Tours

Took my first group of passengers on a tour today with me at the controls from start to finish. The vessel is really nice to handle, since she is relatively light, being aluminum,  and decently powered, woth twin 250 horsepower caterpillar engines with the propellers positioned far to the outsiders of the ship. This gives lots of leverage and makes it easy to steer with just the throttles. In fact, the entire mooring procedure, as well as departing the dock is done using throttles only, woth the rudders set in the middle and not touched until were out. My boat, the Island Belle docks between the two larger boats in the fleet. When leaving the dock, you let the lines go at the stern, and put your port side engine in ahead and starboard in reverse to swing the stern out. Then you back out of the slip, do a tight 360 degree turn using the engines, and off you go. Here's I've posted the view from the wheelhouse!  Not a bad waterfront office I must say. Also you can see the engine room hatch. Its cramped down there, but workable. 2 generators, 2 engines. Its a good spot to work when you get tired of the shirt and tie and want to throw on a set of coveralls and get your hands dirty. My job is mate/engineer for the vessel so I get the best of both worlds!

Update:

Well, I'm back on the blogosphere.  Since I've been back from the tanker I've been doing various exams, got my commercial marine radio liscence, and went on the job hunt. As it turns out, ill be a first mate this summer for the Kingston Thousand Island Cruises.  I figured five months of steady employment,  getting to drive some cool little boats, and being home with friends and family was a good deal. We are in fit out mode right now, wildly preparing the three boats for the season. I will primarily be mate for the Island Belle, but will be licenced for the Island Queen and the water jet catamaran,  Bateau Mouche II as well. Im learning a lot and working hard. It looks like its going to he a good season!

Homeward bound.

I'm on my way home after an amazing five weeks on board the Acadian. The plan is to go back again in a few weeks for a lite bit more. I figured ot was a good time to come home for a visit, especially since my grandmother Popsie passed away while I was on board. Here ia a picture from yesterday's train from Halifax to Montreal. I just arrived in Montreal an hour ago and have a three hour layover until the train to Kingston.

Food!

Some people were asking about food...so here are some pictures! Home baked goods every day including buns, pies, cakes, etc.

Almost back to St. John

We have been very lucky. Very little wind made for a very confortable trip back Newfoundland. Not a whole lot to report. I had fun playing around with my camera on the bridge last night taking long exposure shots of the ship lit up in the moonlight. It is very hard to get a good shot with al the vibration of the ship but a few of them turned out quite well! I will post some later. Today we got all the glass, plastic, and other non burnable garbage ready to send off the ship and take to a garbage truck. Last time we did this was my first day on board so there is a month's worth of garbage bags. Pretty smelly. Not a whole lot of fun! Paper and food waste we burn in an on board incinerator which cute down on smelly garbage bags quite a bit. We are working on pressure testing and replacing winch break pads today. They are set at 31 tons, half the break strengh of the mooring lines. This means that the break should slip before we snap a line. Just on a coffee break, now back to work!

An ice covered trip

Finally, the internet is back up and running! For some reason it has not worked since leaving Halifax. Leaving Halifax was cool though. Beautiful sunny day, and since we left on my watch, I got to be the wheelsman! I was a little bit nervous since it was my first time steering out of port and under the orders of a pilot, but it went very smoothly. He just calls out helm orders for how many degrees to set your rudder, and you follow them. I was also on watch that night, but that was basically just four hours of looking out the windows of the bridge. It was the following day which was a challenge.

We encountered sea ice basically upon rounding Cape Breton and it only thickened as we got closer to PEI. I spent the entire morning watch on the wheel steering for what appeared to be the thinner patches of ice. This is actually pretty fun because the ship is basically yours. You just steer where you think looks best because really, it is anyone's guess where the thinnest ice is. We met up with a coast guard ice breaker shortly after noon when my watch ended. The ice got thicker and thicker until the ice breaker blew one of her engines and got stuck. we passed around the ship to avoid getting too close, and also got stuck. So the wait for the coast guard engineers to repair the engine began. Fortunately we werent waiting long. A few hours later, we resumed our slow push through the ice.

At 2000 hours, I got sent back up to the wheel. It is much harder to steer through the ice at night than in day. The goal is to follow the track left by the ice breaker. The problem is, even with our two searchlights going, it can be very difficult to determine which is the crushrd ice of the track, and what is just regular pack ice. Our rounded bow sometimes helps to guide us along, but since the track is always twisting and turning due to the currents, there is alot of evasive steering required. The ice breaker also got stuck again several times, which meant we had to leave the track to avoid them, then find it again once they got underway. They can go from 10 knots to 3 knots then back up to ten in a few minutes due to their small size. We take much much longer so the captain and watch officer are watchig their speed on the radar and ship identification closely to see if they suddenly slow down or stop.

The crazy thing about following the ice breaker was that it is reallly anyone's guess which way the track turns. As I said it's contantly changing. The breaker could be going straight ahead, yet the track may veer off to port 30 degrees. The captain and harbour pilot are both looking for it, telling you which way to steer. Often they asked me where I thought it turned because, as the captain joked, I'm younger than the rest of them and still have good eye sight. There were a few times when we slowed down to basically a stop, and once when we had to reverse. But eventually we made it right at the end of my watch and I was sent down to help tie up.

The usual 8-12 watchman is here now so I'm back to my usual duties. We are now back in St. John's, NL after a fairly uneventful trip, other than a lot more ice and a few more times getting minorly stuck. After my watch this morning, I'm going to bike around the harbour to visit my friend Shadow, who is working on a Mckeil Marine tug. We are supposed to be leaving late tonight, maybe around 12.

Back to Haliax

It is a cold and snowy day here in Halifax. We arrived at around six this morning after a fairly uneventful 20 hour trip.  It was really cold yesterday though, and the spray from the waves off the bow covered everything up foreward in several inches of ice in hours. Docking this morning felt a little chaotic for me. In certain ports that are less sheltered, we tie up with two extra mooring lines foreward, and two aft. Each are 600 feet long and have to be completely layed out on deck. It can get pretty confusing which goes where if you don't play close attention. Not long after we tied up, the snow started to come down very hard. So my watch this morning consisted of lotsss of shovelling. Fortunately, I had a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, cereal, and pancakes so I was all set. Then lunch was cheese and bacon hamburgers with onion rings, a bean soup, and ham with delicious rasberry crumble for desert. I am well fed here. The steward likes to joke that I am putting them way over budget because of how much I eat. I work it all off though. Just staying warm can burn alot of energy!

Today was also the day the other member of my watch Gerald was sent home. He was filling in for someone who quit but the company sent him home here because his releif is joining in PEI, our next stop. It is much easier and cheaper for the company to rent him a car from here back to St. John, then from PEI. From what I'm hearing, this means a promotion for me between here and PEI! I will be on the bridge at night keeping watch, and steering the ship in and out of port (to the captain or pilot's orders). Finally I am getting to use my bridge watchman's certification for what it's meant for. Keeping watch on the bridge.

I'm going into Halifax this afternoon to hopefully meet with sone friends. We likely won't be leaving until early tomorrow morning.