's really no way of making brass polishing sound interesting!! This blog is my way of catching up quickly on past events, as I only have about a week and a half before I am off to sea again, which I will be telling more about soon!

To make it more interesting you might wish to read it while also looking at the photos from this trip, which tell the story just as well really. Click here to go to the photo set!

2^nd July 2009

In port, Liverpool

Am. Final polishing of the cannons on the boat deck aft.

Pm. Leave ashore. VC (Visiting Committee) joined the ship in the afternoon and held a big dinner party, which went on a bit later than expected, so it was 2330 before the guests had gone ashore and we let go lines.

Vessel steamed overnight to Workington.

3^rd July

Workington – Moelfre, Red Wharfe Bay

Am. On the bridge, I read and signed the Masters standing orders, and got on with finding out the ships particulars and details for record book.

Pm. We were shown around the engine room by the Chief Engineer and gathered more information for our workbooks.

When the ship arrived at the next buoy (a class 1) I went out in the work boat to watch one of the AB's and the second mate replace a racon beacon.

Anchored overnight.

4^th July

Molefre – Pwllheli, Tremadog Bay (North Cardigan Bay)

Am. Polishing brass.

Pm. Study.

Anchored overnight.

5^th July

Pwllheli – Bardsey Island - Pwllheli

Am. Study.

Pm. 1200 -1600 watch on bridge

Vessel steamed overnight to Caldey Island.

6^th July

Caldey Island - Swansea

Am. 0800- 1200 watch, I spent a good hour and a half holding the ship in position standing off Caldey Island using the bow thruster and props

Pm. Study.

7^th July

In port, Swansea.

Day off.

8^th July

In port, Swansea.

Am. Polished one of the cannons on the boat deck again, they now need to be shined up before being oiled and wrapped which will, hopefully, prevent them from being in such a state next time they’re brought out.

Fire Drill at 1130, my station is on the bridge.

Pm. We exercised the Starboard lifeboat as part of the vessels planned maintenance routine. Both S and I had a turn at steering her. The lagging on the exhaust had worn through and it started to smoulder as we returned to the ship. The Engineers inspected it immediately and replaced the lagging.

The Chief Mate showed me how to fill out the stability spreadsheet from the daily tank readings and we then checked the resultant trim against the actual draft marks on the ships side.

Vessel steamed to anchorage near SWIGG (South West Inner Green Grounds) lightbuoy, Swansea Bay. Anchored overnight.

9^th July

SWIGG  L/b – Caldey Island

Am. On deck observing buoy work.

Pm. On the bridge, 1300 -1700

Anchored overnight.

10^th July

At anchor off Caldey Island

Am. Run ashore to Caldey Island.

Pm. Brass cleaning, I got the Elder Brethren’s compass binnacle, bell, vessel’s God Mother’s plaque and clock clean and put away below. Then we were re-shining the taff rail tips before oiling and wrapping them.

Anchored overnight.

11^th July

Caldey Island – Lundy Island

Am. 0800- 1200 Watch. The weather is predicted to worsen in the afternoon so after servicing two buoys the ship steamed to Lundy Island for shelter.

Pm. Study.

Anchored overnight.

12^th July

Lundy – Minehead

Am. Attended security and health and safety briefings.

Pm. Finished polishing, oiling and wrapping the taff rail tips on the heli-deck.

Anchored overnight.

13^th July

Minehead – Coombe Martin Bay

Am. Went out on the motor boat with 2^nd mate to check firing range buoys off Minehead and then I was on deck for the last lift and service of the trip.

Pm.1200-1600 watch.

Anchored overnight.

14^th July

 Coombe Martin Bay - Swansea

Am. 0800-1200 watch, helmed for an hour, and then helmed under pilotage for an hour as well, bringing the ship up the Swansea channel and into the docks.

Pm. On the bridge for harbour watch. Bunkering commenced at 1456.

15^th July

In port, Swansea

Crew change day.

16^th July

Swansea – English & Welsh Grounds, Bristol Channel

Am. Went through the steering gear checks on the bridge with the 2^nd Officer  and went below to observe the emergency steering gear checks. Went aft for letting go.

Pm. 1200-1600 watch, position plotting and got an hour and 15mins steering. Watched the Breaksea class 1 buoy being replaced.

Anchored overnight.

