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.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Not going to St John
It's official, I am the queen of procrastination! When I have work to do I will do laundry, hoover, cook large and time consuming meals, clean the bathroom, re-do the silicone seal around the bath, buy stuff I shouldn't on the internet, blog, edit the photos I've been meaning to get around to editing for two years.... anything but the thing in hand! And so, in that spirit....
Before we didn't go to St John, we went to Halifax, my nav work book starts to get a little more technical here, with tide print outs and lists of instructions on the use and set up of radar and echo sounders and steering and propulsion tests; I was getting a bit more comfortable in my surroundings on the bridge by then. I got ashore in Halifax too, we didn't go far, just down the wooden boardwalk to the first decent looking restaurant we saw, where I recall eating a very good lobster sandwich.
Next day we were due to go to St John, which we had actually been to before as a 3 day cruise from New York, but I failed to mention it when I was writing about early September (my excuse is that my brain was fried at the time of writing, having only recently got home. It wasn't a big event anyway; I did get ashore, but only as far as the nearest restaurant where I devoured as much lobster as I could!) Anyway, I was rather looking forward to getting to see a bit more of it, as we were due to spend a longer time than normal there, due to the tides and depth of water at the entrance to the harbour.
The weather wasn't good, and there had been much discussion on the bridge over the days preceding as to whether we would be able to make it in, but the final decision was only made when we were a few miles off the pilot station. We would have been able to get in, but the forecast for when we were due to be leaving was simply too bad and it would have been too dangerous to try it, which left us with the chance of getting in but not getting out and thereby screwing up a lot of people's holidays by making them late back to NYC, or not going in. That's it in a nutshell, but for the more technically minded I thought I'd put in what I wrote in my nav workbook here, I'm afraid you'll have to do without the charts and diagrams that should accompany it, but I hope it's vaguely interesting (If it's not, just skip to where the italics end!)
The ship was due to call into the port of St John today, arriving on the flood at high tide and departing on the flood of the next hight tide. The ship is only able to get into St John at high tide and has a very narrow window of opportunity to get up and down the channel. The port authority will only allow ships to enter or leave between 2hrs before High water and 2hrs after high water, and they must have at least 5meters clearance over the bank at the entrance. Chart datum at the bar is 8.8m, QM2 has a draft of 10.3m and also has to take squat into account. Squat occurs in shallow waters when a ship is travelling at speed, water is displaced more than normal and so the depth of water is reduced (though the ship's draft stays the same). For the channel at St John squat is estimated at 1.5m, the ship therefore has a clearance of 0mover the bar at datum [datum being the height of water the lowest astronomical tide] and so needs a Height of Tide of at least 5m to be allowed into the harbour.
Looking at the tidal graph for St John that day it was apparent that the ship could make it from the pilot station to the berth by slack water (when the tide turns) but there was not much margin for error or contingency, even without the bad weather that was developing. The forecast for our due time of departure showed a large depression right over St John, bringing winds of 35-40kts. As a depression passes over, the cold front comes first, as this happens the wind tends to alter direction suddenly, first veering slightly and then backing dramatically. If this was to happen when the ship was in the narrow channel the ship could be pushed off course and grounded very easily.
The forecast showed that this bad weather would be likely to happen when the ship was leaving the port, so while we would have been able to get in to St John, we could have been stuck there for much longer than the itinerary allowed and therefore all the passengers who had to catch flights from New York would have missed them, so the Commodore took the decision not to to in. It was not a lighthearted decision, and was only taken at the last moment, when the most up-to-date information was at hand and much advice from shoreside support had been listened to. At the end of the day, it's the master's responsibility to keep the ship safe first, and being on schedule comes after, and we could not have done both.
To fill the time we should have spent in St John, we took a slow scenic cruise down the Grand Manan Channel, heading for New York. However, it wasn't quite as simple as that and the navigator had to work out some extra legs for the ship to sail so that she could go fast enough to be able to keep the water making plant working. The ship uses approximately 1000 tonnes of water a day, and there's no way she could store that much! She has three evaporators, which, when making a speed of 26kts can produce 1500 tonnes of water a day. To be able to run one evaporator the ship needs to be going at a minimum of 13kts so the navigator had to extend our passage to enable the ship to travel at that speed and not reach New York too early.
Before we didn't go to St John, we went to Halifax, my nav work book starts to get a little more technical here, with tide print outs and lists of instructions on the use and set up of radar and echo sounders and steering and propulsion tests; I was getting a bit more comfortable in my surroundings on the bridge by then. I got ashore in Halifax too, we didn't go far, just down the wooden boardwalk to the first decent looking restaurant we saw, where I recall eating a very good lobster sandwich.
