JOURNALS OF A FILIPINO SEAMAN

European EMSA audit is causing a lot of stir lately on the Philippine sailing community and some huge changes on how things are run. Apparently from what I heard in the news is that EMSA is really determine to wipe out every Filipino off the face of any European flag (or owned) ship, but come to think of it lets say that indeed Filipino's get kicked out by EMSA ( all the 80,000 plus Filipino sailor  which equals to one third of the entire active Filipino sailor population - TAKE NOTE ACTIVE , DOESN’T INCLUDE THE INACTIVE SAILORS) . Now who do you think will replace the vacuum that we will be leaving behind when that time comes eh ? Europeans ? Hmpf ! For all I know Europeans have a much a higher salary value that putting them on the workforce thread mill bracket would be 21 flavours of stupidity for any "European" shipping company who are budget conscious, plus European sailor's don’t like the idea that their salaries will be haggled by any shipping company and doing ...

Ship is currently proceeding eastward on the north sea and just passed by on Denmark. During the transit a two ship pilots came in for the 24 hour long channelling (they boarded sometime near midnight and disembarked at around 1pm the following day), I'm not exactly sure on which direction in Denmark this ship went to but I heard that this ship is passing thru some sort of "short cut" trip . I looked on the geographical map on my installed encyclopaedia program (Encarta Microsoft) and saw that there is indeed some sort of river or canal running all across Denmark. I assume this ship went there. It’s a good thing that these pilots has a side business in selling sim cards (both internet and call cards) and I was able to buy some of those stuff for personal updating of this blog and as a plus they were polite enough to give me a change for the U.S. dollar bills I had on my wallet. Seriously this Danish pilots are a life saver - I badly needed the internet connection cause I ...

Few days after this ship left Senegal, the next location it was headed was in las palmas islands (territory of Spain just west of morocco)to do some bunkering. By the time this ship arrived , the sea was a bit rough and had postponed bunkering operations and waited until early morning when the sea calmed down. the bunkering ship was also having difficulty and was "Shakey" going up and down, to the point that we ask ourselves if bunkering at this time was a bad idea. I was at the monkey island at that time doing maintenance work in painting the tower with white coloured paint (Along with O.S. Macalawa and Bosun Payopay). At that height I was able to see it very clearly on what is happening on that bunker ship and saw as crystal the rolling and heaving motion. Hopefully bunkering was Finished at noon without any incident even if the sea was rough. This ship resumed going northward to Gibraltar to wait further announcements from the shipping office on when will be the next loadi...

EVENTS HAPPENED on OCTOBER 06 2014 Weather in Senegal is so hot and unbearable, it really makes me wish for a nuclear winter. Seriously temperatures here are so high that I wet my coveralls with water just to keep me cool and comfy. A lot of people here on-board didn’t like my kind of idea and work tactics in a hot environment , they just basically tell stuff that my kind of tactic will get me killed in the long run - honestly I think they're jealous that I think more creative than theirs and they don’t have any medical evidence to support their claims On early morning of Sunday October 5 , I woke up and saw a note from my co-worker saying that work shift is temporary suspended for a day due to the recent national holiday in Senegal called "id ul adha" (muslim holiday , hell don’t know what exactly means) . So since it’s a national holiday for them , it means any Muslim will literary drop what they're doing on work and go home to god-knows-where to celebrate this h...

Weather isn't exactly friendly at Senegal this time of year it and feels very much like summer in the Philippines (to be specific like in the month of April or May) ,  I had been doing all the precautions and Do's and Don'ts in a hot climate such as these. Always bringing my water canteen around with me to keep my hydrated and keep myself cool as much as possible , to the point which I wear my coveralls wet. Senegal as I describe is pretty much calmer and quieter than it west African neighbours . Locals around here are friendly and mostly do "Small boat" business selling internet sim cards and top up loads, I myself bought an internet sim card load in one of these (unfortunately I didn’t bought a top up load and later found out that they accept Euro's as well). In the extent merchants here on these small boats are fairly honest enough to do business with and there's little need to be watchful over them, they simply just do business in selling and not steal...

Even though it gives me comfort to know that Senegalese people are not cannibals, it doesn't necessarily mean that they won't steal our stuff. As a precaution to these scenario, Captain Ivaylo Dimitriv Kolev told us that our job work currently is part hiding good from the bond store to somewhere else. He ordered us to hid the stuff on the bond store to three separate locations. One location was inside the one of the cofferdams in inside the Emergency steering gear, the other is placed inside the "cable trunk" space at the back of the kitchen, and the rest that remains is sealed off on the bond store at the bottom of the galley. Captains Kolev's intention why he had to conceal most of this stuff is based on the incident on what happened last year where Senegalese authorities ransack almost everything on the ship's supplies. Anyway it's not a big surprise that this always typical happens on any commercial ship going into Africa as authorities there have a ba...

During my spare time and browsing thru webpages when I had come across a "filipino sailor" community themed website. Specifically luswelf website (luneta seafarers welfare - uhm something like that more or less) , the website is basically mediocre at best and nothing interesting at all except the "sailor" song that was being played. I find myself amused to it and yet somewhat bothered by what the song content. Here are the facts on this propaganda material. Website address is ww.seafarerdirectoryph.com Song heavily refers that in order to be a sailor , a so called "backer" (layman term is "sponsor") is needed in order to be employed, regardless of what educational background, credentials and previous job experience a person has. In other words even a lowly janitor with an educational background of grade school can be a sailor provided that he / she has a political connection or contact that would sponsor him to a com...

Early morning of September 19, 2014 Friday was greeted with a lot of heavy Fog. It was so thick that I couldn't see anything infront of me beyond 10 metres, at first I mistook that piloting and mooring will be cancelled from the bad weather, in fact Chief Mate Anatoliy Bayez even gave a work order for us to wash the deck area. We started our usually deck maintenance schedule then all of a sudden in the middle of work somewhere between 9am, I saw A.B. Marlon Layos rushing towards BOSUN Payopay and told him to prepare "Combination Ladder" (a mix of pilot ladder and gangway ladder being lowered) on the starboard side. I asked A.B. Marlon on what's going on and he replied that Pilotage and mooring operation will begin soon and I had to hurry up and change coverall's. Did change my coveralls immediately and by the time I went back the whole combination ladder had been finished rigging. Soon after I proceeded to the forward anchor winch to prepare and heave up anchor. O...