The undesired event - Part I

As a part of our management company’s policy we are required to report things out of the ordinary that happen during the operation of the ship. This is a way to make sure problems come to the surface, are dealt with in a professional way and are properly documented for the future. Basically it’s a pain in the ass is what it is. Happenings are categorized differently. I won’t go through all the categories but here are a few:

1. “Accident”. Accidents are bad. If we have an accident this means someone or something breaks which usually is very expensive or very tragic depending on who you ask. Because some of what we do can be dangerous, we are a prepared. We have a hospital full of sharp scalpels and fantastic drugs.
2. “Near miss”. This is when something happens but not quite. It nearly happens. (Does anyone remember the Tage Danielsson “Harrisburg” monologue?) What I mean is that there’s a risk for something horrible to happen (See point 1), but it’s avoided in the last second because someone does something unhorribly and rectifies the whole thing. Clever people argue that this isn’t technically a “near miss” at all, that something isn’t nearly missed, it should in fact be called a “near hit”. (When I say clever people I mean Mr Smartass MacCleverPants. Nobody likes him….in spite of his cheerful Scottish manor) They take it even further though. There’s something called a “potential near miss”. I just don’t know.
3. “Undesired event”. This is the most fun one since it can be used for anything. For instance, I overslept. I desired to wake up but it didn’t happen. Undesired event. Someone farted in the elevator. I desired fresh breathable air. I was denied. Undesired event. High wind caused all the mooring lines to break and the ship to drift away from the berth and go aground. Undesired event.

All these happened I’m afraid. The smell in that elevator…

Ok, I want to tell you more details, I need to, because this is one crazy thing that happened, not the fart, the breakaway, and I have to process it somehow. Here we go:

I was on watch in the cargo hold the first time the wind hit. We have to be down there to keep an eye on the stevedores, make sure they’re doing their job properly. I heard one of the ABs say on the radio that we had drifted out from the berth and that the aft lines were making a horrible noise. My heart started beating and I ran to the ramp to look and I saw that we indeed had drifted out, the stern was maybe a meter out and the forward more like three. It had been sunny and calm a while ago but now the wind had picked up with rain and hail coming down. I ran up to the aft mooring station to see if there was anything I could do with the lines there. But they were making that weird cracking noise and if there’s anything I’ve learned about mooring lines is that when they start to stretch you stay away from them. They can cut through flesh and bone like butter when they snap. So needless to say, I kept a safe distance. By then the captain was up on the bridge and had started the fore and aft thrusters to push us back towards the berth. We came back in eventually. Everything was fine. We added an extra line forward for good measure but it didn’t feel necessary at all. The wind had died down completely. The sun came back out.

I hurried back to work and got busy scolding a foreman for letting everything fall to pieces while I was gone. 15 minutes later I heard the AB say the wind was back and we were drifting out from the berth. I didn’t feel any urgency this time and I heard the captain say in a very calm voice that he was on his way up to restart the thrusters. I started walking back towards the ramp when I heard another AB scream on the radio:

“CAPTAIN TWO LINES HA…..FOUR LINES HAV……CAPTAIN ALL LINES HAVE BROKEN FORWARD!!!!!”.

I may have said “fuck”. I may have said it more than once.

To be continued…