Facing hell

Besides the danger of sinking or capsizing, fire at sea is, probably, the most dramatic event that a seafarer may face while on duty at sea. To the layman a fire at sea doesn't sound so different as the same scenario ashore. Nothing could be further from the truth. When a fire erupts on a ship at sea, the crewmembers can't go anywhere. They can not retreat to a safer distance, assess the situation and then return to face it, already in the possession of a solid strategy and probably assisted by professional fire-fighters. No. At sea, at two days voyage from the nearest port and unable to be assisted in a short practical amount of time, they have to face the monster themselves. Or resign. And watch the vessel burn to ashes.

Since only a few Merchant Marine units worldwide have a team of professional fire-fighters on board, merchant mariners worldwide have to perform that duty if the divine providence puts them in the presence of such a scary moment. The Advanced Fire Fighting Course was one of the several courses we had to take before our seafaring books were issued and we were considered ready to surf the mighty ocean.

When we made the AFFC, in the early nineties, in Alfeite (Lisbon Naval Base), we were all far from imagine how stressful a real fire-fighting situation could be. A few years later I would recognize the valuable instruction that we received in those two intensive days, when we had a small (it was really small!) fire in the ship's galley. Nothing special. Just a paint of oil from the roast chicken that slipped from the tray and ignited the moment it touched its heating elements. In took us a mere ten seconds since the cookie screamed "fire" to storm the galley with a Chemical Powder Fire Extinguisher and we had already to find our way to the source of the fire like blind people, unable to see more than two fingers in front of our faces. From that moment on, surrounded by a black, thick and impenetrable smoke, I developed a deep respect about fires on liquid fuels. One could only hardly imagine the same scenario in the engine room.

Picture:

Bulkhead in flames for a demonstration of fire suppression techniques using ABC Chemical Powder Fire Extinguishers, in Lisbon Naval Base. The correct technique is here demonstrated: you have to fight the fire from the lower level to the higher one, pointing the fire extinguisher's nozzle from down to up. The smart use of the fire extinguisher's available capacity is the most important factor while fighting a fire.

Picture taken with Pentax SF1 and Pentax 50mm f/1.7 KAF lens on Fujicolor HR100. Scanning in Nikon Coolscan V ED and post-processing in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Impressions of Iceland

Among the several voyages I have made in my short-lived seafaring career, the one I remember most was a Summer voyage, in 2004, to Iceland.

Viewing "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", a few weeks ago, triggered once again a torrent of emotions, when I remembered the vastness of the Icelandic lunar landscape unfolding before me, as I approached the island-nation from the South, nearly ten days later from our departure from Ceuta.

At the time a Captain of a small coastal vessel, casually promoted, for the sake of the world trade, to the select rank of the "oceanic ships", I, too, did felt a bit like Walter Mitty, when he faces the fact that he is, involuntarily, pushed towards a voyage which he isn't really eager to begin.

I, too, was afraid of the unknown, when, reading that nearly-arrived telex, I was informed by the Norwegian commercial operator that, after leaving the Spanish port where we have been in the past two days, loading a cargo of 3600 tons of salt, we should proceed to Ceuta, for bunkering the amount of fuel necessary for the crossing to Iceland. Iceland???... Sh...!!!!

Needless to say, I wasn't jumping with joy. Those northern latitudes are not really cherished by seafarers. We even call the Icelandic sea the "storm magnet", since all the hurricanes developing over the Gulf of Mexico end up traversing the North Atlantic, en route to Greenland, Iceland and Norway, making a lot of damage on the way.

But ok, it was Summer time and, thank God, the guys (and girls) at Bracknell were issuing some good meteorological prognosis. So the apprehension gave its place to curiosity (just like Walter Mitty) and off we went, in our old, but trustworthy, bucket,  leaving our own neighbourhood, for a ten-days loxodromic crossing of the North Atlantic.

