I’m not sure, dear reader, how well you understand ships and shipping. I’m sure you have some idea about it, probably about as much as I know about dry-cleaning. I know you go in there and leave your clothes. I know they come back clean. But I don’t fully understand the process in between. How do you wash clothes …dry? If someone can explain this to me I would greatly appreciate it. In return I will tell you a thing or two about ships.
When the ship is moored there is no watch kept on the bridge and no engine running. Starting the main engine to get forward propulsion is not done in a flash, there are steps to be taken, checklists to be checked and other technical things of that nature. And if you get it started it doesn’t necessary do any good unless there is room to maneuver. Now maneuvering a ship is done slowly and carefully using the propeller, the rudder, the thrusters and perhaps a tugboat or two. The captain always have a plan for how to get the ship from where it is to where he wants it to go. "Ok, I’m gonna pass that buoy, that’s where we’ll connect the tug. Then I’m gonna put the rudder hard to starboard and we’ll swing, yeah. I’ll use the thruster there probably and we’ll get closer etc."
Minor things can be corrected along the way, there is a margin for error, but the basics have to go according to plan or the ship will end up elsewhere. Now the thrusters on this ship are very useful and very powerful. The forward thruster has 2000hp and the aft one, 2500hp. But the ship is huge and when strong wind hits the side it’s like a big sailboat. Except it only goes sideways and there is no gin&tonic.
Where were we? Oh yes, the lines had broke and I was spouting profanity. Ok.
I ran up to the aft mooring station again only to see the spring line break right before my eyes. Like a rubber band, it flew right across the mooring station over the winches and crushed a light fixture on the opposite wall. The starboard stern line broke next. I decided not to go near the other lines. I looked out over the side and saw the stern ramp moving towards the edge of the quay. Oh no.
You see, the stern ramp is lowered and is resting on the quay. The ramp, on this particular vessel, is large. It’s one of the largest, heaviest ship ramps in the world actually, weighing around 500 tons. If the ship gets away from the berth and the ramp is dropped It won’t be good. It won’t be pleasant and happy. It won’t be little suntanned children laughing and chasing butterflies in a summer meadow. It will be the screeching sound of breaking metal, the screams of terrified stevedores and steel wires breaking and slicing through stuff you wouldn’t think could be sliced at all. If you’re lucky it will cause major structural damage to the ship and major financial damage to the shipping line. If you’re lucky. So I said fuck again.
"The fucking ramp is gonna fucking drop fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!" The f-word started flowing out of me like winter sickness. I have to lift the ramp! I started running up the stairs to the ramp maneuvering station, the “crows nest”. It’s 6 floors up and when I came up there the door was padlocked! "Fuckfuckfuckinglockfuck". We have to lock everything in port nowadays because stowaways tend to get onboard and hide in the different compartments. Even the compartments where you cannot, will not, hide because it is useless as a hideout and you would be discovered instantly if you tried to hide in there, have to be locked. So I spent another 10 seconds fishing out my key and opening the lock. Well inside, I find the checklist for lifting the ramp. It’s not easy like pushing a button. No you have to start pumps, change levers, wait for lights to come on, before you can actually start lifting. I was completely surprised when I read the “Ramp to Up” sequence on the checklist! I started lifting and the ramp bounced off on one of the bollards on the quay. By this time the forward part of the ship had drifted out but the aft part was still quite close to the quay forming an angle of about 60 degrees. But when the ramp lost traction the aft part also started drifting out.
I heard the captain say we had to release the anchors and that he was having problems releasing them from the bridge. Oh COME ON! "Fuckfuckfuckinganchorfuckfuckfuckfuck"
Minor detail I perhaps should mention. I lied a bit before. Sometimes there is a gin&tonic. But there wasn't one at this particular time. Had there been one, I would have drunk it. I would have swallowed the lemon and smoked the straw. It would have been nice.
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