The day after our journey through
the Suez Canal was Christmas Eve. The engineering department enjoyed a half day
in recognition of the coming holiday. The deck cadets had to continue sweeping
and standing watch for the day. However, we all got Christmas off (although,
since it was a Sunday, we would have had the day off anyways)! To celebrate we
watched a bunch of movies and ate a lot of good food throughout the day, the
common favorite; cinnamon rolls!
To really get into the Christmas
Spirit we decided to take on the role of Santa’s Secret Elves and give everyone
a little gift bag, courtesy of Muriel who had brought along some matchbox cars.
We were more like the three wise men (although four instead of three) bearing
gifts to our crew members doors, since we were closer to where the real
Christmas story took place.
The engineering department really
cannot avoid clogs. Which is a problem for everyone, but primarily those who
have to fix said clog. This time the clog was in the gray water system, which is
from all the sinks and showers throughout the ship, including the Galley. Over
time soap scum and left over food scraps had managed to completely restrict
water flow overboard through some 20 meters of pipe. Will and Abi helped scrap
out all the caked sludge from the pipes getting further covered in filth. Early
on there was a clog situation with the saltwater that had everyone worried
about the main engine, but was fortunately fixed. Most recently the purifiers
proved to have a clogged up system and were working inefficiently. Hopefully
there won’t be any more major clogs this trip!
The ship underwent an interesting
maneuver this week called an underway-replenishment(un-rep). An un-rep is when two ships match speed
next to each other to transfer fuel or cargo while both traveling around 15
knots about 100 feet apart from each other. It was quite the spectacle to
watch. All four of the cadets were trained to work paddle signals to the other
ship, so all of us got to watch the maneuver. We watched the ship pull up and
match our speed and then proceeded to signal for them to send over the lines to
hook up for the transfer. This was just a drill, so we didn’t actually transfer
anything. Then we unhooked the lines and watched the other ship head off. Will
set up a Go-Pro to capture the entire event in a time lapse, which turned out
great, but is too big a file to post here.
Every once in a while we have a
time change. The hour change ahead means a shorter work day which is always
nice. Also somewhat infrequently we do safety drills. We have done both the
abandon ship and fire drills now. The abandon ship drill is simple, we just
grab our life vests and immersion suits and head up to the life boat. We all
want to do a test run because we have a life boat that drops 15 meters off of the
stern, which would be fun to do! The fire drill is much more active. We all
meet out at the fire station and the fire crew members suit up in gear and
pretend to deal with a fire in a made up situation. The rest of us go and check
the Fire main and Foam main to make sure all the hoses and water cannons work.
The cannons are immensely powerful and an awesome sight to see blasting water
over the side of the ship.
The week ended with another Sunday
holiday; New Years! We all watched a couple movies and stayed up till midnight
to bring in 2017! We just exited the Gulf of Aden, on to Antarctica! 2017 is
lining up to be a great year!
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