Next day we were due to go to St John, which we had actually been to before as a 3 day cruise from New York, but I failed to mention it when I was writing about early September (my excuse is that my brain was fried at the time of writing, having only recently got home. It wasn't a big event anyway; I did get ashore, but only as far as the nearest restaurant where I devoured as much lobster as I could!) Anyway, I was rather looking forward to getting to see a bit more of it, as we were due to spend a longer time than normal there, due to the tides and depth of water at the entrance to the harbour.
The weather wasn't good, and there had been much discussion on the bridge over the days preceding as to whether we would be able to make it in, but the final decision was only made when we were a few miles off the pilot station. We would have been able to get in, but the forecast for when we were due to be leaving was simply too bad and it would have been too dangerous to try it, which left us with the chance of getting in but not getting out and thereby screwing up a lot of people's holidays by making them late back to NYC, or not going in. That's it in a nutshell, but for the more technically minded I thought I'd put in what I wrote in my nav workbook here, I'm afraid you'll have to do without the charts and diagrams that should accompany it, but I hope it's vaguely interesting (If it's not, just skip to where the italics end!)
The ship was due to call into the port of St John today, arriving on the flood at high tide and departing on the flood of the next hight tide. The ship is only able to get into St John at high tide and has a very narrow window of opportunity to get up and down the channel. The port authority will only allow ships to enter or leave between 2hrs before High water and 2hrs after high water, and they must have at least 5meters clearance over the bank at the entrance. Chart datum at the bar is 8.8m, QM2 has a draft of 10.3m and also has to take squat into account. Squat occurs in shallow waters when a ship is travelling at speed, water is displaced more than normal and so the depth of water is reduced (though the ship's draft stays the same). For the channel at St John squat is estimated at 1.5m, the ship therefore has a clearance of 0mover the bar at datum [datum being the height of water the lowest astronomical tide] and so needs a Height of Tide of at least 5m to be allowed into the harbour.
Looking at the tidal graph for St John that day it was apparent that the ship could make it from the pilot station to the berth by slack water (when the tide turns) but there was not much margin for error or contingency, even without the bad weather that was developing. The forecast for our due time of departure showed a large depression right over St John, bringing winds of 35-40kts. As a depression passes over, the cold front comes first, as this happens the wind tends to alter direction suddenly, first veering slightly and then backing dramatically. If this was to happen when the ship was in the narrow channel the ship could be pushed off course and grounded very easily.
The forecast showed that this bad weather would be likely to happen when the ship was leaving the port, so while we would have been able to get in to St John, we could have been stuck there for much longer than the itinerary allowed and therefore all the passengers who had to catch flights from New York would have missed them, so the Commodore took the decision not to to in. It was not a lighthearted decision, and was only taken at the last moment, when the most up-to-date information was at hand and much advice from shoreside support had been listened to. At the end of the day, it's the master's responsibility to keep the ship safe first, and being on schedule comes after, and we could not have done both.
To fill the time we should have spent in St John, we took a slow scenic cruise down the Grand Manan Channel, heading for New York. However, it wasn't quite as simple as that and the navigator had to work out some extra legs for the ship to sail so that she could go fast enough to be able to keep the water making plant working. The ship uses approximately 1000 tonnes of water a day, and there's no way she could store that much! She has three evaporators, which, when making a speed of 26kts can produce 1500 tonnes of water a day. To be able to run one evaporator the ship needs to be going at a minimum of 13kts so the navigator had to extend our passage to enable the ship to travel at that speed and not reach New York too early.
Sunday, 13 June 2010
So much to learn, so little time!
Assignments, assignments, assignments!!! Being a student is harder than I remember!! Or maybe it's because I'm engaged in the subject and actually care, which is more than I can say for the last time I was in education! I'm rather enjoying using this blog as a memory jogging exercise for all the things I've done on ship, and the reason I'm here. I know there are folk who would prefer I had kept it a little more up to date *waves at CunardCritic :D* but I do have a fair bit on my plate so have to prioritise.
Luckily for you, I kept notes throughout my voyage, they started out as the long rambling descriptives that I posted on here in my first month, but as I settled into life on board and started on the written work for college and my workbook I had less time for that and the notes I made became lists of tasks undertaken. In my last month I didn't need to make notes on my computer as I was up on the bridge and logged all my activity in my Nav workbook. Obsessively. Most cadets don't write their nav work book every day, but I did. Most of it consists of lists, a typical entry simply lists what I did that watch, i.e. filling out the log book, position fixing, ticking off items on the checklists etc, and there's a fair amount of sailings calculations in there too, but there were also the days when we hit interesting weather or I got to do something different, which inevitably meant a big write up in my book, along with copies of charts and pictures glued in. I'm hoping for a gold star when the MCA read through it!!