17^th July

E&W Grounds – Barry Roads

Am. Checking all the immersion suits and life jackets on board.

Pm. Started on checking the supplies in the lifeboats.

Anchored overnight.

18^th July

Barry Roads – Lundy Island

Am. Watched safety videos on heli-ops then continued checking the contents of the lifeboats. After smoko I was told to get up to the bridge to get some more steering in, and also after lunch.

Pm. Swapped with S and carried on where she’d left off with the life boats. Only thing left to do was change the fresh water in the canteens. The ones for the work boats were fine but the ones in the open lifeboats had gone rather green from sitting in such a warm place under the covers.

Anchored overnight.

19^th July

Lundy Island – Milford Haven

Am. Run ashore in the morning to see Lundy.

Pm. Steamed to Milford Haven, I helmed for a couple of hours on the way and then took the helm to take her in.

Anchored overnight.

20^th July

Milford Haven – Skokholm – Bishops Rock – St Brides Bay

I helmed us out of Milford Haven. The ship then met a helicopter off Skokholm to supply the lighthouse with water, and then moved on to South Bishop to supply the lighthouse with oil, water and building materials for the roof renovation.

Anchored overnight.

21^st July

St Brides Bay - Swansea

Am. Steaming to Swansea, I helmed for an hour, the weather was rough and vis poor.

Pm. Spent the afternoon photographing any parts of the ship I hadn’t already taken pictures of.

22^nd July

In port, Swansea.

Signed off.

Schools out!

Finally, exams are over. It feels a little strange knowing that I have now completed the entire academic part of the course and the only exam left to do is the big one. But I don’t want to think about that for now, it’s too terrifying for words!

My last exam was the day before yesterday, ship stability, and this was the one we had all been dreading. I think I did well on it though, I finished an hour before the allotted time was up and left feeling confident, and having compared answers with various course-mates since I am happy that I’ve done alright. Assuming that is, that I didn’t make any silly mistakes and make numbers up out of my head, which has been known to happen before! But, I tend to do that when I’m distracted and I was in full concentration mode in the exam. Results should be out next week, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed until then!

Meanwhile, we got our celestial navigation exam results back, and I am incredibly pleased to be able to say that I got 100%! No mean feat considering we only started lessons on this subject 5 weeks ago and had a total of 7 lectures. The first few lessons were utterly confusing and I was convinced that I was never going to get the hang of it. However, our tutor, Mr Warren, is a fantastic teacher and he somehow managed to make it comprehensible. I actually like cel nav now, and I think this is a lot to do with his teaching.

Looking back, the last 9 months have gone by in a whirlwind of law, management, engineering, cargo and construction, nav aids, passage planning, cel nav, stability and dissertations. A lot to take in, and long time to be stuck in Fleetwood, which isn’t the most prepossessing of towns. I’m looking forward to getting back to sea enormously, and am anxiously waiting for my sponsors to tell me where I’m going. Meanwhile I’m getting photos on flickr (the link to my photostream is down the right hand side of this page) up to date, as I’ve just uploaded my first trip on the Patricia I thought I’d take a jump back in time and write about that.

I got less than 36 hours notice that I was joining a ship; I was in the car with my sister driving down to Dorset from Reading on a Monday afternoon when I got the call telling me I had to be in Falmouth on Wednesday. Thankfully I have a friend who lives in Falmouth, so I got the train down on the Tuesday and stayed a night with them. The next day, after a good brunch to dispel the slight hangover I had woken up with, I joined the ship at about 3. As I walked up the gangway some of the crew were sitting about on deck chairs, these were guys waiting for their counterparts to arrive with the hire cars that they would take home, but I didn't know who anyone was so cheerily introduced myself and asked where I should go. I think I came across as a bit over keen as they all took the mickey out of me, but they sent me up to the bridge to find the officers and find out where my cabin was. Up on the bridge I met the Captain and Chief Officer and then someone showed me where my cabin was, right in the bowels of the ship, underneath the galley. It wasn't a bad sized cabin though, and I had it to myself. The only problem with it, as I soon discovered, was that I got an extra early wake up every time the galley crew set to in the morning with the potato peeling machine! I got myself settled, got into my uniform and found the other cadet, S, who'd joined a little earlier in the day. She was also a first trip cadet and we were both as nervous as each other and equally unsure as to what we should do next! We went around the ship to get a feel of where things were and then when the ship was due to depart we reported to the bridge, expecting to be told to go down to mooring stations, but instead we got to stay up on the bridge and watch as we sailed out.

