The undesired event III - Event harder

A Belgian man told me to “Schniff it!” today. Three of us were in the elevator wondering whether the laundry bags lying on the floor were coming from the cleaners or were, in fact, on their way to the cleaners. This was the advice he gave me. It’s the little things, isn’t it?

We’re in Antwerp. Nothing exciting happened on the way here from Liverpool. Even the feared Marine Inspector that had come onboard to audit us was nice. I’m a bit disappointed at him actually, I’ve heard stories of carnage and spiked babies, but he said it was all “quite good”!

I fear I’m losing interest about the whole Baltimore event but I’ll try to conclude as best I can. So back to the story. I ran down to deck 4 again where I met Henrik. He had been in the gym wondering why we were departing already. Then he saw the lines break and thought it was probably a good idea to go out. I screamed at him to follow me and we ran to the forward station. It’s about 250 meters and when we got there I was completely out of breath. The wind was coming in hard from the starboard bow, strong enough to blow you over the side. Ednel, one of the other ABs, was there already trying like hell to release the anchor break for it to freefall down to the bottom. But it was slow moving so we started helping him. Eventually the anchor started falling but then the break automatically tightened again. It was actually designed this way to prevent the anchor chain from stampeding out completely. We got some more chain out, about 4 shackles, or 110m, and it started tightening up. We released the other anchor as well but it wasn’t necessary. By then the port anchor had taken hold and we had already drifted aground. It turned out later that we were only resting against a very steep mud bank so it wasn’t that bad. No actual damage to the hull. After a while 4 tugboats arrived and they pulled us back to the berth where we moored using what was left of our lines. The US Coast Guard came onboard. Sometimes they can be a bit rough for no good reason. This time you’d think they had a reason to be pissed but they were quite nice, reasonable even. They came to the forward station to check out the broken lines. One of them came up to me and asked me if I had been scared. What an odd question I thought, but I figured out what he was fishing for and answered that “No sir, quite the opposite. I was focused and in control.” It sounds so cheesy when I write it now but those were my exact words. And what’s even more crazy, it was true.

But wait a minute here, you say. Focused? In control? Didn’t you, like, say fuck and stuff? I did. But I also fucking did stuff. And I’m actually quite proud of myself and what I did. I thought I’d be all crying in a corner. And besides, I wasn’t alone. Henrik was fucking awesome. Ednel too.

Yeah-ok-great who’s bored? Meee! This was truly a piece of shit, apologies for that. Tune in to the next one though. Promises of nudity.