So, my last entry brought us up to the beginning of the first North America/Canada cruise, and I was shadowing A up on the bridge....
Filling out the log book sounds as though it should be an easy job, but the space you have for the narrative on a 4 hour watch is pretty tiny, so there is a list of abbreviations to be used which is printed in the front of the book. Some of them are fairly easy, but when it gets to 5+ letters it starts to get confusing, especially as there are several which could easily get mixed up. For a long time I actually kept a rough log on a scrap piece of paper and then got someone to check it over and tell me what was unnecessary and what I could abbreviate before writing it up neatly in the log book. My handwriting was a secondary factor there, it looks like a drunken spider has crawled across the page when I write fast!
Our first stop off was Newport, Rhode Island, where we anchored in what seemed to me to be a rather tight spot, we kept the azipods on standyby that day! On the way in I was starting to practice my fixing techniques (range and bearing form the radar and three point bearings from the compass repeaters) and learning how to set up the bridge wing radar consoles. After my watch I got some breakfast and then went down to the tender pontoons until 12. I had a much needed rest after lunch and was back up on the bridge for departure, my fixing techniques were improving and I was rather pleased with myself when I compared the paper chart to the ECDIS track. When land is in range it's preferable to use manual fixing techniques, this is good practice to keep your hand in (in case the GPS breaks) and also enables you to cross check the accuracy of the GPS.
Next morning, on our way to Boston, the visibility went down to below three miles, this means extra precautions and vigilance are required, and therefore yet another checklist. Once safely in and alongside we had a MOB muster and boat drill, this time we didn't actually chuck a dummy over the rail but I did get to go down in the rescue boat, and I got to drive it too! It's weird to drive because it's propelled by waterjet, rather than a propeller, so when going in reverse the boat turns the opposite way to what you would expect and at slow speeds it's virtually impossible to keep going in a straight line. I had some fun with 3/0 G, seeing how well I could approach a buoy as if it was a casualty, and then we went right up to the bow of the ship to see it from below, which is an incredible view of her, looking straight up the stem and seeing the flare of the bow sweep out either side. My watch that evening was extended by an hour as we only left at 2000hrs so A and I were still needed for position fixing etc while the ship was under pilotage.
Bar Harbour was next on the itinerary and lucky for me, as we weren't due to arrive very early and I'd done an extra hour the night before, I only had to be up on the bridge at 0530 and work 'til 0830, it's amazing what a difference an hours lie in makes to someone's mood! Bar Harbour is an even tighter place to get in and out of than Newport, and is made even more interesting by the lobster fishermen, who appear to either not know or not care about where the channel is and place their pots all over the place! We let go the anchor and I learned about swinging circles and how to mark their limits on the radar and set up electronic bearing lines as well as using visual bearings to monitor the ships position and ensure she's not dragging. Because Bar Harbour is such a tight anchorage we couldn't even allow the ship to swing freely so it needed careful monitoring and the pods were kept on standby all day. I spent some time on the bridge for the rest of the morning keeping an eye on things while the senior officer got on with his paperwork in the Safety Centre, which is on the bridge, they weren't about to leave me alone up there!! I got ashore for lunch, and spent a lovely hour sitting under a tree, I'm a country girl by origin, so I do miss the greenery sometimes. I had a little wander around the town too, it's very pretty, but a bit twee for my liking if I'm honest, I'd love to see it in the full flush of autumnal glory though, but sadly we were just a bit too early in the year for that.
When I got back I had a special job from the C/O; film directing! The tender fenders get a bit of a bashing when they come alongside the pontoons in choppy water, despite the best efforts of the ABs driving. So, the Officers wanted some film footage of how they were getting damaged for the shoreside operations team, in the hope that some new fenders could be found or designed to prevent this. I and my cameraman started up on the bridge, looking down on the tendering operation, before moving to deck 7 and then the pontoons themselves for some close up shots. In the half hour we were down there I think we experienced a full years worth of weather - it went from bright sunshine to wind and hail and back with alarming rapidity! The sudden winds meant pausing the tendering operation for a few minutes, but thankfully it passed as quickly as it had come over. I did feel very sorry for the passengers who were out in it though, looking out from the shelter of the shell door I could see the rain and hail going practically horizontal at one point!
Crikey, it's late, again, and I have to try and beat the boys to the bathroom in the morning... Next time; why we didn't go to St John.
Luckily for you, I kept notes throughout my voyage, they started out as the long rambling descriptives that I posted on here in my first month, but as I settled into life on board and started on the written work for college and my workbook I had less time for that and the notes I made became lists of tasks undertaken. In my last month I didn't need to make notes on my computer as I was up on the bridge and logged all my activity in my Nav workbook. Obsessively. Most cadets don't write their nav work book every day, but I did. Most of it consists of lists, a typical entry simply lists what I did that watch, i.e. filling out the log book, position fixing, ticking off items on the checklists etc, and there's a fair amount of sailings calculations in there too, but there were also the days when we hit interesting weather or I got to do something different, which inevitably meant a big write up in my book, along with copies of charts and pictures glued in. I'm hoping for a gold star when the MCA read through it!!