We sailed overnight to Swansea, where the depot is, and the Chief Officer decided to give us shore leave for the day as the crew were busy with loading and discharging buoys, which wasn't something we could get involved with yet. (I think they wanted to spend a bit of time with us to assess how responsible and safe we were before letting us out while operations were going on). Not complaining, we happily bimbled off into town and did some entirely unnecessary shopping! That evening we steamed to an anchorage off Tenby and stayed there for the night, ready to start buoy work in the morning.

While most of the crew got on with buoy work, S and I were detailed to help with preparations for the VC. VC stands for Visiting Committee; once a year the Elder Brethren of Trinity House go around the lighthouses to inspect them, and the easiest way to get to many of them is via the ships. My first job was helping put the stanchions for the awning on the helideck up to clean and check them. We then got told that the awning wasn’t going to be used, so, we took them down again! After that it was brasso detail, which turned out to be a regular feature of my life for the next week or so. It's a fairly boring job, but I actually quite like the satisfaction I get from making something that's blackened and filthy looking become shiny and clean. The frustrating thing is when the rain comes down and undoes all you hard work... Needless to say, it started to rain after afternoon smoko, so I helped rig the screen that goes around the boat deck at the stern and we knocked off after that.

The next morning we were on brasso detail again, which lasted about ¾ of an hour until the rain started up again so we had an early smoko and then S and I scrubbed the scuppers and deck on the heli-deck with sugie (soap) and brushes.We carried on in the afternoon with the fresh water hose, which is pretty weak and so progress was slow so at afternoon smoko we asked if we could use the fire hose, which comes off the fire main and has some serious kick, we got the job squared off easily with that!

The sun came out the next day so it was a good day for painting; we started on the gangway giving it a fresh coast of grey metallic paint. Once that was done S and I started on the rails around the heli-deck with undercoat where the crew had already taken the paintwork back to bare metal with grinders the day before.

We finished off the undercoat first thing the next morning and we were joined by the boys to crack on with the topcoat. The afternoon was spent finishing off any missed bits (holidays) which S was  and cutting in, after smoko I went to find some rope to make new steadying lines for the gangway with. I pulled the wrong end out and it all ended up in a terrible mess so I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting it out and recoiling it neatly as well as cutting the lengths I needed. We were told to knock off at 1630 but we stayed on the foredeck to watch the crew lifting and servicing buoys for an hour.

Next day I got the rope (from the right end this time) and all the bits and pieces to do whippings and spent the morning splicing the new ropes on to the gangway and whipping the ends. It was nice to be doing something that I knew would remain there for a decent length of time and was also suitably salty and seamanlike. I showed S how to do a splice and have promised to teach her how to do it properly and some knots too, all that time spent doing knots and ropework on Pelican has certainly paid off! The afternoon wasn't nearly so much fun though as it was back to brasso duties, polishing the Elder Brethrens Clock, bell and binnacle.

By this time we had slowly worked our way up the Welsh coast, servicing buoys by day and anchoring overnight, and were just off Liverpool by the Bar light float. The racon beacon on the top of the float needed checking so one of the second mates got sent up it, much to everyone's amusement as he's not the slimmest chap in the world. He did it though, and the next morning we went into Liverpool and berthed on the cruise ship terminal. I went forward for mooring operations and raised the bow jack when the1^st line went ashore. Trinity House have quite a lot of protocol and etiquette when it comes to flags because they're such an old institution, it seems as if everyone important has their own flag and there's a few more chucked in for good measure! After that it was back to brasso and then deck scrubbing in the afternoon. The ship has a large industrial scrubber, rather like a floor polisher, and the crew made it look really easy to use, but when I had a go with it I found it has a tendancy to run away with you all too easily!

So, that was my first week, I'll try and write some more about it soon, but it's now time for some celebratory tea and cake as I've just had news about my stability result. Our tutor can't give us our actual results yet as they have to be verified, but we arranged a Green, Amber, Red code for him to email us with to give us a heads up on whether we needed to start revising again. He's just emailed me saying "Your test was a brilliant shade of GREEN! Clearly you put in the effort - Well done!" So I'm on top of the world!!

