JOURNALS OF A FILIPINO SEAMAN

JOURNAL ENTRY: August 18, 2016 Thursday Location: Johor Straight (border of Singapore and Malaysia)     Following to what I wrote earlier , it looks like that the meeting about the five riding crew at the bridge was about asking them if they could make their stay here a bit longer since their   badly needed for the upcoming ship repairs work. I don’t know the other details on their discussion that followed.   The following day, O.S. Marder wasn't happy about being told to stay a bit longer and insist that he should disembark in Singapore, after all his contract is already finished and there is no point in staying longer. He submitted another letter to the Norstar Management and a few hours later, In the afternoon a reply was made by the management confirming that he will disembark in Singapore along with the other three "Riding crew" , One riding crew will be left behind.   Some of the crew here were not happy about the news that, this ship will be short-ha...

JOURNAL ENTRY : August 15, 2016 Monday Location : Enroute to Malaysia     There has been a sudden change of schedule, Originally this ship was supposedly meant to be in the Chinese dry docks for ship repair. Now new news came in that China will be scrubbed out and the new location for ship repairs will be in Singapore.   Now here's more of the problem, being in Singapore for ship repairs is a hassle compared to china and the latest news also suggested that the crew here have to enter and clean up black oil residues inside the cargo tanks before dry dock, hinting that the next set of job will be messy and coverall wasting. If so this will be the case then good luck if some of us have enough coveralls left and industrial soap to use for the work,   Another thing that I had to worry about is the permanent tropical hot weather in Singapore, Although this is not blazingly hot compare to UAE Fujairah area and the weather here is almost identical to the Philippines (pr...

ENTRY DATE: August 09, 2016 Tuesday Location : Fujairah anchorage area enroute to the pacific ocean     Right after unmooring operations , everybody is relived to get the fuck out of Fujairah and unfortunately we won't get out of Fujairah just yet and we still have a bunkering operations that would follow. It was already close to 5am early in the morning when unmooring is finished and obviously were already exhausted from the heat and work of unmooring the ship. We had to drop anchor somewhere near the anchorage area.   Soon after securing the pilot ladder and gangway, a small boat arrived and delivered us some engine room supplies. We didn’t even bother tp help out as were already exhausted and let the engine crew do their own business - for us we went back to our cabins and rested until we were called back again in the afternoon.   After the bunkering, We went back again and heaved up anchor. This time the anchor winch was having problem heaving up anchor, Pos...

ENTRY DATE: August 07, 2016 Sunday Location : Fujirah Oil Tanker Terminal berth 6, UAE   Staying in fujirah for a week was difficult, Aside from the temperature scorching temperature of 48 degrees Celsius. I had problems as well on early counter measures in combating the heated environment.   Earlier my primary measure in cooling myself was to wet and wore my coveralls, But lately it seems that this countermeasure was not effective in the long run and as a result, skin rashes have been instantly appearing on almost every part of my body and the most rashes I got for now is on my legs. Probably I surmise that prolonged exposure to water and moisture (from my clothes) causes some sort of bacterial skin infection which in turn causes rashes. As a result to this unfortunate side effect from my early tactics, I took in a few antibiotics and stayed away from wetting my coveralls for a while. Despite the setback , it pushed and discovered another counter measure to combat the he...

ENTRY DATE : July 29, 2016 Thursday Location: Fujirah Anchorage area , UAE     Life is getting difficult here by the day and the latest of my troubles here is one of the most basic things here on planet earth, - WATER, fresh clean water. Since that this ship has already arrived in fujirah UAE, The temperatures here skyrocketed to blow torching proportions as predicted. Hot temperature means crew get to consume more water, Unfortunately availability of water here is scarce to the point that everybody awaits the purifier for water (take not PURIFIER, bottled mineral water is scarce) and that purifier cant supply water to all 27 people here onboard, so it's obviously someone here is bound to be thirsty or dehydrated soon if this continues.   Actually the main problem here is the extreme temperature of Fujirah which is very hot. To complicate things air-conditioning systems of this ship is very poor according to oiler Lester Suarez and has something to do about the compr...