But, except for a few days of rough seas along the coast of Ireland, the crossing was a relaxed one and so it was the Icelandic periplus, jumping from port to port, after reaching the island.

The most impressive view of the island is, certainly, obtained while approaching from the sea. The vast mass of the eternal polar cap - the Vatnajökull - dominates the shape of this arid lunar landscape. In this artic climate nearly no vegetation grows, except small grass.

When I phoned my father and told him that I have arrived to an island the size of Portugal with as may citizens as in Madeira, he answered "God, it's almost unpopulated". It certainly is. However, that is also a part of her mystique.

Icelandic heritage is very well preserved by this nation's citizens. Well kept gardens, houses and public places. Streets were perfectly clean and the quality of life had more to do with the American way of life than with the European one. But that has probably changed in the past years, since the americans left from their air force base of Keflavik, in 2006.

Maintenance works on a church, in a small village on the North coast of the island. Although they have freedom of religion, the vast majority of Icelanders - more than seventy-five percent -  are members of the Church of Iceland, a Lutheran body.

Our good old Wani Venture (IMO nº 9117208) discharging part of her cargo in the Northern port of Dalvik on a perfect Summer day.

Safety first!

Safety first.

I don't know how many times I've repeated these two words in my mind, like some kind of obsessive mantra, during my Merchant Marine years.

It seems that everything revolves around this sentence on the professional seafaring world, these days. However, a part of me can't help to see this policy as, somehow, hypocritical. Most of these regulations are technology-driven, instead of focused on human resources, like they should, increasingly, be.

With the present strategy, the biggest accomplishment made by IMO is to keep on feeding the gear-driven lobbies proliferating worldwide.

Confronted with the situation, ship owners are forced more and more to upgrade their vessels with some new high-tech stuff year after year.

But that, more often than not, isn't a revolutionary evolution (pardon the pun) in safety of navigation methodology.

Meanwhile, a true revolution still to come, the one focused on the management of human resources aboard is lingering, in slow-motion.

And by that, I don't speak about formation courses slash certification. Those we, seafarers, have already enough. To be at sea, as a professional, we have to collect, presently, a minimum of fifteen to twenty different plastic cards. Does this means that a similar evolution in the safe navigation procedures was accomplished? I don't think so. But they surely look nice on the wallet.

The problem goes deeper than a specific formation (although these are, by no means, less important!) or another credit-card look-a-like endorsement.

It's a question of the minimum safe manning aboard a ship to operate her safely. And these numbers are decreasing year after year, with the adoption of more and more automation systems.

In most areas of shipping (except some specific fields) this policy of crew reduction is already on the red line.

The market discovered long ago that it's profitable to place a single person doing the work of two, particularly if this person can work twice as much. In my opinion (and I think I'm not alone), at sea this is a receipt prone for disaster.

Because nowadays the philosophy is to do more and even more with less and less. And then, at sea, to overcome this, we decorate the cake with a few check-list pages and reports and a handful of assorted safety drills. Just to make all look nicer.

The opposite direction should be the goal of the maritime industry nowadays, in a future reform of the maritime careers. Embraced by seafarers, ship owners and governments alike.

Because the technology, just by itself is not a bullet-proof solution for everything. And the humans crewing ocean-going vessels are not entirely replaceable.

But, and meanwhile we all wait for the tide to change, we might as well remove the lookout from the navigation watch and leave on the bridge just the navigation Officer, with the dead-man alarm switched on.

Just in case the poor guy has a heart attack, when everybody is asleep.

In the picture: watertight door and Security Officer aboard a cruise ship.

Picture taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC FT3 and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ver. 4.1

Papa bear, mama bear and baby bear

The tugboats Barra de Viana, Leão dos Mares and Comenda (from left to right) in a picture taken, while alongside in Leixões, from the bridge wing of the M/V Apolo (IMO nº 9251509), during my seafaring years.

On the background the bascule bridge that allows the berthing, on the inner basin, of the big commercial vessels, namely container and bulk carriers.