So, my last entry brought us up to the beginning of the first North America/Canada cruise, and I was shadowing A up on the bridge....
Filling out the log book sounds as though it should be an easy job, but the space you have for the narrative on a 4 hour watch is pretty tiny, so there is a list of abbreviations to be used which is printed in the front of the book. Some of them are fairly easy, but when it gets to 5+ letters it starts to get confusing, especially as there are several which could easily get mixed up. For a long time I actually kept a rough log on a scrap piece of paper and then got someone to check it over and tell me what was unnecessary and what I could abbreviate before writing it up neatly in the log book. My handwriting was a secondary factor there, it looks like a drunken spider has crawled across the page when I write fast!
Our first stop off was Newport, Rhode Island, where we anchored in what seemed to me to be a rather tight spot, we kept the azipods on standyby that day! On the way in I was starting to practice my fixing techniques (range and bearing form the radar and three point bearings from the compass repeaters) and learning how to set up the bridge wing radar consoles. After my watch I got some breakfast and then went down to the tender pontoons until 12. I had a much needed rest after lunch and was back up on the bridge for departure, my fixing techniques were improving and I was rather pleased with myself when I compared the paper chart to the ECDIS track. When land is in range it's preferable to use manual fixing techniques, this is good practice to keep your hand in (in case the GPS breaks) and also enables you to cross check the accuracy of the GPS.
Next morning, on our way to Boston, the visibility went down to below three miles, this means extra precautions and vigilance are required, and therefore yet another checklist. Once safely in and alongside we had a MOB muster and boat drill, this time we didn't actually chuck a dummy over the rail but I did get to go down in the rescue boat, and I got to drive it too! It's weird to drive because it's propelled by waterjet, rather than a propeller, so when going in reverse the boat turns the opposite way to what you would expect and at slow speeds it's virtually impossible to keep going in a straight line. I had some fun with 3/0 G, seeing how well I could approach a buoy as if it was a casualty, and then we went right up to the bow of the ship to see it from below, which is an incredible view of her, looking straight up the stem and seeing the flare of the bow sweep out either side. My watch that evening was extended by an hour as we only left at 2000hrs so A and I were still needed for position fixing etc while the ship was under pilotage.
Bar Harbour was next on the itinerary and lucky for me, as we weren't due to arrive very early and I'd done an extra hour the night before, I only had to be up on the bridge at 0530 and work 'til 0830, it's amazing what a difference an hours lie in makes to someone's mood! Bar Harbour is an even tighter place to get in and out of than Newport, and is made even more interesting by the lobster fishermen, who appear to either not know or not care about where the channel is and place their pots all over the place! We let go the anchor and I learned about swinging circles and how to mark their limits on the radar and set up electronic bearing lines as well as using visual bearings to monitor the ships position and ensure she's not dragging. Because Bar Harbour is such a tight anchorage we couldn't even allow the ship to swing freely so it needed careful monitoring and the pods were kept on standby all day. I spent some time on the bridge for the rest of the morning keeping an eye on things while the senior officer got on with his paperwork in the Safety Centre, which is on the bridge, they weren't about to leave me alone up there!! I got ashore for lunch, and spent a lovely hour sitting under a tree, I'm a country girl by origin, so I do miss the greenery sometimes. I had a little wander around the town too, it's very pretty, but a bit twee for my liking if I'm honest, I'd love to see it in the full flush of autumnal glory though, but sadly we were just a bit too early in the year for that.
When I got back I had a special job from the C/O; film directing! The tender fenders get a bit of a bashing when they come alongside the pontoons in choppy water, despite the best efforts of the ABs driving. So, the Officers wanted some film footage of how they were getting damaged for the shoreside operations team, in the hope that some new fenders could be found or designed to prevent this. I and my cameraman started up on the bridge, looking down on the tendering operation, before moving to deck 7 and then the pontoons themselves for some close up shots. In the half hour we were down there I think we experienced a full years worth of weather - it went from bright sunshine to wind and hail and back with alarming rapidity! The sudden winds meant pausing the tendering operation for a few minutes, but thankfully it passed as quickly as it had come over. I did feel very sorry for the passengers who were out in it though, looking out from the shelter of the shell door I could see the rain and hail going practically horizontal at one point!
Crikey, it's late, again, and I have to try and beat the boys to the bathroom in the morning... Next time; why we didn't go to St John.
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