JOURNALS OF A FILIPINO SEAMAN

May 22, 2015 Friday 10.30 pm the berthing operation of this ship commenced, and much to the annoyance of BOSUN Diosana (and most of the crew). Captain Sorin is rushing people to heave up anchor A.S.A.P. thinking that starting up the hydraulic system is just as simple as like opening a water faucet. During the transit , after the pilot has already boarded and me and O.S. Keith are at the crew mess. I heard on the radio that Bosun Diosana asked both of us to come to the aft area to help him out in clearing the soot off. When both of us came to the aft area I found out that Bosun Diosana wasn't referring to a small spot but the whole area of the aft part was covered with ash and it was an inch thick. We tried to use a broom to clear it off but with the strong winds and was totally pitch dark we made little progress , So basically it ended up to open the fire pump instead and wash the whole aft area before someone notices. We washed the whole aft area in short notice and effectively...

May 20, 2015 Wednesday Finally arrived in South Carolina, U.S.A. and the first thing that greeted me was to drop anchor at around 7 to 8 pm. Anyway turns out that this anchoring session wasn't very pleasant and our beloved "GOD Captain" yelled at the radio that I was putting a break while the anchor was dropping, bastard even mention that he was looking at us. Whatever he meant he's not looking clearly and most probably he assumed that I was putting the break when it fact I was just adjusting the speed and pace of the drop. Anyway I'd be very glad that he will be disposed of when this ship reaches Panama canal (sign on / drop off point for sailors, In other words a convenient port), just two more ports and my problems with him will be a thing of the past. In relation to this topic , I do admire BOSUN Mario Diosana's efforts in defending me on the screw up in dropping anchor and from our captains hysteria. He has basically no obligation to helping people and...

Saturday, May 16, 2015 Out of nowhere and without warning , I heard on the ship P.A. system " ALL FORWARD MOORING CREW PLEASE SECURE THE TUGBOAT LINE " . Immediately I went in such a haste from my cabin and dressing up on the locker room that I was the first to arrive on the scene in the forward area to help BOSUN Diosana in securing the tugboat line, most of other people arrived at least 5 minutes later. Never really comfortable to hear announcements on the last minute as what happened , but of course I just had to ride along on the show on the management says despite they have a nasty habit. Mooring schedule was unsurprising and expected, no thanks to the information I got on the crew mess 3 hours earlier. For the details regarding what happened on the mooring, it was relatively smooth with only a few minor complications dealt with such as insect bites and half an hour unexpected rain. The first complication was preventable if I just only wore my face mask, but unfortunatel...

5/15/2015 5:25 AM Out of my surprise, captain sorin sageta annouce on the P.A. that he will be distributing our cash advances. It was definitely a big surprise knowing that it's not like him on his nature to be giving crew salaries, Anyway probably the real motive why our beloved "God" captain is doing this was the fact that this ship is headed in the united states and he's afraid that the coast guard might find out that crew salaries haven't been paid yet. He's afraid on the fact that the united states coast guard authorities has police powers to kick out any abusive ship officers (or captains) out of their vessel and send them back home (as in fire them) - So he's playing nice on these past couple of days. 2nd engineer Alijosa Nakic claims that he's the one who convinced the Captain to give out our salaries. According to him Bosun Diosana approached him and asked if he could somehow convinced the captain in paying us our salaries (at least a little ...

5/11/2015 12:40 PM Drills, more drills and even more drills. Damn ! Already had enough on this, Fire drill, Oil pollution , Drill, Abandon ship Drill, Man over Board drill , etc. there seems to be no end on this until at least after the U.S. Coast Guard inspections. "God"  Captain Sorin takes no chances at all in any lapses, - I'm not saying that drills aren't necessary,  Its just basically getting tiresome doing the same thing every day. If there is anything good about this drill , its only for the personal information about my what role will I do. On the first drill, which is a fire drill I made a mistake of not reporting and finding chief mate Alexey Shaley first before preparing the fire hose. On  the second drill, which is an abandon ship drill , I later found out that I was among the four people who will unlash the life boat, (the other three were , BOSUN Diosana, Pumpman Sepulveda and A.B. Ryan Osiang) . Anyway I will later cleared this up after the drill....

Illustration and caricature of Captain Sorin April 29, 2015 Wednesday Ship has finally arrived in Spain and in preparation to this , Working schedules were only half day as it is expected that it will be berthing upon arrival situation. Good for us that at least we could get some rest before getting busy. Well apparently management here was insisting that we should still be on work till 3pm (god damn jack asses !!) but somehow it was reduced to only half days work, which is of course favourable on our terms and we won't get over fatigue. Well some crew here don't mind at all if there will be working till that time but apparently their not willing to do so because NSB will not pay for the extra efforts, In other words it will end up being just "working for free" which is a big no - no in any workforce labour. At about 8pm the engines of this ship stopped and it was my cue that this ship has arrived and a pilot will be boarding in soon. Mooring soon followed, after that...

April 26, 2015 Sunday Now that this ship is headed off back again to Tarragona, Spain to load some cargo. People here are still wondering on why the hell is the laundry room still closed at this time ??? Basically I have no idea why the hell there's a strict laundry schedule in the first place, and I couldn't say that the ship structure here can hold only a limited amount of water since this is ship is identical to conti Greenland when it comes to structure and back on that ship I never had any problems of water shortage - plus surely the ocean is big enough to accommodate (and generate) fresh water supply for everybody's basic needs like washing clothes and taking a bath, so absolutely there no need for unnecessary restrictions on water . Its only plausible that the management here (I'm referring to the captain) is very depriving one and a no good twisted hoarder. In the meantime, this ship had a finally a days off on Sundays. As in totally no work to be doing at all ,...

April 20, 2015 Out of nowhere , Sundays off work was cancelled and this ship finally went to berth in Netherlands and nobody saw it coming even the Bosun Diosana was surprised as well to be informed on the last minute that this ship will be berthing. On my perception I was sleeping at that hour when suddenly I received a call from my cabin phone to hurry up and that we are heaving anchor in a few minutes. Honestly I suspect that Captain Sorin knew that we will be berthing on Sundays and kept the information secretly from us, to purposely give us a hard time and cancel off our rest days - in other words to intentionally annoy us. Jeez what a total bastard !! Anyway it's not surprising given that being a sailor this is the environment that it was supposed to be , there are a lot of bad people out here on this job - as in really bad people, Filipino's and Foreign nationals alike. Expect that chances are there will always be assholes out here who are willing to do everything they c...