At the time, the Comenda, with a bollard pull of 70 tons, was the most powerful oceanic salvage tug operating in Portugal.

She's now operated by an Italian company, located in Naples, who changed her name to Marechiaro.

Picture taken with Nikon F100 and Nikkor 28-105 AF lens. Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS scanned in Nikon Coolscan V ED and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ver. 4.1.

Portuguese Merchant Marine

Vasco da Gama must be turning over in his tomb, in Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, if he's following what happened to the Merchant Fleet of this so-called "Nation of Seafarers" during the past thirty-five years.

From one of the biggest merchant marines in Europe, during the forties, fifties and sixties, we ended up with a miserable cabotage fleet, comprising a handful of vessels, almost totally dedicated to the public service of supplying the Autonomous Regions of Madeira and Açores.

And I'm sad to see how things also changed so fast (for the worst) during the past two decades. When I entered in the Portuguese Nautical School (Escola Náutica Infante D. Henrique), in 1990, I remember that things were already in a fast decline. I recall that, most of the times, we were discussing among each other the sadness of arriving to a professional market that was already, by the time and in Portugal, anachronic and heading towards collapse.

During those days (and I say again: only twenty-two years ago), I remember that we still had about thirty shipowners and, roughly, seventy ships, most of them still under Portuguese traditional register and flag.

Almost five years later, when I boarded a merchant vessel to start my career at sea, the vast majority of that fleet was gone forever.

It's sad to see that we should, particularly now, be looking once again to our vast Atlantic border as a form of escaping to the economical dramas faced by the continental Europe. Just like we did almost six hundred years ago, when we first noticed that this little parcel of land was to small for our ambition and our entrepreneurial vision.

And the solutions for this are already around us. We just have to look for them, learn with them and adapt them to our particular needs. Like a former Captain of mine used to say, we were not aboard to invent anything. Everything was already invented.

But not in this country. Here, we don't have the humility to learn from those who know better. And some of them, paradoxically, were not even maritime nations two hundred years ago. But they are now. And powerful ones.

The weak government we have nowadays and the corrupt political "nomenklatura" that supports it doesn't have the slightest idea where to lead the nation. Which course to steer.

And I'm starting to get tired of listening, year after year, the empty, ignorant and incongruent speeches of both politicians and academic "summities" praising the benefits of returning to the sea and thus fulfilling our destiny as a nation. Empty words of ignorants that don't have the slightest idea of what kind of sea strategy they are talking about, since, most of the times, they don't even waste their precious time to write their own speeches.

We have a saying in Portugal: a weak King weakens a strong people. Poor people and poor country. Are we really to blame for the incompetents that rule us?

The cabotage boat "Rival", navigating in the waters of Faial, Açores, almost twenty years ago. A sad visual metaphor of the present day's Portuguese Merchant Fleet. A nation whose destiny was, once, the sea.

Picture taken with Pentax SF1 and Pentax - A SMC 70-200 f/4 lens.

Agfachrome 100 RS scanned in Nikon Coolscan V ED and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop LIghtroom.

North Sea trade

The North Sea trade is, for us, mariners, in many aspects, the Foreign Legion of a seafaring career.

Inclement weather, unpredictable even in Summer, short port calls, insanely intense traffic, uncomfortably shallow waters (although well charted), commercial pressure, reduced rest and hard work and... a bureaucratic hell, with endless reports and paperwork.

Nevertheless we seamen have short memories and, most of the times, we tend to forget the bad moments. We leave easily behind the storms, the struggle for our lives and the (comparatively) underpaid hard work.

So, when I remember the North Sea my mind navigates to the midnight sun above the polar circle, in the Summer days of the Norwegian and Icelandic fjords, to the oil rig burners that lit the night and turned it almost into day along the British and Dutch coasts, or to the many wonderful people I've met in my maritime expeditions.
Do I really miss it? You bet!