So, what does being a cadet involve?

Ok, I'm still massively behind on this blog, but, I'm not as behind on here as I am on flickr! I am trying to catch up, and to be honest, there's not much more to tell you about, so I'm debating with myself as to whether to bother. In a nutshell, I spent the rest of my time on the QM2 on the bridge for arrivals and departures, doing the same stuff as I've already talked about, but getting better at it. We did the UK cruise, during which I started to learn how to calculate compass errors using the stars. We then went back to New York tracking south to avoid some more bad weather. In New York I got a massage which f*@ked my back up for about a week (tip- when you've had a massage and are on your back, roll sideways to sit up, don't sit straight up!!). After that we did a short 3 day cruise to Boston, Bar Harbour and Halifax before returning to New York where I finally got off and flew home. If there's interest, I will expand on that, but you'll have to ask!

I got off the QM2 in November. I was due to return to college in January, but college, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put our return date back til mid feb. So, with all that time to go I asked my company if I could go back to the THV Patricia, and they obliged. The Pat is the polar opposite to the QM, she's 84m compared to 334m, she does take passengers, but only 12 of them, and she's a buoy tender, going around parts of the UK coast looking after the lights and marks that we all use to navigate by. Quite a difference, but equally interesting and involving!

For now though, something different: Someone I sailed with on the Pelican is thinking about joining the MN, and he asked me what it involved, I wrote back to him with this. It struck me that a lot of people don't know what being a cadet involves, so I thought I'd share...

I'm in the last couple of months of the academic stuff at college, which is pretty hectic- I have 4 assignments and three exams coming up in the next 2 months (which I should be cracking on with but it's friday evening and my motivation is low!). I'm doing the foundation degree course, the other option is the HNC course, the FD covers all the theory for OOW, Chief Mates and masters while the HNC just covers the OOW, this means the FD course is more intensive, but the pay off is that when I have enough sea time to go for my mates ticket I won't have to do a long college stint, I'll just come back to do the orals prep, which is 4 weeks. On the other hand I'll have to remember everything I've learned in college now in a few years time!

It is a big commitment, as you spend several months at college at a time and then several months at sea at a time, the courses don't run like uni terms, and the holidays are less than at uni (2 weeks for xmas, 3 for easter and 4 for summer), plus if you're on a sea phase you don't get the college holiday. You do get some leave during your sea phases though, between trips and if you have something big like a family wedding and you give your sponsor enough notice (ie a year in advance) they will try to arrange your sea trips so you can be home for it. But it's only three years like that, once you're qualified the leave periods between trips are much longer, it depends entirely on the company you end up working for mind, so you could end up doing three weeks on three weeks off, or three months on two months off, or 6 months on 6 months off...

Cadet wages vary according to sponsor companies quite a lot, from about £550/month to £1000/month, some cadets get their accommodation paid for on top of their wage, most of us have to pay for it out of what we get paid. I get an extra bit of money for uniform, some cadets get their uniform provided by their sponsor, which includes being sent a bunch of stuff you're never going to wear, I'll never forget my girly coursemate's tiny white see-through shorts!!

The course covers everything, in the first phase I covered maths skills, introductory ship construction and cargo work, general ship knowledge, buoyage and rules of the road, meteorology and chartwork, tides and sailings. In my sea phase I did Work Based Learning, in which you relate what you did on college to what goes on on ship, to demonstrate you have learnt and understood stuff. You also have a training record book, in which the ship's officers sign off tasks you have done on ship. To back that up you keep a navigation and operations workbook, which is essentially writing about stuff you're done.

This phase we're doing celestial navigation and passage planning, navigation aids, ship stability, engineering, advanced cargo and construction, management, law and professional development (PD involves a 4000 word "dissertation", which we can write about anything we like). In my next sea phase I'll be doing more Work Based Learning, as well as getting the remaining tasks signed off in my training record book.

The HNC course cuts out a few of those subjects, such as the PD, engineering and law, and others are only taught to the OOW level, (stability, and possibly cargo and construction too). The other difference is that you don't do the Work Based Learning when at sea, but you have other reports to write instead.

I've really enjoyed it all so far, well, there have been shit days and the maths in cel nav and stability makes my brain bleed, but I still have my eye firmly on that OOW ticket at the end of it and have no regrets at all.