Saturday, 30th June 2012, 8:12AM

Day of the tour through the engine room and our first BBQ

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But first, the rest of yesterday’s report:

I read all afternoon and finished John Grisham’s “The Appeal.”
Afterwards (4 p.m.??), I went to the pool (it had been a little crowded earlier) and just sat around for a bit, because I
don’t have to worry about anything anymore.
(Read my post from yesterday about that 😉 )

Shortly after 6 p.m., Jerôme, Pasquale, and Gaél arrived at the pool with their after-work beers.
Later, the chief engineer, Thomás, Sandra, and a third person whose name I don’t know joined us, but he jumped right into
the water.

I spent most of the time talking to Gaél, who first accused me of not showing up at 6 p.m. as planned and said he had been waiting for me (well, he wasn’t really angry). I then had to explain that I
had assumed the appointment had been postponed. Somehow the whole planning for all these tours through the ship seemed a bit messed up right now.
Let’s see if/when Gaél shows me the rest of the ship.

Gaél also asked me what I thought of the air conditioning and told me that he woke up at 4 a.m. completely drenched in sweat. That reassures me a little; I thought I had a fever or something when I woke up 2-3 times during the night and felt like I had just been pulled out of the water.
Gaél explained that due to the constant time difference (currently one hour every night), the air conditioning setting
is no longer correct – good to know….

He also told us about his student exchange in Germany, the hot engine room, trips to hot countries where even the shower provides only warm/hot water, and that he learned German at school for five years.

At 7 p.m. we went down for dinner, but made plans to meet up afterwards for a digestif and, if possible, to play darts.

At dinner, I sat at Alex’s table again and learned many interesting things. For example, that life on board here is actually still a bit medieval with a strict hierarchie and rather ridgid rules: e.g. the Romanian crew are not even allowed in the crew smoking room or that he as an officer has to knock on the door of the crew smoking room and can only stay there with the crew’s permission.
Consequently, I’ve come to the conclusion that, conversely, if a crew member wants to enter the officers‘ smoking room, they’ll probably need a written consent, the captain’s permission or something similar *eye roll *.

Furthermore, he told me about the four waterfalls on Guadeloupe, and now I’m once again at a loss as to what to do there because of the too many choices….argh….

After dinner, I stopped by the crew smoking room, but no one was there yet. So I played two rounds of darts with Alex, which he unfortunately won by a narrow margin…grrr
After that, he had to do his laundry, and Jerôme, Pasquale, Gaél, and later my neighbor Cabrol, Jean, and another guy without a name were in the crew smoking room.

I was so sneaky as to borrow the three dart arrows from the officers‘ smoking room for the crew smoking room. I really hope no one noticed, because I would probably have needed the captain’s permission for that…

But it’s really ridiculous: you can’t play in the officers‘ smoking room because they always play cards there and the crew isn’t allowed in there anyway, and in the crew smoking room there is a board, but not enough darts arrows.
Maybe I’ll ask the captain officially at the BBQ today, then at least the topic will be settled.

The evening was really nice: there was loud music, laughter, (rum, of course). Pasquale pretty much knocked out everyone except me and can now (still) call himself „The Boss“ because he can clearly beat us all at darts, but at least I was mostly second. Except in the last game of cricket, when I was already almost falling asleep.
Seems like my little darts practices are showing some results 🙂

This morning I woke up with a headache. Even though yesterday I only had one pastis and a pretty disgusting rum cocktail—well, actually it was almost only rum. And I wasn’t in a great mood. Downstairs at breakfast, I was told by a crew member that my tour of the engine room was at 10 a.m. and not 6 p.m. And silly me said that no one had told me, when in fact I had probably just misunderstood the chief engineer.
Hopefully the guy won’t pass it on, otherwise I’ll be completely out of favor with the chief engineer (I have a feeling that he’s one of those people who doesn’t understand why I’m here when I’m not speaking the language).
I have to admit that I’m already a little nervous about later.