The Motor/Tanker NCC Tiahmah (IMO nº 7384871), under tug escort, enters the Berendrecht lock, in the port of Antwerp, on a very typical grey North Sea morning.The Berendrecht lock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berendrecht_Lock) is presently the largest in the world, with 500 metres long and almost sixty meters wide. Depending on their size, it can accommodate several ships at once and allows them to access the port of Antwerp interior basin, where the vessels can be alongside free from the natural tidal movements.

Picture taken with Nikon FM3A and Nikkor 28-105 AF-D kit lens.

Fujichrome Velvia ASA 50 scanned on Nikon Coolscan V ED. Post-processed in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Chatham docks; one early Winter morning

Several years ago, while still navigating as a professional mariner, I made a couple of seasons on the North Sea, doing a little bit of tramp cabotage here and there. Although I don't miss it so much (nautically speaking), since that particular trade is becoming harder and harder on seafarers, it was always with pleasure that I called the English ports.

England, for the moment, still manages to keep herself as a nation of mariners. And we can see that in every coastal town. Historic vessels are recovered and dry docked for posterity. For the future generations to see. Maritime History is, itself, cherished and preserved. All that heritage is kept alive and present in everybody's hearts. Perhaps, some of the times, with a little bit of excess. Like if they are the maritime nation of the world, instead of just one more. But who can blame them? It's their History. I'm glad that they defend it.

Not so with the country where I'm coming from. We are on the exact opposite of the scale. We don't cherish our maritime traditions at all. We were the first ones departing to the Age of Discoveries. Actually, we invented the all concept. And when the others started to wake up for that new world and vision we, basically, have already discovered pretty much everything.

And then, one day, we turned our backs to the sea. And this country was forever never the same. To this day nothing happened to change that. And while our politicians only remember our maritime heritage on their empty speeches, the only true connection of Portugal to the sea remains within the dominant and elitistic social class that rule our common destiny and their sailing yachts and "wine bottle" regattas.

For the rest of us, the plebs, the Portuguese maritime History is basically written words in the school manuals. Fading through time.

Not so for the Brits. For them the sea and all connected with it is a matter of national pride. A nation's design. To be shared among all. But you would have to visit England's coastal cities to truly understand what I mean.

The Chatham docks, near the river Thames estuary, in a very British and melancholic Winter morning. Once a important naval dock, Chatham is now a port facility mainly divided in two areas: a historical one, comprising the former naval docks and buildings and also with several historic vessels to be visited and the commercial docks, where we stayed alongside for a few days, while waiting for clearance to load a bulk cargo in a terminal up the river.

Picture made with Nikon FM3A and Nikkor 28-105 AF-D kit lens.

Fujichrome Velvia ASA 50 scanned in Nikon Coolscan V ED and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Marine acrobatics

The funny thing about my professional seafaring career is that no two days are ever the same. Like I've said before, in a previous post, a routine day aboard is hardly that. When we are sailing between ports there are always paperwork to be made, either internal or commercial. Safety drills are also, most of the times, performed during the sailing periods, since it's the only time when we can reunite all the crew together without compromising the commercial operations of the vessel.

However, there are some jobs that, by its innate specificity, can only be achieved in port. Alongside. Crane works are one of those. The maintenance of these electrohydraulic systems is one of the most important jobs performed by the Engine and Deck crew members, since all the cargo operations of the vessel (and therefore her sole purpose in life) depends of its readiness.

As much as a car cannot run out of oil, also a marine crane without the proper lubrication and regular maintenance can only lead to a catastrophic failure in the future.

The maintenance schedules for these particular equipments is vast and complex. However one of the simplest of those operations is also the most vital and important: the lubrication of the main cargo wire.

A Merchant Marine Bosun, suspended on the cargo hook of a container ship-based marine crane greases the cargo wire under the watchful eye of a fellow seaman who is operating the equipment from the control cabin, fifteen meters above deck.

Picture taken with Pentax P30-T and Pentax SMC 50mm f:1.7 AF lens.