Somehow, I find it all quite complicated at the moment. I never know when I have to ask whom what, what to say, and I feel like I’m constantly looking for the next faux pas.

4:48 PM:

I’m back – without my head being torn off!
I didn’t get caught, and I only saw the chief engineer briefly, said “hello” and asked if I could take photos *phew *.
Thomás and Pierre-Antoine took over the tour. And Thomás really knows his stuff (but then again, he was on board the Fort St. Louis already last year).

Tour through the engine room

If I had to sum it up in a nutshell:
It’s incredibly hot (Gaél said yesterday that it was 38°C at the moment) and super loud. There are an insane number of machines, and the main part can be broken down into pumps,
filters, and engines. Everything has to do with air, water, oil, or diesel.

The guys started by explaining the entire combustion process of the diesel engine to me in the still cool and relatively quiet control center (super good!!).
Then we looked at the auxiliary engines and everything else that runs alongside them:
air intake pumps, compressors, the entire exhaust air process with fans, cleaning, etc., then the oil stuff with heating, cleaning, regulating, feeding, discharging, cleaning, etc.

Water treatment (for service water, the salt water is evaporated, cooled again, enriched with minerals, and the bacteria are killed (electrically), mineralization, purification, a quick look at the main engine, which is simply super impressive… and at the very end of the tour (after almost 1 ½ hours) we followed the exhaust air, which is still used to heat the service water and drive the fans (to draw in fresh air)- there it gets quite hot again (if I saw correctly, the exhaust air is about 500°C hot) – until we suddenly stumbled into the hallway on the D deck .
From there, we went straight out into the fresh air and took a deep breath. After 1 ½ hours, I was pretty sweaty (without working) and at times close to fainting.

So, what the guys and girls put themselves through every day for eight hours (or longer) deserves greatest respect!

That gives me a topic for the BBQ tonight:
Why do you do something like this voluntarily, and so far away
from family and friends? I’m curious to hear the answers.

When we finished the tour, there was just enough time for a quick dip in the pool and a shower before heading down for lunch.
After that, I went straight back up to the pool and woke Gaél from his afternoon nap, which he seemed to like because he could then turn over and get a tan on his front too (he’ll look like a lobster tomorrow, but that’s not my problem ;-)).

At 2 p.m., when the boys had all left, I jumped into the pool for a quick dip and spent the rest of the afternoon reading (but I’m still
not sure if I really like “White Heat” by Sandra Brown).

Overall, it was quite windy, even though we stopped in between, and I was almost blown off the bench in fright when the cadets tried out how to shoot a rope into the air. Someone explained to me afterwards that this was an emergency measure in case you had to anchor very quickly.

I didn’t know what the guys were up to on the bridge and got a real scare when I heard a loud “WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSCH” behind me. It sounded a bit like something had blown up, which is usually not a good thing on a ship.

Besides that, the afternoon was uneventful. At around 4 p.m., the cadets arrived to scrub the sundeck so that we could theoretically eat the BBQ off the floor tonight.
But tomorrow it will certainly look the same again (if not worse), with food scraps, spilled beer, cigarette butts, etc.
Let’s see if they have to clean up again afterwards.

Anyway, I’ve (once again) done my laundry and I’ve also arranged to meet Gaél after lunch tomorrow for a tour of the ship, so I can
finally get to the forecastle, where you can supposedly see flying fish. Maybe I’ll be lucky and there’ll be a few dolphins hanging around tomorrow, that would be something 🙂

According to ??, the ocean water is supposed to be 27°C, which I can’t imagine at all. It’s like we’re driving around in a giant ink-blue bathtub – unbelievable 🙂

And in two days, I’ll be back online…aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh…. I have to say, I’m really a little excited 🙂

Sunday, 1st July 2012, 7:47 PM:

Due to the party yesterday and my laziness today, here is a very late entry (addendum) about yesterday’s events:

At 6 p.m., there was an announcement that I didn’t understand.
To be on the safe side, I went outside and asked Pierre-Antoine, who was standing in front of my door, what was going on. He was a little upset because they had to go to the bridge to sign their
“utility bill” for the first week, which already amounted to 100 euros for one week.
He then asked me if I had already signed my slip. For the
first three seconds, I actually fell for it…tss….tsss.tss…. until I remembered that I had already paid a lot of money in advance….what a sneaky little…

The BBQ

Since I was already outside, I went to the sundeck to check out the current situation. Jean had just started setting the first things
on the tables, and I helped a little after Jerôme had already given me an after-work beer (even though I don’t actually drink beer). So I distributed the chips among the bowls and took the first “pre-party pictures” („At the beginning, when everything still looked nice…“):

Then Gaél arrived, and the entertainment part was safe.
Little by little, the rest of the team trickled in, but dinner wasn’t served until much later (around 8:30 p.m.???).
I alternated between taking pictures, talking to Gaél, and mingling
with the rest of the crowd. In short, I had a really, really good evening 🙂

In between, I chatted with the female mechanic. She has been working at CGM for 20 months and really likes working in the engine room, even more than on the bridge. She said you get used to the heat, and when you’re busy working, you don’t notice it so much anyway. And unlike on the bridge, it’s much easier to avoid each other in the engine room if there’s been a row.
And I added that in the engine room you can’t hear anyone shouting at you anyway ;-).
Still, I wouldn’t want to swap places with her.

By around 10 p.m., most of the crew had already left, the cadets were having fun in the pool, and at some point Jerôme unpacked his guitar.
Apparently, apart from his own songs, he only played old sea shanties and French folk songs, and everyone (Gaél, Sandra,
Thomás, and Jerôme) knew the lyrics.
Hmm, I couldn’t say the same about myself and German folk songs, although I would like to point out that Breton folklore is quite different from Bavarian folk songs ;-).

I was particularly impressed by a song that is obviously THE French sailor’s song par excellence. Gaél told me right away when Jerôme started playing that this song gives him goose bumps,
and Jerôme later recited the entire song to me in translation:
It’s about how the job isn’t easy, how families don’t have it easy (when the man is at sea), that it’s a dangerous job, but that this is their life, that it’s the only life they can imagine, that they are proud that this is the real life (for them) and that they consider themselves incredibly lucky.

Apparently, the song describes the emotions of sailors very accurately.
That evening, several people told me that it is this freedom and the vastness of the sea that makes them do this job and that it is the only job that comes into question for them, even if, of course, not everything is ideal and the job is still dangerous today.

Pierre-Antoine told me over dinner that the captain had
really bad experiences with alcohol on the last trip.
Apparently, there were people who couldn’t control themselves,
which led to repeated fights.
That’s why it’s all the more surprising that he’s still being so generous this time around.
On the Chinese ship Pierre-Antoine sailed on last year,
alcohol was apparently completely banned – and when you
hear these stories, you can understand why.

So once again, three cheers for the captain for taking the risk again, and this time it seems to be going really well (in my opinion). We also have him to thank for the crêpes and the BBQ.

So I guess I’ve been really, really lucky with the ship, the captain, and the crew.
Who knows if it would have been the same on the Fort St. Georges, which I was originally supposed to sail on….

I think it was around 11:30 p.m. when the cadets with Alex and Jerôme disappeared from the sundeck (we assumed they were going below deck to continue the party with loud music and more alcohol). And after we chatted a bit more, Gaél had the idea to show me (finally) the forecastle.

So we set off with the moon almost full and a flashlight.
And it is simply the very best place on the whole ship!
You climb the ladder and suddenly it is… quiet… almost windless… And the only sounds you hear are the wind and the waves breaking against the ship. It is simply amazing.
This must be what it is like when people sail the ocean without engines, powered only by wind.