Fujichrome Velvia ASA 50 scanned on Nikon Coolscan V ED.

Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

The rise of the dragon

Until the Second World War, the global Merchant Marine fleet was basically an imperial one.

It operated in the so-called "protected markets". The world, then, was a vast net of water-tight protectorates, with a very small amount of communication in-between. In those days, the merchant fleet was orthodox in its commercial approach and territorial in its own area of influence. Basically, the Europeans dominated the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Indian basins leaving the Pacific to be mostly shared between the Americans and the Far-Easterners.

Aside from a few interactions, nobody bothered to question the sanctity of this establishment. Things were OK that way.

Those were the days of the traditional flags. Meaning that every nation had its own merchant fleet, registered under its own flag. The market was heavily regulated. Both in the commercial matters and in the labour ones.

In those days having the nationality of the vessel was a nearly-global mandatory requirement for achieving a job as a seaman.

But then came the Second World War. And the world equilibrium of forces started to collapse. And so did the Empires. And, within six years, the war was over.

Suddenly, somewhere between the end of the forties and beginning of the fifties, the world had a vast fleet of thousands of "Liberty Ships" and former "imperial" vessels alongside. And all of them desperately craving for a freight contract.

And so did happen. While the world was being rebuilt over the second global conflict, we, mariners, entered happily in a new-era of globalization. And I say new-era because the actual globalization have started four hundred years before those days, with the Portuguese Discoveries.

First in the form of convenience flags (with the purpose of making the fleets commercially competitive) and afterwards (as a direct consequence of the latter) in the form of labour market deregulation, the globalization arrived to the modern maritime world.

It's hard, presently, to attribute a direct responsibility to anyone for the happening. Like most things in human History, this had also a direct relation between cause and effect.

And one of the causes being the traditional maritime nations starting the loose the vocation to the sea. And it happened through all European maritime nations. Faced with (at the time) large fleets and no crews, these nations started to open their labour markets to foreign citizens.

However, and regardless of that, the European maritime power was still hegemonic. And that hegemony lasted until now. To the days in which our European economic power, once mighty, is being challenged by the so-called "emerging nations".

And so is our Merchant Fleet (or what is left of it).

I'm not a very old professional mariner. Truth being told, I've started my professional life about seventeen years ago. But I do remember, not long ago, the racist comments I used to listen on the VHF open channels and related to the non-European seafarers navigating in our waters.

Nowadays those colleagues are respected members of our profession and were embraced (due to their proven value) by the maritime community.

But things continuously change. And while we are sitting and enjoying the view of the China's rising economic star, we should also take a time to see and analyse the development of their global transport net.

Once a timid regional player, China is now opening her eyes to the more profitable global freight market.

And so we see them now. Calling every deep water port in Europe. The Coscos and the China Shipping Lines. And this is just the beginning.

While I was tramping in the North European short-sea market, some nine years ago, I had the chance to discuss that with the Bar Pilot leading us in the port of Rotterdam. According to him, they still have a "shy" approach to shipping. They take (at that time, at least) a Deep-Sea Pilot while arriving to Ouessant and they don't disembark him until they left the North Sea for good (and with that crazy traffic... who can blame them?). Also according to him, their English is very, very weak. And fluent English is now becoming mandatory for any seaman.

But I guess this is not a problem. There's one beautiful thing about us humans: we can learn anything if we are taught. So, soon they will learn their English and they will be ruling our waters as they are already ruling our economy.

Unless we learn mandarin first.

The container carrier Xin Pu Dong (IMO nº 9270440), from China Shipping Line, entering the port of Rotterdam, under escort by two tugboats, pictured from the bridge of our "petit" Wani Venture (IMO nº 9117208).

Photo taken with Nikon FM3A and Nikkor 28-105mm AF 1:3.5-4.5 D kit lens.

Shot on Fujichrome Velvia ASA 50 and scanned on Nikon Coolscan V ED.

Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.